The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-12-04
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (36,754 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council held a work session on Thursday, December 4, 2025, focused on establishing a joint legislative agenda with the Office of Government Relations (OGR) and the Mayor's office ahead of the February legislative session. Discussion covered draft federal and state legislative agendas, evaluation criteria for assessing legislative priorities, and proposed operating best practices for intergovernmental coordination. Topics addressed included federal priorities such as protecting targeted communities, civil rights, infrastructure funding, and behavioral health; state priorities including local authority, shared revenue, public meetings law reform, housing and homelessness resources, and economic development matters such as retaining the Portland Trail Blazers. Councilors raised proposed edits regarding language on data-informed criteria, city policy alignment, civil rights protections, drug interdiction wording, police training funding, and housing accessibility provisions. Discussion also covered internal communication practices, roles and responsibilities among the Mayor, Council President, councilors, and OGR staff, and processes for resolving disagreements. A council vote on the agendas and best practices was noted as scheduled for December 17 or 18, with outcomes to be recorded in the vote ledger. The session concluded with discussion of a postponed afternoon work session on housing and homelessness, including disagreement among councilors about the reasons for the postponement and calls for council oversight regarding housing bureau funding.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good morning. It is nine. Oh, there's an echo.
1 Hold on. That's my fault.
2 Okay. Good morning. It is 933 on Thursday, December 4th, I am going to call to order a work session of the Portland city council. And we are. Doing this with our office of government relations and with the mayor this morning. And I'm pointing that out a little bit differently, because, mr. Mayor, I think we have you as a more of a full participant in our conversation today than we usually do, because we are working on establishing a joint agenda that our office of government relations will carry forward that is supported by the full council and the mayor. So we want to make sure we have you as as part of this conversation. So thank you for being here. Colleagues. This is an important opportunity for us to come together ahead of the February legislative session and make sure that we have a strong, shared foundation for our intergovernmental work. While we will be talking about our agenda today as well, we know that that those deadlines for that February session is part of what is driving our timing here. In addition to reviewing our draft federal and state agendas, we also will be having an important discussion about our operating best practices that will help us establish a model and process to support collaboration in our intergovernmental work. When we get this right, it will lift all of our agendas. It will strengthen our relationships and help the city and our partners at the state, federal and regional levels achieve more together. We know that when we are all on the same page, we have a lot of sway in bringing those other partners to that same page with us. When we reach consensus on issues, strategies, and operating best practices, we can be strategically positioned to maximize our success in advancing our policy goals and as importantly, in protecting our local authorities so that we can serve portlanders and use our resources in a way that advances our work. A council vote by resolution on the legislative agendas and operating best practices that we discussed today will come forward on December 17th. I'm going to note that that might be pushed to the 18th, but one of those two days today as a work session, we will discuss what our ogre team has put together based on conversations with us in past work sessions and discussions. But we will take that vote at a full council meeting in two weeks. At that time, we will be asked to consider three items our state and federal legislative agendas. The evaluation criteria that will guide our ogre team in vetting various bills that come forward, that we may want to respond or react to, and then the shared operating best practices, which, as I noted, is where we'll spend the bulk of our time in discussion today, because that is what will allow us to address issues that come up in the moment. And while our shared agenda is critical, that is our proactive foot forward, understanding how we respond and how we work with each other as we each weigh in on additional items as well is critical. Alongside our work as the council. The mayor, of course, plays an important role in developing, communicating and advocating for the city agenda, which, as I mentioned, is why we've asked him to join us for the the entirety of today's discussion and make sure that we include his perspective and observations and insights here as well. And, mr. Mayor, in just a minute, I'll ask you to say a few words to us, but I want to first, just thank everybody for being here and make sure that as we move forward, we are creating an agenda that gives clear guidance to our ogre team so that you can move forward and do the critical work that we know you do. On behalf of the whole city, I want to thank you all for putting together drafts for us. I know you've spent a lot of time between our last work session and today really trying to refine what this process looks like with a new council and a new form of government. It's a little bit different than when there were only five people up here. And I want to thank everybody around the dais for the work that you've put into responding to the calls from ogre for information about what the priorities for each of our districts are, and how the things that we each are working on might interact with the things that our ogre team can weigh in on in Salem and at the federal level. With that, mr. Mayor, I'd like to turn it over to you for some opening comments, and then sam will turn it over to you and your team.
3 Thank you. Council vice president, council vice president, council president, council vice president and councilors. Thank you for the collaboration this opportunity during our last work session and throughout the previous legislative session, we worked closely together to hone where we're at today. I deeply appreciate the work we've done together to align our efforts and our message here today. I also want to thank city leadership and staff. Sam, evan, jack team, appreciate all your effort. We've been going at this for quite a while. You've done a great comprehensive job in this approach. Developing a collective agenda is no small undertaking. What we have before us is a well-vetted, strategically positioned set of priorities designed to succeed in the legislature. Now more than ever, we need our partners across all levels of government to lean in and support portland's biggest priorities as we move toward the short session, I want to reaffirm my commitment to working through issues internally to find consensus among us and with our community, or, at a minimum, to get as close as possible to ensure that our city is moving forward. I look forward to continuing our partnership through the short session and into the next long session as we work to build a durable system for shelter operations, affordable housing, behavioral health, and supportive services. As we strengthen local businesses and drive economic development to support public systems that deliver meaningful impact for Portland residents. With that said, sam, if you would help us through this process, I look forward to the conversation. Thank you, council president.
4 Thank you, mr. Mayor. Sam, do you want to frame us up in what we're doing here today?
5 I do, and I want to start with thanking you. Council president, mayor, council, vice president, council for all of the time and energy that you have put into this process and working with us. And we've really felt like our office has had a lot of attention and and serious review of the work that we've been doing. And we appreciate you. The office of government relations is here to support your priorities and share. Portland's voice is strong, consistent and effective in government relations. This council, mayor and administration have already been great models for coordination and collective action in our external advocacy work. About three years ago, when I started this position, the first thing I heard from legislators at a legislative breakfast was concern about hearing one thing from the city in one area, another thing from the city in another area, and a third in another. And it created confusion and a lack of understanding about how to move forward in support of the city. And so we've been very focused on trying to get to that place where we are moving forward as as with our collective agenda. And I want to be clear and reiterate this. We do not develop or approve policy. We're not policy makers. We are intergovernmental liaisons and advocates who operate within a framework that are that our elected officials set. You are the policy makers and the city administration are the implementers. Our role is to advocate for your policy decisions with other levels of government. The mayor and council play a critical role in showing our intergovernmental partners that portland's issues are too important to put forward a divided front. We have done the hard work internally to try to align our positions, and we believe the effort has paid off. Today's discussion will help us finalize a legislative framework that reflects both near-term short session priorities and helps set us up for the long the next long session. So we're we're continually doing that work in a cycle. We we hope that your interests are accurately reflected in these documents through the messaging order of priorities and expectations for collaboration. Moreover. Moreover, we want you to feel confident that the issues you have raised have been appropriately addressed. This is another opportunity for you to confirm that we have got it right. Following today's session, ogre will incorporate any additional council feedback into the final federal and state legislative agendas for formal consideration and a vote on December 17 or 18. So with that, I am going to transition straight into the. So here's the you can see the agenda that we have forward here. And what's our next slide. This is this is a reminder about the process. And it's a cycle that is an annual cycle where we're even after short session long session we're collecting the issues. We're we're working with council and service areas to collect those issues. We are helping process and vet and identify those priorities. And we started more deeply down that avenue in the September work session. And then we've been working with you continually through the last couple of months to try to get to a place that we feel like is addressing your interests. And then, of course, we'll hope to finalize the agenda in December and, and then launch and, and go more public with our external advocacy and, and, and working with legislators through the short session and, and all through that time identifying issues as, as they're developing and starting that process over again after the short session, we can go to the next. So the evaluation criteria is one that we talked about at the last work session and wanted to just provide a reminder that this is how we assess issues for agenda inclusion. This is not how ogre assesses them. This is this is a guide for how we as a city, as a collective body, can be on the same page about how to assess and evaluate where we're spending our time and energy to get the most we can out of our external advocacy. We had a few. Changes or some input last work session around the evaluation criteria to make sure that when issues are urgent and and timely, that that is recognized. And then we also had another change to. I think that was I think that was it. So wanted to just stop there on this piece and say, does this feel right? The issue evaluation criteria. You have a document that was in your packet that spells out more context around these issues. I can walk through them more if you want, but I you know, my sense was it was there was support that it was it was in the right direction with with a little bit of input on the on the urgency question.
6 And colleagues, because we're in work session. We're not voting on each of these things today, but we do want to make sure to get the ogre team feedback. I think what we'll do for this and a couple of other pieces of the agenda is say, if anybody has questions, get in the queue so that we can make sure to get all of the details out. And then if anybody has any concerns or an argument they'd like to make for something different, get in the queue. Let's make those arguments. But that if this captures the conversation that we've had before and we're good to move forward, we obviously can't take a vote today. But the absence of any hands raised for concerns gives us kind of the nod that, yes, we're all in a good place here. Councilor canal questions, concerns, arguments against.
7 Thank you, madam president. Thank you for being here. Both of you. Whole team. So the the issue I raised last time, I just wanted to address, again, in terms of collective agreements, starting with city bureaus, the description I like this list. I like the idea of collective agreement. I don't like the idea of an implied veto by city bureau leaders over elected leaders priorities, and both in terms of their inclusion in the list. And they're they're being placed first. I would love to see it say something more to the effect of executive and elected leadership with the advice of subject matter. Experts, including city bureaus, generally agree, etc. I just wanted to flag that. Thank you.
8 Okay, that.
9 I know that wasn't the intent.
10 Thank you. I don't see any challenges with kind of being more clear about that. And what this also is a good question because it raises kind of a point I'd like to make, which is at the end of this work session here, toward the end, we have the best practices that we have identified around doing this collaboration and making sure that we're addressing those those concerns. And so we'll have some more time to to talk about the process part, because, again, we think of ourselves as process people, not policy people. And so we'll talk about and I think that's very important part of this work. And because we want to build trust and transparency. And so we'll we'll talk some more about that as well in that section.
11 Thank you. Counselor. Anything further okay. Counselor Dunphy.
12 Thank you. Sam. Three things pop to mind. And I think that there are some of them are in some ways implied in this, but I wonder if it and maybe this is also for my colleagues. The first is aligned with city values as an area. I think that's right. But also there are a number of times where I think we need to be aligned with city policy, like specifically that if there is, for example, rental assistance. Right. We are doing a lot of effort around rental assistance and getting people into housing, and that is a broad area that our our bureaus are going to be looking at. Do we call it out by name to say that this is a line by policy as well, or that these are the priorities that the city council is working on? And. Seeing that as a reflection in the partners at the state and federal levels. The second part of it similar is data informed, meaning maybe it's maybe this collective body really wants to build a water slide on the front on waterfront park. But that's not the highest and greatest need. It's not aligned with city values, but also there's not data to demonstrate. We need that. And then the third is around the collective agreement. Reading through the presentation, the materials that you guys sent over, there was a line in there about the different roles of who plays what in this process. And it says the mayor sets the legislative agenda and that the city council informs on it. It's not I'm not exactly saying exactly, but under the mayor's responsibilities, it says setting the legislative agenda to some equivalent to that. And I assume that that implies also being informed by the administration and the bureaus. But how are we thinking about this? If there is a conflict between the mayor's priorities and the city council's priorities?
13 Thank you for those. I'll break this out into three pieces. I'll start with the last one, which is I think that's a absolutely critical how this understanding about how we're all working together as the city team. And so I would like to flag that in the operations best practices conversation. And then in terms of the city values and and I think adding the, you know, policy alignment with city policy that that I don't see any I think that's actually really helpful. So I appreciate that. And I think we can incorporate that unless I'm hearing other. But I think that sounds in line with what we've been hearing from council. And then the other, I think the complete and ready is an area we can be a little more specific about data informed. And so if I if anybody wants to speak in contrary to that, I would say that I do think you're right. Sounds good.
14 I think maybe it doesn't. I mean, for the purposes of this, for, you know, we don't need to add extra language onto it just to make sure. But I want to be explicit that I think you're right. Complete and ready does imply that there is some data demonstrated that why we are concerned about xyz issue, why we are advocating for whatever it is and not just pulling something completely out of the ether. And I think that you're right. That is in there. And in some ways I'm satisfied just saying this out loud. So yeah. Thank you.
15 Let's try something though. Colleagues, does anybody have a concern with adding language about data informed in the complete and ready section? I don't see any concern. Okay, okay colleagues any other questions concerns changes that you want to propose for this section before we have sam move on. Council vice president.
16 I just have to say I really thought you were going to say can we add water slide language? I was like ready for it and was a little done. I want to be clear.
17 I'm ready to figure out where we can have a water slide going into the Willamette river. I think this fits with the family friendly, future focused agenda that I want to make sure that we are pushing. I'm here for you, councilor Dunphy. I appreciate that you brought it up, but no, I don't think we're at the distinct agenda items part of the conversation, so we'll save that for later. Sam.
18 Flexible. And if you were to change our priorities to include water, we will be your advocates.
19 Councilor Green.
20 I just can't resist here. If you're if we're going to do if we're going to go down that road, can we can we lobby for a giant sasquatch statue on ross island?
21 Yeah.
22 Are you.
23 Is that what the water slide comes out of?
24 It can be it can it can come out of that. Yeah.
25 The best meeting. I don't.
26 Think councilor Clark is sold yet.
27 Zip line, zip line. Oh.
28 Salt from the east and west parts of your district, across the river.
29 Behalf of everybody watching at home, I'm really apologize for.
30 Doing this.
31 We're a serious body, I promise.
32 All your fault, Dunphy.
33 Willie levinson is super happy at home right now, though.
34 That's true.
35 Human access project.
36 Sam, I think you've gotten the most lightness, light conversation out of this body that we've had in a few weeks. Let's move to the next part of the agenda. We can get to the water slide later.
37 Thank you. Now we're going to discuss the federal agenda. I'm asked jack arriaga, our federal program manager, to federal relations manager, to come up and join us. So council's already familiar with our many of our federal issues, but it is important to provide a few quick updates. In our September work session. Council provided guidance to elevate certain priorities which have been reflected in the updated agenda. And I'm going to turn it over to jack, who will summarize the revisions and key developments and take it from here. Jack.
38 Yeah. So good morning, council. For the record. Jack arriaga, federal relations manager in ogre. And I think, you know, this should be fairly brief portion based on the fact that I think we heard a lot of clear consensus from council during our our September work session and in the subsequent meetings we've had with many of you on, on the federal agenda. So, you know, we heard loud and clear that pushing back against federal overreach and taking action to protect targeted communities in Portland is a you know, those are the top priorities of of the council in this city in this current moment and in the coming year. So language to that effect is now front and center in our draft federal agenda, starting with the introductory language. So we've also added new language since that September work session to underscore that support for defending funding streams to the state and county that those the state and county rely on to provide health care and social services such as medicaid and snap, that's been added to our agenda. I think they were implicit before that. You know, we supported those kinds of programs, but it's now explicit that, you know, we'll show up to to back the state and the county that primarily deal with those, those issues. So other than that, the agenda priorities remain consistent with what was shared with council earlier this fall. But I will briefly touch on each of our key areas of focus just to, you know, recap those and then we can open up to any discussion or questions. So as I mentioned, the first key priority in the draft agenda is preventing federal overreach and protecting targeted communities. So that includes imposing any federal actions that infringe on the constitutional rights of community members and defending the city's policies as a sanctuary jurisdiction, including preventing funding streams from being cut off for that reason. So following that, we also elevated and updated in our agenda the priority of strengthening civil rights and racial justice in line with the city's core values and racial equity goals. So this language really empowers us to find opportunities that to to support voting rights, equitable federal cannabis laws, access to comprehensive health care, federal codification of protections against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. I will admittedly say those opportunities are bit fewer and far between than they have been in the past. So it's a tough environment in that space right now. But that that is a theme we'll hear throughout our agenda, frankly, at the federal level. So that section also supports direct efforts for the to preserve the rights of tribal sovereignty and self-governance, including the city support for congressional efforts to address the lasting harm of indian boarding schools, moving on to to advance economic recovery and development. We will be seeking federal resources and policies in the coming year to support downtown revitalization, arts investment, workforce development, and digital equity initiatives to ensure inclusive economic growth for marginalized communities. In focusing on reducing homelessness and increasing housing stability, the city will advocate for expanded federal funding and program flexibility to provide shelter support our housing production strategy, protect renters, and promote homeownership opportunities for low and moderate income households to enhance community safety and behavioral health. Will be pursuing federal resources for behavioral health, substance use treatment and disaster preparedness, gun violence prevention, and community policing, while supporting medicaid flexibilities for mobile health services and the reclassification of 911 dispatchers as public safety workers. As I mentioned earlier, the city will also actively support our state and county partners in securing those federal funding streams for nutrition and health care services. To bolster infrastructure investment. Will continue seeking federal funds for transportation and redevelopment projects to advance safety, equity, climate and mobility goals, including ev infrastructure and vision zero programs. This will include continuing our engagement as congress considers the next surface transportation authorization bill in the coming year. With the biden administration's infrastructure investment and jobs act aspiring to ensure climate and environmental justice, Portland will advocate for programs that reduce carbon emissions, improve energy efficiency, and build climate resilience while prioritizing environmental remediation projects, flood management reforms, and protections against toxic chemicals like pfas. Again, admittedly, this is a tough space to be working in right now, but I do want to acknowledge that we are finding opportunities. I want to highlight that. Councilor Avalos was just at the national league of cities conference, and was featured on a panel that featured that that focused on on mitigating extreme heat, and so was able to uplift all of the city's good work in that area. Finally, as we seek to maintain local authority, the city will defend its ability to manage zoning, permitting and local ordinances while supporting strong federal privacy protections and responsible deployment of emerging technologies. So just want to mention, before I conclude that within those priorities, council has raised several discrete issues that we've had conversations about in the recent weeks. And so just want to mention that we'll be following up on a number of those. Top, top of mind, of course, is the federal earmarks process. And so I want to reiterate that we'll be turning our attention to that process in the coming weeks, starting with a briefing that for staff that I think will be will be sending out an invite in the coming days, and that will happen before the holiday break, and that will lead towards a call for proposals from bureaus that will work with council and get council's ideas in January. And so that will all lead up to a process that will lead to submissions to our congressional offices, likely late in February or early March. So it will be a fairly quick process after the holidays, but something that we're going to be hitting the ground running on and getting started before the holidays. So with that, I'll hand it over to any questions or discussion.
39 Question concerns arguments for something different. Councilor Novick.
40 Yeah, I just wanted to focus. Thank you, madam president. When I see ensure climate and environmental justice, to me that means mitigating the impacts of climate change on particularly vulnerable communities. And although you said that part of that is reducing carbon emissions, I think it's important to call out that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is itself a goal. And I just don't think that necessarily follows the language ensure climate, environmental justice. So I would I would like us to add in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And you said carbon emissions. I think it's always important to say greenhouse gas, because methane is pretty damn important to.
41 Noted.
42 I think that feels appropriate. And I think, you know, we'd want to make sure that was feeling appropriate for others.
43 Yeah. So just because we're not going to see this again until it's before us for a vote, is there anybody who has concerns with the addition of that language? I'm not seeing any. Okay. Councilor Dunphy I'm sorry. Councilor. Novick. Did you have anything further? Okay. Councilor Dunphy.
44 Thank you. Jack. Two questions. One, you've answered for me in private, but I'd like to ask it here. And the other, specific to the federal situation. The the first is could you tell me a little bit about the strategy of getting our our federal priorities in front of our federal delegation and how, I guess, whether there is a strategy between us going an inch wide and a mile deep, or a mile wide and an inch deep in in terms of our asks, or the way we coordinate that with our, our, our state partners and our county partners. And then the second question is. With the recent government shutdown that happened over our, our our lack of ability to pass a budget, did anything good happen from our priorities? Did we get anything out of the effort that we had through the last budget cycle and the last budget efforts.
45 Specifically on the federal level?
46 Sir, can you clarify the last when you say the last budget cycle, you mean in the in the what? The deal that was reached to end the shutdown? Yeah.
47 Or any of the budgeting efforts that have happened. The big beautiful bill as well. Absolutely. But also, yeah, you know, we the last city council went through this in advance of the, you know, this time last year. And did we did anything happen in a positive way or ultimately are we staring down I mean, like, is this do we have reason to think we will be more successful this year? I mean. So unfair question.
48 To ask. Yeah, I think I will divide my response and sort of two areas. One is general policy level, over which we are a fairly small actor with limited influence at the federal level. But I think we have priorities and needs that align with a lot of our other local government partners, both in Oregon and nationally. And so that those those issues tend to elevate up through the us conference of mayors and the mayor's engagement there through the national league of cities in those forums, is where I think we really get our voice. Most, you know, more heard beyond just our delegation on that front. It's I don't have much good news from the last year. It's been a really challenging year. The one major positive I can point to from h.r. One, the reconciliation big, beautiful bill. There was a lie tech reform, the expansion and increase in the value of low income housing tax credits. That is something that the city we had been part of several different coalitions and efforts for years to try to achieve, you know, in a bipartisan fashion, what was ultimately passed as part of that partizan bill. So that is the one place where I would point to a positive, a success that we are supportive of. Otherwise, I think you're going to hear, particularly in the state conversation on the whole, just how devastating that that bill is for in a lot of ways, for for us. More specifically at the, you know, in the sort of earmark space and where we engage for our needs, I think, you know, we have a delegation that always has an open door. A lot of times the question just is about their ability to achieve an outcome. And I think, you know how difficult that is at the federal level. And so we you know, we did not get any of our earmark requests in the last year. As we talked about in the last work session, congress last March, this past March reached a full year continuing resolution. And so they they basically flat funded most, you know, most of the federal government and did not include any specific requests for any, any entity that requested earmarks, nonprofits and governments alike. And so there were no earmarks funded in the last year. But we do currently have five projects in play that if congress reaches a omnibus agreement, their next deadline is January 30th. They may extend that out a little bit further, but likely in the next few months, we will know whether those five projects will get funded. So those are still still in motion.
49 Thank you councilor. I'm next in the queue. I have a question about the line that I don't think was here before around 911, dispatch workers being classified as public safety workers. And I'm wondering if you can explain what that does. And I'll just I'll show my cards here. Insane. In my work at the state level, there were conversations about needing to have federal changes in order to make pers changes here, and I'm wondering if that's what this is about or if this is something different and what it is that we're trying to achieve there. It seemed maybe I missed it before, but it seemed like a new addition. So I want to understand that.
50 Yeah. And so that has actually been a part of our agenda for several, for numerous years, as long as I've been with the city. And so it was in the previous draft, and in fact, I think councilor Kanal mentioned it in the work session. And frankly, he may be able to help me out because it's been a while since I've looked into the details of that bill. But so he may know more than me on that. But basically, you're right that it's a federal designation of what you know, of what kind of positions qualify as public safety. That then does provide them with better, you know, or with more access to benefits like pers that that only, you know, firefighters and police officers and public safety designated workers get have incentives to receive. So that's about the extent to which I can speak to it right now. Maybe someone else can go a little bit deeper if you want.
51 I understand it. If it's related to the pers change, we're setting ourselves up for some additional costs down the line. It sounds like. And I know that that also sets us up to help with recruitment and ensure that our employees are well compensated. But I just want to make sure that we're eyes wide open about the cost side of it. Also, I apologize that I didn't see it in the agenda previously. I was focused on other things. And to that end, thank you because there are a number of of additions here based on the last conversation that I really appreciate.
52 Yeah. And if I could just to show my cards, you know, that's like I said, it's been in our agenda for several years. There's a bill that has passed out of the house, but not the senate or vice versa. Over the last several sessions of congress. So I know that our 911 dispatchers, I think they go to d.c. Every year and do some advocacy around that bill. So, you know, it's something that the city has supported for a while. Our delegation is supportive of it. There's not much more engagement that I've been able to do on, on that in, in recent years. So that's why it's not, frankly, top of mind for me.
53 That's okay. I appreciate the explanation. Thank you. Councilor canal.
54 Yes, thank you, madam president. I wanted to speak to the conversation around. It's a relates to the strengthen civil rights and racial justice idea because it's about civil rights, but it's actually language that's at the end of maintain local authority. And so I have maybe a request for clarification, maybe a request for change. And I just wanted to understand it's the last sentence. The city will also support policies establishing strong federal privacy and consumer protections for individuals, while allowing cities to responsibly deploy technologies that best serve their communities. Then it has a comma, including and it lists out all these particular technologies. And as I read it, the way the sentence is formulated implies to me that it's applying to while allowing cities to responsibly deploy technologies and therefore implying that we support this and this. There are things in here that city policy. This goes back to councilor Dunphy's earlier point. City policy prevents facial recognition software to be deployed in the city, and this seems to contradict that. So I'd like to see that I understand the the part before the comma including. But the the remaining part does not. I also know that it says surveillance policies. So I think maybe the intent here was to say we're going to get involved in these conversations. But the way that the sentence is worded seems to be an endorsement. Can you speak to that a little bit?
55 Yeah, absolutely. And so just first, I think you said you mentioned that that was in the civil rights and racial justice area, but.
56 I think it should be our strong support of individual privacy, our opposition to facial recognition, all that's under civil rights, not under local control the way we've done it, but maintaining our ability to do that makes sense in local control.
57 Okay, I understand. So yeah, just in case anyone else missed, I misunderstood. So that is in our maintain local authority. At the end of the draft, the sentence you're referring to. And I agree. And I think frankly that's one of the challenges here, is that oftentimes a lot of these issues can cross over into different areas. But I agree with you. That is obviously a civil rights issue that we're talking about. And when it comes to privacy. To your point, I think this the reason it's under the maintain local authority section is because we are our key priority is to avoid federal preemption. And as you may know right now, there's a really hot debate around artificial intelligence and a movement. In fact, there's probably going to be news articles today around the white house has been considering an executive order attempting to preempt states and localities from regulating artificial intelligence, and that's something that they've been reportedly considering doing and then trying to get congress to actually legislate on. And so there's been this burgeoning back and forth over recent months on that, that artificial intelligence preemption conversation. So this is really intended to point to the fact that what we want is to maintain local authority, to regulate, to have our own city ordinances around facial recognition. I think given your comments, we can think through if there's some clarification that could happen to to more clearly state that, that, you know, our stance as a city and that what we're trying to achieve is just our ability to manage that ourselves without federal preemption.
58 That makes perfect sense to me. And I think I think I assessed the intent here accurately then. So I would like to see maybe if you could separate those or by rewording the sentence, or you could separate them by just making this one clear and adding the part about what we support into the civil rights section is up to you. I just love to see that updated.
59 Okay. Appreciate that.
60 I think we can handle clarifying that because I think we understand.
61 Okay.
Procedural episode · turns 62–71
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62 We'll look for some clarification there. And just again checking with folks. Is there any concern with clarifying that in the direction that the conversation is going? Okay. Not seeing any mr. Mayor?
63 Yeah.
64 Thank you. Jack. What I want to do is just talk about the strategy and you'd noted it. Councilor. There's 13 of us, and unfortunately, every city and state in the union is being affected by the federal administration and their changes in philosophy and process and funding. And that's no different with the city. And I just want to kind of talk about one tactical thing that I'm doing, and I'm hopeful we can partner with collaborate, the 13 of us. So we have two major projects, the 82nd avenue redesign, and we have the streetcar, which are both projects that we want to begin the build on. They're really germane to our future. Our transportation network. Transportation systems aren't really in favor of the environmental stewardship of this administration aren't really in favor. So I'll be in at the us conference of mayors in January, and I've asked to meet with the administrator for the fta to really start talking to them, to explain the local benefits that these projects are going to bring to us. And so what I would like to do is just with this legislative agenda that jack and sam and the team put together, I think it really should be a tactical shared focus when we travel. National league of cities was great. Anytime we have a chance to meet with the administration on a relational basis to advocate for these projects, because that really is what allows us to get these across the finish line. When the funding and the continuing resolutions do move forward. I just want to let you know, I really think it's time for us to really lobby on behalf of the city, because the funding really is at peril and really is important for us to try and keep that funding going. The stack on the 82nd avenue is 97% firm. It's just hasn't dropped into the funding bucket yet. And it's a it's a concern that I have. And so if we can work together as we fly we meet. Let's really collaborate on this to make sure that jack is is successful in the federal side of it. So thank you, council president.
65 Thank you, mr. Mayor. I agree wholeheartedly. Councilor Novick.
66 Yes. And the fact that I didn't bring these up earlier indicates, obviously, that I was unprepared. But two things. One, to me, one of the most threatening things the federal government has done in the past year is reduce the staffing for the bonneville power administration. And I think they've restored some of that. But I suspect we're still in a tenuous position, and I'm not sure if this belongs in community safety or economic development, but I'd like to see some language about ensuring that the bonneville power administration has the personnel and the resources to ensure stability of the electric grid now and in the future, because also we're concerned about, you know, they're making investments in transmission. Et cetera. Et cetera. So I'd just like to see that somewhere. And I just just as my colleagues have an objection to that, adding that somewhere.
67 Councilor Green, did you have an objection to that?
68 I feel compelled to respond because I used to work there for ten years. No objections, but I would maybe offer a little bit differently in that the bonneville power administration is not appropriations driven. So their their resources and their funding and all that, that's based upon local ratepayer dollars. I think what we want to advocate for is noninterference from the department of energy on, on the on the administrator of the bpa's ability to hire to the level he needs. Does that work for you?
69 Okay, but I'm not quite sure I see the difference, because what we've seen them do is fire a lot of people on the other power to do that, so we don't want them doing that.
70 What I'm saying is, yeah, the doe should not step into john hairston's hiring authority because the bonneville power administration spends its ratepayer dollars to do that hiring. So if and this is a nuanced discussion because I let me.
71 Let me try something here. Does anybody have a concern with us putting language in around this? Can I ask councilors Green and Novick to work with our team to get the language right offline? Because I know that you both are going to go really deep into the policy on this. Okay.
72 Thank you. We'll do that. Also, I have some concerns about the language under enhanced community safety and behavioral health services. For one thing, it says something twice, which is stemming the supply of dangerous controlled substances. And then it says increased federal resources and coordination to support interdiction of interstate drug trafficking. Now, I happen to think that interdicting interest rate drug trafficking is a losing battle on a waste of time. I know that councilor Kanal disagrees with me, but I am worried about saying it twice, particularly in the context of where the federal government is now murdering people on the high seas, claiming they're drug traffickers. And I realize it says interstate, not international, but I am. Personally, I'd like to take it out altogether. But at minimum, I'd like to say it only once rather than twice. That indicates that it's a really high, high priority. And also, the city will advocate for policies and funding that increase public safety, including gun violence prevention, transparent and accountable community policing, recruitment and retention of police officers. Does the federal government provide any funding for those things to begin with? Is that I mean, is that something where there's really the possibility of getting assistance from the federal government?
73 Yeah. So on the second one, the Portland police bureau does pursue d.o.j. Grant funding, usually through the byrne jag program. There is additional funding available through the cops program that's available for hiring of police officers, though for reasons I won't get into too much detail, but we haven't pursued those historically. Because you buy pursuing this cops funding, you are then required to maintain those positions, and so it doesn't give you as much budget flexibility in future years. Okay. So we have pursued though and you know and I'll go on the the other mentions of domestic violence, sex trafficking, support for survivors. Those are all funding streams that exist within doj that that we've gone after and past years.
74 Thank you. What about transparent and accountable community policing? I kind of assume that that's our job, and I don't see how the federal government, you know, does stuff that relates to that. Really?
75 Yeah, I would say I don't have a I wouldn't point to funding for that. I think that's more of a policy position that that I think, frankly, that language has emerged both from the, you know, the our city's relationship with the doj around the Portland police in recent years and the settlement and then, you know, sort of I think in the era after the george floyd murder and raising of legislative proposals in congress around qualified immunity and other policing transparency and accountability measures, that's that's where that language is couched in supporting those kinds of efforts.
76 Does it? It struck me as odd that that language is in the federal part, but not the state part. Is there because, you know, the state has the dsst, etc. Which seems to be related to accountable policing. So I just I mean, this just struck me as an odd thing to have in the, in the federal part period. But if there's an explanation for that, I'm wondering why it's not in the state part to do.
77 You mean.
78 You can? Yeah.
79 Feel free. Actually. Councilor Novick you just addressed something that we recognize in the last couple of days was missing from the state agenda, and we're hoping to discuss it with you today to make sure that it gets covered under the under the community safety bullets in our agenda. It's been on our agenda in the past, and dps has just proposed some massive cuts to the programs that the basic police training program, which is, you know, we helped bolster that over the last few years and get the backlog addressed. So you called it out, and I hope you all will tell us that we should put it back in our agenda.
80 Thank you. Finally, I just wanted to say how much I appreciated the paragraph about pre-disaster mitigation programs, etc. I know that this administration is gutting those and the prospects are dim, but it's really damned important. So I'm really glad that you're still you're still highlighting this priority. Yeah. Thank you.
81 And I just wanted to add I don't think we really responded to your your points about interdiction, drug trafficking, interdiction of drug trafficking. And and I think that's, you know, I'm open to input from council. I do think repeating it there is probably a an artifact of previous agenda language getting moved around. So it may be redundant there, but I think just including it in general, it's an open conversation. I will say that is, you know, as we saw, the influx of particularly fentanyl, you know, in the last five or so years, we were looking for a way to engage at the federal level on that issue. And that is where the federal jurisdiction existed for us to try to address that. I will say that's one of also the reasons, though, that community safety and behavioral health are put together there, because our main focus is really on treatment and and support. On the behavioral health side.
82 This might seem sort of obvious, but if we're going to talk about supporting interdiction of drug trafficking, I almost I kind of would like to add some language saying not including the murder of suspected drug traffickers on the high seas.
83 So, colleagues, I think we have three options here. There's been an argument from councilor Novick to perhaps take at least one reference to drug trafficking out. We could leave the agenda as it is, or we could add language in that is perhaps not quite as specific as what councilor Novick just said, but something to the effect of federal resources and coordination to support interdiction of interstate drug trafficking while maintaining our values around our international relationships, or something like that. Do folks have strong opinions about maintaining status quo, taking the language out, or adding in language in reference to the current federal actions internationally?
84 Yeah. Madam chair, if you if you just added coordination to support legal interdiction of interstate drug trafficking to stem the tide and just take the first reference and add it on to the end.
85 How do folks feel about councilor Clark's proposal there? Councilor Kanal is your hand up on this? Yeah.
86 Yeah, I think the my understanding from reading this is that the intention was to have the, the first reference, be that it's broadly good for us to stem supply and that that one particular thing we want the federal government to directly do is the intersection of interstate drug trafficking. Is that accurate? And then I can answer the question.
87 Yeah, I think so.
88 Okay. So that's that's why I think it could make sense to keep two. I don't have a problem with councilor Novick original suggestion of finding a way to consolidate into one or councilor Clark's suggestion of it. I do think it's worth noting that that supporting interdiction, I just want to say it out loud, is not supporting either. The fairly obviously apparent murder or and violation of international law that's occurring right now by the federal administration. But and so I do think legal helps in that way a lot, although I don't know what they think is legal or not. The other thing that I just wanted to say was, I agree, I appreciate the transparent and accountable policing piece. I think there are definitional differences at the federal and state level on what community policing means, and the references and justification that you gave jack were all very appropriate for transparent and accountable policing. But I think that there are some kind of like you mentioned with the cops program. There are some different definitions used at the federal level and the state level on it. And so I would like to see a clearer piece of language. There's some terms in here that are defined in a purely not by you, but generally in a purely vibes based way livability. We're going to get to that in a little bit. And so I would like to see all those vague terms removed so that especially the ones that are used to define other vague terms, which we'll get to in a minute. But but yeah, on the subject of the drug item, I think it could be consolidated that way in either the upper or lower sentences.
89 Does anybody have concerns with councilor Clark's proposal that we add legal and councilor Novick. Does that address your concerns?
90 That addresses the second of my concern. I still would like to the consolidation. Okay.
91 I'm not seeing any new hands in the queue or anybody shaking their head. No. So perhaps we can move in the direction of consolidation and adding the word legal. Okay, councilor Smith.
92 Thank you, madam president. Thank you all for putting this together. Thanks, jack. I wanted to go back to the key priorities around infrastructure investment. And I do understand that we can't get new additional appropriations if we do a cr. I understand that, but I want to go back a an administration ago when president biden passed all the infrastructure dollars. And I know that we were a benefit from some sidewalk money that has to go through the state and then come to us. I think it was like $10 million. We we have since applied for this past year. Again, we don't expect that we're going to get it two years in a row. But could you so that I'm clear and this may be in partnership with the grants department. What money did we get? And not necessarily from appropriations, but what monies did we get based on the infrastructure bill, that bipartisan bill that the city of Portland got that's in the queue, like what the mayor was talking about? We have some projects that are in play, but I want to know where where is the bottleneck with the money that we did get from the infrastructure bill through grants and appropriations, when before. Speaker of the house pelosi, she did a big bill at the end of her session before the new. He's not the speaker of the house anymore. It's from new york. But at any rate, geoffrey. Yes. So we have money and some of those dollars have been held up. And I'm just trying to figure out which and how much has been held up in terms of infrastructure dollars that we got from that bill and from grants. And like I said, it may be a combination of partnerships that we may have to get with government relations and, and the grants department to find out how much money we got, because I want to know where our money is right now that we got from that particular bill. And some of those dollars have actually stopped, like the mayor is saying in, we may not be able to continue because this administration has decided not to. Take those those awards seriously for whatever reason. So I'm just trying to get an understanding of how some of our restricted funds are going to be held up going forward in this next fiscal year.
93 Yeah, I think so. I was trying to find I do have a list. I think I'll need to follow up with you.
94 Okay. Can you can you do.
95 That specific list of amounts. Yeah. But I will say I know, you know, PBOT particularly had a fair amount of, I would say a great deal of success. Yeah. In the last few years, unfortunately, we have seen a basically a rolling back in for a few different.
96 And they clawed back some of that. And I'm trying to figure out what was clawed back, what wasn't. So what's.
97 Still in this grant was our $38 million for lower albina. That was the broadway main street project. So that was a neighborhood access and equity grant that that PBOT had won in conjunction with the 450 million that ODOT had gotten for the caps on I-5. So that was the biggest example. We all that was clawed back by hr one that was rescinded by congress. Separately, we also had an issue around the burgard bridge and the administration letting that grant which bridge burgard bridge up. I think it goes over columbia boulevard. Okay. Yeah, in north Portland. So that was $19 million. So there have been a number of instances where where some of our biggest successes have been rolled back by the current administration, but we do still have a number of grants that safe streets for all grant that you're.
98 That's what I'm talking about. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. The safe streets.
99 So that's that's still coming to the city. We also have a federal railroad administration grant to study the crossings in the central east side that is still moving forward. And there's a few other examples. So I'll follow up with with specifics.
100 And I just want to piggyback on what my district one councilor said, councilor Dunphy, I mean, we have many priorities that we have based on our districts in those kinds of things. And we did pass the the sidewalk improvement and paving project for short, called cip, that I sponsored through the transportation committee and through the bid committee. And in theory, you know, it passed in PBOT is creating a plan to see what that would look like if we needed to fund it for the next four years and how we could do that, I am optimistically. Looking forward to seeing how that can happen. And while cip is not on one of these priorities, it is a priority for district one to improve and increase and expand the sidewalks in our district. And it did pass as a resolution. It was not a ordinance, and we're going to come back with an ordinance at some point when we kind of figure out what's going on. And I do understand that our dollars are going to be we're going to be juggling, because if this ballot measure passes and the money that we are getting through this latest transportation bill, that will be clawed back as well, too. And so I understand those kind of complexities. But at the same time. I want it passed. I want district one and district four to have some sidewalks that they were promised many years ago when they were brought into the city of Portland and never got them. And I want our families and our kids to have safe routes to school. In some of those areas, we have a horrendous problem with traffic accidents and high crash corridors. Councilor Kanal talked about district two, but district one has some egregious high crash corridors that are happening. And if there's any kind of way that we can cobble together some money so that we can build the sidewalks going into 82nd avenue in 122nd avenue in the not in the arterials, so that they some places in district one, you have some sidewalks and then it'll be dirt and then, you know, like 500ft down, you have some other sidewalks to connect some of those places so that they don't feel, you know, safe. Because I felt very unsafe. On division and 122nd, I did a walking business tour and the midway business association. They they gave me a tour and I was like, okay, let me go get my car because I'm not feeling too safe around here. And then I'll meet you at where we're supposed to be. And I said, no, it's okay, it's okay. But I didn't feel safe, and, and I, I went and got my car and I drove them back because I didn't feel safe for them. But I guess what I'm saying is it is a priority to me, even though it is not on the federal agenda. It's a priority for district one. It is a resolution that passed the the whole council committee, and I just don't want you all to forget about it. Infrastructure is real for me. It is what we do. It is our book of business, and I want us to not forget what our mission is at the city of Portland.
101 I appreciate that, councilor, and I'll just comment that I think, you know, like with several other things we've discussed here, you know, there are federal agenda is a very high level, broad document that that empowers us to respond to council's priorities as you all pass things, you know, resolutions, ordinances, etc. We're paying attention to those and working with the bureaus. So, as you know, PBOT is already very aware of that. And that's why, you know.
102 They have their list of priorities based upon what the administration wants as well. But I'm just trying to figure out how to. Weave in priorities that we've passed in resolutions to make sure that those things are looked at as well.
103 Yeah, absolutely. And the cip is high on that list.
104 Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
105 It's helpful for us to be hearing from you around your priorities, even independently. There's there's this kind of nuance that we'll end up talking about in the best practices conversation about, you know, resources as the way we're understanding are for the collective city of Portland, not for individual, even electeds necessarily. But that is not to say that we can't also be engaging and serving and understanding and making sure we're really well informed about what your priorities are. We want to hear from all of you that something is a priority, and we want to talk about moving toward consensus, but we also do welcome hearing from you and helping you think about how do we get this toward consensus? How do how do we help you with that process and getting to the place where we feel like we could put something forward that is going to have the enthusiasm and support of the weight of the city behind it.
106 And thank you. And so what we do in our office, we keep like a parking lot of like issues and things that we want to work on. It's in the parking lot. It's not having moved over to a piece of legislation or anything like that, but it's just a parking lot issue just to know that, you know, what some of our individual priorities are. And at the same time, too, because we often travel and I want to be able to talk about those key priorities for the city of Portland. When I'm in dc, when I'm at a conference of mayors or something like that, or, you know, the national league of cities I didn't get a chance to go to, but my chief of staff did, and we were able to get some information about what's going on in other cities and how they're dealing with bringing in new resources into the city. So I want to be able to, if we are traveling, to be able to call you and say, we're going, tell me what the top three things that I need to be talking about, not necessarily cip, but what what what is the messaging that I should take with me when I go?
107 I really appreciate you saying that because we've we've really appreciate you have reached out numerous times to say, hey, how do I make sure I'm representing the team? Right. And that has been really valuable and it hasn't been just you. We have had that with a number of council members and we and and again, we'll talk about some of this, but it is hugely appreciated anytime you're reaching out and and and just getting information from us that's, that's really our, our goal is to just have people be well informed as well informed as they can and help empower them in, in the work.
108 Thank you. Councilor councilor Ryan.
109 Thank you, madam president, and it's great to be here. Sorry, I'm a little bit late. There was conflicting schedules. It's good to see you, sam. Jack, this is your time. And evan, of course. And your entire team. You guys are really a tight team. And I just want to let you know that we appreciate you. And I like all of these priorities. Of course. Especially the first two are deep in my heart reading the room of Washington, which is fun to do. Jack, right, with this administration and the upcoming midterms. I think that infrastructure investments will continue to be one of the few bipartisan angles that we can try to leverage pers from pork from, and we might need to play some games on how we say that, but I just wanted to make a case for the fact that I don't know if these priorities are in any order of preference, but I would hope that we see that we, I think, have the biggest opportunity to get some pers with infrastructure, and we obviously have the biggest need in terms of our deferred maintenance around infrastructure. And when I think, goodness, councilor Kanal was looking at the bridge out in north Portland. And although this administration baffles me on so many levels, one is how silly they are about trade and about commerce internationally. It's hard to believe that this guy's a republican. And so it's it's like you want that flow coming in. And we've really benefited as a country being open with trade. And we have a port that now that they finished the airport, they're starting to focus on the container ships. And we are river city and we have a working waterfront, and we have a lot of living wage jobs connected to this. And so having that infrastructure, north Portland that allows our freight and our cargo to get safely to those ports is a big deal. So I hope that we can continue to make the case for that commerce. It's necessary for commerce in north Portland for the infrastructure to have those bridges and those roads done. And I just want to lift it, because I do think when you read the room of time and place, that that could be one of the areas where we could have some success, irregardless of the politics that's going on.
110 I would say that that is very high on our awareness list. I would say also, we we addressed some of the ordering of the priorities based on the work session in September and council's input. It is it is not a priority list of order it. We did address it to make sure that we were putting up front some of the things council wanted to see as as you know, they are tremendous and important, of tremendous importance. But I want to be clear that the things that are on the priority list are not ordered in terms of a, b, c, d.
111 We just know that that's so important for the entire state. And we don't want to lose all of our import export business to up north to tacoma and seattle. And so I do think that although this again, this administration baffles me with its isolationism, which is of course not good, but I think there's still a bipartisan common sense from both parties on how important this is. So I think our delegation could even come together to be strong advocating for that. So I want to take time with that. I came in late on the conversation about the language, and so I, I will just say this, that in 2020 through 2023, it was such a big deal for our city. We were hammered so much from international drug trade. The biden administration spoke to this eloquently. It almost sounded like it was a science fiction, but they spoke to it in person on cnn as a credible source about the fact that the illegal cartels connected to china and that we were definitely a target because we just passed measure 110 and it wasn't you could see with your own eyes. We just received an onslaught of poisonous drugs that have really been awful for our city, our state, and for our workforce. So I just wanted to say that I could see why that's in there. And I won't make any more comments about the language, because I came in late and I missed half the conversation, but I wanted to raise it as an honest truth about something that's really impacted the great state of Oregon entirely, especially Portland. Thank you.
112 Thank you.
113 Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal and Green. I want to make sure to get your last comments, but I also just want to flag that we're pretty significantly behind at this point. So if we can make sure to keep them specific to agenda approval, that would be fantastic. Go right ahead, councilor.
114 Thanks. Just thank you to councilor Ryan for bringing up the bridge situation. I also wanted to mention the four bridges across the railroad cut and getting infrastructure dollars for that to make sure that north Portland is not isolated in the case of a natural disaster. Thanks.
115 Thank you. Councilor Green. No, thank you for the content. Also, councilor Green.
116 Yeah, I support the flag for infrastructure investments in the port to enable, you know, commerce. But I want to make sure that we don't pursue an agenda that conflicts with efforts to find a different location for the ci hub, because we've got we've got some other conversations around that.
117 Good flag.
118 Okay. I'm not seeing anyone else in the queue. I know we're a little behind. I think we can still make this work. Should we move to state agenda? Okay, jeff, thank you very much.
119 Okay. I will jump right in. The state legislative landscape, as you know, is fairly daunting this year. The December revenue forecast improved by 309 million. The shrinking deficit between forecasted revenue and budget spending to 63 million deficit. While this is a more optimistic outlook, the state legislature is still tasked with rebalancing the budget, which has been made harder because of the passage of h.r. One or the so-called big beautiful bill act. So that creates a whole nother set of financial liabilities for the state. Beyond that. 63 the full impacts of h.r. One are still being realized, and the legislature has some levers they can pull to try to mitigate those impacts, regardless of the changes the policy changes the state makes, a number of state programs will be less be hit less by less federal funding, new costs, and changing requirements to administer. Understanding and mitigating these impacts will be a big focus of the upcoming short session, and the state's programs are being hit hard. Despite the fiscal landscape, we still have many local needs internally received over a dozen funding requests for the agenda, most of which align closely with portland's highest priorities due to the financial landscape, legislators have been asked or been directed not to make new funding. Requests of the state and state agencies have been directed to propose 5% budget cuts to try to close the gap, with significant funding at risk through shared revenue, cost shifting and preemptions. Asking for new funding blurs the city priorities. For these reasons, ogr recommends we not bring forward new funding requests in the short session. Doing so could make us seem out of touch with the realities of the state's financial situation. We also know that there are going to be a number of cuts on the table, so we recommend focusing on helping legislators understand which state programs and resources are most important to support city success. This kind of environment also gives rise to other risks for local governments like new preemptions, cough cost shifting, and attempts to pull back shared revenues. We've already heard about some such measures and believe we need to preserve capacity to make sure we can mount an appropriate defense to protect our existing authorities and resources. Although all that said, it's our job to be opportunistic and we will be, we are well aware of the city's needs and remain ready to strike if a particular request seems fathomable as we move through the session. I also want to be sure to note that agenda development is cyclical and ongoing. We will continue input through the short session and and and and really the the process of beginning the long session preparation has already begun. And some of the issues identified this year need a little bit more work like sdc reform. So we plan to keep working on those issues to get them ready for the long session. I'm going to turn it over to evan, who will give us a review and share some of the updates that we've made to, based on the short session in your input.
120 Yeah. Hi folks. Thanks for the opportunity to walk through the short session state legislative agenda. My for the record, my name is evan mitchell and I'm the state relations manager for ogr. Because of the financial outlook and the the constraints of a 35 day session, we tried to develop this agenda in two parts. The first is kind of the core priorities, where we'll put the bulk of our proactive efforts. And then the second was sort of a broader set of policy issues and guidelines to help when the 300 plus bills that will get filed at the beginning or will drop at the beginning of the February session, come available, and we start sifting through them and reviewing them, try to figure out how we take your top priorities and and use those those bills as vehicles to try to accomplish them. Unfortunately, in those bills, there will also be a number of attacks on the city, local revenues, unfunded mandates, preemptions. And so part a big part of the agenda is around preparing us to kind of deal with that. So that actually takes us to the first core priority. We've never, from what I've been able to tell, put local authority and shared revenue as the first core priority on our agenda. It's usually kind of the add on bullet at the end to kind of cover a lot of bases and make sure that we have the ability to do our work down in Salem and defend Portland. This year, both my team and then other government relations teams around other local jurisdictions have been getting together and talking about how we really need to call that one forward. That needs to be kind of the the focus as we head into session is saying to legislators, please, please, please do not balance your budget on the backs of local governments. Do not take away our ability to have local revenue streams. Do not try to impose or shift costs around by putting them on us. And so and sadly, this is not just like a theoretical threat. Every year that I've been at the city, we've seen bills to take away some ability to use local income taxes in some way. There's been broader threats. There have been more specific threats focused on individual programs. But any of those attempts will, you know, open the door to further rollback of our flexibility for revenue, including voter approved revenue funding for us. So and I think I'll just make sure to point out that, like those of us in local government, we understand that these pots of funding were created because our property tax system needs to be reformed, because we are so constrained by the system that Oregon has. We have legislators in Salem who really understand that they came from local government. They feel our pain. We also have legislators that do not. And so, you know, continuing to make sure that that is a big point of what the local governments are talking about, unfortunately, feels like it needs to be sort of central to our strategy for this short session, aside from that, to kind of move on to another set of issues. You know, we there were a couple things we've heard really loudly from you, all that we wanted to add to this agenda. One which jack talked about earlier was federal overreach and kind of, you know, the threat of federal overreach. And there's a group of legislators that are working on a package of bills to try to address a number of different issues. They're looking at civil liberties, privacy, due process, sanctuary policies, cuts to planned parenthood. You know, there's a broad reaching set of issues. A couple of the bills that we are anticipating and sort of waiting for drafts on to provide input on are around protecting the privacy of tenant information so that tenant information isn't getting shared with the federal government and around. There's also a several bills emerging around law enforcement identification, masking ids. And so those are issues that we think. And we believe that you all agree that we should be engaged in and we should be supportive of and where we can we should be strengthening them, pushing to strengthen them and make them better. We also heard from our last conversation with you all that behavioral health puts enormous strain on the city and the services that we deliver. And, you know, I, I, I think I certainly am excited to work with you all on the idea of like an Oregon state hospital north. That is not really an issue that we need more time and planning and coalition building to take that to a short session. So in the short term, what we're recommending, you know, the agencies have just put out a number of proposed cuts, not recommended. I don't think they like it either. But proposed cuts. And there are the behavioral health landscape is is looking pretty bleak. And I think, you know, the opportunity we really have is to stand with the providers in Portland and try to defend the programs that we rely on the most. So we'll talk about things like rent assistance as well. But things like substance use, treatment and recovery housing. And we're planning on bringing together a group of behavioral health providers and experts in the community to meet with you all to talk about, like, here are the things that we think need to be prioritized short and long term. There's been a ton of gap analysis done. We know we know what we need as a community and as a state. And so I think having them sit with you all and you all talk about the kind of different gaps and helping us to prioritize how we do that and what we really focus on is, is what we're hoping to do kind of next in the process so that we go into go down to Salem, kind of best prepared to advocate for the things that you really, really care about and tell us that matter the most to you in the behavioral health space, kind of shifting gears, well, before I do that, we're also recommending a strong defensive posture around housing and homelessness resources. There's cuts on the table for housing, production programs, rent assistance, shelter operations and services. And and we see a need to go forward and defend those items. To change gears a little bit, we're also very actively working on already changes to the serial communication law, your public meetings law that tells you you guys can't talk to each other. We are sitting at a workgroup. I'm on it. The city attorney's office comes with me, and we've been meeting on a regular basis with a group of legislators who are trying to fix the problem. We've not received a draft yet, and so I can't promise you that we've completely fixed the problem. But we are making inroads, and people are really understanding the set of problems that they created, which is a big difference from the conversation we had in 2023 when they passed this to begin with. And so I'm I'm relatively hopeful that we're not going to fix everything about our wonky public meetings process. That's going to need to be a longer term, but that we're going to make some progress on that issue in the short term. And I I'm sorry you all have to deal with it. It's it's ridiculous. So the other a couple of other things I want to highlight. We are seeing some opportunities to help try to mitigate risks at the critical energy infrastructure hub. There are two key proposals that legislators are working on right now. One would require the fuel terminal operators to carry risk bonds or essentially insurance in in the case of an emergency so that they can actually afford to clean up if something were to occur. The other is a planning effort to get the department of energy to plan for how we could diversify where we store fuel in this state. It shouldn't all be in Portland. And so we think there's that is very much aligned with what we've heard from you all around the cei hub. And we should go forth and be really supportive of those efforts. Have you all come down and talk about the needs of of portlanders? And frankly, everyone upstream and, and also the fuel shortage issues that could happen. And so we'd like to really, you know, with your blessing, lean in on those sets of issues. And finally, since September, we've heard a couple of new things emerge that we really wanted to draw out in the agenda. One was kind of this many different issues in the space of economic development. And so we heard really loud and clear in September that, you know, attracting and retaining quality jobs, building oregon's workforce. Those are core priorities for you all. Unfortunately, that's also going to be a space where we're seeing a lot of proposed cuts, especially in workforce development programs. They are like left and right on the table for some level of cuts. And so that's going to need a strong coalition and a broad coalition saying don't why would you do this? Please don't do this. Find somewhere else. The other thing, there are a couple of other economic development bills that are emerging that we've been kind of monitoring and, and providing bits of input on without sort of committing anything. Yet I think both bills will, or at least the two that I'm aware of right now, will be worth further consideration once there's actual language for us to look at, to make sure that it fully aligns with your your values and goals and priorities, both have have something to do with existing incentive programs. And how do we strengthen existing incentive programs. And then another one, which is much broader, is is looking at things like our cobid process. And how do we make it easier for minority and emerging businesses to actually move through that process and get more of the money? And so we'll need to have more conversation with you all as those bills emerge. But we think kind of having a focus on economic development is something that we heard you all say, that you support it. The new thing that's on the agenda, basically in the last couple of weeks was we we wanted to really call out the interest, portland's interest in having the Portland trailblazers here for the long term. And so we don't have specific language because those proposals are still taking shape, and we're still learning about what it is that they want to ask you all versus the legislature versus the county. You know, those pieces are coming together. But we just wanted to make it really clear for them and for portlanders that, like, we recognize that we need them to stay in Portland. They support a huge number of businesses and jobs. And and so we want to be good partners with them, since we don't know what those proposals are yet and they're still coming together. You know, that's going to be a space where we're going to need to have more conversation with you all so that we can feel empowered to kind of do our job in Salem. Finally, the other kind of emerging issue is around h.r. One, the big beautiful bill. So the state is trying to understand how they can mitigate the impacts of that bill. And they have some levers. They they sort of refer to it as either decoupling from federal tax code or disconnecting from federal tax code. There's kind of three options in that space. You either stay connected 100%. You do some level of partial partial disconnect or you fully disconnect. I don't get the sense that a full disconnect is on the table. I think the legislature is talking about a more surgical approach. And so there's going to be a lot of things that they talk about in this space that we don't need to weigh in on. They're not relevant for the city. But I really wanted to make sure that we have the ability to engage when it comes to city resources and protecting city resources. And then also if there are, you know, kind of protecting or strengthening tools that help with investments in housing, infrastructure, kind of our core book of business, as you all were discussing earlier. Those are the items on the kind of first section, core priorities. The second section is broader, and it it tries to kind of outline the general policy positions that we think you all really care about, to help us sort through the bills that come at us in February. So in this section, you're going to see things like protecting affordable housing, keeping roads and highways safe and clean, preventing gun violence, sex trafficking and traffic deaths, supporting the integration and expansion expansion of psr and chat, safeguarding civil rights and privacy, including. We've called out the need to prioritize privacy in relation to surveillance and other emerging technologies. And then we also think that we need to prepare for the next transportation funding conversation that is going to come up in 2027. There's also some stuff in there that we, you know, have heard about. We anticipate there could be some bills on ride hail like ride hail regulation, autonomous vehicles, micromobility. And the goal there is to to try to defend the city of portland's authorities, protect portlanders and make sure that they're safe. I think that may be another space where we'll need to have more conversation with you if legislation emerges. We also anticipate, unfortunately, that we're going to need to defend our some of our land use tools like inclusionary zoning. And so that's on that list. And the that second section also reflects some of what we heard from council about championing property tax reform and diversifying public procurement. And so we tried to capture a lot of what we heard from you all, so that we have your direction to help us in navigating all the bills that drop and sort of like, like sam said earlier, I just wanted to note that all not every issue that surfaced this summer made it on the short session agenda, but it doesn't mean that we're not engaging on them. There's a number of issues like sdc reform, like conversations about about social housing and rent control that we need more more leg time on and need to do more work with you all. And we want to keep doing that work in the build up to 2027, when we will have a much better chance of accomplishing those things. So I think with that, I will stop and see what questions and discussion you all have.
121 So again, we are going to try to make up a little bit of time here. And if folks have concerns, if folks have changes that they want to see, let's make sure to get those on the table. There's a lot that, to evan's point, is not here that we all care about. Because we can't have everything on the the main priority list in a short session. And I think you have that longer list still, that's not part of the official agenda that captures a lot of those issues so that you know where to weigh in on things as they come up as well. Councilor clerk.
122 Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. Evan. Great job. Great overview. I just want to make a couple of comments. I totally echo making a preemption a priority or stopping preemption of whether whether it's inclusionary zoning or revenue issues. That's hugely important. And I worked on that with governor kitzhaber and got an agreement to not commit. And I'm wondering if we've thought about getting a pledge from our delegation in writing and not to preempt. And if the llc has brought that up with the governor, the llc and the aoc, you don't have to answer that. Just I'm going to just put that out there, that one one question I wanted to ask you, and I think you've really addressed it, actually was about what's the greatest risk, where are we at the greatest risk? And you've outlined a few of those. But what I didn't hear, or maybe you mentioned it earlier, was best. Maybe it's called psst now. But I think we put a lot of effort into making sure that that pipeline of police officers would be trained. And I'm really concerned about that, because recruitment and getting more officers here has been a high priority. So I just want to flag that. I don't see that in writing anywhere here, but I would suggest that that be added. So that's in the category of where the greatest risk and you mentioned mental health. I think that mental health for us is part of our recovery strategy. You know, no, no pun intended really, but it is a recovery strategy for Portland. And I hope that we can do some defense there, maybe join with the county and others on that. I had a question when you mentioned economic development. The governor just had an announcement about some of her initiatives. I don't know if she's intending to have legislation or budget issues around that, but if we're supportive of those things that she's recommending, we really haven't had that kind of a conversation here. And then lastly, I would just say that even though we may not be able to get legislation through, we can do defense, but we can do a lot of education in the short session, I think. And the ci hub is definitely if we can't get those bills passed, it's definitely an opportunity to educate the state on what the impacts of that are. Same for the trailblazers. I mean, this is an opportunity for us to educate the legislature on the impact of everything that they do and the things that we need, because we are a driver of the statewide economy. And they they can't forget that. So but thank you. And I do want to add psst in here.
123 Yeah. And as long as everyone is okay with that we totally agree. Honestly, it was an oversight in moving things over from past agendas. And would like to do that well.
124 And oversight and things arise that we may not have predicted in greater scale. And so that will continue probably to happen and will be continuing to consult and engage with you. And we think a lot of these agenda items give us some room to say, hey, we we know this is something council wants us to come back on. We know there's some issues once it gets, you know, defined as to what is being proposed. We try to understand kind of the sense of the council around this is an issue they want to hear about. But now that you've raised that, I think that would be a really helpful one to document and have in place.
125 That'd be great. I would really advocate for that. And one other comment, you mentioned that you're working with an internal group on the public meetings law. I was assuming that the league of Oregon cities was going to take the lead on that.
126 So the league of Oregon cities is sitting with me at that workgroup table. It's it's not an internal group. It's an external legislative convened workgroup that I bring the city attorney with so that I can have a lawyer immediately on hand to answer some questions. For me, the league is really driving the conversation. The league is also had some tension with the government ethics commission in recent years over this law. And so having a couple of other cities, especially the city of Portland, at the table with them has been, I think, really helpful. And we're in fact, we're meeting with the legislature this afternoon to kind of dig in. And portland's kind of helping to mitigate some of the tension that's been making some of these conversations harder.
127 And I'll add that there are times where, you know, we're getting into strategy now here. There are times where it makes a lot of sense for Portland not to be out front pushing something. In fact, we help it more by stepping aside. But that doesn't mean even when llc is engaged in something, we're very active and often, you know, sometimes the brains behind certain kind of proposals and strategies moving forward. And so it sometimes takes more work to work through llc than maybe to go do our own direct education. But it's strategically very important for us.
128 Well, in regards to llc, I would really encourage us and I can help with that too, that they try to get the governor or the legislature to make some sort of pledge on preemption that this cannot this cannot be done. They cannot cut our legs out from under us. And so some sort of pledge on that, we could draft some language would be really great to shop that with our delegation and get locke to take it to the governor.
129 We'd love to explore that idea a little more with you. And and that's very interesting idea.
130 So.
131 Colleagues, we had a proposal to add something to the agenda about police training and dps. Are there any concerns with adding that to the agenda? Councilor canal.
132 It's not a concern. I just wanted to clarify, is the issue, the lack that we're talking about addressing here, the reduction in the amount of training that a police officer is required or a trainee is required to have, or a reduction in the overall the overall budget.
133 Capacity of the existing basic police training. And what we saw in 2020 2021 was these long wait times. So as police were being recruited, they sat at the desk and couldn't go out into the field because they couldn't get into the state, mandated.
134 That change that was made that we're talking about rolling back was incredibly powerful. So I would strongly support what councilor Clark said. Thanks.
135 Thank you.
136 Any concerns with adding that? No. Okay. I think you've got the go ahead to do so.
137 Can I make just one more comment? And I'm happy to work with you on some pledge language if we can do that. But I would just say I speak for maybe my colleague to my left, so to speak, here, that I'm sure we would be happy to help on the ci hub with you, provide testimony, show up, whatever it takes.
138 Awesome.
139 We think it's very powerful when you know electeds from the city are down representing the city, and we really embrace participation in in the work.
140 Thank you, councilor Green.
141 Thank you, madam president. Sorry I had to step out there for a moment, so apologies if this has already been covered, but when I was preparing for the session, I wanted to get a little bit more information about the revenue side of this short session. Seems like probably not a time where serious revenue conversation actually comes forward, but I'm curious to know how we would engage if that were to happen, and we might have some differences of opinion across this dais on what what tax structures should look like. But I just wanted to express that I have an interest in that, and I don't I don't think the city should be lobbying in support of regressive taxes. At a minimum, they should be flat taxes, ideally progressive taxes.
142 We don't anticipate any monumental shifts in the revenue reform conversation in the session. They've had a tremendous amount of difficulty passing like revenue raising tools. And, you know, having them referred, which we can talk about for a long time, but we so in the short session, we're not anticipating a lot of those issues really elevating. There is a conversation happening in the legislature, sort of spearheaded by the house revenue and senate finance and revenue committees around property tax reform and kind of broader revenue reform needs. Locke is actually hosting a meeting in sherwood next week for local elected officials in this region to come together to talk a little bit about their efforts. They've identified a handful of things, pretty small things that they could do without going to the ballot. And then the legislators are kind of working with them and the association of Oregon counties to try to uplift a lot of the education that would be necessary to go to the ballot to try to get some changes. And so I'm we we've sent that out in various forms and definitely encourage folks to participate. And councilor Clark will be sitting, I believe, as a board member of locke will be sitting at the kind of advisory body of that work. But we're going to need all of you. This is this is a big undertaking to reform our revenue system. And the other thing I will flag is that I do think some of our local legislators are working on state revenue related fixes, how we do our forecasting, trying to maybe keep the kicker more under control. And we've encouraged them to talk with you all. And if that's something that you all think we should go lobby on, I mean, personally, I'd love to lobby on it because it's just so desperately needed. But we want to make sure those like those proposals get vetted with you all.
143 Well, and I would I would just add that, you know, I think your question about the tax reform and your comment, you know, might be differences of opinion even within the council, there certainly within the state, right, or even within the nation. And when one of the opportunities when a number of you have been very active in either the league of Oregon cities or the national league of cities and participating in those, those venues, and those are really great places for us to have a presence. It helps us, you know, kind of bring folks along, along around what are some of portland's challenges. And it helps us understand where there might be alignment with with other elected bodies around the state and, and, and creates that momentum for those big hairy kind of policy questions that are in front of you.
144 Thanks for that. And I do want to support efforts to influence discussions around the kicker conversation, just personally, publicly. I have been hearing whisperings, though, about a conversation around a sales tax. And so to the extent that that becomes something more serious, I would hope that we would have a a very detailed conversation about our our position on that. I don't support a sales tax statewide without certain exemptions. And, you know, it's a very regressive tax structure. Thanks.
145 Thank you.
146 Anything further counselor? Okay. It doesn't sound like there's anything we need to change for now. Okay. Councilor Kanal.
147 Thanks. I'll first cosign everything that councilor Green just said. I really appreciate that you split this up. I think that makes sense the way you have this structured. And it was really helpful. Definitely want to appreciate the inclusion of the trailblazers conversation. It's obviously particularly important for my district two colleagues and I, but I think it is important to the whole city, the whole state, and I would love to have conversations around to what degree the methodology that the state legislature used for baseball could be adapted for use here. And we have some ideas that have been raised to our offices, I'm sure about that, that I'd love to talk to you about. I also appreciate the local authority on revenue and revenue section in general. It's prominence, and I, I don't think this needs to be written because I think it's in two sections. But just to say it out loud, the state policy conversations on masks should not preempt our authority on that. I am working on legislation for that, working with state legislators, and want to make sure that that's not preempted by something else. Two quick things on on just verbs that are maybe a little weak. The clarify under public meetings law should probably be update. I think having a change is good when we get down to civil rights and racial justice on the surveillance section, monitor should probably be a stronger word to to protect something. Just to be clear to, I think your description is is great, and I want that to be reflected in in here. What you've said verbally is great. I also noted the emergency route thing on the for the north peninsula on the federal side. Same thing applies here. And I wanted to ask regarding the public safety components. Are you planning for that to be in the top priority section, or is that going in the general principles and areas of importance section? Can we be talking about the general principles and areas of importance now too, or is there a later section? Okay, so just first I guess clarification which side will that go in the first part.
148 So presently I think it probably makes most sense to go in that second section. Section. We're trying and I want to be clear, the second section isn't like not the official agenda. We use both sections. We'll use both sections as our agenda. And we'll talk about all of those items with legislators. So it's not like we're going to rip the second part off and not share that. So it is part of the agenda. We just think it's helpful to, you know, and legislators ask us when we sit down with them like, okay, but what do you really want? Like you can't have all of this, tell us what you really want. And so we were trying to get at kind of honing in where we where those core priorities are. We could absolutely move it up to the front, but we did so much of the heavy lifting already to get that training program fixed so that they no longer had a backlog. And now it feels like we just have to defend what we already did. And so I'd be comfortable with it in the second section if that was okay with you all.
149 I'm good. Personally. I'm good either way. I just wanted to clarify the other two things. One, on community vitality. I referenced this earlier. This is the one where it's fairly vague and the definition picks the absolute most vaguely vibes based definition word in in local government, which is livability to define vitality. If you ask 12 of us up here, you might get 12 different answers on what that exactly means. I'd love to have some more clarity. I think what we're talking about is physical spaces being clean. That's how I read that, and I think that's a great thing. If so. But just to have that, that level of clarity for everyone, I'd appreciate it. I do not have a specific suggestion because I don't really know what your intention was there, but I would just ask for that. And then the last thing is, is sort of broader. When jack was up here, he mentioned something that was really great, which is that the federal delegation is consistently a strong partner in looking out for the needs of portlanders and for the needs of the city government of Portland. And I know on the federal on the state delegation, looking out for the needs of portlanders is a strong thing too. But as it relates to looking out for the needs of the city government of Portland, I am not always 100% sure of that, and so I'd love to be brought in. I think other colleagues as well, on how we can help build those relationships up, because for a variety of reasons, I don't think we see a lot of people go from this city government to the state legislature. And I think that that is something that we should we're not going to change that, because that would probably involve, you know, making it harder to be a city councilor Instead of helping make it better there. But I would love to see how we can help ensure that the priorities of city government are known and able to be reflected by that delegation. And I just I don't want to make you respond to that, so I won't, but I want to say it out loud and put it out there. And then the one specific thing I'd like to see added, and this is where I'll close, is in affordable housing. As I read it, I'm reading it not as capitalized affordable housing like a program name, but as housing that is affordable and including particular programs. There's no reference to the rent burden. There's no reference to the rent being low. I'm not talking about control per se, but there's I would love to see a specific reference to ensuring reducing the number of people who are rent burdened, extremely rent burdened, reducing the ratio of rent to average rent to average income. Something that explicitly talks about that particular problem because it is something that the 47% of us that are renters are all facing. I would like to see that somewhere in this. And I think affordable housing is probably the best place.
150 There was a number of things there. I think the one piece that we can, there's some clarity that we could do around this, like community, vitality. And I will be honest, I thought that was awkward, but I was trying to lump in a number of things around kind of the things that make our community safe, clean, walkable, you know, that build the fabric of of the kind of civic life here. Arts and culture. I don't actually think there's going to be a lot of money for them this time around, but if there is like, we want to be able to jump in and engage and support our arts organizations, we know that we have work to do with ODOT around their their highways and how they maintain their the right of ways in Portland. So we could potentially separate those two and kind of target in on the kind of clean, safe spaces that you were talking the physical spaces as one item, and then maybe some of the the like arts and culture type items as a separate item to kind of try to clarify there if that feels right to folks.
151 Yeah. However you want to address. That's good with me. I just would love it to be here.
152 Yeah.
153 Madam president, can I ask councilor Kanal question when you were referencing the public meetings law section, did you want to change that? Clarify to change?
154 Yeah, I would like to see a stronger verb there.
155 Actually, I didn't mention this. I would also love to see that we explicitly call for them to to write a law that applies to themselves. I think that that would solve a lot of it. I think it's a good narrative. I think if any state legislator watching this, you know, try living under this yourself and, and see for yourself what it does.
156 So I, I heard initially and asked to change that word, clarify to update councilor Kanal.
157 Yeah.
158 Something more active. Change whatever you choose.
159 Okay.
160 Does anybody have a concern with a change like that? Okay. And then I heard an ask to change a word to protect.
161 Monitor under civil rights and racial justice to to something that is not necessarily protect but something more active there as well.
162 Are there any concerns with that change? This is in the second section under civil rights and racial justice.
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163 I'll explain why we have monitor there. And I think it is because we know that these are issues that are very important to council. We don't necessarily know. I think we want to be sensitive to entering spaces where it's not clear where the collective interests of the city are. And so when we put these in here, that is to say, hey, these are critical issues and we want to bring these and, and vet these with council before and have that sense of this isn't something that we feel like we have agreement on necessarily.
164 Sure. And I think this gets back to councilor Dunphy's point. We have some for some of those. I think the minority of that list, we have policy that's been adopted by by council. So I think maybe we're adding perhaps a verb of where appropriate for, you know, pursue.
165 Councilor right now it says monitor that list to protect individual rights and maintain local decision making authority. What if we were to, say, monitor that list to protect individual rights and local decision making authority and maintain current city policies? Something like that. Yeah. Capture what you're looking for.
166 Absolutely.
167 Is there any objection to making a change in that direction? Okay. I'm not seeing any objections there.
168 We think that sounds really good.
169 Okay.
170 Anything further councilor?
171 I did ask for adding in a portion on the rent.
172 The rent? Yes. So are there any concerns would that be in the current section on housing, rent assistance and shelter.
173 Could be in line. Either that or. Yeah I think that's actually the better place for it. Thank you.
174 Are there any concerns with adding something about the cost of rent to the housing, rent assistance and shelter section? Councilor Novick did you have a concern there?
175 Well, what can we I just wanted to get some better sense of how you think that would play out. What could the legislature actually do?
176 The legislature could tie the minimum wage to the average cost of a one bedroom apartment statewide, as called for in the renters bill of rights? For one thing, that's not the only thing. There's a lot of other things we could do. Representative gamba has has already introduced some legislation on that. In previous sessions.
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177 Okay.
178 I think we're writing this in in a way that doesn't necessarily take a position on those, but says that that's something we're going to look at. So we might.
179 This is something we want to know about as council.
180 Yeah.
181 Okay. Any objections. No concerns not seeing any okay. Councilor Smith.
182 Thank you, madam president. Thank you for the state review. I think that that was so important to give us to level set us the mindset of what's going on down in, in Salem. And I do agree that, you know, the rent burden is is great for a lot of people who don't make salaries like councilor, canal and and and me, that's that that's true. And but your rent burden, you call yourself a renter and I'm a homeowner. I'm a grandma homeowner. So the the issue that you talked about in terms of the trailblazers, and we've all been meeting with the trailblazers over the last couple of months, and I had a meeting with them, and one of the one of the thoughts that I had when I was talking to Dan jarman was at the top of the year. I didn't think that we were going to be able to do it in December, but maybe at the top of the year, bringing those supply side businesses who make up, it's not I think people have this image of the trailblazers, all these multi-million dollar babies, and they're playing basketball and these executives with all these big salaries and don't really understand that there are supply side mom and pop businesses that help them be the trailblazers who they are. And we want to bring in some of those businesses in the committee hearing to say if this if this franchise leaves, this is what's going to happen to us. And I don't think they think about the smaller businesses who feed us, the trailblazers, whether it be the towel folks or all the all the other little things that the catering, all these businesses who do business with and alongside the trailblazers that are going to be basically defunct if they if they leave. So I want to have those spaces and those businesses highlighted in a committee hearing so that people know that this is bigger than just the trailblazers leaving. And I don't think they understand the impact of our economy. What would happen if they were to leave?
183 So that's that's really helpful. And I think strategic thinking around how to really get messages across about the importance of the blazers, I will tell you, this is the way we kind of I think this is a good example of something in our agenda where, you know, we're we're more comfortable talking about the need and helping folks understand the importance of having the blazers in Portland. Then when it starts to get into specific legislative proposals, you know, right. This kind.
184 Of I want to stay away from that. That's the mayor's agenda.
185 Yeah. That's where that's why it's broad here. But no I think that's registered. And I think that is a a good assessment of kind of the the place we're starting is just with the need for, for retaining.
186 And why there is a need, not just because we want to go watch basketball here locally, it's because we also have thriving small businesses that depend on the trailblazers to be here. So that that part is another piece of our economy that I don't think that people think about. But I was I had a real pleasant conversation with the folks over there. And we we took a tour and the building is in pretty decent condition. And I was very impressed with how they've been keeping everything up. But I personally wanted to say that I want to keep the blazers here. While district two is. That is my second district, because I'm probably in district two as much as I am in district one, and I live there, and I think people don't they don't understand that I'm not in district two anymore.
187 But councilor, you're welcome to join us in district two anytime you'd like.
188 Thank you.
189 Thank you. But it is so important to me and the other piece to this mayor. And I don't think people, you know, for 30 years we've been getting a 6% off the top of the blazers, and that helps to pay for some of our operating costs here. And I don't think people know that. And so it's like, you know, why are I mean, that is that is our building now. And we we get revenue from them. So it is important for us to keep them. And that's going to be a huge revenue drag if we don't have them here for us specifically. But I think for the city in general and for the region, it is important that we keep the Portland trail blazers here.
190 Thank you.
191 Thank you. Councilor, I don't think we need to make any changes based on that. Just support for what's here. Is that correct? Right. Okay. Councilor Ryan.
192 Yes. Thank you, madam president. I want to start with the first one, the local authority and shared revenue. Of course, that's important. I think the challenge there, and I want to hear how we're going to face that challenge, is you have metro and you have the county, and you have the city, and then you have the 12 of us. And we don't always see everything the same way. And so that's a fact. And yet we are smart enough to come together on how to play this game. So what will be how we heard these political cats is the question. And then do we take the breakfast that we do as an in January this year. Is it do we expand it both in the duration of time and who's at the table so we can have those positive tension conversations so that we can figure it out a little bit here in person before we go down there and lobby, because it doesn't help when we are not united in something so profound and necessary. So that's something to chew on. I'm sure the mayor's already chewing on that. Did that make sense?
193 That makes a lot of sense. And I think the the spirit of how we're trying to work collaboratively within the city, it's sort of an expanding circle in a rock and a pond. And so we try to have that collaboration with the county and, and metro. And evan is constantly involved in communication with other government bodies around. And the agendas are incredibly helpful to to be able to align and say, hey, here are the priorities. How do we how do we align with you on these priorities? Where might there be conflicts and and resolving those before we're going down? Because it's very powerful when we are going hand in hand with our our allies down there.
194 Thank you. I'm glad that that that you received that. And so I just hope that we're strategic about how we do that planning before the session begins on. I know that we talked you talked about sdc reform. And, you know, I, I found out about this colleagues in in 2023 and for some reason no other commissioner Told me about it. And we just kept doing the rules as they were given to us. And I was so appalled. And so of course, I started spouting off about this. And I do think I've done a decent job helping the public now be aware of it. And I don't, for the life of me, understand why this is so complicated and so, and it will give us instant technical change that will help us spend money on deferred maintenance. And so I hope that we can figure out how to keep expediting that forward. I don't think there's a lot of controversy amongst electeds on this one. I don't think so. I and we all did the best we could in the past with those rules. You know, there was a skate park being talked about for 25 years. So I took the advantage and did that took a lot of heat for it. And I had to keep explaining. Well, I can't spend it on deferred maintenance, but no one cared. So. But now I think more people understand that. So I just hope we can keep pushing on on that. And I continue to be a little confused on where the political bedfellows on this one. Something tells me there are camps in both parties that want to protect the status quo on this one, and I hope they come out wherever they are so they could explain why they're defending whatever that is.
195 And I just want to emphasize that I don't think what you all are talking about trying to accomplish is what creates the complication around sdcs. It's the trauma of the past conversations about sdcs that ignite other elected officials in other cities, other counties. And we just need the time with a clear proposal on the paper to say, guys, this isn't going to hurt you. We aren't proposing something like they've proposed in the past where where the legislature was trying to take away authorities around sdc.
196 So there's past trauma.
197 Past trauma is the right word for how people.
198 Alive and well in Salem. Yeah, okay.
199 There are certain issues that what.
200 Era was that in how past is this trauma?
201 Sdc reform has been decades in the, you know, world of consternation. I think there are certain issues that open up a lot of interest in, in the legislature. And so this is an issue that we think has a lot of promise. We think it just needs to be approached very carefully so that we are as strategic and organized as we can be going into those conversations and short session on is not a is a difficult place to get any real proactive stuff done. And then something this big, we think it's it's worth the time and effort to have our internal, you know, I think I can do to help with the whatever the therapy that's needed to heal from this trauma so we can get back to common sense. Thank you. On economic development, there's so much to say on that. But there's one little micro economy that I think the state and the city has failed on, and we went from before it was legal. This is called cannabis weed. We were like the number one cash crop. We were had a lot of under the under counter money coming in, if you will. And somehow we've managed in the state in the city as well to squander that a bit. And it's because we've added more tax taxes and burdens on cannabis industry than other states, especially locally. And so I just hope that we can continue to lift that part of our economy. And while you're chewing on that, I just will say why I'm an economic development. It's kind of connected, I guess. I can't think of anything more important than arts and culture not asking for a new ask. But the fact is, every study you look at, when you look at how to ignite the economy in blighted areas or kickstart economy, it's all about butts and seats and traffic flow and foot traffic. Arts, culture and sport, like we were talking about earlier are such a big part of that. So I just hope that we continue to play that. And since tourism continues to be challenged since COVID, we were at a gathering last night with my two colleagues to the right and left of me, district two and mississippi district, and one of the most poignant things I heard last night, colleagues, was when they said back, like, say, seven years ago, people would come to mississippi street before, right after the airport, before they went home. But it was a place to come. And so every day they had customers coming into their storefronts that were tourists. They basically said that stopped. They haven't experienced that. And that is one reason why they're all suffering and barely making rent and barely paying themselves a living wage at all. And so I just hope that we continue to know how important it is to get that foot traffic going. And we have the port of Portland, which did a fabulous job on the airport. But it's like, so that's a great first impression. We need to make that next impression. Good. So okay, I'll stop there. You know what I'm saying. But on that note, I will end with this. Remember, some of you are too young to know this, but you might have read stories about it. It's worth listening to. In 1996, we had a great flood. It's okay. You can look at me councilor and. And what's that?
202 The rest of us born that year.
203 You were born in 1996. That brings us home. So as your beautiful light was coming into the world, there was this thing called a great flood. And mayor vera katz was famous for those moments. She went down to the seawall, the mccall park, putting the boards in there so it wouldn't flood the city. And I think that type of spirit is what we got to do for two things the Portland trailblazers and nordstrom's. We should all do everything in our power to not allow those two things to exit this city, or we will be in deep doo doo. So I just hope that we continue to know how important that is. And so it was lifted earlier, and we know that they're going to want a new arena. We'll talk about that later. But that's going to happen. But thank you councilor Smith for lifting the blazers. First time I skipped school was in 1977 to go to the championship parade. And I'll never forget that. And so we cannot allow those two things to leave the city under our watch. Got it. Good. Thank you.
204 Thank you.
205 Thank you counselor, I didn't hear any changes. We need to work through just some things to highlight.
206 And unlike my colleagues who are really good students and do wordsmithing, I didn't do that. I came to this meeting to just continue to let you know what I think our priorities should be, and to give strategic suggestions. So. So if there wasn't any wordsmithing, I'm okay with that.
207 Okay.
208 I did hear a suggestion that along with building a water slide, everybody go buy some new clothes at nordstrom.
209 What's that.
210 Oh I don't think he was here for the water slide.
211 Oh okay.
212 Well we're going to a giant water slide.
213 I do have one more. Let me just say this behavioral health is bigger than just what I think. We sometimes talk about with behavioral health. Behavioral health is a connection to our shelters with services. And we need more sober housing. We know that the highest number of people who are homeless are aged 25 to 54. That's our workforce. I know earlier we talked about drug trade, but that was a strategic hit from china to to take out a workforce. People like that's the chemical warfare going on. It's called fentanyl and the new meth. And it hit Portland in the state of Oregon really hard. We've got to counter that with sober housing and get these souls into housing and into workforce asap, or we're never going to get out of this crisis. Thanks.
214 Thank you. Counselor. Colleagues, I just want to pause for a minute to note that for a variety of reasons, and I'll send out some more information later. After the meeting. We are postponing this afternoon's work session. Your chiefs have all been notified, but wanted to make sure you all know. As you see, cancellation notices pop up and potentially your chiefs rearranging other things on your schedules for this afternoon.
215 Point of clarification, can you say a little bit about why that was canceled? So the public understands?
216 Let me do that at the end here. I'm happy to say that during the work session on the record, but I want to make sure that we get through this conversation with continuity. I just didn't want people to see notices pop up and wonder what was going on. But yes, let's get back to that. Councilor Dunphy, thank you to you.
217 Great. I have just a couple things I want to first uplift. What counselors Ryan and canal have both mentioned. I have been my team has been deeply harassing the city attorney's office, trying to squeeze an interpretation of sdc law out so that we could put the the splash pad at lewis park back online. After four years of it being gone. We're that's a good one. And specifically for council with regard to the emphasis on rent and renters, I'm really, really worried about the cuts that came to the the rental voucher system in the state. It is going to make things really hard for us next year. I have no you know, I've done I've done enough lobbying of the state legislature to to have my expectations pretty low for what's going to happen in February. New initiatives, new money. Those things are really hard. But I have I have found that direct critiques of state bureaus sometimes get some specific movement going. And so I have two specific things that are affecting our district that I'd really like to emphasize above and beyond what we are already emphasizing. The first is ODOT land management. The I-205 multi-use path in this in my district as well as district, actually, I think it goes through two and three, but the I 205 multi-use path, as well as all the freeway on ramps have been really problematic. Additionally, the future of rocky butte is ODOT land. The the the sand lot in the sumner neighborhood is ODOT land. I'd really like to emphasize that we need a good partner for land management, and I know that that is partially because of the agreement between the city of Portland and funding and all of that. But ODOT is doing a they need, we need we need help. And the second one was specifically for the Oregon beverage and recycling or Oregon beverage recycling. Cooperative cooperative. Thank you. The bottle drop locations in my district 122nd in glisan. The bottle drop is really deeply problematic, and all three city councilors from district one have met with brc. They've talked to the folks, we've talked to the mayor, we've talked to all this. It continues to be an enormous challenge for the neighbors. And neighbors are really getting fed up. And we're not getting. In nbc's defense, they said they planned some pretty good community engagement. But for me, it's too long, it's too far away. And it would be well after the legislative session. I think we just need to come back and reemphasize that the management of these lands is challenging, especially as we are also considering the alternative deposit sites like the people's depot and things like that. We need help. So those are my my two big things is ODOT land and the bottle drop locations.
218 And I just and mayor, you may want to jump in and add more context about some of the works that are going on. It kind of makes me sad that we all spend the same, like we all spend so much time with ODOT and with work and some of these issues. We passed legislation last year with the help of the grocers and brc, to try to remedy some of the issues around, like container redemption at stores. We have more work to do around the redemption centers themselves. And I will say, because I think it's worth noting on the record, this ob, this group of people working at obc are trying to be good partners and have committed resources to to create kind of safer areas around. And my hope is that we can continue to build on the legislative success that we had last year. We're making progress with legislators and understanding kind of what we heard first was, well, this is just a Portland problem. No one has this problem anywhere else. Like this is you guys, not we don't need to deal with it, but we've been able to make inroads with them. And I think there's avenues to get help. Figuring out what that is is really important on the ODOT lands. I just I want to make sure it's clear in the mayor can talk a lot more about this, because this has been an area that he's been very invested in. Odot has allowed our iga with them to lapse and do not want to bring it back. And so they are maintaining all those lands on their own, and they I it is worth all of you talking to them on a regular basis about the areas that you are seeing that are not being maintained, because they say they can do that work better than the city can more efficiently, more cost effectively. I would wonder how much we want homeless people to get offers of shelter and those things, but that's not their job, I get that, but that is something we all need to be uplifting as loudly as we can with ODOT directly.
219 I totally agree, and I fully also agree that brc. I believe that they understand where we are, understand the problem, they want to make it happen. But for the purposes of the legislative session, I think it's important that the legislative branch understands how big of a problem this has become. And there's often just only so much that agency level staff can do regardless. And it needs it requires additional direction from the legislature and ultimately additional direction from the the governor as well. But I think every conversation we can have helps. So thank you.
220 Thank you. Councilor councilor Novick.
221 I have like six things. I'll try to make them quick. I'm going to lead with something where actually I'm interested in councilors thoughts about whether there's a legislative agenda item we might pursue in the future, prompted by your our team saying there's discussion of the kicker. There's two problems with the kicker. One, it means there's less money for public services. Two, it's extremely regressive. You can't start using it for public services. I think basically without a constitutional amendment passed by the voters. However, my reading of the constitution, which I feel pretty damn confident about, is that what the legislature does, which is send people a percentage of their income taxes as a kicker, is not required by the language. The language simply says, return to the taxpayers. There is nothing to prevent the legislature by a simple majority of saying that we can have an equitable distribution of the kicker, where everybody pretty much gets the same thing, with the exception that maybe people with really low incomes can only get back what they what they put in. So that's something I mean, there's an argument with legislative council about that. I think legislative council is out of their minds, but I think there's an extremely strong argument that the legislature could take action to make the kicker more equitable. And I'm curious if my colleagues would agree that's something that we should pursue.
222 Yes, yes.
223 Councilor, I would add that I have it on good authority that at various times, our state ag's office has agreed with you on that interpretation, despite legislative council.
224 Not. That is delightful news.
225 I don't know if they do now, but at other times.
226 That's my that's great. That's and that's my most substantive comment.
227 Councilor are you suggesting that that be added for february's agenda or that that be something on the the longer list.
228 I think probably. Building towards yeah.
229 May I actually ask because I tried to figure out how to work it in here, but we hadn't had any conversation. Rep gamba has a bill that seems I mean, we need to see the bill language and but it seems like he's heading in the direction that you all are talking about. And he has a multi year plan. And so at a minimum I'd like to suggest that we do some kind of call with him so that he can walk some of you through what he's thinking about. And because of that bill and his effort to try to move this forward, it might be worth putting it on our agenda in the short session so that we can explicitly weigh in on that bill and demonstrate your support for for working on this issue.
230 Councilors, does anybody object to the city moving in that direction? Mr. Mayor, any concerns with that? Okay, councilor, maybe you could suggest to the chair of finance that he invite the representative to give a presentation.
231 That that's a fine idea. Thank you. Representative is also my representative. So he sometimes takes my calls. Another revenue reform thought. I was struck by your comment that I think is totally true, that the legislators do not understand the revenue constraints that we suffer under. And I'm thinking about maybe some sort of guerrilla action to bring that to their attention. Like what suddenly came to my mind is, what if a bunch of local government officials filed a ballot initiative, the state local revenue equality initiative, that said, among other things, that the taxable income of any individual human being cannot increase by more than 3% a year, no matter how much their actual income increases, which would equalize the income tax system and the property tax system, and which would prohibit the state legislature from passing any of the taxes that we're prohibited from taxing, like taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. So I'm curious if you think that would be counterproductive. If not, if you can suggest some edgy city councilors and mayors around the state that might work with on that. We can. Yeah.
232 Would you like to get back to us on that?
233 Yeah.
234 Well, I think the, the, the thing I want to say is you're talking to a group of government relations professionals, not elected officials here. We we cannot do that kind of stuff. Our job is to collaborate and try to make make things function.
235 I know, I'm just saying, if you happen to know some edgy city councilors who are really upset about this, I'd like their names if that would.
236 Be okay. Okay.
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237 It's helpful to know what you what you'd like.
238 Yeah. Another thing I just had to note. We've now had two issues come up today where I am decidedly two councilor Kanal left, which is always entertaining. I do not want to explore the idea of doing the same thing with the blazers that the legislature did with baseball, because what they did was adopted. The principle that the income tax revenue generated by a business should go back into that business. And I think that if we adopt that principle, then we have no income taxes at all. So I just wanted to mention that as an option. I just wanted to say that there's disagreement on that. And let's see, what else did I have? Oh, councilor Ryan, first of all, I'm delighted that you gave me a wave of nostalgia about george herbert walker bush by employing the phrase deep doo doo. But second, that I would note, yeah. Yes. Second, I would note that if we really want to bring back the cannabis industry, all we need to do is pass legislation implementing bob dylan's suggestion. Many years ago, in rainy day women 12 and 35 that everybody must get stoned.
239 Second.
240 Oh my.
241 God, I'm not going to ask for objections on that.
242 It's generational.
243 I'm not objecting to the song. It sounds like we have a potential area of disagreement that we probably need to have more conversation about. If you all decide to, or if we hear other people moving down that path. For now, I think I'm hearing support for keeping the blazers broadly, but let's not move down the path of supporting that one suggestion. Unless we have a broader conversation here.
244 Registered, you know, and that's again why we have it in this broader place, because we we we would not be moving forward and endorsing something without, you know, a really good sense of where council wants to be and the mayor and the administration.
245 Just to clarify.
246 I was talking more about parity between the sports than the specific the specific tactic employed for baseball.
247 Thank you.
248 Councilor Koyama Lane.
249 Thank you, council president. First, thank you so much for all of this work. It's not lost on me that you had to talk to a lot of different electeds to hear all of our perspectives, and that that took a lot of time and patience. And I think you guys did a great job of bringing this together. I believe that pretty much everyone up here sees increasing housing stability as very, quite important. And from what I see, it seems that we almost have conflicting housing production priorities in some places, saying that we are prioritizing increasing housing production without imposing additional costs. But then also it's a priority to provide sufficient accessible housing. And the way I'm seeing this is that we need to increase housing production to address homelessness and housing stability, which includes exploring cost reductions and at the same time, meeting the housing needs of an aging Portland, which includes regulations and or incentives. And so locally, I want to see us explore our options. We have no cost options. I've heard of some that are as easy as just using door levers rather than door knobs, ensuring bathrooms are large enough for accessibility and also low cost approaches. Adaptable housing that can be made accessible in the future. Zero step entrances. But we do need to unlock state approaches by exploring changes to building code. I know I've hinted at this at a previous work session and so would love to hear your thoughts on this. And if we're engaging with the Oregon housing and community services or building code division to understand how to increase housing production to meet the needs of older adults and people living with disabilities.
250 We're going to ask our our housing specialist on housing legislation.
251 To create.
252 And share some.
253 I mean, the short answer is yes. We work with oaks quite a bit and there have been a number of bills to kind of age, age related and accessibility related that we get involved in and support. But I want to let the person who does that work talk a little bit more about it.
254 Thanks for the record. My name is derek bradley, state relations coordinator for the city of Portland council. Vice president Koyama Lane. Great question. The city supported senate bill 444 during this previous long session, which would have put requirements on creating certain number of accessible units and certain types of building types. Units in certain building types. We have learned this week that there's an intention from some of our partners that we work with regularly to reintroduce legislation around that policy in the short session. Beyond that, they did not relay this was in a larger group conversation. They didn't relay. Oh, we've worked on getting these sort of coalition built. We've got this idea. It moved out of the senate. It did not pass the house. So there is some conversations to be had in legislative days or in group meetings ahead of that about where that stands. But we anticipate that coming forward in the short session. And if due to, you know, things like budget cut conversations and just the brevity of the short session, it doesn't move in the short session. I would be shocked if we don't see that returning for a longer session consideration in 27.
255 Specific to the document that you guys put together. What I would love to see in the housing production section, if possible in that last sentence is some acknowledgment as we're talking about land banking, innovative financing, but putting something in there like equitable development or fair and equitable housing outcomes. Wondering how my colleagues would feel about that.
256 Does anybody have any concerns with that?
257 Would you say that one more time.
258 Adding in the wording fair and equitable housing outcomes or equitable, equitable development in the housing production section?
259 And explain what that means.
260 Yeah, yeah.
261 So someone from my team specifically focuses on age friendly cities and in the planning and development world like those terms are used. It's part of the Oregon housing needs analysis in is kind of at the heart of state housing production. And it's also a term used in portland's adopted housing production strategy. And this idea of making sure that our development is inclusive and accessible. And we're considering people of all ages and all abilities when we're doing this planning.
262 You guys have an asterisk. I mean, in this circumstance, what.
263 This seems like a place where maybe there's a need for more conversation. And I'm wondering if we could get 2 or 3 people to talk with the team about what that could look like and what it could mean if it's something that we want to include, or if it's something that is too much to add, but we should think about for a longer session, let us know that.
264 Can I.
265 Offer a suggestion? Perhaps. What about. And I'm hearkening back to councilor Kanal your comments about these broad terms that don't mean or mean lots of different things to what if? Rather than kind of equitable development, we focus on maybe like age friendly and accessible or something like that. We added accessible after our conversation with you, but I think we could double down on like more language around that particular piece without using a term that means so many different things.
266 I would love to specify age friendly if my colleagues are open to that. Wonderful.
267 Thank you.
268 May I ask a clarifying question you're still talking about within the state building code that we're asking for more age friendly housing, either through oaks requirements or in the state code? You're not asking about an exception for Portland to require more age friendly housing, is that correct?
269 Well, I mean, that is something that we've also discussed. I'm not bringing that up right this second, but I am interested in if the city can explore an exemption from state building code.
270 That's not what you're proposing right now.
271 Of adding.
272 Okay.
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273 I know we need to have more conversations about that.
274 Yeah.
275 I hear that as age friendly, you know, being a priority, but that the details of what proposals or not would, would absolutely be something we would need to be feeling like council and the mayor and city are on board with.
276 Yes.
277 Mr. Mayor, any objections there? Okay. Councilor. Clerk.
278 Thank you, madam president. Just really quickly, just a comment. Some feedback from my colleagues is the moda center will hopefully be in the asset management report that we get in the tni committee. That will come back to you as well next year. But it's a venue that all the arts and culture venues will be in. The asset management report. And I think to councilor Ryan, it's really not just a regional asset. It's a state asset. So everybody has a stake in the moda center and the blazers. And I wanted to say that the sdcs really are a major preemption. That's what we're talking about. Is the state getting in the way of us doing what we need to do. So just it is an example of a preemption. And lastly, to. Councilor Novick, I think that if we were to work on the pledge that I was talking about to legislators saying that, you know, don't preempt us and here's why we might be able to educate them also about the kicker and other kinds of things. But I think they really do need a basic education about what we do and which they can't do what they want to do without us, without the cities and the counties actually implementing things and making things happen. So don't get in our way. But I think a pledge like that might be an opportunity to educate.
279 Thank you. Councilor councilor Ryan, did you have something additional?
280 Yeah.
281 While we're on the topic of age friendly councilor Brought up just a little bit ago, I just want to put this out there in case I'm on a small group that needs to include senior elder housing justice. The affordability crisis is really hitting elders hard. People on fixed income. With taxes accelerating over the last ten years, it's been pretty extreme. So I think a lot of us know elders in our neighborhoods literally on my block that vote no on things now that they don't want to vote no on, but they literally can't afford to stay in their homes much longer. So I hope that we start making a case for that. As we look at this, it goes beyond renters, but it also looks at our elders that want to age in place.
282 Yeah, and I'm.
283 Speaking for myself.
284 I would highlight. So we're going through the state budget cuts, proposed state budget cuts right now. And and that is an area that we've seen. There's a proposed cut for program specifically to help senior folks stay in their homes. And what we're thinking right now is to try to pull all those down and identify the top priority ones. The cut to start this conversation was really going to help us kind of understand where we could bring things back to you and say, we think this should be the city's position around the specific cuts that are being proposed. And so, sadly, I think this this issue around senior housing is something that we'll be able to elevate. And then depressed cuts and then some some other.
285 Items like that on the dais in case I'm not on that small group. And I appreciate the head nods. Thanks.
286 Thank you counselor. Colleagues, I'm not seeing anybody else with changes that they would like to propose. And I know we do have another section of our agenda today that we need to make sure to get through. I'm not sure, colleagues, how your schedules look, but I do have the thumbs up. And, mr. Mayor, your schedule. I have the thumbs up from our support staff that we can stay until one. In order to have time to complete the last section, it sounds like we may lose councilor Clerk, so let's try to move as quickly as we can here to talk about our operating and advocacy best practices. Sam, go.
287 Right ahead.
288 Thank you. Well, I think this is an important part of the conversation. And this is about really understanding and kind of trying to articulate where we think the city works best and what what practices we think have worked well within the city and that are also shared by other common practices shared throughout the nation, by other cities and jurisdictions. And so we want to put this forward to see if this feels like the right practices for us to be implementing. These are not rules. These are not requirements. This is not code. This is just a way of articulating, hey, these are practices that we think make sense as a city and work to help foster this, this, this team working together. And, you know, essentially we, we, we want to create a system where there's mutual trust and respect for the work moving forward to help create flexibility and opportunities to really react and move quickly. So the a walk through and then we'll we'll have time for questions. So we have some slides here. The the I think the practices are about coordinating and communicating early and often. We we don't want surprises. We want to create a environment where you're getting as much information as you can. We're in a unique place, which is we're we're also dealing and reacting with information, and sometimes in a place where we can inform before, sometimes where we we have to make our best judgment calls on some of the issues and, and, and really have your sense and pulse of where you want to be. I won't I won't read through these, these talking points, but just wanted to have you seeing what some of the, the overarching themes of the practices are. We can move to the next slide.
289 This was the disclosure.
290 Oh, and then kind of skipping a little bit to one piece at the end here, but. One of the things we talked about is, is really being the last session was about really having clarity about when representatives from the city in any, you know, but particularly electeds, because as staff are expected to speak only on behalf of the city. And so as electeds, you're in a little bit different place where sometimes you're representing your perspective as an elected. And so what we think we heard last session was a request to just have some suggested language that could be used in those scenarios to just provide that clarity. And then everybody knows that when you know, somebody from the team is is engaging, that there's there's a way of, of kind of defining that. So this was suggested we can come back to this and see if that kind of fits with where council wants on that. Then what I'll do next is just share a little bit of the document that we provided to you. That's a new document that you hadn't seen before, that we shared some of the purpose of providing these best practices. And then our effort to try to spell out how we think the roles and responsibility works for different components of the city. And so, you know, identifying the mayor's role, council president's role, council members roles, the expectations of administrative leadership and bureaus, and importantly, advisory bodies and commissions. How are they engaging in legislative work? They're they're really they're appointed by the city. They're a part of the city's infrastructure. And so our interpretation is that we should be they should be coordinating and working through on, on anything that's official to their business with the city they should be working through and are agenda, process and helping inform and engage with us in that process. But really being committed to doing the hard work internally before having external advocacy work. We. You know, I'm reluctant to get too detail oriented on some of these. There's. Some language around conflict and really just emphasizing the, the importance of, of of reaching out and being part of if there are conflicts or differences of opinion, being part of a process to really try to get as far as possible to coming to some kind of agreement or getting toward consensus, I think one of the important things that has come up is, you know, how do we know when we are as close to consensus or as possible, you know, at the work session, council suggested, you know, something along a nine, nine out of 12 is a is a good a good kind of measure of whether the council should whether we should be moving forward on something. But then if there were some really strong opinions within, you know, even a small number of council members, let's work to try to resolve that to the extent we possibly can. And there might be some times where there needs to be a call on on moving forward, but we don't go and poll every member. We don't survey. We're not voting on these individually. We are working with you to, to to really do our best to understand where you want to be. And so the 912 would really work as a guide for us. It might work specifically when the council votes for the agenda, you know, on December 18th. But other council, you know, there's always opportunities to bring something forward formally in the council process. But it's really about about trying to understand us being eyes and ears, listening, hearing your comments here, hearing your comments as issues are getting submitted, hearing them in the work sessions, in our one on ones, listening to council sessions and committees on topics of interest. And so we're trying our best to really understand, hey, here's something that we think council is going to want to know about as we're going through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of issues, that's that's how we want to build a system that is feeling like it can be trusted by you. And that that as we go through that, you feel like you are as representative as possible. Now, that means trying our best to understand what the, the the desires and and and guidance and direction is through this agenda process. We're not going to capture everything in here. We're not going to there's going to be surprises that come up, and we want to be as informed as we can about addressing those. We don't want to have situations where there's advocacy and we're reporting back that we, you know, worked on something that we didn't get right, and we've done that. We did that long session we had we've talked about some of the scenarios where we didn't get it right. And so we want to we don't want we want a zero error on that whether we can. I'm not promising that we can do that. Right. But that's kind of the system that we've set up. And so then we have our and this slide is really about some of the ways that we try to measure and provide opportunities for oversight for you around this work. And, you know, government relations, very difficult place to to have measures because so much of it is about making sure we have those relationships when we need them for the big things, and we have allies and supporters. Others are cost avoidance or or, you know, preemption protections. Those are are hard things to, to measure. Other times there's some direct dollar stuff that is, is, is, you know, more easily measured. But so we've set up and I wanted to share with you the information that is available for you throughout the year. In this tracking and monitoring process, we do a customer service survey every year where we ask council, mayor's office, administration, how are we doing? Are we achieving the goals that we set out with you? Are we achieving the things that you've worked on? Have we been responsive? So that's one measure to get that information. We provide intergovernmental update emails regularly so that you can see the big activities that are happening. We do kind of one time things as they come, like the state revenue forecasts. We do report as we gave to you after the in the September around what issues had been submitted to be considered any breaking news? I think a very and I think one of the most important things that we put out is an end of session report. And this is the one that is really by far the most comprehensive. We kind of rate success with red, red, yellow, Green. And there's there's hundreds of issues and it's it's got narrative and detail. So the problem with this is it's a look back. So it's it's hey today we're we're talking about what are your expectations. And then we come back after the fact with this report. So there's limitations there. But in this the cycles that we'll be continuing to go with through you year to year, it's our opportunity to say did we get it right? How can we improve and address these issues so that x or y doesn't happen again. And then we also will be doing session briefings weekly during session. And we have those monthly now. But we will be doing those weekly so that you can hear and as close to real time as possible what what we're working on and helps us identify if we're getting it right. And then finally, legislative bill tracking and positions. Thanks to councilor Canal for pointing this out in the in the September session that we really we started out last session with a report, but we didn't keep it updated and we wanted, we wanted and we want to do that. And so this takes a lot of work to do this. And it's a lot of but we want to get it right. And if there are things that aren't helpful in here, we're happy to to know that or if there are more other things we can be doing. But this is our best thinking around how to get you informed in a way that helps build some of that. Trust that, hey, the team is down there. They're not communicating with us on each of these hundreds and hundreds of bills, but we've got the the playbook for them to get this work done. And in consultation with the practices that we've outlined for you.
291 Thank you both for the overview and also for putting this process together. I know it's hard to figure out how to coordinate a really robust agenda with a lot of incoming that changes every day in Salem. And 12 of us, plus the mayor, plus our bureaus here, it looks like we do have at least one person who wants to weigh in. I know we're short on time, but let's make sure that if anybody has concerns with anything, we get those on the table. Councilor Avalos.
292 Thank you.
293 So, sam, we've talked often about just this kind of thing of process and how you interact with us and get those kinds of temperature checks from different council offices. I think I just want to flag, you know, I get that you want to have it be kind of loose and organic in some ways. Things are really fluid and fast moving, but at the same time being too loose. I think you're going to lose people, right? I've heard you say that in the past. You'll reach out to council offices and get temp checks on certain things, and I've gotten some outreach from you, but I don't know, like how who are you reaching out to? Right? Like, who are you going to? More or less like, I'm just saying that we cannot rely on that being so loose, because if you don't add structure to that, people are going to feel left out. I feel left out at times. And so I would just encourage us to think about what it looks like to have a regular cadence of how you check in, having a structure for how you check in for, and having a methodology that you can explain about how you are gauging our temperature. Right. Because that is, again, people could fall through the cracks in that process. So let me I'll pause there and just see if you have a reflection on what I'm saying.
294 Yeah, I, I, I absolutely welcome, you know. Any guidance around how we can be more kind of responsive to, to any interests or needs? I think we, you know, the, the, the briefings, the, the weekly briefings, which are currently monthly, that our intention there was to just be available as things come up and, and, and I think that, you know, one request I would have is, you know, to really engage in those moments because that's where we can have, you know, conversations in real time, in closer to real time about the actions that are going on. You know, we can we can come and be available to to help walk through some of the more detailed bill reporting and position reporting actions that that, you know, are, are, are developing regularly and help highlight issues that we think are, are of. Concern or interest to council offices. You know, I think we're we're trying to like I don't have some great playbook on how to how to how to put this all together other than we want to have you and council feeling like you're getting the information that you need. And if there and and, you know, transparency. Our team lives and breathes not for getting, you know, our own interests through an agenda. We we are focused on transparency reporting you know above board wanting to try to be in that place and wanting to focus on continual improvement until we have a sense that there is that trust in the system. It's it's as I say, it's a hard thing to measure. We can provide the data, we can provide analysis that we think measures it at the end of the day. But we we we need to have that regular ongoing engagement with you and, and councilors as we're going through this, this work.
295 Can I want to add to because you asked about methodology and I want to make sure it's really crystal clear to you all. We don't come to you on the things that that we know that you're supportive of, but we try to when there's an issue emerging in Salem that is housing related, we come to you because or you and your your co-chair and vice chair. So we try to use the committee structure that you all have used. So on transportation issues, we had a number of conversations with councilor Clarke at the end of session. And then we also try as we can to bring in other folks who have said to us, we really care about these issues, but we've had to kind of try to use the structures you all have set up to have some sense of prioritization, because sometimes we just can't get to every single one of you. But I will say maybe a little like underscore what sam was saying. We put those briefings together so that you all can tell us before we get it wrong. And having you at those briefings during session is really helpful. Your staff have been amazing. They are great advocates for you and know your thoughts, but they don't know all your thoughts. And so if we our staff who works on the scheduling, try so hard to find times that will work for every single one of you. And it very rarely is possible. But if there's if you can't come to the briefings, call, call sam. Call me like we want. Yeah, we'll we'll talk to you. I, we drive back and forth from Salem every single day. So we have an hour long drive to answer all the questions and talk to all the people like we want. We want to get it right, but we don't like. We have to use some of the systems that you all have been putting in place to try to accomplish that.
296 And, and we are in a place where we do. I just want to be clear. We have to make judgment calls at times, and legislators grabbing us in the hallway, last minute stuff or even stuff that does have a longer timeline. But we think that this is not the place that council wants to have engagement, because we think we understand where council wants to be on this, and we feel confident enough that we do that, and so then we want to be in a place where you're trusting that we're bringing and identifying the issues that matter to you and and providing that information about that.
297 Yeah, I appreciate that. I guess I'll just flag though, like for me, legislative briefing that doesn't when I see that on my calendar, I maybe maybe that's something we need to talk about. But that doesn't seem like a place where we're having a strategy discussion or something's coming up that needs our feedback. To me, that's like you're just relaying information that doesn't feel like an invitation to the strategy. I'm not saying that you're trying to do that, but just so that we can be clear about what the expectation is of us in those briefings, if that is what I'm hearing you say, is the place you are expecting to say, this is coming up, what do you think? Right. So I think we need to get clear about what you are expecting from us in the different spaces you're creating. And I think you also need to work with council president to figure out how how we create more spaces like this. Because as much as we you know, I know that our schedules are tough and all of that. But if you do too much of this, like sidebar one on one things, I think that's where people get lost. And that is why people feel like they're not in the loop. Lastly, you brought up something that I was going to ask as it relates to committees, because yes, we do have these committee structures. I get your logic for, you know, going to a committee chair of a topic to discuss that. But I think it's worth us discussing because we keep having a general discussion on council about what does it mean to be on a committee if you're not on it? How do you weigh in on those topics, like how do those things come to the larger council? So I would just caution that we think about that more deeply, because it's a broader thing that I think we're working through as far as like, what does what kind of authority does a committee have, you know, is, is is it like, do we agree. Right, as councilors that like, yeah, you should just go to Olivia when it's transportation stuff. You should come to me when it's housing stuff. Like I get your logic, but I think we need to have a discussion about that to make sure we all feel like we're on the same page about who has the authority to, you know, give you the temperature checks that you're asking for on the topics that we're leading. Does that make sense?
298 Yeah, totally.
299 So yeah, I think let's keep talking about, again how we create more. We just need to have better expectations of each other, because I definitely want to engage in this kind of conversation. I also need to understand how to. And I think that's what that's what I'm trying to say, is that it's still not super clear to me how that I engage, how I'm going to be tapped for certain things. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we're not because we're humans. Right. And so human nature, we do human things like, well, oh, well, candice is she's always busy and maybe I'll just go talk to such and such. It's like, so those kinds of little decisions are the things that impact the equality, in my opinion, or equity of how we all get to weigh in on the council's agenda. Thanks.
300 Thank you.
301 Thank you councilor. Councilor Kanal, did you have something?
302 Thank you, madam president. Thanks. I appreciate this conversation. I cosign everything that councilor Avalos said. And I'll note, you know, and I bring this up to say, when we talk about trust, I think it's important that that we learn from the things that happened before. For example, there was a anti-civil rights and human rights bill that was advocated for by the city at the at the direction of ogre this past session, and it was related to public safety. As someone who is an expert on human rights, civil rights, I was not consulted on that. As someone who was the co-chair of community and public safety committee, I was not consulted on that. So I want to be clear and also something that I gave direct guidance about, that this is something I want to be brought in on early. If it comes up in these two areas of work of which the bill addressed both. So I do think that that's good. And I have a lot of faith in the state team as a whole down there. I know how hard it is to do what you do. This is not about what happens on the state team. This is more about the ogre leadership connection. And I think what you've done with this is really good, because it's trying to create more clarity around that and more shared expectation that can move us forward on this. Because last year was weird, and I want to just acknowledge that. I really like what you did with the purpose. I really like what you did with the key components section here. The roles and responsibilities gave me a lot of pause, and I wanted to to talk about those here. There are these verbs inform and provide strategic direction for the mayor, serves as a coordination lead for the council president, and contribute ideas and provide input during for for the council members. I would like to see those verbs be identical. I we do not actually have. We have a facilitator in this conversation. We have we have a council president, a presiding officer that's different from a hierarchical setup. And I don't want to calcify a hierarchical setup in this document. I don't know if this is a part of what we'll be voting on or not. I guess I should probably have led with that question. Is this a part of what we'll be voting on?
303 It?
304 It is not necessary. Although if there was an agreement where council and, you know, could come together, we think it would be very helpful to clarify some, some understandings about what practices are effective. Not again, rules or or requirements.
305 Okay. I think the the last item under both mayor and council president basically cut out the other 11 councilors. And I'm very, very concerned about those. And this this should not be two people in a back room deciding when we've given direction. And again, this is informed by that experience this past year, as well as my experience on the other side of this and the bureaucratic side the year before. On the administrative leadership and bureau side, it says, provide subject matter expertise and policy analysis as requested. I think you should cut as requested. I think they should provide it, and I think we should always be seeking that out. And I think that it's been really helpful when they have weighed in on it. And so I'd like to build that into our process under ogre, the very last bullet point. I like the rest of it. The one thing I'd add is where you have guided by the city agenda evaluation criteria. Here's where I think councilor Dunphy's point makes the most sense to put in the word policy there. In that list at the back end. And then I had a couple questions under decision processes legislative agenda, as you say, developed biennially and with mid-year mid-cycle refinements, is that guaranteed that we will do a mid-cycle refinement? Will there always be an annual time to look at this, or is this one of those things that we say, you can bring it up any time, but there's never actually time for it.
306 We want to. Well, you have some other questions too, but I will answer that one. We want to have an annual. So the short session is typically a session where we're doing refinement work. But we would still continue to have a process. The process this year for short session, we see as much more robust than it might be in a typical year before short session, because it's a we will have worked with you to define long term priorities, and then we'll be following up and refining those.
307 Great. I like I like that answer.
308 I think there's a couple coordinates that I'd love to follow up offline. About. What? How you mean that doesn't need to be resolved here. When we get into the the last thing I had on here is on it's the fourth page. It's the top line, it's midway through the section. But there's a page break on conflict resolution among members of council. If unresolved, escalate to dcas slash city administrator and then council president and mayor. A disagreement between two or more councilors is not escalated when it goes to the council, or when it goes to the dcas or city administrator that that's actually in our that's not part of our chain, right? So that that implies that we are subsidiary advisory to this process. And I want to be very protective of that because it's not. And then same thing with escalating to the mayor, I do see a role for the council president. If multiple councilors are disagreeing, that makes perfect sense to me. But it says if unresolved, escalate to dca slash city administrator and then council president and mayor. And I just have a lot of concerns about that conceptually there in terms of separation of powers.
309 Where's the escalate?
310 It's this is a five page document. This is the very top of the fourth page.
311 It is sam.
312 You have two separate sections.
313 There's conflict resolution among members of council and then conflict resolution broadly. And this is in the first of those. And I'm wondering if what that initially was, was something around getting advice from the dcas around how something would be implemented, and perhaps whether those two positions should have more information coming from the dcas rather than escalation in a problem solving sense. I think at one point that might have been part of the conversation. But if that's not what the intent was here, let us know what what the intent is.
314 I think I think part of the intent was to say we've we've sort of approached this a little bit differently with now having a dca structure, which is to say, the administration. We our view of the administration's responsibilities are to implement the policy under the policy, you know, and, and of of the council and mayor as the elected to the city. And so it's it there's not clarity. Then we want to make sure that the dca is are a touch point in terms of, hey, is this in alignment with council, you know, this this work or is there conflict that's related. So we want to make sure that there is a touch point with the dca. And it's not you know, I think in the old system there used to be much more of a free flowing, you know, system of working with bureaus and staff within bureaus and liaisons. And we're trying to provide a little more accountability, sort of up through to council on that.
315 Using the subject matter expertise of dcas makes a lot of sense. That's not what the document says. And so I'm pointing that out. Dcas don't exist in the charter. It is hypothetically possible that without even I mean, we don't have to have that system. There's been a lot of pushback on that system. I'm not saying we should change it, but I'm saying it could be changed. Theoretically, I think the mayor has a lot of latitude in how to organize the administration, the executive branch of the, of this government. So I don't think that's the specific thing with the dca. But more broadly, the the escalation word, I guess. Let me step back. There is a lot of hierarchy in this document. And in the early stages of the year, we had a very a worldview that was promoted of the council being effectively an advisory body to the mayor of calendar year 2025 has nothing to do with the legislative agenda. I'm talking broadly, and I think we we learned from that and we evolved out of that. I think people now get that that's not the case. This starts to bring those concepts back in the way it's written, in my view. And I also think that it it relies very heavily on routing information through a single councilor. And I have a lot of issues with that to information flow has been a concern to the council. And I, I think this relates to what councilor Avalos was talking about, but also is more broad than that. We need the information that everybody has, and I don't know what's happening coming up from the administration a lot of the time until weeks after it's been communicated to one councilor. And I think that needs to change. And that's mostly on us and how we change our structures. But I don't want to calcify those practices in here. So when I see escalate, that's how I'm interpreting it. And I want to be clear about that. But I think more broadly, it's that that ethos that's, I think, embedded in the document that I had concerns with. Thanks.
316 On this particular.
317 Item, councilor. If it were to say if unresolved. Console dcas or the city administrator on any impact to the administration in the work of the city that councilors should know, and if still unresolved, then escalate to council leadership with something like that make more sense to you here?
318 Yeah, and I'd include the mayor in that first grouping too. I do think that resolves my concern, and I appreciate that.
319 Does anybody have concerns with the wording change like that here.
320 Do it again.
321 If unresolved, seek input on. Policy and city operations implications from dcas and the city administrator. And if still unresolved, escalate to council leadership.
322 If it would solve the problem. Because the next line where no unified position is possible. Ogre will not speak for the city. I want us to avoid that at all stops. So if what you're suggesting would help us avoid not playing the game because we need to rely on your expertise, your team, because you're there every day and you have a good sense of what we should be focusing on. And we don't want to. We don't want to miss out. So I was troubled by that next line. Like, you will not speak for the city, so I don't want dysfunction. Not a bad word, just reality of not getting on the same page to prevent us from advocating at the trough.
323 And I think my broad intent, and I think the council president's intent in the rewording is to make a better system, to try to go from a starting point of lack of consensus to eventually getting to that unified position before the game is played, so that we are in the game and it's just about the process by which, because we're not always going to start on the same page, it's the process by which if we don't start on the same page, two or more councilors are talking about it and it hasn't quite gotten there. Now, what is what we're talking about? And I think I appreciate the, the rewording from from the council president on how that would work. I'll just add, mayor to that first part. I do think it makes sense to have the mayor be a part of that conversation at some place, and I don't want to miss exactly, but.
324 What it's worth, I think when we're talking just about disagreement among counselors, it's the administration, not the executive branch, that we need weighing in. But I'm happy to include the mayor there, too, if that works better for you and others.
325 That I understand that point. So I'll abstain on that part. Not that we're voting.
326 I want to just also address and and remind folks that the issue around the drones, I think that's what you were referring to. Councilor I want to be clear, that was on us. That was not a that was not a directive that was put on us by any. We didn't even have a conversation. I'm just going to say this with the mayor. Before that, it came to us. We thought when the the chief went and testified on that issue, we thought we understood that issue. We didn't. And so I just want to be clear, that was on us. That was not there was not some consultation or conversations behind. I just want to be clear. And so and so that was an example where we identified it very quickly and we and we pulled back and said, that's a place where we're not going to have a city position because we don't have that work done. And so I want to avoid that happening again. I don't want to I don't want to have that scenario, but I want to be in a place where we are understanding and knowing and able to address these issues as they are arising and, and, and have a system where we can check we don't want a top down system, but we want to have some consolidation of where that communication is able to happen to, to, to, to get some advice. Essentially for us in terms of how we are, we are moving forward, are we moving forward in alignment with the council and the mayor and the administration's interpretation of of good policy, so that that we want to be in a place? And I think I think the mayor would support and understand this and that. We are constantly saying and asking is council on board? Is is there anywhere in the city that has identified some significant issue with this? You know, or if we're talking to the council, we're saying, is the mayor on board? We we are just always that's where we're advocates. We're advocates to say, we're looking out for you, and we're looking out to make sure that your priorities are being addressed. And that's that's where we really kind of take our professional pride in, in in our work.
327 Yeah. And I know how difficult that is. I know how good of a job you generally do. I mentioned that to say that when we talk about trust, I actually think that trust is is stronger after there's been an issue once you work through it. And I think we're deep in the process, not at the beginning of the process, but deep in it. On working through that. And I wanted to acknowledge that as a positive. I never had a concern about the mayor on it. And I've said before, I don't think the chief was at fault for any of it either. So worth mentioning again, and I appreciate you bringing that up. And I know I've seen even ask this question about council 100 times in the last couple of years, so I know.
328 And councilor Kanal I also want to add one of the and you know this because we work together like one of the things when I came into the city that really bothered me was how much the agenda was driven from bureaus up. And I think you guys are elevating that and really and and so one of the things that we've talked about as a team, because we really do believe like this is a democracy, you guys tell us what to do and then we go do it is slowing down. We don't have to weigh in on all 300 bills that get introduced. And I think that's part of what happened in that particular instance was we were just reacting and there was pressure in Salem saying, this is really important. Senator prozanski is moving forward. Come on, come on, guys. And we overreacted. And so going into the short session and beyond, what I've said to my team and what will keep saying to bureaus is we're not going to respond to everything. It's okay if it's not foundational to our operations. And we vetted it. We don't have to go there. And that is okay. And that's my commitment to you all is like, we may not still get it 100% right, because one person may have thoughts that we don't recognize, but we now know that anything about technology, surveillance or otherwise, we're going to take a pause and take a beat. And if we don't have a policy about it that already exists, we're not going to just rush to weigh in. And if a bureau comes to us asking to, we're going to say, are you sure? Has there been a conversation with the committee? Has there been a conversation with council? What's the policy? Okay, we don't think this is ready for us to take any kind of position. And so that's our commitment to you all is to slow down and kind of try to really do that.
329 Thank you, counselor, I really appreciate this conversation and the the points brought up by councilor Avalos before we have to have a system. And I think you capture that here with maybe some of the couple of tweaks we've heard that empowers you. All right. Because we could have work sessions like this once a week and still not fully keep up with everything happening in Salem. And I don't think we have time to do that and do the rest of our work. And we could require you to get council permission on everything we do, but we're going to miss a lot of places that we need the city to weigh in if we ask for that. So we have to have a way to empower you, make sure councilors have information. I think the briefings are really helpful. Maybe we need to call them something different or make clear what those spaces are for in a different way. I also just want to say to councilors that at least for my time in this position, I really rely on hearing from you all what it is that you care about so that I can flag things not only when ogre brings up topics to me, but when others do as well, and also on chairs doing that same work and on our committee chairs. Really knowing where your committee members stand on things, so that when ogre comes to me and says, hey, this issue has popped, I can say, okay, talk to the chair. But I also know that this councilor or these two councilors care about this and know that when you all talk to the chair, that chair is going to be able to say to you, oh, because people talk to me about this issue. I also know these other councilors care about it too. And so I just want to put that out there because we can't weigh in like this on everything. But the more that we're sharing with each other in a way that doesn't violate public meetings laws in a way that is just about general issues, we care about what some of those things are, especially with the committee chairs who are chairing issues and with your council leadership team. The more we can flag not only for ogre, but for others, that you are one of the people who needs to be consulted on those issues. And I know there were some missteps last session where things were were lost and work done to repair that, but I know there were also a lot of places where we were able to flag, go talk to these people. And so I just I want to make sure that everybody's thinking about, especially our committee chairs, how your how you're able to help elevate your committee members. You care about issues as well in that way. Councilor Ryan.
330 Thank you, madam president. I think about lobbying a little bit. I think about it similar to how when in my career I raised money for large capital projects, and it was a lot about it's about relationships. And so I don't think we can assume who up here has what relationships with who, but I think it's good that you know that. And I shudder to think what that document could look like. So I don't want to air that out too far. But I want us to be strategic and smart enough to know that this is relational, and it would be good for you to know where we have those relationships, obviously, within our districts. But, you know, this is a small town still, I think, and, you know, people for various reasons. And there were times in my career where I'd look at the seating chart and I'm like, no, you can't put that person next to each other. And they're like, oh no, they they should really be friendly. Like, oh no, I, I have information. So, you know, separate them. And so it gets to that. And that resulted in six figure gift over a much smaller gift. You know those little social moments matter. So I know you know that. But I just wanted to air that out.
331 No we want it. We want to utilize the relationships of our elected to elected relationships at the city. So thank you.
332 Yeah. So I hope that we take some you take some time to have that in your heart and head. Thanks.
333 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Smith. I'm going to close this out.
334 Yes. Thank you, madam president. I was just thinking kind of along the lines of what? What councilor Ryan was saying. Salem moves fast, I know it. I've been down there sessions, I've lobbied, I've had clients in the whole nine yards, and I just can't imagine how you all do what you do, particularly from looking at our priority list and to keep everything straight. So some of the grace that I think that we need to ask of, of ogre is that you all are still learning us. And so as quickly as a, as a, a long session is a lot of things move fastly, a short session is even faster. And so it is hard to get. Information to a lot of different spaces. But I wanted to just kind of level set. So do you all report to a dca?
335 We report to administrator. I report.
336 Report directly to the administrator. Okay. So just so that we're clear in, people don't think that you report to a dca or you know, so that so that part that you are considered a bureau, right?
337 Yes.
338 Thank you. And yeah small bureau you got added another additional personnel this this last year. So.
339 Well we've gone from 12 down to eight in recent. Yeah maybe nine in recent last year and a half.
340 So I appreciate the work that you do. I think that it's important. And but I just want to let my colleagues know that it is I, I cannot even tell you how quickly things go. And you have to catch these legislators, like in between committee meetings, going to the bathroom, getting something to eat it, and then to be able to have a call, call councilor Smith and ask her this. You don't have time for that. So what I have done in my office is I think what would be helpful to to these folks would be to like take a look at the pre pre-session filings of things that have gone on. Go to all this. This is how you look at stuff. And so I have my I have a staffer that worked for me when I was in the private sector in who knows how to go on to olives and see what what is happening. And so then I have them look at it, tell me, what if there's something that's one of our priorities, and if there's something that I need to to flag you about, I have my staff do that because you guys can't do that for every single person up here. I know you can't. You don't have enough staff or time in the day to do it. And when things are moving very quickly. But I think if you all gave a training on olus and, and how the the process goes when things go to hearing, if things are not through hearings, and just so that our staffs know what that looks like. And so a lot of times, things that you think that we might need to have a conversation with you, we're ahead of the game because we already know what's coming up in the next, in the next hearings on a particular issue. Because if you go to the housing committee, you'll see what's happening for, you know, that's that's all I'm saying, because I don't expect you to call me on every single thing. I know that because I'm a former elected, you know, some of the things that I have prioritized. And that's why you may call me on labor's related stuff and other things, but that's because you probably already know what I've already done. So I just want you to know, don't think that you have to do triple duty with me, but I think what would be helpful for the for the group is to do a little tutorial about how to get in and how to look at things. And so that I look, I look during the session, I look at, oh, to see what's coming up, see what, see what, who's doing what. And then I may call you and say, oh, I see such and such and such is going on. But that's just because I have a history and a background in that. But if you teach us as a group how to use those, then some of that, some of that conversation can be from councilor to ogre, and I'll call you up, because I think that whenever I've had something that I wanted to talk about, I've texted you about it. I said, sam, so and it's because it's in real time. But things that we know that are going to be big ticket, things that are going to happen, like we knew the transportation bill was going to be a big deal. We knew that. And so that was coming up the reauthorization. So I don't know, maybe it's simple as just saying, you know, are there any people who, you know, in addition to the mayor who wants to talk and be in support of the transportation bill or whatever? The big thing is, there's always usually a couple big things that, you know, that's going to fly through. And I think it would be helpful because all of us as a group don't know the system. And Salem.
341 I like that idea, and I think we certainly can do some, you know, come up with some ideas around that. We could also add to that the the tracking sheet that we will be providing and making sure people are understanding, hey, here are the the positions that we have identified for the city on these pieces of legislation. Then here's how you go into all this and see where it's going and and monitor.
342 And there are and that's the other piece. There are tracking systems that give me a they give me a I get help for that, I get help. And I don't expect you all to tell me about every single thing. But there are tools that we can use that can be helpful to make us feel feel more involved. And so that might be helpful to me and my colleagues.
343 Yes, yes. Thank you.
344 Let's give.
345 We've got about.
346 Two minutes left. I want to give councilor Morillo time. Her hand is up. I want to see if the mayor has any last concerns, and then allow sam to do a wrap up. Go ahead. Councilor Morillo.
347 Thank you, council president. I think you'll notice I've been fairly silent this meeting, and that's largely because I think the government relations team did a really great job briefing me and working with me behind the scenes before this happened, to discuss what policies and priorities I had. So I didn't feel like I needed to be redundant about all of that. I also regularly we get memos from you guys during the legislative session, updating on where things are at, and there are briefings that you can attend if you want those updates. So I read through those. I find them very helpful, and I just wanted to put that on the record, and I appreciate that. Last time around, it was our first time doing it together, and this time around we're refining those systems. So I have seen all of those improvements and I'm very grateful for that. I, I also really I personally enjoy telling people what I need and then letting you guys take over and do the work, because the legislature is fast paced, so I don't feel like I need to micromanage that as much. But we do have two minutes left. I have another meeting after this, and we have to discuss why our afternoon work session was canceled, because the council actually does have oversight powers over bureaus, the executive functions, and we need answers about where $21 million went from the housing bureau. So I would love if we could get into that discussion and get that on the record before we close out today.
348 Thank you, councilor.
349 Thank you councilor. Mr. Mayor, did you have anything you wanted to say about this document before we move on?
350 No. For the sake of time, we can move on.
351 Thank you. Sam and evan, any final remarks and wrap up?
352 I would just share that we will be drafting a resolution to attach the federal legislative agenda, state agenda and the evaluation criteria. I don't think the operating best practices is ready for that level of at this point, we are open to that. And then once that is approved, we can, you know, really put that out externally and the agenda. And then there will be a legislative breakfast in January where we would like the. Mayor and and president to to help message and vice president, excuse me to, to help articulate what's in the agenda. We would absolutely love to have council members there. And. Then I think that's it.
353 Thank you. Thank you both for being here today. And thank you to the whole team for all of the work that you do. We know that you do a big job on behalf of our city. I want to take 30s. Councilor Green asked a question previously that councilor Morillo just reiterated. As many of you know, for a little over a month, I've been working with the initially conversations with the vice president and then with the chair of housing and homelessness conversations with a number of other councilors throughout about having a work session in early December on homelessness and housing, given the December 1st deadline that has just passed that the mayor had set out for his plan. Given that we are about to receive back the work that the administration has done on the unified housing plan, given that we are about to take a vote in the coming weeks on the kpis for our joint work with the county, it seemed like there was a lot coming together, and we should just sit down and talk about where everybody's at and what everyone's priorities are. As I've heard from many of my colleagues in governance, there's an appetite for having more of those strategic conversations about councilors priorities and the direction we want to head. And frankly, I was also hoping we could use this as a bit of a test to see how a strategic, policy specific conversation went and if that might help to get at some of the work that we haven't been able to do there, but need to do. About a month ago, I invited the mayor to attend the conversation. We got it on his calendar. There was really only one date that worked for our council calendar. I've been trying to keep our work sessions a little more. On thursdays to respect everybody's schedules, and we had that on the calendar. Unfortunately, the mayor informed us just recently that he would not be able to attend this afternoon. Initially, we decided to move forward anyway, but after some further conversations between my team and councilor Avalos team this morning, it seemed like it was best to postpone until we could have the mayor present to have that conversation. Councilor Avalos, I don't know if there's anything you want to add.
354 Yeah, I think that we pivoted because we were told that the mayor could not be there. This conversation without you is impossible, especially because you have been leading on the shelter process. So I'm disappointed we can't have that conversation now. Things are moving quickly. I hope that if we reschedule that, it's early January. But you know, we do need to have a strategic conversation as a group. And importantly, mayor, you need to hear from us what our vision is for how we move forward, especially as we're stepping into the next budget season. That was how we we sent out some questions to fellow councilors so that they could marinate on those things and again, have that dialog with you. So I don't know if there's anything you want to say about why you were not able to make this work today, and what your commitment is to have that conversation with us for those reasons.
355 And I'll add, mr. Mayor, as you're coming off mute, that our teams are already working on getting a new date on the calendar.
356 Yeah. Thank you and appreciate the deferred meeting. The overall focus at the city, at the administrative side is to be prepared, to be focused and make sure that we can provide a professional response. And the team, after querying what they weren't ready with absenteeism project and the shelter to housing strike team has been working in overdrive to hit a particular December 1st goal. They were working all through the weekend, and so we were looking at the overall chart of effort and how much work that we're doing. Could they be prepared? Could they be professional in their approach? And the answer was we could show up, but it wasn't going to be at a point. You need good information that's well vetted, that's well prepared to really honor your positions as far as the council, to the city. And so we had asked for let's defer it. Let's provide a great work product for you so we can really work together and have a substantive meeting together. So I appreciate you deferring this. You know, donnie's out of town. He's been working overtime. Ashley's out of town. We have a new housing director and we have a new ca coming in. We want to provide you really good information and have a substantive, salient discussion as we move the city forward.
357 Councilor Avalos did you have anything else? Councilor greene?
358 Yeah, I just I just want to express my disappointment because I think we still could have had the session for council to have a conversation, because there's been a lot talked about sort of askance at the dais over this last couple of weeks. We all received an email about $21 million of unbudgeted funds that was discovered. And it's never really been appropriate to talk about that fund in depth, because we're talking about something else. We could have used that space to talk as a body, to decide how we want to figure out how we take action as a collective body to get the answers that we need in a timely fashion and exercise our investigatory powers. If we need to do so, we could have had that conversation. We're not having it. And so for me, it looks like the mayor and the city administrator and their dca said, we don't want to have this discussion right now. I heard I've been hearing in the hallways that they've expressly directed staff not to attend. Okay. And so that to me, looks like city council actually has no authority to exercise any oversight authority. And so it's one thing to have a conversation, a sort of collective effort to get to answers in a structured way, but to not ever have an opportunity to talk in a timely fashion around these $21 million, which is quite urgent, frankly, as we're developing our next year's budget, just leaves me disappointed. And I had to say that on the record.
359 Councilor I appreciate that. And I want to be really clear that the city administrator was prepared to be here today. He strongly advocated for ensuring that his staff, because the administrative side, as I have noted multiple times recently, is separate from the executive branch and works for both of us. He strongly advocated that they be able to be present today. I don't know what the conversations were between he and the mayor and how decisions were made there, but I do know that he was planning to be here and had informed me that he advocated for staff to be here as well. Unfortunately, I was told the staff would not be present. I believe that we can have a strong conversation with the mayor and staff, and I want to be clear, mr. Mayor, that our expectation, as it was for the meeting today, when you put it on your calendar, is that you will be there in January and that we won't have a repeat of this, because this is a critical conversation. And I hope that you're hearing from my colleagues the import of that conversation, which we were hoping to have with you today. Councilor Morillo.
360 I just just need to finish by saying, I think if you're a senior level executive in this building or in that building, you make your vacation or travel plans around big ticket items to have before council. And this idea that the relevant people are not in town is just not a satisfactory explanation. So I just want to leave that there.
361 Fully understood. Councilor Morillo.
362 Thank you council president. Yeah, I agree with everything that councilor Green has already stated. It's been known for weeks, if not months, that this work session on housing and homelessness was going to happen. And this is a top issue for the vast majority of portlanders. We know this is an issue that requires urgency and for us to move methodically as a body, both with the city, the county, the council and the executive. And we have been publicly talking about addressing our housing and homelessness plan for months. So to act like this was an oopsie and we didn't know that this was coming or that people can't attend is incredibly frustrating. I also want to say that during the budget cycle, through our budget amendments and notes, we talked about oversight that we would be able to do for the executive branch. Should the executive branch not be working in alignment with council. So this is coming when we know that holidays are coming up, the news cycle is going to die down. We have $21 million that were missing from the housing bureau. There are contradictory pieces of information that are coming out about the removal of the housing bureau director, who happens to be a national expert on social housing and incomparable national expert, and the public deserves answers. This council deserves answers, and the city council has oversight power for a reason. And I don't really know why we are not using our oversight powers to get that information. And my expectation not just of the executive and the mayor coming and showing up for his job. My expectation is also that we would have a council president that would push us to have this meeting and to have the discussion about what our oversight powers are, because we, as a council, actually have a responsibility to get that information for the public, because the public can't get it themselves. And it is unacceptable to me that we are canceling this meeting. I would love to come back here in the afternoon and do my job. I would love to have a discussion with my colleagues, and I would love to hear about how we are going to actually address unsheltered homelessness, because the creation of additional shelter beds, as we all knew it wouldn't, did not end unsheltered homelessness. And getting people into shelters is simply putting them in shelters. It is not ending their homelessness. So whenever people are ready to come back and do their jobs, I will be here in chambers, maybe, and we can have a discussion about what oversight looks like, because if we have to use our subpoena powers to get this information, which it feels like is the recurring pattern in this council, then I guess we will have to use that to get information from the bureaus, because I just don't think this is acceptable at this point.
363 Councilor Kanal well, this will make my comments a lot shorter. I agree with everything councilor Greene said. I agree with everything councilor Morillo said. I was really hoping that as that conversation was developing, we would be hearing that it was a week later, a day later, two days later. Waiting until January is incredibly disappointing. I would love to have the new city administrator hopefully will be appointed soon and will be present for that. That's that's a great thing, but we're really talking about what's happening now under the current structure. So I want to have that be a part of the conversation too. The thing I wanted to add is we all knew that there was a deadline of December 1st. It seems reasonable to assume that on December 2nd or thereafter, in the short term, we would have some sort of status update on it. And while we can delay some of that, I want to, you know, we'll be talking about the number of people who have been affected by current policy that could or could not be changed, depending on when we have these conversations. But also, I want to be very clear that the $21 million better be still unspent when we have this conversation, and I want to be super transparent about that, that this is a council will be allocating those dollars. Thanks, councilor Avalos.
364 I don't know if you want to speak to that, but I know that you and your colleagues have a proposal for the expenditure of those dollars.
365 Yeah, that will come to the committee next Tuesday. So we'll have that discussion.
366 Councilor Smith and staff, I apologize. This is the last person in the queue.
367 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. You're absolutely right. They can't spend any money because it's not acknowledged in the budget yet. So it has not been amended to the budget. So you can't spend any money that's theoretically not there yet. And we have to do that. And those were the conversations that I wanted to have with the housing folks is to see how do we begin to have a system where we acknowledge monies, new monies. I thought I dealt with that with my 912 earlier this year, but it's the struggle is real and we have more questions today than we had two weeks ago when we found out about the $21 million. And it's almost like when you ask about it or make reference to it, it's like a mystery. People look bewildered. Like yesterday, folks were looking bewildered as if they didn't know what we were talking about. And I even mentioned something about that was said in your finance committee. To cfo barry and to treasurer bridget flanagan when she stated on at your at your council meeting that there was $115 million that was spent on administrative fees, and then she said there was $28 million. That was that. We had earned through through the investing. And so for me, I don't want people to look at me as if I'm asking or talking in a foreign language. That was so disappointing to me when I talked about the 21 million and the 115 million, and my chief of staff just got an email back from cfo berry saying, that's absurd. Well, it's not absurd because we sent the clip that where the treasurer said on record that there was $150 million in administrative fees, all you have to say is, oh, we made a mistake in our saying we meant to say xyz. Don't say that. That's absurd. What I was trying to suggest, I'm just repeating what I saw in the public domain. So we wanted to have this opportunity today to talk about housing and to talk about the 21 million and other things, too, as it relates to housing. So that's that that is the frustrating part. And we have moved our schedules around because we thought that this was an important issue today, in this afternoon, at this moment. I went to a rotary this morning where I talked to the rotary and one of the members asked me a question. He said, well, it looks like the mayor didn't get his unsheltered housing finished by December 28th. I said, no, that was December 1st. And we kind of moved the goalpost to getting 1500 shelter beds. We had to get those 1500 shelter beds first before we could deal with that. And so there's some confusion in the community about what we're doing, what we're working on, and how well we're doing it. And so this would have level set it that that conversation. So thank you, councilor, madam president, for kind of giving us the background on that. I appreciate that and I look forward to the conversation in January.
368 And we will work to get it on the calendar as early in January as possible. I share your disappointment that we had to make this change today. Thank you. Colleagues, staff, I apologize that we ran over. We will adjourn today's work session.