The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-05-15
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council's Climate Resilience and Land Use Committee met on Thursday, May 15, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance. After minutes approval by unanimous consent, the session turned to discussion of the Mayor's proposed budget as it relates to parks, urban forestry, and emergency management. Topics included proposed amendments to transfer police funding toward parks maintenance, a proposed transfer from the Golf Fund's contingency balance (figures for the fund's total and contingency amounts were stated inconsistently across speakers), and questions about golf course operations under management agreements. Discussion addressed a decision package eliminating the Alternative Community Service crew program, park ranger and service dispatcher staffing changes, community center and sports/aquatic facility hours, and a deputy director position transitioning to a new Public Works service area. Extended discussion covered a proposed reduction of Urban Forestry tree inspector and permitting staff, including funding sources, revenue generated, workload, and historical staffing growth. Additional discussion addressed proposed funding increases for the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, including 24/7 watch capacity, planning positions, and coordination around the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub. Related revenue proposals, including a possible loan from the Portland Clean Energy Fund and a business license tax surcharge, were also mentioned. Votes occurred during the session, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for May 29th.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Just a test for councilor. Morillo. If you can hear us in chambers.
1 Yes, I can. Thanks for checking.
2 Thank you.
3 It is Thursday, may 15th at 9:30 a.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?
4 Good morning. Canal Ryan Morillo.
5 Here.
6 Avalos.
7 Present.
Procedural episode · turns 8–16
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8 Novick here. Claire, could you please read the statement of conduct?
9 Good morning, and welcome to the climate resilience and land use committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda@Portland.gov council agenda, slash climate resilience and land use committee. Or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be will be muted. When your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record and address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
10 Thank you. Claire. We have two items on our agenda today. First, we have a brief action to approve committee minutes. Then we will discuss issues relevant to the mayor's proposed budget related to the work of the climate resilience and land use committee. What I expect is to have for each counselor to have an opportunity to discuss amendments that they propose to bring forward in areas such as parks, the bureau of emergency management and other relevant areas of the budget. And have an opportunity to raise those proposed amendments and have an opportunity to ask staff questions. Tentatively, I want to suggest that each of us try to limit ourselves to 15 minutes for the first run through. I also want to have an opportunity to discuss with parks and forestry staff at least one amendment proposed by somebody not in this committee, which is councilor Zimmerman's proposal to cut the number of tree inspectors from 37 to 5. The first item of business is to approve committee minutes for the previous month will be approving minutes for committee meetings that occurred in February. I shouldn't presume we may be approving. Minutes for committee meetings occurred in February, March and April. Diego, could you briefly tell the committee about the clerk's process for compiling minutes.
11 Committee meeting minutes include the disposition agenda, which documents the actions committees take on each agenda item. The minutes also include the closed caption file, a speaker list, and audio files for each meeting. Minutes are presented for approval once a month for the previous months. Meetings.
12 Minutes can be approved by unanimous consent. Can I have unanimous consent to approve the minutes? Is there any objection? No. With no objection. The minutes are approved. Thank you. Diego, can you please read the next item?
13 Two discussion on mayor's proposed budget related to climate resilience, land use, and parks.
14 So, as I said, this is a chance for committee members to present amendments that are or discuss amendments they're planning to propose next week. And with the full council and for committee members to ask relevant bureaus questions about those amendment concepts. There's staff in the room to address. Committee questions include a vibrant communities director, dina long, parks and recreation claudio campuzano, finance, property and technology manager. Vibrant community support services. Pier division managers and staff, including sarah huggins, sustainable future program manager, lauren mcguire, asset and development division manager, parks, Portland parks and recreation. Maximo burns, recreation division manager, Portland parks and rec casey joggers, joggers program manager for urban forestry. And there may be. I'll scratch that from the Portland bureau of emergency management. Shad ahmed is here, I think virtually and jordanne whiley, in person from community and economic development, interim director of ppe and david kuhnhausen is available. And as is vivian satterfield, chief sustainability officer. So I have a couple of proposed amendments, but I think that I want to give my colleagues a chance to discuss their proposals before getting to mine. Is there anybody that wants to start airing amendment proposals for. For the group?
15 I have my hand up. Councilor.
16 Sorry. Councilor Morillo.
17 No worries. Thank you for this opportunity. This is really a great chance to talk about this, and I'm really excited and I'm really excited about I've only briefly been able to see some of the amendments that councilor Novick and councilor Avalos have put forward, and I think some of mine are pretty similar, but maybe a little bit different. So I want to talk about them, but I like all of them. So I guess that's where I'm starting out and knowing that we're going to be negotiating some of this. So and also apologies, because I'm working off of my tiny computer screen and I have multiple things open to look at at the same time. So bear with me while I try to do this. The first amendment I have that I'm happy to talk with councilor Avalos about, because I haven't had a chance to fully share this with you yet, and I know you have. We were working on the same thing as far as transferring police funding to restore parks maintenance. I completely agree from a value standpoint that it doesn't make sense to expand law enforcement budgets while we're cutting back on basic core care of our parks and community spaces. Because in my opinion, public safety isn't just about emergency responses, it's also about prevention. And it's about giving our community spaces where they have belonging and dignity. So our parks, bathrooms are being closed, trash is piling up, fields are falling into disrepair, and we are sending the message that our shared spaces in Portland and the people who rely on them don't matter. So to me, having safe, clean and welcoming parks is a frontline public safety strategy, not an afterthought. So I wanted to use a I wanted to have a proposal to transfer one time funding from Portland police bureau to support existing materials, exponentials and maintenance for parks that have been proposed for elimination in the mayor's budget and support for ongoing staff. I think that none of our amendments are actually in conflict. I guess I'll say support for ongoing staff, as was listed in councilor Avalos amendment could be covered by the funds saved with councilor Novick call priority amendment because councilor Novick call priority amendment uses ongoing funds. And so I think that would be a better tool to use to save employees jobs. Whereas I think my amendment talks about specifically using one time dollars for one time things in parks. So that's my first one there. Do you want me to pause? I only have one other one. I'm just going to go for it. I also have I also have a golf fund reduction to support park services. So we're still waiting on some legal analysis from cbo and the attorneys on this one. But if it all looks good by tomorrow, we'll be adding this in as well. Every bureau is being asked to do their part to meet urgent citywide needs, and we're all facing 20% in cuts. And the golf fund, in my opinion, should not be an exception to this. So I'm proposing a $5 million transfer that represents roughly 20% of the fund's total resources to be absorbed without impacting frontline services. And given the fund's really big contingency balance over $7 million and the significant fee increase proposed by councilor Green, I think that this would be a good option. So this would transfer golf funds to core services that portlanders rely on. And yeah, I guess I will stop there if people have any questions.
18 I have a question. Councilor Morillo I'm realizing I don't actually know what the golf fund does. Do you guys know we should have someone.
19 Come up in parks?
20 Is anyone from parks available? Is a golf person here?
21 It is an enterprise within golf within within parks. So thank you. Coming up, claudia.
22 Claudia camposano, finance property and technology manager for vibrant community support services. So the golf fund is a standalone fund in which all operations for the golf program. It's our six courses are both the expenses and the revenues are there. So everything that's charged to golfers and all expenses related to golf operations are in that fund. In almost every instance. There's no transfers between. But there's historical precedent going both ways, both ways.
23 So it's a restricted account.
24 It is it does have a fund statement of purpose that does restrict it. But I believe that there are there are options for transferring funds between the golf fund and other funds.
25 So it's more designated then. Yeah. Okay. That distinction is important. Yeah.
26 How much money is in the golf fund?
27 I left my notes back there. I can go ahead and get them and I'll give you a precise answer.
28 So part of what my office has been asking and that we're getting answers for, is whether or not the funds, the golf funds can be used to support parks maintenance legally, or if we can reclassify that account. And I believe the cost of the amount in the funds is about 26 million, but happy to be corrected on that.
29 So the, the budget for the fund is close to 26 million. And that does include contingency as well. Sorry. So total total expense is 25 million. And that includes about 4 million in personnel, about 10 million in materials and services, 1.3 million for ims. That's internal materials and services. That's charges by the central service functions. And then a transfer to the general fund for general fund overhead. The contingency is about 7.5 million. And I will note that that's a contingency that's been built up over a number of years to do two things. Number one, golf has is very susceptible to the weather. Any rainy season can can lead to significantly lower than projected revenues. And then also as a self-sustaining fund, it doesn't rely on any other funds to maintain its assets. And so it has been building up a capital maintenance reserve to address all of the capital maintenance for the courses.
30 So can I ask a follow up question? So did you say then that the expenses annually for the golf programing, if you will, is 25 million? But the budget we have is 26 million. But then there's also 7.5 in contingency.
31 So the 7.5 is part of it. So let me let me give that to you again. So the total budget is 2720 $4.8 million. To and so of that there is 7.5 is contingency. So that's really a one time resource that's been built up over time for those two things that I mentioned. Both operating reserve for bad years and capital maintenance reserve to take care of the assets. Other than that, all of all of the other all of the other resources are accounted for as part of personnel, materials and services, payment to the general fund, etc.
32 So.
33 And I would just like to add, as far as my amendment goes, that this cut wouldn't doesn't have to come out of contingency, it would come out of efficiency gains, which is what we're asking all agencies to do right now.
34 Councilor Ryan. Is that a legacy hand?
35 No, the efficiency fund startled me a bit. Could you explain what what that is?
36 I'm sorry.
37 Did councilor Morillo say an efficiency fund? I was tracking the contingency.
38 I think that she. She's looking for efficiencies from the operation.
39 Oh, I thought I heard the word fund. So what's the total dollar amount again that we want to that you're proposing to take out of golf? Councilor Morillo.
40 One second. Sorry, I have I have a few tabs open. Hang on. It would be a $5 million transfer, which would represent roughly 20% of the fund's total resources. And what I'm saying is that it could come out of their efficiency gains.
41 And one thing that I will note is that.
42 I want to know what the damage would be to what?
43 Yeah.
44 No changes for golf if this happens.
45 Yeah, I wasn't aware of the amendment before now, but as a general matter, speaking about the operations of the golf fund, most of our courses are under a management agreement. And so we would we would need to look at the agreement terms to determine how much savings we could get based on based on that, because we've got agreements with the course. Operator. The other piece is that they operate the actual golf operations. We do all of the maintenance of the courses. And so that would that, that personnel, that $4.5 million is, is what we have the most control over in terms of expenses. But happy to look into more more options related to the to the counselors proposal.
46 Okay. First of all, I'm not a golf. I'm not a golfer. I just want to know what the if this happens, what happens to that golf enterprise and you have to work with kemper. Is that the name of the. Okay, that's I just wanted to understand it better. Is there anything else I know that's not the area that you're in all the time. So thanks for pinch hitting, if you will. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
47 Not right now.
48 On what this would. Okay, thanks. It's important for us to understand how this impacts operations.
49 I also just wanted to add that this could be conjunct with councilor Green's amendment to increase golf fees so they'll have increased revenue, which means that this doesn't have to impact services. As far as golf goes. This could come from their contingency, with no impact on services or their efficiency gains. And if councilor Green's amendment to raise the fees, you know, goes, then they're not actually going to be at a net loss.
50 I have a question about the condition. If you if you know the condition of parks assets, I mean golf assets because of this, if the contingency is supposed to address sort of asset maintenance issues, I'm curious whether the golf courses are in as bad shape as a lot of our other facilities. Is there like a big maintenance backlog, or is that 7.5 million more, more than enough to address any maintenance issues?
51 So I'm probably not the expert for that. That's our asset management team. And so we could get back to you on that. My understanding is that the general condition is similar to our other assets. But but we want to give you a more precise answer.
52 Thank you. Councilor Avalos councilor Avalos.
53 Well, I was going to say one of my questions. I think you answered, but I'll just say out loud, councilor Morillo is just that. Is your amendment contingent on councilor Greens increase going up?
54 No, I don't think so. Because even if his doesn't go through again, this can come from their efficiencies or their contingency, which would have no impact on services. I'm just saying that it's a bonus if his goes through, because paired together, it would be like a really good combination.
55 Yeah. Thank you. Agree. In general, I am supportive and I'm also supportive of councilor Greens amendment to increase fees. And in general I'm supportive of us increasing fees. So yeah, I guess the only other thing as far as like my amendments go that I'll add to the conversation, obviously, you know, later we'll be talking more about broader amendments. So I'll be reading all of mine into the record. But the two that are relevant to this committee would be, as we've already discussed, this maintenance cost. As I have it written, it's taking it from directly from. Police staffing increases. I'm also really supportive and interested in councilor Novick ideas around the police numbers. So I know that. Yeah, I want to chat with you about that because I think you're on to something there. Just the way that you rationalize it, I think, is you have a better rationale than I had. So I think I might just piggyback on your amendment. And then, you know, I had another amendment that's specific to parks programing. That one, I think hits my district particularly hard as we are the one with the least assets, the least community centers and parks, and also home to 40% of the entire city's children. So those programing cuts would really affect my residents. And I think as of right now, the source of replacing those cuts. I am still working out some details with the budget office. So I think those are the only two relevant to this committee.
56 Thank you. Councilor. So councilor.
57 Novick, can I can I quickly respond?
58 Of course.
59 Okay.
60 Sorry, I don't want to interrupt. So I actually think I just want to really emphasize that I think the amendments that councilor Novick, you've proposed and councilor Avalos has proposed are complementary because councilor Novick goes for ongoing funding and councilor Avalos uses one time funding. I think, in my opinion, what you want to do with that then, because I agree with all of this and I think it's really important, is that we should have an ongoing funds used for things like programing or staffing, and then have one time funds used for things like maintenance that are, you know, a one time cost. But I'm really excited that both of you put those things forward, and I'm excited to figure out how we can work together on on that and just workshop it. So I just wanted to name that. I don't think that there we don't have to give up one for the other. Basically.
61 No. That's actually really helpful to understand. And you're right, there are some nuances in what we're both proposing. I think ultimately, I think we're all just looking at offsetting increases to police to ensure that we're not making deep cuts to parks. So yeah, totally agree and excited to hash those details out.
62 I just wanted to say councilor Kanal that before you got here, we were talking about following the same procedure we did in public safety, trying to allocate at least 15 minutes to each councilor to talk about and invite discussion and questions of staff about amendments that will be bringing that are relevant to the work of this committee. Councilor Kanal.
63 Thank you and thanks for the patience and explaining it here. I'd like to ask about the decision package to cease the utilization of the alternative community service crew. This is a parks proposal and I'm just going to read this. It ceases the utilization of the alternative community service crews, ten service zones and land stewardship. Alternate use of the acs crews every month. The acs program provides an alternative to jail for individuals who have pled guilty to misdemeanors and who have received court ordered community service. The service pays for the crew leader to oversee and transport a crew of individuals to perform community service and parks, park staff, set up maintenance projects, bring tools and equipment, and coordinate with the alternative service community service program to perform parks maintenance tasks, and this is a total of $30,000. That is not a misstatement. It is not millions. It is thousands, $30,870. And I don't really have a reason, an understanding as to why that is the why that was the proposal to do at all. And I want to know if there's anyone here from parks who can speak to that. The other one was also related to parks, and I have one that is not parks related. So thank you, director long.
64 Thank you. For the record, adena long, director of Portland parks and recreation. Good morning. I do agree that it is a nominal reduction in comparison to many of our other reductions. I will say that this is more of a philosophical reduction. The inmates are getting paid nominally, I think is the best way to put it. We see that labor as not being in alignment with our values around how we should be treating people who are looking to better themselves and to eventually enter the workforce. So they're, I believe, getting paid pennies for that work.
65 One of information, can you repeat what you asked? Because I think I missed the context of what her answer was.
66 There's a program called alternative community service. We pay currently $30,870 a year into it.
67 It's been.
68 Proposed to be zeroed out. And I was asking why. And what the program does is cease the utilization. Well, the ten service zones and land stewardship, alternate use. So the crews every month, they provide an alternative to jail for individuals who have pled guilty to misdemeanors and who have received court ordered community service. The amount we pay in pays for the crew leader to oversee and transport a crew of individuals to perform that community service, and I asked why it was being zeroed out. And I'm going to paraphrase, these are not director long's words, but that we're paying them so little that we're effectively exploiting them.
69 I think.
70 That's my summary. I don't want to make you have to say that. So thank you for that information. That is not the answer I expected. Appreciate it. I wanted to ask also, while you're up here about park rangers and the service dispatchers. So I'll start with the service dispatchers. I see three of them have been zeroed out in the parks budget is there. Can you speak to what that my understanding is that that's related to the rangers program.
71 That is correct. My understanding is that actually we're transferring quite a bit of that work to 311. So yeah. So it's just it's not that it's redundant. It's just an efficiency savings.
72 Are the three individuals in those positions moving to 311i.
73 Do not believe so okay.
74 So this would this would be a layoff.
75 I believe so okay.
76 Thank you for that.
77 Great.
78 One minute please.
79 If you can give me a few moments I can actually find out whether there are there are filled positions or not. I have a feeling that they're vacancies. But I don't want to give you false information.
80 Yeah, I believe two of them might be vacant, but hold that thought. Thanks. We'll stay up here. Yeah.
81 Yeah, I guess just philosophically, the park rangers, there's 29 of them citywide. And I was curious. You know, I've often said that when people are describing for low acuity types of public safety interventions and they describe the sort of intervention they're looking for, they're often describing a park ranger. They may not have that terminology, but that is, you know, in terms of de-escalation, in terms of helping keep the situation calm and also helping it get resolved, maybe not as rapidly as some other responders and higher acuity situations, but for the, for the, the, the role, they have 29 seems like a very small number for the city, and I know that they rotate through. Has there been a conversation about long term planning or even short term planning around increasing the size of this program?
82 It's actually increased quite a bit over the years, and it did increase due to the levy. So the current reductions are reductions that are related to the sunsetting of federal funds that we utilize for, I think, about 12 seasonal park rangers. So nothing would please me more than to increase the ranger contingency. I agree with you there. Work doing de-escalation. Just being a great visibility in the park, public education and just a deterrence is really valuable. And you're right, it is a lighter touch and they're able to gain compliance through words, which is pretty remarkable.
83 Yeah.
84 So looking at those positions it does look like those three positions are indeed filled right now.
85 So and as of right now. So the they're not moving to three and one.
86 I don't know what the what the disposition would be at when there are layoffs. Positions are eliminated. Usually there's often a complex bumping scenario that bhr needs to work through. So exactly what happens to those individuals is not something we'd be able to speak to right now.
87 Well, I'll just clarify, because there's bumping there's another program I can't remember the exact name for non-rap employees. Are they represented?
88 They are represented.
89 And are they? Can you can you say which union they're in?
90 I believe they're dct. You asked me is what the information that I've got in front of me. Okay.
91 So I'll look into that because I know the split I'll stop here but I might come.
92 Can I ask a clarification question connected to what he was asking? Director long. Director long? Was it your advice to the mayor then to cut the program? That's an alternative to jail time. That's like recidivism. Work that I can't remember the total. Was it? Did you ask him to cut that then?
93 That was a package that was put forth by the bureau to the administrator. Okay. In February.
94 All right. So the you know, with the mayor's proposed budget, it's great to know the through line of where the cut might have come from. So today I learned because those questions, that it was directed by the bureau leadership. That's helpful to know. Thank you.
95 Councilor Kanal. Did you want to take this opportunity to talk about amendments that you're going to propose relevant to this committee subject matter?
96 Yeah. So one of them, the one that I don't think is going to end up being an amendment, but I just there's a chance because I need to make sure it I'm this is the one outside of the scope of parks. There's one that's within the scope. The one outside is I'm interested in councilor Clark's budget note on cei planning, as well as councilor Novick's amendments for pbem. And it's about a cei planner and on an ongoing basis. So that's the resilience side of the climate resilience land use context. I want to make sure that with whatever happens there, a portion of an fte is assigned to cei planning, ideally within pbem. So that's not an amendment that I'm I think that we won't need it. I just want to make sure I have everything from your amendment, specifically chair Novick. But that's that's the first one. The other one is there's $471,242 that has been taken out of the parks budget. And this is the aggregate of two decision packages to reduce the hours of community centers. And to reduce the our operating hours and to reduce the operating hours of sports and aquatic facilities. So what it says it would do is open one hour later and close one hour earlier daily on community centers. Other than the saint john's community center, weekday afternoon hours, which would remain as is, which I'm very happy about. But then on the sports and aquatic facilities, it would close east Portland, mat, dishman, mount scott, southwest as well as the Portland tennis center one hour early each day. So I'm not 100% sure on this one either, because I am. I would be interested in amending that with no budgetary change to, say, open an hour later, as opposed to close an hour earlier. Because my primary interest in community centers, beyond the recreational obvious thing is to make sure that that children and young adults have somewhere to go in the afternoon and evening. I don't really have as much of a concern if they're closed for an hour, that those folks would be in school anyway, but that that's a net total of $471,000 to restore community center hours and sports and aquatics hours. I will be proposing an amendment that is the upper limit of the dollar amount. There may be less than that. As I break that down. I'm just waiting for information right now.
97 You pull the money from this.
98 This amendment currently is unbalanced. I have a whole. When you see my whole list, you'll see there's offsetting.
99 Okay.
100 But they're not they're not 1 to 1 in that same way, if that makes sense.
101 It's a list.
102 I'm sorry.
103 I was asking questions because we think it's important for the discipline of this process is where you take the money from. So I was asking so councilor Kanal that question.
104 Yeah, it's a good question. Just from a rules perspective. The, the my understanding is that we are allowed to propose individual amendments that are unbalanced. So each one can be unbalanced. But what I'm doing is looking at the aggregate dollar amount that's being added. And then I'm looking at my other amendments and the aggregate dollar amount that's being either raised or trimmed from other expenses, and making sure those match as opposed to a 1 to 1, because sometimes you have something that costs 300,000 to do and you can get you can save 150,000 here and raise 150,000 in revenue there, and it adds up to 300,000, and it ends up being budget neutral in the hole. So that's that's how.
105 I look.
106 Forward to seeing those details. The mayor proposed a balanced budget. Our job is to keep it balanced.
107 Yeah, yeah.
108 And I think there's going to be folks who have proposals that just add money to the revenue side. And there's going to be folks who have proposals that just add money to the expenses side. My hope is that mine add up. But I also know that the aggregate of all of our amendments has to add up and yield a balanced budget, of course. So that's a that's my approach to this is to try to ensure that mine are I can't guarantee that they're all going to, you know, pass or so there may be some imbalance after the voting from mine, but then afterwards we're going to have to go back and figure it out. Yeah, that's part of.
109 The we're not done yet.
110 Yeah, exactly.
111 Thank you. So is that is that the entirety of your amendments that you want to raise today? Councilor Kanal. Yes. Councilor Avalos.
112 Director lang, if you could come join us up here, I want to have a bit of a philosophical conversation based on what I heard you talk about. What's the name of that program? Councilor Kanal.
113 Alternative community service.
114 Alternative community service. Okay. So what I'm thinking about, and it's not necessarily like this budget. It's not necessarily something that would impact this budget, but thinking about kind of the philosophy that I heard you describe and something that I've been working on, which is as chair of the homelessness and housing committee, what are good opportunities for employment that we call try and fail jobs? Right. And so they are opportunities for people to gain skills and have a workplace that is accommodating to the fact that people who are coming out of experiencing trauma, whether that being incarcerated, being chronically homeless, that they need more support. Right. And I've been working with a bunch of different advocates across the larger workforce systems to talk about this, but just hearing about that program and thinking, I've already been thinking about what are places within parks that might offer that kind of workforce. So I'm having a high level philosophical conversation with you, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts about opportunities within parks to create that kind of job, or if there have been things that are similar that you can point to? Yeah, let's just start there.
115 Sure. And first I'd like to correct myself. I use the word inmate previously and it's not incarcerated currently incarcerated individuals. It's folks who are doing community service in lieu of. So I apologize for that, but I wanted to correct myself on the record. I love the idea. I would say that we have many entry level opportunities depending on the individual's background. I mean, there's some concerns around people, you know, people who have to pass certain standards to work around children, for instance. But our park techs are a great example of a classification of an entry level position. These are the very important, valuable staff who keep our parks and community centers and bathrooms clean and safe for the public. I've not worked directly with anyone in the city or the state to think about how we could be a landing spot or or to create a program like that, but I would really welcome the opportunity to have that conversation. I will say that in my former role at new york city parks, we had a program called parks opportunity program, and essentially it was folks would be in lieu of receiving subsidies from the city and the state. They got training and were placed in both administrative, security and maintenance positions within parks. So it's a really great program. I'm still very close with the people who started it, so I'd be happy to connect you with them to have a conversation about what that might look like.
116 Thank you. That's really helpful to know. And yeah, I would like to have that conversation. So I just wanted to have a philosophical conversation about it for now. But I appreciate your answers.
117 Thank you. I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
118 Yeah for sure. Thank you. That's all.
119 Councilor Kanal I am really sorry, director long. I'm sorry. I'm truly, truly sorry. I'm just going to suggest staying up here. We got five seats, so. Yeah, if anyone else needs to come up, we got other four others. Is your deputy director position vacant right now?
120 The deputy director position is not being filled as it as it previously was. Filled, I guess is the best way to say it. The previous deputy director position became the deputy director of vibrant community support services. As you know, that individual has left the city altogether. And that position will be sitting in the public works service area for future filling.
121 Okay, I am looking at the budget book we got, and it still shows the retention of that position in parks and recreation. So I'm a little confused. One of the interests that I have, and I'm going to go back to the top of the public works section just to make sure that it because if it if there's not one being added there, then this would just be a typo.
122 Well, none of those none of those moves will happen until July 1st anyway. So it makes sense that it would still show in the parks budget.
123 Okay. One of the interests that I have, I've talked about our org chart needs to look like a pyramid and not like a column. And this has nothing to do with parks specifically. It's just broadly over the course of it, and especially as we continue to narrow the bottom of the pyramid with seeing proposed layoffs and position eliminations at the frontline staff, ensuring that we're also looking at the management positions that need to be reduced alongside that, to keep the relative ratios in place. And also, as we've done charter change, we have bureau directors used to be the person who reported to a elected official. Bureau deputy directors used to make more sense as well in the context of being the second person in that now we have two additional layers between elected officials and bureau directors and everybody else below that. So I'm just looking at those positions and saying where the need is. I think parks is a huge bureau. So if it was there, that's, I think, more of a conversation than in some of our ten, 13, 20 person bureaus that have deputy directors, too. And I'm seeing dca, so I want to make sure you have a chance to respond to that if you have a thought. But I'm just I'm just that's my reason for asking and looking at that.
124 Yeah I will thank you. Good morning. Sonia shymansky dca of the vibrant communities service area. I think it's worth clarifying because you'll see it again this afternoon when the service area was created, essentially all of the central services from parks were pulled out and turned into a standalone unit, support services. The deputy director who had managed them that position went with it and became head of that unit. Right. Both units are now going into the public works service area. So that position still exists. It's in a new functional place. The budget was not changed the way the org chart was changed. So all of it is still together and it looks like it's in parks. But we've been operating with those as freestanding units. And those positions have both been reporting to me since last April. So it's not acting as a deputy to the parks director, but it is still there and it's in that new role. And as dina said, it will be in public works starting July 1st, and that dca will have conversation about how best to use it. Probably it will remain the executive manager of that support services unit, and potentially that will become the org unit. That's business operations for that whole service area. That's to be determined.
125 And to.
126 Your clarifying or confusing.
127 That's clarifying for me. Okay. I think it's not I'm not sure that that is the best way that it could have been done. Of course, in terms of showing it here as part of parks. And I'm sure you both have seen it on as well as.
128 Sorry. No, I was just gonna say it is confusing, but we're also not at July 1st yet. Right. So a lot of the resources, both human and financial, are still going to show as being in this bureau and service area. And to your point, there is no expectation that a deputy director of Portland parks and recreation will will be a future position.
129 Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. Yeah. The other question I had was back to that alternative community service program. Who sets the rates that a. Person who is participating in this would be paid?
130 Again, I made the mistake. I, I mixed up the program. I thought it was a different program that we previously had. So I'm not sure if that comment is still valid. It is. It is community service. So I imagine that they're doing it, that they do the work in lieu of other, you know, outcomes. So I may have been mistaken about the wage.
131 So then is the rationale then purely a redundancy with some of your other entry level positions?
132 I wouldn't say it's a redundancy. As you know, all hands. However, every programmatic area under my purview was asked to take proportionate cuts across. We did not choose for one area to take larger percentage cut than others, and that was a cut that the land stewardship manager felt was, you know, better than bad than other cuts. So this was a.
133 Portion of the land stewardship budget that was cut to make the percentage. But it is 100% of what was going to this particular program.
134 That's correct. Okay. And I apologize for the confusion earlier.
135 No, no problem at all. Do you have a rough idea of how many people a year go through this program?
136 I do not, but we can text a friend and get back to you on that.
137 Okay. Well, then I'll just say I might add $30,000, $30,483 to the things I would be interested in amending back in. Thanks.
138 Thank you. Councilor.
139 Thank you, councilor. Councilor. Ryan.
140 Yes. Thank you, chair Novick I and thanks for staying up there, director. Long as we know, kemper and golf is a relationship. How long has that relationship been in the parks bureau where they do a lot of the. Is it the oversight of the golf courses, the scope, and how does parks connect with that?
141 So we did a large RFP maybe three years ago. And because we had many of our golf courses were under under different operators, all outside but different operators. So as those sunsetted, we did an RFP so that we would have one operator for all of the golf courses. So I would say three years.
142 Okay. Was there savings in resorting to that model prior to working with partners?
143 I'm going to have to phone a friend. Excuse me.
144 Pardon me.
145 One moment please. Can someone join me and.
146 Help with that question?
147 You're the friend we're phoning a lot this morning.
148 I brought a lot of friends. Yes, you'd have a lot of questions.
149 Yeah, unfortunately, I don't. I don't have it at hand. Historical data for golf. And I can certainly get back to you on that. I think that that it's, it's a little bit muddied because before we would take net payments from them. And so now now we, we receive all of the resources, all the revenue that they make and then we pay them. So it's sort of grossed up the budget and made things not as easy to for me to do on the fly to, to sort of give you, give you a sense, but can certainly get back to you.
150 On that. You use the word muddy. So that was clear as mud. But I think that's what you're telling us. You have to look into it. Okay. The reason I bring that up is because I was recently in a meeting with you, director long. It was a couple of weeks ago. Where they northwest united states tennis association. There were a lot of acronyms. I think that was most of it. And they were in a meeting thinking out loud with us about a model that could be in partnership with the Portland tennis center, which is adjacent to benson high school. My question is, are you exploring that as an efficiency opportunity? It was. I thought it was a good meeting in terms of hearing a creative idea that could be helpful to move forward with a service that portlanders desire. Treasured location that is kind of iconic within the parks enterprise, if you will. And I just want to know if you're exploring that further. And did you see the value in that?
151 Yeah, I forwarded the proposal to several of my staff, both on the recreation tennis end as well as on our property and partnership end, and I asked for them to read it through. We're still awaiting some additional information from the individuals that we met with regarding some financials, but I do want to do my due diligence and contact the two municipalities where they they have entered into agreements with.
152 Vancouver was one.
153 Yeah, one of Vancouver was one of those. So absolutely still investigating. And you know, we partner with so many different organizations and businesses, individuals in so many different ways. So really excited to look at it. I don't know if their proposal, as it was stated, is completely viable, but I think that there's a there there. And so I look forward to continuing to have those conversations.
154 I really stumbled upon that meeting, and I've been in a lot of meetings like that. That one smelled better than most. Like the sincerity was there. The business plan, the most recent partnerships. So I, I had some excitement leaving that meeting that it could be a helpful new partner for all of you. The other question I have, and I see that casey is here, and so you might be coming up or not. I shouldn't tell the director long which friend she's calling up, but I there is another councilor That's proposing an amendment and they're not here, so I don't know the details of their amendment. I do know that we worked really hard to secure funds for what I thought was a really good idea, which was in urban forestry. And now there's a suggestion of cuts, not from that pot because it's secured, but from what I think would be the other side, permitting regulations, I believe. And so I think it was 32 of those positions might be in the amendment. I just want to hear from you directly since you're here. Hope this is okay. It's kind of related because parks is here and all the intelligence is here. If I could.
155 Just I was actually planning to have a discussion of that amendment in general so we can have that discussion now.
156 Okay. Are you okay with me starting it off?
157 Sure.
158 And then we can circle. Back to it.
159 Well, let's see what I was planning.
160 I'm glad you agreed. We should talk about it.
161 Yeah. I mean, I think that why don't you ask a couple of questions, and then I wanted to give you and myself a chance to talk about our proposed amendments. So let's start the conversation and then circle back after you and I both talked about amendments to have a further discussion of councilor Zimmerman's. Kick it off. But okay, let's be coming back to it.
162 Yeah, it's wonderful that you're all here. So I just want to I'm here to understand.
163 Yeah.
164 No, that's.
165 All I get it. Yes. Casey is here to speak specifically to councilor Zimmerman's amendment, and I'd rather have her do it because she's much more versed in her operations. So I can either have her come up now or councilor Novick, as you suggested. We can bench that till a little bit later. However, you all want to proceed, I will tell you that the amendment was to cut a program that has 37 people to five to make a to the 6.9, I think 6.3 million to 800,000. I think that I'm not sure that the amendment explained what they were hoping to accomplish through this amendment, because the program is not just tree inspectors, it is five different program areas, including our customer service, permitting and regulation. All the work that we do with other bureaus and private entities with regards to capital projects. It's a very large, complex and important program that supports title 11 and codes. So like I said, casey is here to talk about it a little bit more in depth and answer questions. But I hope that.
166 That was very helpful.
167 Helpful grounding.
168 You're also experiencing the new council. So we're in multiple meetings. Half of us aren't in half of the meetings. And so I'm probably in a moment right now where I'm repeating what from what happened at another meeting. But I don't know that because I'm too busy being in another meeting. So this is just.
169 The we have not had.
170 A little messy right now in terms of how often you all are called to the council chambers, and how often we probably keep repeating questions. I apologize for that. That's just how the system seems to be set up at the moment.
171 I understand and respect that, and I think we're all and we're all living it, but it has not come up yet. This is our first opportunity to talk about it. And that's why I brought the, you know, the big guns in.
172 Its chair. I'm glad we highlighted this and thank you for allowing me to do that. I assumed it was already discussed in some other meeting. I apologize, I guess I'll continue to be staffed by the media, but.
173 And we look forward to we look forward to informing you all about that program and its value.
174 Yeah. And I think we will have significant time to discuss that later on. Councilor Ryan, are there amendments that you're planning to raise?
175 I have amendments, but they're not specifically in this area. I am exploring the partnership one and will be in touch with your office. I would never do anything that's a blind side, so thank you.
176 Thank you. Maria.
177 My comments were more. I had more additional things to say about my golf amendment, but do you want me to hold off so we can finish out this conversation? Sorry, I think it's just product of hand raising.
178 No. Go ahead councilor.
179 Okay. Sorry. I don't mean to take us off track off of this conversation because I'm also very interested in learning more about this, but I just wanted to flag that the binding city policy for the golf fund states, and I quote, historically, contingency size has been recommended to remain around $1 million, which is quite a bit less than the $7 million currently in the golf contingency fund. So I'm happy to share that binding city policy with the group if that's helpful. But I guess what I'm saying is the contingency fund, as it stands right now for the golf fund, is seven times what the binding city policy recommends. So I think we are in good standing to essentially use that fund in this dire budget emergency that we're in. And it's financial policy. 2.04 if folks want to take a look at it.
180 Thank you. Want to take this opportunity to go through my own proposed amendments relating to our subject areas, and I apologize in advance for my technological incompetence because I am going to have to share my screen on my proposed amendments. And your guess is as good as mine is, whether capable of such a technically fraught effort as sharing a screen. But I will try. Okay, are all of you seeing Novick amendments? Okay, good. So, as you know, mayor wilson's proposed drastic cuts to park maintenance across four areas personnel, materials, programing and contracted services, my proposed budget amendment would restore $3 million in funding for some of the most critical parks maintenance decision packages. The money would come from the Portland police bureau and represent the expected savings from no longer sending armed responders to welfare check calls, and instead sending Portland safety support specialists ps3's or Portland street response psr to those calls. I have a list of proposed maintenance personnel cuts from the parks bureau, I suspect. I think that this largely overlaps with a similar list that councilor Avalos has referenced in her proposed cut. Police to restore parks maintenance amendment, and these include the current proposed elimination of the utility worker crew, reducing seasonal maintenance workers, reducing daily cleaning litter pickups, eliminating the swing shift crew, reducing and combining the eastlands maintenance zone staff and et-cetera, and based on conversations with parks staff, the impact of these personnel cuts would include significantly reducing the staff needed to maintain parks, natural areas, trails, community gardens and community centers and other facilities. Declines in basic services like litter removal, restroom cleaning and repairs, fire risk, mowing and ADA barrier removal, direct impacts to public safety, cleanliness, accessibility, management of maintenance workload, and long term stewardship of portland's parks. I also, I believe that cuts now mean higher costs later deferred maintenance leads to broken assets, deteriorating trails and emergency repairs, and means slower response to storm damage, vandalism and safety hazards, and deepening inequities and parks, asset asset access across communities. We also got a list of priority ems maintenance cuts, reducing the palms safety and trash can program, reducing purchase of lumber or concrete and park materials, reducing purchase of materials for playground repairs and installations. The impact of those cuts, including limiting the ability to perform essential upkeep across parks, facilities and natural areas, reducing restroom cleaning, graffiti removal. Roof repairs, basic repairs, and upkeep will stall, leading to faster deterioration of public assets, leading to direct impact on park quality, community use, and our ability to protect public investments. So hang on a second, what do I oh, I don't have the. So I'm proposing to pay for restoring $3 million out of this list, which would not obviously mean the whole list, because the whole list adds up to more than $3 million by a cut in the police budget of about $3 million, which again reflects the savings that I would expect them to achieve if they stopped sending armed officers to welfare checks, which are in most cases where boec gets a call saying, hey, there's somebody here who seems like they can't take care of themselves, could somebody come out and take a look? And those are calls, which in my view, in no way, shape or form require an armed response and should reasonably be taken by psr or ps3's and psr and ps3 personnel cost about two thirds of what an armed officer does, and the welfare checks take up about 6% of all police calls. So you could replace armed officers doing 6% of police calls with unarmed people that cost a third less. And given that the police bureau discretionary budget is about 264 million, 6% of that is about 5.2 million. So reducing that by a third would save, you know, 1.7 million, I believe. However, in addition to that savings, the expansion of psr in the mayor's budget should already result in armed officers going to fewer of those calls. So my feeling is that the police bureau is spending a bunch of money on something that they could achieve much more cheaply. So that will that's one amendment that I proposed. And by the way, responding to the earlier exchange between councilor, Ryan and councilor Kanal about whether each budget, each proposal to increase spending should be accompanied by one to reduce spending, I tend to philosophically agree with that, but I had a conversation with the council president about why we aren't adopting such a rule, and she said, well, she suspects that a number of us will be using the same cut to offset different increases. So simply adopting that rule might not result in a balanced budget, because if we adopt several of them relying on the same cut for different increases, then we're still out of balance. So although philosophically, I like the idea and I'm sticking to the idea of I'm not going to propose an increase rather than a cut, I can see the council president's point that adopting that, as a rule, might not ultimately get us to where we're going, where we need to go. So the other amendment that I'm going to be proposing is or one of the others, oh, I'm sorry. Before I get to that, I want to mention that something else that might be proposing is cutting a couple of the community centers in order to shift more money to parks maintenance. There's several community centers which are in very bad shape, and at some from an asset management perspective, and at some point without a big influx of money, might have to be closed down anyway in the not too distant future. In addition, the polling that councilor, pirtle-guiney and I paid for indicated that portlanders as a whole are more protective of outdoor parks maintenance than they are of community centers. I do not have a slide on this, but I asked the parks bureau what it would save to close down two of those, you know, facilities that are in the worst shape, the Multnomah arts center and the community music center. If we close those down, starting three months into the year, and they said that that would be a savings of approximately $1.8 million. So I may introduce an amendment to do that and switch the money to parks maintenance, because we have a $6 million parks maintenance hole, and I could only see my way to proposing $3 million in police cuts. So that's an amendment which I'm still debating whether to introduce, but I may well introduce it. The other amendment relevant to this committee that I plan to introduce is to add funding to the Portland bureau of emergency management, and I propose adding approximately $3 million, which I would pay for with a proposal to reduce our council office budgets by about $300,000 apiece, translating to about $3.3 million in savings. I in particular am proposing using a cut in council office budgets. Well, I might have done this anyway, but particular argument for using cuts in council office budgets to fund pbem is that council office budgets, about half of them, are counted as overhead. So you can't take and you can't take a cut in an overhead cut and transfer it to another bureau. That's that's non overhead. So however pbem is largely treated as an overhead bureau. So if we take cuts in council office budgets and move them to pbem, we get pretty much a 1 to 1 benefit. So I want to go over what the 3 million in additions to pbem would be. And this is based on conversations with pbem about what some of the most essential needs are. They said that it would probably cost about 8 million to build out the kind of pbem that really should exist, consistent with national standards. But here's what they could do with $3 million. The first item is to add 24 over seven watch capacity. Right now, pbem does not have personnel awake and on duty 24 over seven. It takes somebody from boec or someone who has to call pbem to wake the on call duty officer, to wake them up, to start taking over response to the emergency. And rather than we have a slide listing all the items, I'm actually just going to go through the description. In turn, we need a 24 over seven team to monitor potential issues that could affect the city. This group does three things. They keep informed of everything around us and prepare briefings for city leaders and affected bureaus and partners. They initiate response actions with something they're monitoring becomes a problem. And critically, they alert the public to take life safety actions when needed e.g. There's a wildfire, evacuate or shelter in place order, etc. Pbem again, currently depends on boec to wake a pbem on call duty person who then needs to learn what's going on, formulate messaging and issue an alert to have a proper 24 over seven watch program that would require between 15 and 20 positions. Pbem, at my urging request, is six positions for an initial 24 over seven capacity and a plan design and construct the framework for this program. Pbem also recommends adding three fte for coordination and response programing when an emergency occurs. These personnel response is essential for coordination of functions, communications, and operations for anyone involved in the response, both internal and external partners to the city. These people would work with our partners to share information, coordinate actions, and plan next steps for the rest of the emergency. We do not really have personnel for to perform this these functions. The next item, which PBOT discussed a few weeks ago, is an item that actually has been addressed in the mayor's proposed budget. We have an emergency alert system, but the system needs maintenance, monitoring and updating and needs someone who's managing compliance requirements and training users in the system regularly. We haven't had a person since over a year ago whose job it is to do those things that thankfully, the mayor is restoring in his budget. Another item that I'm proposing to add is a citywide incident manager system, fte. Most cities have a software project to manage all the information and track data and metrics related to emergency response. We do not. Thankfully, the mayor authorized funding to procure such software in his proposed budget, but once it's up and running, this will require someone with a specialized ability to manage the system and provide training to others in how to use it. So pbem will request one position to support this function. Then there's two fte requested for a planning and preparedness. Our ability to respond to emergencies depends on our plans, the vast majority of which are years out of date. The proposed budget eliminates our one remaining preparedness planning position the mayor's proposed pbem would request, adding that one position back and adding an additional position. The next item would be training and exercises. Once plans are built, you conduct training to build the skills required by these plans. Once those skills are built, we need to exercise the plans to ensure the plans actually make sense and the skills built were appropriate for this purpose. Pbem is asking for one fte for the training and exercise function. And finally, whenever you add personnel, you have to add space for personnel and each bureau is charged by the city for such space. Pbem estimates that if all these positions were added, that would include their rent charge of $400,000. So those are the proposed amendment I expect to advance that are relevant to this committee subject area. And at this point, I would welcome my colleagues asking questions of bureau staff about these proposals. And councilor Ryan, I see you're in the queue. Oh, okay. Councilor Kanal are you a non legacy hand? And legacy? Another legacy. One thing that actually. Does anybody else have questions about these proposals? I actually want wanted to ask mr. Wiley to come up to address a comment that. Is.
181 Yeah. I'm online.
182 Okay. Yeah. Sorry.
183 All good.
184 All right. So I wanted to ask you to begin to address a comment councilor Zimmerman made the other day when we proposed this, when I brought this up in public safety, which is that the pbem staff can't prevent an emergency from occurring. And it might be a paraphrasing him, but any police sergeant who is an initial responder can take control of responding to the emergency. So he thought that my suggestion that not having a functioning pbem would not really put lives at risk when a major emergency happens. And I wanted to see if you had thoughts on whether having a functioning pbem when an emergency strikes does affect our ability to preserve lives in the early stages of emergency.
185 Yeah, thank you and really appreciate the opportunity. I have to say, I do agree with councilor Zimmerman's notion that we don't prevent any big emergency from happening. What we do is help to mitigate it, prepare for it, organize ahead of time, and then, of course, respond to it, and of course, and also recover from it. So the full sort of menu from for emergency management as far as we're concerned. So no, we don't prevent anything. We help to make sure that whatever the impacts from said emergency are lessened or mitigated. And then of course, our our folks that are impacted by those are are supported afterwards to the notion of, you know, we gave the example of, you know, well, we have police on 24 hours a day. We have firefighters on 24 hours a day that are awake in a lot of cases for their respective disciplines. That is true. What we kind of counter or could counter with is that when a police officer is faced with a, you know, something that's very clearly in their wheelhouse wheelhouse, that becomes an incident, they are, in effect, you know, dealing with a with a police issue. If that incident were to grow or to expand or to suddenly become larger, we still want them focused on the police issue. Same for firefighters, for example, if it's a fire, we really want them focused on the fire where pbem and emergency management comes in is if that incident grows, gets more complex, involves other agencies or bureaus, by the way, involves other jurisdictions, partners that we help to coordinate tissue across the city and across the region to ensure that we are both communicating all the things that need to be communicated, notably to leadership, including counsel, by the way. So in the middle of in the middle of a crisis, convening folks around the table to make sure folks understand what's going on can take informed decisions with something we call ground truth or also common operating picture. I don't want to use too much jargon, but is essentially a level playing field where everybody in our community can understand the breadth and depth of the situation. We still want the police dealing with the police thing, we still want the firefighter dealing with the firefighter thing. But for example, in the example we used earlier was a fire in forest park, for example, like 2:00 in the morning. We want firefighters focused on putting that fire out. What we focus on is what happens if they're unsuccessful, and they do that to some degree as well. But we want to make sure that they have all their energy focused on putting the fire out. What we do is zoom out, communicate, you know, to your point about alert and warning, alert, you know, the community about what's potentially coming. Bring in necessary partners. You know, mutual aid partners, should it be necessary, etc, etc. So we're sort of that zoomed out approach. Now, this doesn't this doesn't happen every week. This happens. You know, in fact, you know, I don't want to put a time on it. But what what is true is they're happening more frequently, especially with the effects of climate change. You know, increasing heat events, increasing cold events, etc, increasing fire, wild wildfire and smoke events, etc. So we're we're seeing more and more of these, and we feel like resources are dwindling simultaneously. So they're not keeping not only not keeping up, they're they're getting, you know, more reduced. Wow. We're being faced with more incidents. So I would say that we are the we are the zoomed out 30,000 foot view on an emergency. The other distinction I wanted to make councilor Because you brought up, you know, cascadia and things like that. There's a difference between disaster management and emergency management. We are not just the disaster. We're not just the major cataclysmic thing. We help to coordinate agencies, city bureaus, partners, community members, etc. Around things like rose festival or the christmas tree lighting, or a marathon or so that we can be holistically prepared should something not go as planned. And I would point to the recent incidents in Vancouver, canada, or in louisiana, you know, vehicle borne attacks for community, you know, community fairs, etc. These type of things, you know, are extremely pertinent, I would say, and extremely worrying for us. And what we aim to do is get everybody lined up, dialed in, talking to each other, planning scenarios ahead of ahead of time so that when something goes south or when something goes terribly wrong, we respond that much more quick. And so in the midst of emergency, you don't want to be exchanging business cards. You want to have all that done ahead of time, know who's doing what, and then be able to respond. So I hope that gets a part of your question, sir.
186 Well, can I ask take the example of the cascadia earthquake. How might things play out differently? The earthquake hits and I think that we get some. We're supposed to get some initial warning of it, right? Isn't there like a west coast earthquake warning system?
187 There could be. Yeah. There's something called shakealert. Yeah.
188 Go ahead. I mean, does it why would it matter if there is 24 over seven pbem people on duty? Could any police sergeant implement the emergency alert system that you have? But why? Why might it make or not make a difference in the early stages responding to the earthquake? If we have pbem staff that are already awake and ready to immediately respond, sure.
189 Yeah. So speed will be absolutely key in any of this. To answer your question, yes. I mean, technically and theoretically a police officer could do that system. It's called an everbridge system. That's a wide area broadcast that essentially, you know, gives information to a wide swath of people. I'll invite ratchet, who's our chief resilience officer, to chime in as well. The other thing I'd say, though, is it's not just the alert and warning, it's the setting up where the people going to be sheltering, how are they going to be taken care of when they're reaching those shelters? For example, if it's a cascadia scenario, it's kind of the worst of the worst. Like so that's the that's the extreme example. But that in particular is a situation where you want more than ever, all of our partners to understand who's doing what, to have preparedness plans, mitigation plans to understand the conduit between the city, the county, the state and the federal government. Because of course, during cascadia, we're going to depend on the federal government coming in to support all emergencies begin and end locally. But in the middle is a large swath of usually, you know, outside support and mutual aid. And so that's that's the function that we perform is the connectivity, the common operating picture for all the potential responders. I would argue that, yes, boec or a police officer or whoever, you or I could push the button on the machine at two in the morning that says, you know, here's where, here's where the zone is. It's the coordination aspect that is really a profession in and of itself to figure those things out ahead of time. And as I mentioned on on in committee on Tuesday, we feel and this is not a sob story, this is just where we're at. It's not, you know, is that is that resources have not kept up for the modern frequency, depth and seriousness of the emergencies that we're seeing every single year now, especially in Portland. We're sort of growing, becoming our own city, becoming a bigger city and wrestling with what that means. And we're not we certainly are not keeping up with best practice nationwide, best practice in terms of the emergency management piece. So it's always a, a notion of like, how much do you invest on the front end to mitigate, to reduce to, to otherwise prepare a community versus the actual response and then the recovery. And it's one of those things where you realize usually after the fact that, oh, we should have been investing more in planning, investing more in preparedness, investing more in mitigation. So that's that's the unfortunate nature of the style of work we do. As you realize it after the fact.
190 Because I want to ask if mr. Narwhal wants to weigh in.
191 Yeah. Please. Please, richard.
192 Yeah. Thank you.
193 For the question. I would just add so councilor Novick shakealert, just to elaborate on that point. So obviously no agency can prevent cascadia from happening. It's an earthquake. It happens when it happens. But as jordan pointed out, there's a lot we can do to prevent casualties that could happen from an earthquake. So, for example, we can enforce stricter building codes, or we can set up something called shakealert, which you just referenced. Shakealert is not a system that requires a manual alerting. It's this whole system is based on automatic alerting to the community based on where the zone is. So it wouldn't require an individual to press a button. However, as jordan pointed out, there are several components in an emergency that are not necessarily an on scene incident commander. Respond what councilman Zimmerman was referring to in in his comment earlier this week. So, for example, let's say there is a fire, a big major fire in the city of Portland, and the on scene fire chief is serving as the incident commander. But there's a lot of back end that happens. For example, if there is a contamination of the air, then we have to inform the deq. Then deq becomes involved. If there is an evacuation of people, then evacuate for evacuation. Red cross gets involved, county gets involved. So this this scope can quickly increase. And one on scene commander is not not necessarily dealing with all of that. And that's where pbem and emergency management agency comes comes into place. We saw that in last. In past few years we've seen that a couple of incidents, the one the kmart fire, we saw debris flowing into Portland parks properties and deq had to get involved in. That became a whole incident. We saw that with camp creek fire in 2023, with where our water supply was at risk, where pbem got worked closely with Portland water bureau in doing planning for water distribution across the city. If our planning, planning, our water source was impacted and all of that. So there's a lot, of lot more that happens within em that's not just on scene response. And I'd also add that there is this the frequency. So the reason I'm not in person today is because I'm in city of seattle. There, there. I'm not sure if people are tracking, but they're hosting fifa next summer. This the big soccer championship, and they are hosting a tabletop exercise. That's the entire focus is on if there's an extreme heat event that overlaps with a public gathering event, what would be the consequences of that? So there are things like this that a city needs to be planning for and thinking about that. That's where emergency management comes into comes into picture and to what and to whatever, jordan said. And I would also address council mike nils comment about the cei hub emergency response planner. Lucian, thank you for keeping that conversation going. I'd like to I'd like to thank you for that. And I'm happy to answer any questions or provide more clarification.
194 Thank you. Councilor Kanal.
195 You know my comments not directly related to this, but I, I do think that we'll need to have a discussion. It sounds like we have one amendment that would increase community center hours and another that would would decrease community centers, period. And then I also imagine that there'll be a great deal of conversation around, well, I don't know how much around reducing the council office budgets, but also around urban forestry, and I am personally unclear and I'm looking for more information on that. So I guess just my advice and the reason I put myself in the queue is, is when we talk about that, be prepared with my request to parks to be prepared with to the penny what's going on over there? Because I imagine 12 of us are going to want to dig in on that particular one. And as I've said before, I think this is a really this is a topic of high interest for my constituents. It's the thing I probably receive in terms of items, actions that the city has taken. Zenith is the thing I hear the most about, and urban forestry is number two. It's a distant second, but everything else is way third and below. So, and I don't think I've heard a much positive feedback. It's not zero. But just to summarize that, that's not a personal opinion, just what I'm hearing.
196 Thanks so councilor Ryan.
197 Yeah. While we're on the topic of the critical energy hub, I remember the meeting we had where the state person said what we really need to do. I asked this question, where's the table? Where the state leaders, the metro leaders, the city, the county are all coming together to make the hard decision to try to transform it to another location, since that location continues to be the concern. And I think you recall the response was in that meeting, basically, that's not happening. So until there's courage at the state level to have that conversation, and for all of us to get focused on what success looks like, then we're just pointing fingers at each other. So let's remember there's a bigger picture on this one. Portland can't solve it alone. This is the energy hub for the entire state, the entire region. It's a big influence. So the state has to have the courage to do this conversation soon. And to hear that response from a state leader was very disappointing. So I just wanted to since we're on that topic, let's remember this is much bigger than just the city of Portland. Thanks.
198 So I think we might at this point be able to. Oh, mr. Wiley, is there something you wanted to add?
199 Well, yeah, just just to councilman Ryan's notion and then also circling back to councilor Nils support for the cia, what we can do as a city is be better prepared for it. And I think there's a couple of folks modeling what that would look like. It does look like, for us at least, a pbem planners to focus on cei hub, specifically all the risks, etc. And there's a lot of work that's been done already. Right? But to collate that and get under one roof, one table where we have state partners, metro partner partners, county, city, etc. At least to discuss and understand what happens when something goes wrong there. What is our response framework? Who does what? What are the you know, what are the feds doing? What are the you know, what's Multnomah county doing? What is the deq doing? And to get us down the road, I think we absolutely could do. It does take resources, but we could we're arguing that with a couple of extra planners that focus on cei hub and those outdated and or non-existent plans, holistic plans that we could get farther in terms of preparedness and or mitigation to jordan.
200 That was an and statement. Just so you know, I know that we need to have a response. I'm just saying that there's a bigger picture system issue, that there's a lack of courage amongst leaders in the state to tackle. Mr. I appreciate.
201 Mr. Wiley. You talked about a couple of planners focused on the hub. I mean, if we added restored the one planner plan planning position that the mayor's eliminating and added one, would having those positions enable you to do planning relevant to the ci hub as well as everything else?
202 Correct. Yeah. We could absolutely. And up into you know, I don't want to over promise anything that would get us farther down the road for sure. Those are long term plans of course, but we'd absolutely be able to support ci hub specific planning as well as other city plans.
203 Okay. Councilor Kanal are you legacy handing? No. Okay. Go ahead.
204 Yeah. I think well, councilor Ryan brought up is really important. I agree that it's a and that's why I referenced councilor Clark's budget. Note that that she mentioned she was putting forward, which was to start the process of convening that table co-convening it because to, to some degree, figuring out what the long term plan is for liquid fuel storage in the state is a state responsibility. It's 90% of the state's fuel. It's not just ours. Right. But but from the perspective and then and then in parallel from the perspective of how are we going to. React, plan for, react to and mitigate. That's that's where the city side comes in. So these are I think both conversations benefit from the two occurring in parallel, I guess just to put a finer point on the conversation, deputy director wiley, you were having with councilor Novick, and I'll kind of explain my question here. Does it require a full fte for ci planning? Could there be things that are combined with it? For example, related issues such as the liquefaction zone, the bridges over the railroad cut in north Portland. Like, to what degree does this person have to be 100% focused on cei in order to be able to do the job appropriately? Are we talking 0.9 of an fte or something like that, where we can add a full time person but give them some other smaller portion or related task alongside it?
205 Yeah, I appreciate that. And I'll and I'll invite richard to comment as well. What I, what I can say is loosely, not cavalierly but loosely what what we invest is kind of what we get back out. So councilor, councilman Novick mentioned if we had everything we wanted. Everything. Like if you just said, tell us everything you want, it's 55 positions for pbem. We're currently at about ten ish, maybe 12 for operational folks, which is yeah, 99% of our people. If we were to put a planner on any type of planner, it would absolutely help us get there whether or not we would cover every single facet. I think that's maybe over stating what that capacity would be, which is one single fte. I'd say what we're doing right now in the bureau, if you think, for example, we have 15 things we must do, we have, you know, 8 to 9 fte that are actually trying to juggle those. So they're 25% working on a plan, 25% working on training and exercise, 25% working on, you know, alerting, warning, etc, etc. So if we put a dedicated person only on ci, they could get a lot done. I don't know how comprehensive that would be in terms of every single aspect. But richard, maybe you have a better thought on that.
206 Yes. So for the record, richard narwhal with Portland emergency management, thank you for that question. Councilor Kanal. I would say a lot about ci hub right now. I maybe I should rephrase that, that we're we're still finding out more about what the hazards and risks associated with ci hub are when we hire or when we work on a plan. The two questions that we start with, how soon we want to get this done and how comprehensive we want it to be. So that that would be my question to the council as well. How soon do we want to get this done? Bureau of planning and sustainability has already started. I don't want to speak for them, but they have started the community engagement work as an outcome of the last session we had on ci hub. And emergency management is a small component in it right now, so there's already already progress that's happening from our last session. And dick was is coming, coming as a better partner. So we are meeting with them as well. So I would still say, considering the scope of the hazard associated with ci hub and a planner can write a document. But a lot of what we have with ci hub is internal and external stakeholder management. So you can't just write a plan in a in a silo within like at your desk. You have to engage the right parties. And that does shift timeline quite a bit is like when and how who is available to meet. So I cannot accurately answer your question right now, but I could say that this one fte could potentially be just be working on ci hub at least for a year or two, and then definitely like if we have an emergency, we typically all of us shift our focus to that emergency. And for example, I sit in the planning section chief position or ic position. So yeah, considering all of that, I could see the an individual working on this for 1 to 2 years at the same time managing other tasks as assigned during an emergency.
207 Thank you.
208 Maybe the only other thing I'd add councilor Kanal, is that a plan is only as good as you're able to exercise. Practice it, make sure that it works, does not work, and then amend it. Change it, you know, modify it, update it over time. So the initial plan for ci hub, however comprehensive it is, still should be in best practice exercised with all those community that that richard was mentioning both private and public. And so it's kind of they kind of go hand in hand. We have a planner. We should also invest in the training and exercise piece, which is the proof of concept of your plan, if you can think of it that way. But thanks for the question.
209 Yeah. Can you comment on you commented very comprehensively on, I think, everything but one small piece, which is do you think that it makes sense to connect this work with things like the liquefaction zone and the failures of the bridges in north?
210 Oh yeah. Yeah. When richard mentions comprehensive plan, we're accounting for what we call all hazards. So comprehensive plan would take into account fires or full rip of the cascadia, but of tank rupture of some kind that, you know, gets, gets out of hand, a terrorist attack, you know, loss of the power grid and what does that mean, etc. So all hazards means what are all the things that can potentially create a situation here?
211 I'd actually like to move on to have a discussion of the Zimmerman amendment with the parks folks. Thank you. But yeah.
212 I was just gonna say, before we take leave, I just wanted to mention I did get some information on the community service piece. Councilor Kanal. So the $30,000 does pay for the probation officer who oversees the crews. The crews are approximately five individuals. We accommodate about 11 per month, and that's about 660 people per year. And in fiscal year 2324, it totaled 5000 hours of work. You're welcome.
213 So before I kick off a discussion of the or continue the kickoff of the discussion, the Zimmerman amendment, I did want to make one bigger point, which is that there's a number of us that are concerned about parks maintenance and proposing ways to raise money for parks maintenance and for another proposals. I think there's probably arguments that, well, do we really want to do that this quickly in the context of like, you know, the budget deadline hanging over us, for example, I'm sure the police will say that my proposal would take a long time to implement, and they need to staff up psr and ps3's in order to implement it. And there might be people in response to councilor Zimmerman's proposal to slash the parks, permitting the urban forestry permitting staff that, well, that would be a dramatic change in the program, and only some of it would yield general fund, etc. There is a proposal that. So as a backdrop to that, I wanted to note that councilor Green is bringing a proposal to the PCEF committee this evening to borrow $10 million from PCEF in order to cover all of the parks cuts, and he and I plan to pair that with a proposal I would bring to increase the surcharge under our business license tax on companies that pay their ceos more than 100 times what they pay the typical worker. That proposal doesn't start raising money until next fiscal year, but it would raise $27 million. So councilor Green and I would be proposing that if we passed, if we both got the PCEF loan and passed my tax proposal, then a chunk of that $27 million would be used to repay the loan. And in the meantime, all of us could be discussing at greater length some of our, you know, savings proposals like reducing the urban forestry, permitting staff, like reducing the police budget in order to account for savings we expect to get from moving welfare checks from police armed officers to unarmed personnel, etc. So with that backdrop, I wanted to initiate a discussion of councilor Zimmerman's proposal, and I apologize. I've got a document from parks which I'm not sure everybody else does, which lists the various functions that those 37 staff that provide, including program administration. That's for staff, non-development permitting and inspection. That's eight staff. The capital projects team, seven staff code compliance and private tree support, nine staff and tree hotline and customer support, nine staff. One thing I want to know is how much of that work is funded by the general fund. So a cut in these positions would actually result in general fund savings. But I'd also like to know for each of those groups, how many work items does the average person in that group see each year? We heard yesterday that from Portland permitting development, that they have something like 40 people doing 130,000 inspections a year. So I'm curious how many inspections, permit approvals, etc. Each of the urban forestry folks do per year. Like, it's my understanding that non-development there's about 3000 non-development requests to remove trees each year. Does is does that take up the time of all of the eight staff under non-development permitting inspection? And I'd have a similar question for every other item. So can you kick off giving us a breakdown of basically how those 37 people spend their time and how many work items they perform?
214 Sure. Good morning. Councilors casey jogerst, urban forestry permitting and regulation manager. For the record, we are working on answering some of those questions because I know that they were asked, but we did get it late last night so I can provide more detail after this. But what I will say is that we have approximately 10,000 permits that get issued a year, but that doesn't equate to the number of inspections. So each team has sort of a different number of inspections it may take to get to permit issuance. In terms of the non-development team that you were referencing, that can be anywhere from 1 to 4 inspections for each permit. And each of those inspections can be anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. It sort of depends on the location, because they're working citywide and moving around everywhere. And then that differs for each sort of team, with the exception, I would say, of our capital team, which has a very different sort of portfolio of work than the other tree inspector teams do where they're reviewing capital projects. Doing your typical plan review of 30, 60, 90%. They're also performing site inspections. They're also issuing permits when there are situations that come up during construction. And so they sort of have this different role in terms of projects from the very beginning all the way to the very end, post construction, to sort of ensure that everything has complied with the way the plans were drafted when it was issued. Do you want me to go through each individual team and kind of give a little bit of an overview today, or do you want to wait until we sort of put that together and send it off to you?
215 I'd like to if you can do a bit of an overview and to the extent possible, give a rough estimate of how many inspections, etc. Each person does every year that would be useful. Each year that's going to that's going to be hard to estimate. So starting with the non-development team, like I said, it's about 10,000, approximately 10,000 permits or decisions that are issued annually. In each of those would be anywhere from 1 to 4 inspections. Keep in mind that our inspectors are our front line in terms of community engagement, outreach, education. And so when they're going out on site, they're typically engaging with the property owners, talking with the property owners. There's a lot of back and forth that goes on through email, goes on through phones before they get to a permit decision. But each one kind of varies. They all have a different sort of level of complexity in terms of whatever that application is that they submitted that they'd like to request. Our non-development team also administers our 17 active programmatic permits. So those programmatic permits are sort of, for lack of better terms, a blanket permit that allows government agencies and utilities to have essentially a permit to perform routine maintenance on trees without having to come to us for each individual permit. And those can be valid for anywhere from 1 to 5 years. And then they go through a renewal process. So each of our inspectors there are assigned anywhere from 2 to 4 of those programmatic permits and build a relationship and maintain a relationship with the permit holders, because there are some aspects that require inspections where the permit holder can't necessarily do it just based on what the blanket permit says. Before I move on, I have a few of my team members here with me, some of them who have formerly been tree inspectors too. So anything that either of you would add to the non-development team name?
216 Yeah, my name is rick faber. I'm the supervisor of the code compliance team. I don't have anything to add at this moment, but I'm definitely here.
217 Hello, my name is Dan glisan. I'm the permitting and regulation coordinator.
218 My apologies. I know councilor Morillo has had her hand up, so I wanted to ask her if she wanted to ask a question now.
219 Well, thanks. Councilor Novick. Sorry. I'll speak up more. I know it's a little weird when someone's online. I have a question about councilor Zimmermann's amendment, and I don't have the written language in front of me, so I apologize if it's already there, but I have two questions. So it's my understanding that the urban forestry folks also produce revenue for the city. So can we talk about how much revenue would be given back to the city if we cut these positions, versus what's the net loss of that revenue generally? I know it probably shifts from year to year, but that's my first question. I'll pause there.
220 Sure. So the general fund is about 6% of that, 6.6 million for the permitting and regulation team. So it's $412,417 of general fund. And the rest of it, in terms of how we're budgeted, is made up of levy funding, interagency work that we perform for other bureaus and city entities that have trees on their properties. There's a set funding for programs that we administer through permitting and regulation, and then there's some charges and services that that make up just about $100,000. But generally, the general fund is just over $400,000.
221 And how much is the levy?
222 Funding levy is 1,675,275. And claudio, feel free to.
223 And I would just note that that those two should should be considered to be roughly equivalent because we using the blended funding model, will actually run that at the end of the process to determine what the right blend is. So if you consider those two the same resource, it's about $2 million of flexible general fund levy resources.
224 Thank you. Okay.
225 And so and the levy funding can't go to parks maintenance. Right. And then PCEF can't easily be repurposed. So zimmermann's cut would save the general fund around $400,000. Is that correct?
226 Well, it depends. It sounds like they're my understanding of the amendment is that there are some positions that are that continue. Their portion of the program is funded with, with PCEF. So I would expect that it would be either PCEF or general fund positions that would continue. So but about $2 million of general fund would be saved. I would expect that to be the first. The first dollar saved. Based on what I've understood about the amendment.
227 And my understanding of the amendment, was that it was five staff to be retained, but to be reassigned to Portland permitting and development, which essentially means that there would no longer be any regulation as it relates to title 11 outside of development.
228 I think. So we would save.
229 Around 2 million for the general fund, but we would lose whatever revenue is produced from the fees that this group collects. Correct?
230 Yeah. And I did misspeak a little bit because so to save general fund it would be that would effectively have it would be saving it would be transferring levy to the general fund because general fund is the first dollar spent, then levy is the is the last dollar. So this would be a levy savings. Our whole budget is you know, ultimately the gap is in the parks levy is in the parks levy fund. But with regard to your question around around revenue generated by the program, there's actually very little revenue generated by this program. Now, now that most of the development functions were transferred over to the Portland permitting and development and even less now subsequent to the changes that were made to the fee schedule or that are being made to the fee schedule as part of this this budget process, most fees that this program charges are being reduced by by half or eliminated. And so we originally had in our base budget, a little over $400,000 of revenue. And that's now just a little bit over $100,000 of service charges and about $80,000 of miscellaneous revenue. So there's not a lot of funding coming from the public for this program anymore. Based on on all those changes.
231 Okay.
232 Thank you. This was really helpful. I would love to see a breakdown of that written out if possible, just because I think this has been of interest to a lot of people, and I think it's a little bit more complicated than it seems on its face.
233 Councilors, if I may, I understand that deputy city administrator sent the document that councilor Novick is referring to, and it is our intention to add to that both some of the questions that were asked last night. And then we will continue on and add any additional detail that's coming out of this conversation today.
234 Fernando, would you want to return to going through the is it five subject areas?
235 Sure. Yes. Dan, did you have anything to add for non-development?
236 I just wanted to note when we're looking at comparison, I worked both in the development and the non-development side of our program previously when we held development. And so comparing permit issuance compared to other bureaus. And important to note that most of our permits issued also have an inspection component where the employee is going out to site to look at the resource and make a determination that's needed for that permit through that process.
237 Thank you sam.
238 So I'll move on to the capital projects team. So this has been a historically understaffed team, and we've spent probably the last decade trying to get to where we are right now, which is. Seven staff. And at any one time, we typically have about 350 to 4 to 400 capital projects in our portfolio. Right now, at this exact moment, we have 325 active capital projects that we are reviewing, as well as, as I mentioned, managing during the construction and post construction. So it's a little different than how other bureaus are organized, where they have a planner that's doing just the sort of review component. Then they have inspectors that are doing the inspection part as well as a compliance component. So the staff on that team are doing that, that full purview from the beginning to the end. They also are reviewing our Portland parks and recreation non-park use permits. So for external entities that want to use the park for any reason, they're again addressing, you know, are there any impacts to the trees? Are there proposed tree removals, preservation heritage trees that are on site that they that need to be reviewed and see they also participate still in our development, even though the staff that I that I had previously that worked on private development got reassigned over to Portland permitting and development. Within our purview is the responsibility for development on city owned projects and city owned property. And so those tree inspectors are performing land use reviews and early assistance reviews for all city owned property projects. So, you know, for example, if PBOT is going to go put a new street, if parks is going to put in a new park, that's the responsibility of those tree inspectors. And I want to back up a little bit to the non-development. They also manage our heritage tree program. So that is a pretty well-known program, but gets pretty complicated as those trees start to become extremely mature and senesce. And so those are the tree inspectors that work with the property owners to inspect the health and condition of those heritage trees to help determine, you know, their ultimate fate and manage for their condition and such.
239 How many heritage trees are there?
240 I don't know offhand. Do either of you know?
241 Yeah, we have listed over 330, but not all of those are active. So I think it's roughly in the 250.
242 Okay, I have to ask, what's the difference between an active and inactive heritage tree?
243 Thank you for.
244 The clarification question. Meaning that each tree is given a distinct number. So, you know, one of the first trees that was given heritage tree number one. And then even after that tree is removed from the landscape, it maintains that number and we build from there.
245 Okay.
246 So we're not talking about ents versus regular trees.
247 Yes. No, it's.
248 And then before I move on to code compliance, I just also want to point out that both the non-development team and the capital team, as well as the code compliance team, they all work in coordination with the other teams within the department. So the permitting and regulation team plays a pivotal role in drafting and providing work orders to our operations team to perform the work. So our operations teams are the ones that are skilled and go up in the trees and use the chainsaws, whereas the permitting and regulation team are the ones that do the consultations, the inspections and the drafting of those work orders to hand over to that team. So that would be lost in terms of like, who's providing that work to the operations team in order for the tree tree care maintenance. So then going back to our code compliance team, we have rick here. So I'll let him speak more directly to what his.
249 Rick faber with the code compliance team of urban forestry. This team was created and is levy funded and created in about 2023. Prior to then all code compliance cases, any concerns from the public were all handled by the non-development or development or cip inspectors, which led them to have to make challenging calls about whether they're going to be responding to property owner complaints or responding to paid permit applications. And when my team was created, we were provided originally two tree inspectors to help manage the 800 case backlog of complaints that were unaddressed. And we worked through those diligently until we were able to resolve those. As a code compliance team, we're able to handhold people through situations where they find themselves on the other side of city codes, oftentimes having many, many more than one inspection, whether we're talking to multiple property owners handling a dangerous tree concern where nobody wants to take responsibility, or whether we're handling a situation where public property has been destroyed and the responsible parties don't want to address the concern or maintain safe condition. Trees. We work hard to bring them along. We used to not have that staffing and we were limited to sending informal and oftentimes harsh letters. And now that we finally have a decent staffing and a stable program, we're able to really reach out and meet people where they are. We've instigated a number of ways where people can or initiate a number of ways where they can call us out to their site to talk to us, getting on our calendars without having to talk to anybody first. Those are the tree inspectors. The code specialists that you'll see on the list are responsible for verifying tree planting requirements of those non-development permits. So most non-development permits have a replanting requirement. They'll go out there and they'll verify the trees have been put in the ground as they're required to, and they will work with property owners to identify why trees might not be planted and help them navigate that conversation. And we're also kicking off the PCEF funded private property tree care program that's coming to my team, because we have the pulse on the community need of where dangerous trees are on private property that aren't being assessed. We can assume that those people with the private property, dangerous trees, are having a hard time having them maintain for a number of reasons, and we're going to help provide that assistance directly.
250 We're running out of time. But actually, you just raised another question I meant to ask, which is you've got 37 people with these various functions. Now, how does that compare to where we were, say, ten years ago?
251 Yes, about 12 years ago is when I came on and there were seven people.
252 There are what?
253 There were seven.
254 So it's gone from 7 to 37 performing all these functions.
255 And I will say it was necessary when I, when I came in, it took about 12 weeks to get a permit. People were irate. We were not able to answer calls and emails in relationship to concerns that people had. As it relates to whether it's a dangerous tree, how can I get it taken care of? And so it's taken, you know, those, those 12 years to get from that point to this point where now and I didn't get to the single point of contact team, but they are pivotal and I think incredibly important asset to the city in terms of answering questions, phone calls. They are not a customer service center that transfer you. They answer like that. That is their role to research and provide responses and not bounce people around. They take that incredibly seriously, and their turnaround time right now is about one and a half days. And when I came here, it didn't even really exist. And for the permits again, we are at a22 week turnaround time at this point in time, which was 12 weeks previously.
256 Councilor Kanal do you have a question?
257 Is there any part.
258 Of the.
259 Staffing that relates to that of this program that relates to the. Sort of sell, for lack of a better word, self certification of PBOT requests? We saw a recent news article showing that basically, if PBOT requests a permit to remove a tree, they get it. My office was involved in that, and certainly some of our shared it's in our district. So and I'm just trying to understand if that's a budgetary question or a policy question, because the disparity in how difficult we get reports about things are, how difficult it is when a non-city employee requests something versus when a city employee, basically they they request it, they get it, and there's no appeal. Is that a budget question or is it a policy question?
260 It's not a budget question. I will say it's a it's a significant misunderstanding in terms of what's sort of the narrative that's been placed out there versus how things are. And in that particular case, that was for an ADA compliant sidewalk. And there is some authority that the city engineer has in terms of determining that a tree is creating a hazard as it relates to complying with the American disabilities act. And they have the authority at that point to essentially cause the tree to be removed. We do work closely with PBOT, and I've actually been in conversation with them recently to find out. Are you connecting with the adjacent property owner when you're you're obtaining those permits. So improvements.
261 Are not.
262 Improvements can always be made. But that is that is sort of what that case was, is that our our hands were tied. That's a situation where it's meeting ADA and it is the authority of the city engineer. And, and we don't sort of have the authority at that point to, to deny it.
263 If I may provide some additional context, the that specific clause was in prk 2.04, and it does specify that it's not an over the counter self-certification. The application from PBOT will include an assessment of alternatives to tree removal, so that will be reviewed and assessed as part of the application process. But the ADA ramping will supersede any any tree concerns at that time. I'd also like to do a shout out for PBOT that they would probably disagree with the assessment that we let them remove whatever trees they want to.
264 Well, we've got the news article here showing 77 out of 78, so I apologize. One was denied out of 78. That's that's there. And I would love to hear about that. At a time when we have time to go through the other 77. Because again, constituent input that I'm hearing is very difficult when they request anything. And then on the flip side, to see this and no opportunity for appeal, that is frustrating. And I will say that urban forestry as a program, the response always seems to be, well, it's something else, or you don't have the whole story. Or here's a new answer. That's not the answer that was given in an email before. And I, I think there are a lot of people outside of this building who've run out of patience with that. And I would love to hear from the director next time of that program so that it's not them putting you up here to have to hear difficult feedback that they should hear. Thanks.
265 Thank you all very, very much. Thanks to my colleagues and to all the staff that have been here today. Director long, I really appreciate that you're going to supplement on this Zimmerman amendment to supplement the material you've already provided and appreciate what you did provide. Our next meeting is Thursday, may 29th. We'll have one item from Portland permitting development on flood hazard areas code amendments, and we're still determining what else we're going to cover in this busy budget season. So I will now, with only only three minutes late, adjourn the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee.