The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-01-29
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Climate Resilience and Land Use Committee met on Thursday, January 29, at 9:30 a.m., with roll call, a conduct statement, and unanimous adoption of December minutes. The main agenda item concerned proposed amendments to the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefit Fund's Climate Investment Plan, particularly a proposal to shift $15 million from an underperforming electric vehicle financing program into energy-efficient affordable housing. Panels presented alternative or supporting uses for the funds, including a bikeway/mode-share expansion program, TriMet transit and infrastructure investments, a housing project proposal from Self Enhancement Inc., additional PBOT transportation options, a Multnomah Youth Commission proposal to expand Youth Pass, and a presentation from Frog Ferry. Figures describing emissions sources and program costs were stated inconsistently across speakers. Discussion addressed process concerns about how funding expectations were presented, equity considerations, and TriMet budget shortfalls. Votes occurred to amend the exhibit restoring original funding allocations and to forward the amended package to full council with a recommendation to pass; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The committee then heard and voted to forward the 2024–25 Parks Levy and Parks Levy Oversight Committee annual reports to full council for acceptance, with discussion of the access discount program, revenue sustainability, and means-testing tradeoffs. No public testimony was submitted. The meeting adjourned, with the next meeting scheduled for February 12.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Testing the zoom volume. Councilor. Ryan, if you can hear us on zoom.
1 I can hear everyone.
2 Wonderful. Thank you.
3 I've explained.
4 It seems like councilor Avalos zoom link isn't working. If someone can send her one.
5 Thank you for joining us today. And I think all of carbon. Oh yeah. So much for. That. Okay. All right. Well you guys. Know. How I appreciate your time. Here. This.
6 Out of here.
7 Now you're here. Yay.
8 Yeah. Sorry. Thank you. Diego.
9 Good morning. I called the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to order. It is Thursday, January 29th at 9:30 a.m. Diego, would you please call the roll?
10 Good morning. Avalos. Present.
11 Kanal here.
12 Brian.
Procedural episode · turns 13–21
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
13 Here.
14 Morillo here.
15 Novick here. Claire, could you please read the statement of conduct?
16 Good morning and welcome to the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland gov slash council agenda, slash climate resilience and land use committee. Or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
17 Thank you claire. We have two primary items on our agenda today. We'll continue our discussion on the climate investment plan. And we'll also hear annual reports on the parks levy and parks levy oversight committee. But first we need to adopt committee minutes for the month of December. And if if there's no objection, we can adopt those minutes by unanimous consent. Are there any objections? Hearing no objections. The minutes are approved. Diego, could you please read the next item?
18 Item two amend the Portland clean energy community benefit funds climate investment plan.
19 Thank you. So we have before us a series of proposed amendments to the to the climate investment plan for this year. There's a number of them that are rather technical, and some of those have some urgency. So I do hope that today we can vote to recommend those amendments to the to the full council. However, one of the proposed amendments is very significant. It the climate investment plan allocates 47% of the funds to energy efficiency renewable energy programs, most of which is investments in energy efficiency and buildings. It allocates 24% to transportation decarbonization programs. One of those transportation decarbonization programs, one involving offering financing for electric vehicles, was not performing well. People just weren't using it. So PCEF and the committee recommended taking that, taking 15 million from that pot and putting it into renewable energy, energy efficiency specifically to help build more energy efficient units. I have questions about that, because 40% of our carbon emissions come from transportation, and only 24% of the pcf money is going to transportation. And actually, before the climate investment plan, even a smaller percentage was. So I was concerned about shifting money from one two small pot to another already big pot without without an opportunity to talk about how we might spend that money for transportation. So today we're going to be hearing from five different panels who I'm asking to spend only nine minutes apiece on various concepts. First, we're going to hear about a plan that's based on something that roger geller of PBOT came up with to restore bicycle mode share to what it was ten years ago. Then we're going to be hearing from TriMet about proposals on how they could use some of this money. Then we are going to hear from PCEF staff and from folks at self-enhancement inc about why the pcf staff recommended moving the money to housing, and ci is one of the entities that might get some of that housing money. They're going to talk about what their project is and how that would look like. Then PBOT has an assortment of other possible climate related uses for the money other than bikes. So they're going to make a presentation. And finally, we're going to hear from folks from the Multnomah youth commission about a proposal to expand youth pass. So again, I'm asking everybody to keep their time to nine minutes apiece. And then that will leave some time for for question, for questions and discussion. And I should give a heads up that there might be a bit of a back and forth between Multnomah youth commission and TriMet about the youth pass proposal, because obviously that involves TriMet. So with that introduction, oh, and city staff are in the room for questions. Eric engstrom of bts, sam barrasso, manager of clean energy fund, james valdez, sap partnerships and policy manager. So inviting up the first panel, beginning with congressman earl blumenauer.
20 Oh, no, no, no, I texted you today. I didn't I hadn't heard from you about it until yesterday. You said on Saturday what I.
21 Good morning.
22 Good morning. For your record, I'm former congressman earl blumenauer and pleased to be with you here today. For 50 years I spent a lot of time working to try and develop Portland as america's most livable city. We've had some significant accomplishments. One of the areas with which I am most proud dealt with what we did with cycling, the planning, the infrastructure. Roger, I think, is appropriately focused on what's changed. Where are we? We still have some of the finest facilities in the country. We have a base of support for cycling, but the mode split has been in decline. The opportunity here to help supercharge that a little bit to get our mojo back. Now, I have not fully understood the protocols here in terms of the ethics guidelines. I have bike pins for you that with your permission, I would leave and then you can figure out the reporting requirements. I don't want to get athwart some sort of ethics dilemma, but for years this has been a symbol of portland's advocacy and leadership. It's been on everybody from the dalai lama to presidential candidates. I'm pleased to be here today supporting additional investment in cycling, making it possible for people to burn calories instead of fossil fuel. And you will hear some examples of things that people have done. The bike busses, which my grandchildren participate in, really are a source of great pride and an opportunity that enriches communities. I will respect your time. I could go on at great length and will in a different forum as much as you would like, but I appreciate your attention to this today. There are no bad choices investing in the environment, so you've got some great things, but building on the singular investment that's been popular, effective and makes a difference is something that I would commend to you. Thank you for your attention and allowing me to share some of my biases with you and and bike pins.
23 Thank you congressman.
24 Good morning councilors. My name is stephanie engelman and I'm elected to the school board. I'm also a resident of Portland since 2002 and have been an avid bike commuter since then. And in 2016, my family invested in an electric cargo bike so we could commute around the city with our children. Since moving here, I have seen the increase in bike commuting despite the infrastructure not being there like it is today. And I've also felt and seen the decrease in numbers on the streets. I like this program. I like the idea of spending money on bicycling because it's built on a concept of the fantastic bike bus idea that we've seen work in schools. And as a school board member, I can tell you that the kids who can safely ride bikes to school, they gain independence, a sense of belonging, and it helps get their wiggles out, which means they can pay attention better in class, which brings attendance up, which brings learning up, which is good for the city of Portland. I also know that as a member of our neighborhood school bus, bike, bus, as congressman blumenauer said, I've seen firsthand how to activate an existing bike bike network. Some days we roll down our neighborhood greenways, the street packed with smiling, happy families. A few years ago, a lot less kids were biking to school. Bike busses worked so well because there are dedicated leaders who understand the routes, who know how to troubleshoot on the way, and help make this fun and stress free to ride downtown. The culture is infectious. We need bike busses at any school that wants one, especially as a district, we are tackling chronic absenteeism. Biking together is a low cost plan with a potential massive payoff across the city. Finding and funding better ways to get to school and around our city is critical, not only for city, whose goal it is to advance climate justice, but also for city who believes in public education, a sense of community and alternative commuting options. Thank you for your time.
25 Thank you, thank you, members of the committee, I appreciate your invitation to be here. My name is roger geller. I'm the city's bicycle coordinator, and one of the key elements in portland's climate action plan is getting to a high bicycle use 25% mode split by 2030. And if we're serious about climate, we have to have a serious focus on biking. And we have and we've expressed our focus for more than three decades, most prominently on building a bikeway network. Let's see if I can get my slides to advance. This is the bikeway network as it existed in 2000. On the left, rather sparse, greener neighborhood greenways, bluer bike lanes, magenta or off street pathways. And on the right is what we had for bicycle use at that time, about 1.8% citywide. The darker the census tracks, the higher the bicycle use. Over time. We've built a really excellent network in many parts of town, and a very good network in others, and our efforts really seem to pay off. In the mid 20 tens, we saw bicycle use in Portland that was higher than any in any other north American city. Here we see the bikeway network as it existed in 2015, and we see the bike use that grew in those 15 years, since 2000, 7% citywide. And we've continued to build. And no, we're we're not amsterdam, not even close. But we're a lot better than we were in 2015. But the results are worse. This is our bikeway network as it exists today. And this is roughly what our bicycle use is today. Somewhere down around 3%. We've dropped below other comparable cities. And you can see that the the the colors have lessened. The intensity of use has lessened. Those thick lines are all protected bike lanes or buffered bike lanes. We've invested significantly and we're not seeing the results. Just from building the bikeway network is a tool. What we're proposing, what I'm proposing in this $6.3 million bikeable Portland program is something that we can do to leverage our investments in infrastructure and activate our residents in order to get our mojo back. This program centers on two ideas giving people a reason to bicycle and then opportunities to do so. A cornerstone of the program, called bike together, builds off the heart of the success of the volunteer driven bike busses program in Portland. We will contract with an organization that will hire ride leaders who will be responsible for hosting daily, regularly scheduled rides and encouraging participation. Basically, bike busses in the program area for people of all ages and abilities. Ride leaders would lead regularly scheduled, advertised rides in neighborhoods throughout the project area. Rides would reliably leave daily from set locations at set times. They would also promote the rides throughout their assigned area in the form of door to door canvasing. Putting up fliers in neighborhood destinations, use social media, attending events, and public meetings. The program also includes fleets of bikes that would augment our training that we're doing in Portland public schools, training pe teachers how to teach kids how to ride so that we can spread that program to triple the schools that we're doing now because we need not just adults riding, we need future generations riding as well. The second cornerstone is raising the visibility of bicycling by reigniting a civic conversation and getting bicycling back into portland's zeitgeist. The mayor did an admirable job of that the other day, talking about how Portland needs to regain our former nation leading status as a bike friendly city. We need more of that. The program would fund two main tracks for advancing a civic conversation. Both involve developing and displaying prominent messages and messengers, celebrating and encouraging bicycling that are intended to direct interested residents to the bike together rides. The program would also make targeted capital investments, designed to be both effective and to engage with the community. The bikeway network in much of the target area is formed by neighborhood greenways, so we're looking at improving conditions on those neighborhood greenways, building more diverters and also building bike lanes, improving bike lanes where they don't exist, especially on a stretch of Burnside that connects inner Portland with east Portland. And then finally, there would be an evaluation element. The program is predicated on the idea that bicycling is a good product, that it's transformative at both the personal and societal level. In 2015, the bike use that we had was based on about 23,000 portlanders. Daily biking. Tomorrow, 70,000 portlanders could decide they wanted a bike and the system could accommodate them. This program is a new step toward achieving the goals we set for ourselves. This slide shows a suggested project area that would be about 11mi■!s, about 85,000 people, and would touch districts one, two, and three. Thank you for your time, I appreciate it.
26 Thank you, thank all of you. And I'm asking my colleagues if we can hold our questions until the end, asking all the speakers to stay because we should have 40 minutes for discussion. Next we have john sarah, local government affairs manager from TriMet.
27 Good morning councilors.
28 Good morning.
29 Give me one moment while I pull up my slides. Good morning. Co-chairs Novick and Morillo and members of the committee on climate resilience and land use. For the record, my name is john sarah. I'm the local government affairs manager at TriMet, and I'm a registered lobbyist on behalf of the agency. Thank you for your opportunity to testify and discuss how Portland clean energy fund resources can be used in ways that clearly meet PCEF eligibility criteria while delivering real near-term climate equity and resilience benefits to portlanders. Pccep was created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase climate resilience, and deliver benefits to frontline and priority populations through community based investments. Public transit, particularly when it is clean, reliable and accessible, directly advances all those goals. Last fiscal year, TriMet provided approximately 66 million trips. That's about 1.3 million trips every week. Our transit service reduces car trips and harmful emissions, avoiding nearly 55,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, with five max light rail lines and 46 bus lines operating in the city of Portland today. Transit. Transit is already one of portland's most effective and proven climate strategies. That progress, however, is in risk. Reduced passenger fare revenue and increased costs have led to an annual annual operating budget shortfall of TriMet. This past July, we announced a $300 million structural deficit, and we're preparing to cut more than 10% of our service over the next 18 months to address it. Reduced service means fewer transit trips and more people forced into cars, directly, increasing emissions and undermining the city's climate goals. The impacts would fall hardest on on portland's PCEF priority populations 35% of trimet's riders are transit dependent. Many are low income people of color, older adults, people with disabilities, and households that are already burdened by increasing costs. Today, I want to focus on three specific TriMet projects that could be funded by PCEF, all deliver improved transit for portlanders, and would help TriMet address its budget shortfall. Each of these projects aligns closely with program eligibility criteria and are ready to be implemented and deliver measurable climate and equity benefits. First, maintaining bus service to providence Portland medical center on northeast glisan street. Though we are proposing to reduce service on several lines within the city of Portland, there's one bus line that stands out and serving PCEF priority populations, where one time funding could have a significant impact. Trimet's line 19 serves providence Portland medical center, providing essential access for healthcare workers, patients and families. We know many of these riders are people who cannot easily shift to driving, and that service reductions here would increase single occupancy vehicle trips and emissions. While while there are technically other transit options for riders in the area, we understand that the elimination of service along this section of northeast glisan will be a burden for vulnerable members of our community. We are proposing the pcp bus to temporarily maintain bus service between downtown Portland and gateway transit center in east Portland. This would cost roughly $2.7 million a year, and we could preserve bus service along this segment for two years at the cost of $5.5 million. This two year service extension would allow us time to attempt to find other solutions to our budget deficit, and the investment would support PCEF priority populations from all over the city and maintain equitable, clean transportation access for our frontline communities. This is a clear example of using climate dollars to protect an existing, low carbon transportation option for people that rely on it every day. Second, max climate resiliency upgrades. Extreme weather is now a regular occurrence here in Portland, and we expect that these events will become more intense and more frequent. Our max trains are powered by 100% renewable energy using an overhead catenary wire system. These wires are copper, and a counterweight system holds the lines in tension while they expand and contract in changing temperatures. However, this system was designed for climate. The climate of portland's past and the wire sag at extreme temperatures above 100 degrees. This forces us to slow or even stop our max trains during the exact times when they could be the most important for Portland riders, helping them to get to potentially life saving shelter during heat emergencies. By funding the replacement of these aging wires with a new system with features that will be able to withstand up to 130 degrees f, can help prevent delays and keep trains running reliably through heat waves. This is a phase project and could be supported to upgrade the systems across the city, at the cost of roughly $2 million a year. Similarly, to achieve climate resiliency for our max system, we are also working to address locations where the rail is prone to warping in extreme temperatures. Rail lines are designed to allow trains to operate within a specific temperature range. These rails need to be distressed to avoid sun kinks that require us to slow trains, or transfer riders to shuttle busses during extreme temperature events. With a $2 million investment, PCEF could pay for derail d stress. Excuse me, saf could pay for rail de-stressing at locations in the expo and albina, mississippi areas along the yellow line as well as along the banfield blue line. Additional future investments could support a citywide rail de-stressing program for 25 miles of rail within the city of Portland. These investments in climate resiliency for the overhead catenary system and the rails directly aligned with climate resilience goals. They will help prevent delays and keep trains running reliably through heat waves, ensuring that our zero emission electric max trains remain operational in Portland needs than most. Third hydrogen fuel infrastructure to advance zero emissions. Busses TriMet has secured a federal low or no emissions grant to house hydrogen fuel cell electric busses at our powell operations facility in southeast Portland for the 82nd avenue project. However, a $3.2 million local funding gap is needed is. Currently, there is currently a $3.2 million local funding gap, and we need to find that money to advance this project. If we were to fill that gap, that $3.2 million investment would unlock federal funding, accelerate transportation decarbonization, and support equitable clean transportation access along the 82nd avenue corridor. This will help prime the renewable hydrogen market to attract a fully Green hydrogen fuel supply to the region in the near future, and with zero tailpipe emissions, these busses will further reduce exposure to diesel pollution for riders, operators and nearby communities, many of whom are PCEF priority populations. Each of these three investments maintaining bus service to providence Portland medical center along northeast glisan, strengthening max resiliency and advancing hydrogen fuel cell busses represent a focused, high impact use of PCEF funds. They are scalable, ready to implement, and firmly within the fund's mandate to reduce emissions and increase resilience and deliver equitable benefits to city of Portland, to the city of Portland and its residents. I also want to note that we have been in close coordination with our partners at PBOT about opportunities to collaborate on this funding opportunity. We would welcome further discussion around investments that jointly support our agency's shared goals, such as how PCEF could support our partnership for the better bus program. Before closing, I do briefly want to address youth fares. Trimet strongly supports affordable youth access to transit, and I want to be very clear that the significant and I want to be very clear about the significant programs that already exist. Currently, youth pay half the cost of adult fare for a day pass in less than one third the cost of an adult monthly pass. Trimet provides free summer passes for all youth in the TriMet district, ages 14 to 19. Trimet provides free school year passes for low income and transit dependent students in parkrose david douglas, sam barlow, Gresham, reynolds and centennial school districts and through a cost sharing agreement, free passes for all high school students enrolled in Portland public school district. A proposal to replace these programs and create a no cost pass for all Portland youth would cost an estimated $25 million annually. Such a program to align with sf's equity goals for such a program to align with sf's equity goals and trimet's needs, and must be that funding must be stable, long term and reliably funded. Any limited term pilot to replace the existing programs would risk undermining the future viability of those programs, and any attempt to scale the program to a specific population will create inequalities. Inequities across the district's implementation would also take TriMet 9 to 12 months, and require new staffing and administrative capacity that the agency cannot absorb without additional ongoing funding. That we do not currently have. These considerations do not diminish the importance of youth mobility, but they underscore the need for stable funding and a thoughtful approach to any change to the existing system. In closing, PCEF has the opportunity to protect and strengthen one of portland's most powerful climate tools investing in essential transit service, climate resilient infrastructure, and zero emission technology that delivers immediate emissions reductions while centering frontline communities. We look forward to working with you to produce measurable, equitable, and lasting climate benefits to portlanders. Thank you for your time and consideration.
30 Thank you. Since we have a few seconds left, how many people ride the bus in a given day or week? Do you know?
31 I do know that. Councilor. Give me one moment. The currently weekly ridership for the line. The weekly ridership for line 19 is 17,500.
32 Thank you. Next we have a presentation on the current proposal to shift $15 million into helping to build energy efficient housing. And I wanted to hear briefly from sam barrasso about how the committee reached this decision. I talked to the two co-chairs of the pcf advisory committee, and they weren't available today. And after a brief, you know, refresher from mr. Barrasso, then we're going to hear from I hope I'm not mangling the names, kiley yang of housing development, director of ci and housing developer ci, about a project that they would have in mind that they'd want to use that funding for. And and again, we have nine minutes combined. So hopefully we can we can work out the timing.
33 Okay.
34 Thank you. Co-chairs and Novick and Morillo members of the committee. For the record, my name is sam barrasso. I'm program manager for the Portland clean energy community benefits fund. I'm going to go ahead and load up the screen here, but I know our colleagues at ci here are hoping to present their content first and have us follow if that's okay. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to go ahead. Pull your deck up here.
35 My name is frieda walker. I'm the chief compliance officer with self enhancement inc. We are here to request that you adopt the recommendations from the pcf committee. And I'd like to pass it on now to kai liang, our housing development manager.
36 Good morning. Council. My name is kai lang. I am the director of housing developments for self enhancement inc, and I'm here to kind of present what is the impact of sp1 in our community and what kind of trends in energy efficiency and also the livability of the future housing for our city. Next slide please. So we have two important projects in pre-development. And actually they're ready to break ground in this year. The first project is a 59 rental homes on mlk and garfield avenue. And they this we have secured 95% of the funding and we are ready to cut to get to the finish line and then break ground this year. And this is to serve 4% low income tax credit. The population intend to serve is 60 ami and below, and our residents will be people of color, single parents, family, children. Those are the target, target audience that we've been serving for the 45 years of ci history. Next slide please. Another project is also ready to break ground is during may of this year as well. We also hope to kind of take advantage of sp1 in order to get to the finish line. And this is even more critical. We have a range of 30% to 60% residents that we aim to serve, and 25% of those are actually permanent supportive housing units, which mean to be serving very low income residents, residents of color, single parents as well, and families with children. And these are larger units than typical affordable housing, which is much needed units in our community. Next slide please. Now we have majority of our capital stack already secured and you can see our sources all lined up here. Total sources secure right now is already at $53.5 million. And we really just need the remaining three ish million to kind of the most impactful to the quality of life for our residents. And I can explain you why in the next slide. Now, without this piece of sp1 eligible resource, we would be eliminating a lot of this critical infrastructure for livability. We will no longer able to secure renaissance comfort at high heat or super cold days, which is we're seeing more and more often in our recent years. We also may face very terrible air quality of for these residents. And we're talking about 30, 40 years. These buildings will be in operation and serving the most needed people in our community. So and also like energy efficiency aside, like we also try to bring back a lot of our dislocated families who are now working very far from where they work, where they shop, where they live. There's a lot of like excessive amount of carbon we actually want them to bring back to a centralized home where they can get their meet their needs and also have a safety of a home they can depend on. And next slide please. Now what is the opportunity cost if plf were not able to reallocate more resources to sp one now, what is the impact to our project particular in this case? And actually this spreads to many other housing projects that also qualified under sp1. Now we would be forced to redesign, meaning that we'll need to spend additional likely millions of dollars to take out all the energy efficiency of our current design. And we'll provide a lot of significant delays to our project. We're talking about perhaps a year or two of delaying able to deliver these projects to a needed community. We also may face residents that will face extreme conditions and not able to cool or heat their homes. And we also the residents will face extremely high energy costs escalation over the period of 3040 years, which is we often not talk about. We talk about the burden of rent that we haven't really touched on, the burden of energy cost. It's rising very, very quickly. So it's another impactful to how family can stay housed in these affordable housing projects. And the worst case scenario, we may lose all the funding altogether, meaning that all the 55 million we secured, which will be in jeopardy because we're just no longer able to deliver these projects according to funding source expectation. So under that, I pass this to sam.
37 Okay. Let me go ahead and turn the deck over to our deck. Give me a second, folks. Okay. All right.
38 I just want to point of clarification, mr. Barrasso. It's not like money from this source has been promised to ci or any other provider. I asked with some hesitation because other providers didn't have to reach out to us. I asked ci to present to give us an example of how this money could be used. But I just want to clarify. It's not like this money has been promised. Ci is here to talk about an application they make, which could be more likely to be approved if the amendment to the on the $15 million is approved. Is that right?
39 Correct. No funding commitments have been made for those additional resources.
40 Then why? Why was it just presented to us like we might be taking money away?
41 I'll give a brief. Maybe I'll try to do my best to explain, and I'll certainly encourage my my colleagues, including ci, up here. My understanding here is that there are other funding sources, particularly at the state, Oregon housing and community services. And typically when you go in to put in a request for funding for a housing project, you've got to put all together your entire capital stack. And so sometimes there's there's projections in there because some of it may be debt financing that you're taking on from lenders other financing. It is a complex capital stack for affordable housing. And so it is not uncommon for folks to say, and we anticipate getting PCEF resources prior to us making a commitment. So and, and building out their projects that way, as you'll see in the presentation here, we'll show strategic program one, which is our energy efficiency program focused on affordable housing had been essentially it had been allocating resources, making commitments until it got recently fully allocated. And so I think there's a certain point and I don't know, timeline. There's a question of timelines, but there's a certain point where it would have been reasonable for folks to expect that they may have been able to access those resources. Does that make sense in terms of projecting and saying, this is our anticipated capital stack that we expect to pull together?
42 So it's sort of an aspirational thing. We hope we might get this.
43 No, that is not correct.
44 But you haven't been promised the money from PCEF, right?
45 We we actually well, these are grants. So you if you meet certain criteria when subsets of standards. So when building meets a certain expectation or quality of standards from established. And we aim toward, towards those, now you have to be it's a very lengthy process for building design to to break the ground. It takes about a year to two years. So when we actually have projects that take advantage.
46 I think we need to cut this out. I mean, to turn it back to mr. Barrasso. I think it's important to note that, I mean, neither ci ci has not been promised this this amount of money because it's dependent, among other things, on the amendment to the cip being made, which hasn't been made yet. Mr. Could you just take us briefly through how the committee reached the decision to allocate this $15 million?
47 Correct. We'll do, and we're looking to see if we have our staff that manages that program in a little bit. See if there are further questions there. So briefly I'm just going to talk about the amendments themselves and then talk about the existing program, the outcomes and the projects as well as our broader timeline. So I think there's just a broader question here around process. And I hear that and I want to acknowledge that there's great projects that are being discussed here. When we first came to and developed this process with the pcf committee, to have a more structured process for how they engage in developing amendments on an annual basis. So and largely in response to lessons learned adjustments they need to make over performance in one program, underperformance in another. That was the process that they set into motion. And so they're really four categories of adjustments that the committee considered funding adjustments, goal adjustments and scope refinements, technical changes and adjustments that were necessary to align with the city budget. This particular change here falls within that first bucket. Funding adjustments. I think what I do want to state, and I think it's important, as I know, that we haven't focused on the process itself from the outset was, but it takes about nine, 10 to 15 months to develop a climate investment plan where we envision that new program. That is what we did from the outset of the climate investment plan. In this annual process, we are making tweaks. When we started the process, we set the stage for the committee that we were, and these were based on discussions with them, that there would be no new programing. The focus would be on existing programs. I do want to state that because I think that that just needs to be said, given the implications of developing new programing, the timing, the the process that would need to be run in order to appropriately vet ideas. And so here within the the specific recommendations here it was to the committee's recommendation was to increase funding for our Portland housing bureau's clean energy and regulated multifamily affordable housing by 15 million and decreasing 15 million from the targeted financing program because it had not launched yet. In our projections on what could be reasonably deployed in that program were lower at this point. Now, the existing program and the focus here where we're discussing increasing program had initial allocation or a current allocation of about 63.7 million. And the program was intended to fund the difference between code and high efficiency measures, with up to 10% of total hard construction costs being eligible. The eligible projects had to be projects that were funded by the Portland housing bureau or Oregon housing and community services. They had to have restricted rentals so no more than 60% area median income in a period of rent restrictions for a period of at least 30 years, and they had to be awarded funding through a competitive solicitation process. And last, they had to at least be 20 units in order to be eligible for the program. So that's the current program that's since been fully allocated. Now in that program. Getting to this point, it supported a total of 21, about a little bit over 2100 homes to date that have been completed or under construction. The slides here show you just that breakdown between 60% ami units, 30% ami units, and permanent supportive housing. And additionally, there's about 566 additional units that have had funding committed with construction pending. That will ultimately bring us to about a little bit over 2700 units for that first $63 million in resources that were allocated to the program prior to this proposal. And this just gives a breakdown of some of the projects that have completed and some of the measures that were part of those projects. Now, with the recommendations that the committee made, it was to increase that add an additional 15 million, which would support about an additional 586 housing units, efficiency upgrades and 586 housing units. About 1700 folks supported. Based on looking at a review of our existing pipeline. And so that's that's really the the and so for their perspective, when we entered into when they entered this review process, we had just completed the first year of the climate investment plan.
48 And sam, I'd have to ask you to wrap up. Okay. So back up for questions.
49 Yes. So we completed, I think, getting to the rationale, we completed the first year, the climate investment plan, when we looked at their review and said out of all of the programs, this was the singular program that had fully allocated all of its resources. Everyone else is in a different stage of implementation, significantly earlier. There's no other programs that had performed like this program. And so it was clear that as we looked across the program and said in that context, what could we do? That's that's where the focus was for the committee.
50 Thank you. To reiterate, we the purpose of this ordinance was technical amendments to the cip and to review program success and and rates of spending. It was not to discuss new programs.
51 And as far as the technical amendments are concerned, it's my understanding that there's some time urgency on the technical amendments. And therefore, one thing this committee to do today is recommend to the full council adopting all the amendments except this major $15 million shift. And then we could consider that one further. We could do that.
52 We would certainly say yes, there's the other. There are certain times and sensitivities and negotiations that are wrapped up in some of the other technical amendments. So, correct. Should you all decide to hold off on that 50 million, we would we would ask that you consider those other technical amendments and move those forward.
53 Thank you. And next up is PBOT with a with a group of suggestions. And I think director williams and kristen hall are here to speak.
54 Thank you. Councilor Novick. Good morning to the members of the committee. My name is millicent williams. For the record, I am the director of the Portland bureau of transportation. Thank you for acknowledging the importance of investing. I'm just going to start while kristen pulls up the presentation. Thank you for acknowledging the importance of investing in transportation, decarbonization, decarbonization in climate work. I want to acknowledge that PCEF has already invested in many transportation focused projects. Our work on transportation decarbonization is far from done and will require more resources, likely local resources. Pbot strategy to reduce the climate impacts continues to be to reduce the number of miles, driven by encouraging biking, walking and transit, making it easier to choose to drive electric vehicles and to change how goods move. While we continue to work in all these areas. You already heard about ideas for increasing bike mode. Share. I will now speak to four other areas that could be ripe for investment mitigating streetcar service cuts. Investing in zero emission delivery at the james beard public market. Restoring a small portion of the rescinded federal funding for a street project to serve lower albina and providing employee transit passes. One key theme that we've heard from this council and from our community is the importance of maintaining transit service as a as a key tool for climate mitigation, equity, affordability and mobility. As you know, the city is the owner and operator of Portland streetcar and is responsible for capital and asset management. Our partner, TriMet, is responsible for most operations and service funding. With its current financial situation, TriMet is proposing a 10 to 20% cut to trimet's funding for streetcar services. We cannot backfill this without new resources. Next slide. The scale of reductions proposed by TriMet would require significant changes to streetcar service. We would need to operate only reduced operating hours from 20 to 16 each day. We would also be forced to make other changes, like eliminating service over the tilikum bridge, reducing service on the ab loop from every 20 minutes to every 30 minutes, or reducing service on the north south line from every 15 minutes to every 20 minutes. We would also eliminate eliminate staff positions. A modest investment from PCEF would preserve a streetcar service for our nearly 10,000 daily riders, and ensure the city is in a better position to fund asset management, both now and in the future. It would also provide time to work through a long term funding model. Now, I'd like to share a potential transportation decarbonization investment tied to the james beard public market. The james beard public market is slated to open at the end of the year. When it opens, the question isn't whether deliveries will happen for it's 40 vendors, it's how they will happen. The default will be thousands of diesel trucks competing for a handful of curb spaces on the same block, along with congestion, safety conflicts and localized air pollution. James beard public market coming to us now gives us a rare opportunity to do deliveries differently and avoid the problems other cities have faced with this funding. The james beard market would make a simple but powerful operational shift, rather than each vendor managing deliveries independently, goods would be consolidated and an off site warehouse and delivered into downtown using small, quiet, zero emission vehicles. The request for this effort is $2.8 million, which will be entirely focused on the elements required to make this new system work. Vehicles, charging, staging space and logistics coordination. From the city's perspective, the benefits would show up immediately and very visibly to residents and visitors looking to explore downtown and its newest world class attraction. Another choice would be to restore some of the funding for the transformation of the lower broadway in albina in 2025. Current federal administration canceled funding for the construction phase of this important project that would widen sidewalks, protect bike lanes, improve bus stops, but more importantly, create a street that supports transformational housing development in the central city. Depending on funding, PBOT could build part of this project, advancing the vision and making future phases more achievable. Today, the city offers a 50% subsidy on monthly and annual transit passes as part of a package of incentives for the city employees. Excuse me. Today, the city offers a 50% subsidy on monthly and annual transit passes as a part of a package of incentives for city employees choosing to walk, bike, take transit and carpool to the office for roughly $500,000 annually. We can provide a fully subsidized annual transit pass for all city employees, and I will pause to state that the team that's worked on this with the bureau of human resources, our PBOT team members, and TriMet have identified that roughly 500 employees are currently registered to use the trip program. This would provide, and the employees pay 50% of the transit pass. This would provide the opportunity for all employees to have a fully funded transit pass that would take our user rate, presumably, if everyone chose to use their transit pass from 500 daily users to close to 9000, depending on whether or not folks were coming into the office for work. Subsidized transit passes respond directly to employee feedback and boost transit ridership. We want to make the choice to come downtown on transit and easy. Yes, by removing cost of transit and take the guesswork out of deciding whether to work from home or go downtown. This concludes our presentation.
55 Thank you very much. Next up we have. Celeste ruiz, the Multnomah youth commission, ishaan bhardwaj, the youth commission, and jules jones. And I think that our own vivian satterfield is going to going to join them.
56 Good morning, members of the committee. For the record, I'm your chief sustainability officer, vivian satterfield. I'm so pleased to hear so many of the discussions and presentations up until now refer to the future generations and to future riders. And so I'm going to go ahead and pass the mic to those very folks, and I'm going to invite erica molina rodriguez up here to take my place to help support the presentation around youth pass. Thank you.
57 Good morning. Councilors. My name is celeste ruiz. I am a student at Portland state university and I live in district one.
58 Hello everyone. My name is jules jones. I'm a student at mcdaniel high school and I live in district two.
59 Hello, my name is ishaan bhardwaj. I'm a student at ohs and I live in district four.
60 We are a part of the Multnomah youth commission, which is the official youth policy body of the city of Portland and Multnomah county. We are youth who live, work or attend school throughout Multnomah county, and we lift youth voices and policy priorities to our local elected official. Today, we are here to speak to you about one of our top priorities youth pass, which is free year round public transportation for youth.
61 Now, our work builds off years of advocacy from the sisters and action for power, an organization made up of girls and women of color who won the first free bus program for youth on free and reduced school lunch at ps in the early 2000. In 2008, nyc supported the implementation and development of the ps youth pass, funded by the Oregon business energy tax credit. However, this expired in 2011 and the legislator was unwilling to renew. So ps the city of Portland and TriMet split the cost three ways with continued advocacy. In 2017, the city funded a small expansion to low income students, and david douglas and parkrose, while appreciated, the program faced long waitlists and eligibility hurdles, with demand far exceeding available passes. In 2018, the city withdrew all youth pass funding, forcing ps to cover the city's one third share. Later, the the state legislature passed hb 2017 and the statewide transportation improvement fund, also known as stiff, which allocates 1% of funds to student transportation and enabled the creation of TriMet high school access transit program, distributing around $700,000 in transit grants to tri county high schools. The funding was intended to supplement, not replace, yellow bus service, and districts were asked to develop strategies to prioritize students with the greatest need. In practice, however, this means that distribution varies by district and requires students to navigate varying processes, such as finding the right administrator to request passes from. Over time, districts adapted and awareness increased, but the ease of access remains a challenge for students. Importantly, youth pastors included in the 2020 metro transportation measure opening the door for a real cost analysis of youth pass. $9 million, if passed, would have funded all youth in the tri county area. All of us has been possible due to the work youth leaders have put in over the years. Young people have shown up locally, regionally and statewide to share their own stories and why youth pass matters. Now we want to share why youth pass still matters and opportunities we see for this investment moving forward.
62 Next slide please. All right. Funding youth pass aligns with sf's missions in many ways, including the support of priority populations. For example, parkrose and david douglas school districts are among the most racially diverse public high schools in the state of Oregon. And youth are a priority population as they have less access to the decision, decision making and benefits of environmental investments while facing greater vulnerability to climate related harms. Youth pass increases job access and economic mobility. With reliable access to transit, youth are able to get jobs, often helping support their families with additional income.
63 Youth pass is more than just getting to school. There is more to a high schoolers life than just being a student. Oregon has one of the worst of chronic absenteeism rates in the united states, with a third of public school students missing more than 10% of school days. Research shows subsidized student transit passes, increased trips and access to school, improving our absenteeism rates, getting to work and participating in extracurricular activities. Furthermore, the national center for education statistics links extracurricular participation to stronger academic performance and engagement. Yet low income students participate less often despite widespread availability, with transit access being a key barrier, youth pass reduces these access disparities by removing a paywall that favors youth with cars or greater resources. About 30% of Oregonians, including parents and students, do not own a car, according to the world resources institute. Busses and trains can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to two thirds per kilometer, compared to cars growing ridership, starting with youth, is essential for transit to deliver real environmental benefits, including bike infrastructure, alongside a resilient public transit system is an important part of creating a strong multimodal network that can improve for the needs of all portlanders and reduce environmental strain. Youth pass helps youth travel without the stress of fines. When a student can't afford a pass, they may ride without paying and face fines from 75 to $250 or exclusion from transit. Deepening financial strain for youth and families in today's national climate. We have also seen some parents reluctant to leave home or give their child rides. While we hope this is not a long term concern, free youth access to transit can help ease this burden for immigrant and refugee families. Next slide please.
64 Since the high school access program began, the number of youth requesting hot passes has increased, but the ease of access has not. To prevent a plateau, all youth need a year long year round pass on their student id, not just those who request passes through school. Youth pass represents a culture shift that helps youth build lifelong transit habits. Although the 2020 metro ballot measure did not pass, it opened the door to actual youth ridership data and a new lens to estimate youth pass costs. Earlier estimates from other organizations assumed 100% daily youth ridership, which is inaccurate. Cost modeling should instead use actual ridership data, similar to the universal pass program for Multnomah county employees. With the high school access program already in place, a universal youth pass can build on existing infrastructure while reducing administrative and overhead costs. Pps saves tax dollars by opting out of costly yellow busses in favor of youth pass. As transit service is widely available near pbs schools, other districts cannot eliminate yellow busses, but youth pass is more than just getting to school.
65 For our final thoughts, every young person deserves access to opportunity to education, health care, jobs, extracurriculars, cultural engagements and recreation which are all rights outlined in the city of Multnomah, city of Portland and Multnomah county's youth bill of rights. When youth begin writing transit at a young age, they're more confident to navigate the system and bring friends and family along with them. De-stigmatizing public transit and increasing ridership. Youth pass would allow youth to be more connected and engaged, making communities stronger and safer for everyone. Youth pass isn't just a program. It builds lifelong riders, advances climate solutions, and removes barriers that hold young people back. Youth pass is access to our city, our county, and our community, and to the futures that our youth and our city deserve. Youth pass are passed to more. Thank you for your time.
66 Thank you very much. Colleagues. We have half an hour until we have to move on to the parks levy discussion. My guess is that we will not be able to come to a consensus on this $15 million item in the next half hour, and so I'm going to recommend that the that in about 23 minutes, we have a motion to send all the technical amendments to the council with the recommendation to be adopted, but delete the $15 million change until we have further discussion. Deleting the $15 million amendment would not have any real immediate consequences, because right now the money is just sitting there in this ev fund and not being used. So that's what I'm going to recommend. But now I want to move on to questions and discussion.
67 Councilor Kanal councilor Novick. I'm first going to say I'm open to that idea. I think we might want to not reallocate it back and just leave it in a sort of separate pool for the 15, but we can talk about that when we get to those last seven minutes. We had a bit of a miscommunication here in conversation around how other options for transportation funding could get presented. And so I wanted to, if, with your permission, ask someone to come up and speak to their proposal.
68 Yes. Thank you.
69 Okay. So I did want to give some time to another transportation related project that's asked for money as well, which is frog ferry. And I'd like to invite up friends of frog ferry to speak for a few minutes about that. We talked about this at the last meeting and just wanted to make sure that that happened. Sorry for the miscommunication there, right?
70 No problems. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here and see you both. For the record, my name is susan and I'm the founder and president of frog ferry.
71 Hello. My name is xavier de stickler. I'm the vice president of the downtown neighborhood association, and I work closely with frog ferry.
72 We appreciate the opportunity today. And really, this whole conversation this morning is about planning for the future. We don't have a prepared presentation for you, but just in summarizing what we're hearing and what frog ferry brings to the table, we so need to change how portlanders are navigating around the region. We absolutely have to have more people taking active transit and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Trimet we know we can help induce ridership. We know ferries are considered a gateway mode of transit and people find ferries are really fun. Oh gosh, I can take another mode of transit to actually board the ferry to take for my commute to work or for school for cyclists. We really look forward to welcoming you aboard. Cyclists. I was a co-founder of cycle Oregon. I served on the board for 15 years and really love that mode of transit. Emergency response ferries are a proven best practice, and we need other modes in order to help get our first responders back and forth. Crossing the river central city activation. We can put a boat on the water by 2028. We are now almost nine years in. And again, ferries aren't just transit, they're actually a fun new attraction for downtown. Portland has a lot of infrastructure. We have docks and we really appreciate deputy city administrator priya jayapal and sonya shemanski for granting us permission to use two city owned docks and ferries are very low maintenance. We'd be using the existing infrastructure. You don't have maintenance costs of roads and rail. $22 million puts a boat into operation. We have already delivered $40 million over the past nine years. That's been in research, the planning, all the feasibility studies and a lot of community outreach. And that money, that 22 million would go to upgrading your two docks, actually design, engineering a vessel that would be an electric vessel. That's also the charging infrastructure for it and the ticketing and the marketing program behind it. Our vision is up to seven vessels and nine stops. The first boat, just a pilot project, would be displacing 225 passengers a year, or 600 cars per day. That would escalate to a total operation of seven vessels is what we have in our proforma, and displacing a million passengers per day. To date, city council has awarded us $90,000. No funding in the past seven years and and we just look forward to working with the city. We feel like we've really de-risked this project. Do you want to speak very briefly to north Portland? To.
73 Absolutely. North Portland is an underserved community, and this would create a transit commute time from the north Portland peninsula to the south waterfront. And OHSU and PSU cut that transit time in half. So we think this is a really transformational project that is critical to the revitalization of downtown.
74 3200 metric tons displaced by one vessel.
75 Thank you very much.
76 Thank you.
77 Colleagues, let's move on to questions and discussion.
78 Am I up?
79 Yes. Councilor Avalos okay.
80 Hello everybody. Apologies that I am not feeling well and I am virtual, but I have been here the whole time. Before I get into the substance, I want to be clear about where I stand procedurally. Based on what I heard you say. Chair Novick I do not support sending this package forward while carving out the 15 million housing allocation from transportation. I believe we should send the full recommendation for it as a complete package, because to me, pulling out this piece doesn't resolve the disagreement. It just delays the decision and delays this investment in housing. At a moment when we know when housing projects are shovel ready and construction costs are rising. So I think delaying has real consequences. I think there's any if there's any further discussion that we need to have, we can do that at full council. But for those reasons, I think the responsible path is to move the entire package forward together rather than letting climate dollars sit idle. With that said, I want to ground us first in the emissions data because precision really matters in this because I keep hearing this talking point. So statewide transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, about 35% of the total emissions that matters. But what often gets lost is that buildings, residential and commercial, are the second largest source about another 30 to 35% of emissions. And this is driven largely by electricity use and fossil fuels for heating and cooling. So when we're talking about climate investments, it's not a debate between climate and housing. Housing is climate policy and buildings are one of our biggest levers right now for emissions reduction. And they sit right alongside transportation in terms of impact, in my opinion. So where I'm struggling with the argument that we need to keep these particular dollars in transportation is that it assumes all transportation investments are equally ready and equally able to move the needle right now. And that's just not the reality we're facing, especially after what I've heard from the presentations. What we're actually talking about here are dollars that are currently sitting unspent, largely because ev infrastructure and related systems are not yet ready to deploy at scale. And that doesn't mean that it's a failure, but it does reflect where the technology and infrastructure are today. But I also want to be clear about what it's not, because this is not a permanent de-prioritization of transportation. As staff have explained, the city has already invested substantial PCEF dollars in transportation, and that work will continue. So this is about timing and readiness and impact, not about abandoning transportation as a climate strategy. So the real choice in front of us is not transportation versus housing. It's whether we allow climate dollars to sit idle or whether we deploy them where they can do real work. Right now, from my perspective and from the perspective of the pcf committee and staff who are closest to implementation, housing is where those dollars can be put to work immediately because those housing projects are shovel ready. They exist today and they're waiting on capital. When PCEF can come in at roughly 20% of the capital stack, that's often the difference between a project stalling and a project breaking ground. And that is not theoretical. That's just how housing financing actually works. So these investments also primarily benefit low income renters who face the highest energy burdens and the greatest climate risk. This is where climate action and equity and housing instability intersect most clearly. So when those projects move forward, we get deeply energy efficient buildings, long term emissions reductions from the second largest emitting sector, lower utility costs for renters, displacement prevention and progress on the city's number one crisis, which is housing. I also want to name the real downside of waiting every delay in housing construction increases costs. We hear this a lot in our housing committee. Labor costs rise, material costs rise, financing costs rise. So waiting does not preserve opportunity. It actually erodes it. And waiting to use available climate dollars now helps prevent or using them now helps prevent projects from becoming more expensive or falling apart altogether. I also don't believe it's appropriate to use dollars to try to patch structural gaps in our regional transportation system. Trimet's own materials make clear that they are facing hundreds of millions of dollars in long term funding challenges, and I respect the urgency of that situation. But small infusions of climate dollars are not going to materially change service outcomes, especially for east portlanders. Those are structural funding questions that deserve their own solutions state, regional and federal. And I don't think that it serves transit riders or the integrity of our climate fund to blur those lines. I know this is long, but I've got a couple more things to say. It's important to recognize that many of our transportation proposals that we're seeing climate resilience upgrades, phased infrastructure replacements, long term transitions, these are multiyear systems level investments, and they matter, but they're not shovel ready in the same way that housing projects are. And they are not going to deploy emissions reductions on that same timeline. So that, to me, really matters when we're stewards of a fund like PCEF. Which lastly brings me to process this package didn't come out of nowhere. It was recommended by the committee based on staff analysis of readiness, impact and alignment with voter intent. And I think it's important that we respect the governance structure we created and trust the expertise we asked for. We're about to approach the next climate investment plan process, which is exactly the right venue, in my opinion, to step back and evaluate longer term proportionality across sectors. That plan is designed for those conversations, but what's before us today is not a philosophical shift in our climate priorities. It's a technical, time bound adjustment to ensure that climate dollars are actually working, not sitting, and are being used where they can make the most immediate difference. So for all those reasons, I support sending the entire package forward, including the 15 million housing allocation, rather than pulling it out and delaying an investment. We know that we can move on now. Thanks for your time.
81 Thank you. Councilor just wanted to quickly respond to that. Right now, we're spending 47% of funds on the second largest source of carbon emissions buildings and 24% on the largest transportation. So the proposal that came from seq would would increase that imbalance. And second, I think that there are some very immediate uses for the money in transportation. And after hearing from other colleagues, I might call up john sara from TriMet to ask how soon they are planning to shut down line 19. For example. Councilor Morillo.
82 Thank you all. Sorry. Apologies. I'm also sick, so it sounds like everyone is getting the plague at city hall and I think we're having I'm sad to not be there in person because frankly, I appreciate all of the presentations. And it's it's not often that you have so many good choices before you that the decision feels hard, because there are so many good things that we could fund with such limited dollars. So I do feel very compelled by a lot of what councilor Avalos said. And frankly, there are a lot of statistics also being thrown around about carbon emissions with regards to driving versus housing. But I've actually heard a lot of conflicting things. So with regards to the importance of both, and I think both are equally important for different reasons. I am curious though, if we don't, do we have a deadline to move the entire package forward today apart from the 15 million? Because I also feel like last time we didn't get these presentations and this is a pretty heavy thing to weigh, and half of our over half of our committee is extremely ill. And having to work from home today.
83 Yeah, my understanding from staff is that at a minimum, they would like us to do is to forward the amendments that have been proposed to full council, with the exception of the amendment that moves the $15 million. And clare has been working to come up with what precisely that language that amendment would be. So bts has asked us to today move the technical amendments. But we can do that and just not do the amendment that moves the $15 million.
84 Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. I also have some clarifying questions about the housing projects. I understand what sam barrasso stated as far as like these dollars aren't officially allocated to them, but also you do projections based on ability to get those dollars so that you can start building as quickly as possible. And we do need that, and we do need our buildings to be climate resilient. If some of these dollars don't go towards that, can can sam or somebody just outline like exactly what those impacts would be like? Will these things not be built. It sounds like maybe they're just will be less energy efficiency. Or does it mean like the building will be completely unusable during high heat or extreme cold? And I'm sorry if I'm not articulating myself very well today.
85 Sam, can you give a quick answer to that question?
86 I.
87 Couch Novick Morillo for the record, sam, just briefly, I mean, I think and we've got colleagues here from ci that can certainly speak to that more articulately than I can. What I will say from my understanding is that these projects are these projects are designed both from an architecture perspective and otherwise for the as they're designed. So if some of the projects that anticipated getting PCEF funding and design and develop their projects based on that do not get those funds, they are understanding based on ohss, then they go back to those projects, typically go back to line. There's a certain expiration date by which they have to get their capital stacks together to move their projects forward. If they don't get their funding together by those time periods, then they lose that funding commitment from ohss and go to the back of the line and hence restart their process of assembling their capital stack.
88 But thank you, mr. Barrasso.
89 That's very helpful. Thank you. I think obviously, I, I think I'm the only member of council that does not have a license. And so I can't drive. And so the bike and bus infrastructure items are uniquely important to me on a personal level. And also I, I believe in those projects very strongly. I do have concerns about the city of Portland using our dollars and PCEF dollars to backfill TriMet because the state legislature failed to secure a transportation package, because we simply don't have the dollars to do that. And so I, I do worry about the precedent that sets even though I take the bus. 19. I need the bus 19 and I would love to see it never be cut, ever. But I, I have concerns about that. I also have some concerns about the bike package that has been brought forward after sitting with it for a few weeks, because I'm not sure that advertising or more political discussion about biking is the barrier. I don't think that people aren't biking in the city because of a lack of advertising. I think that they're not that we're not biking in the city because it doesn't feel safe, or because we don't have the physical hardened infrastructure to keep people who are biking safe. And I struggle to see how the ride along. Things are different than like pedal palooza or other things that already exist for free that people can join, that are just being organized by community to teach people how to bike ride in an easier way. So because of those reasons, I am leaning towards maintaining the original cip package and I appreciate councilor Avalos suggestion also that we can revisit these things as a whole if needed. During a broader discussion. But if people have reactions to that or want to respond to those things, I welcome that as well.
90 Councilor Kanal thank you. I think I agree with much of what's been said, and there's a probably not quite enough time to really get into a lot of the questions I had. I want to just quickly say, I agree with 99% of the idea that there are no bad projects here. I the one exception is exactly, exactly what councilor Morillo just said. I strongly oppose the use of money for social media ad campaigns at PBOT to encourage people to bike through this process. I do think that the activations are a good idea. I do disagree there, so I'm very glad to see that that mr. Geller's proposal has evolved. I've given some feedback on that in the past, and I'm grateful to see that, that some expectation or expansion has has gone there. I'm going to not take a stand at this moment on the question of where the 15 million should go, because I think I there's a lot of things in here that I have very limited information about. I have ideas for if it's either. And I wanted to to flag that if it remains on the housing side, I am very supportive of both of the two projects that I brought up, in particular the mississippi development, because we need more 30% ami related projects. I am a little bit concerned and I my concern is for csf, not mci or any of the other developers on this, which is that I'm unclear as to why something we might not do is being presented to us as something we might take away. And that really bothers me that that's how it's being portrayed to us, because it limits council's political ability and authority to decide when people are pretending it's a or sorry presenting to potential recipients of funding that it's a defunding. If council makes a decision, we're empowered to do that hasn't been for money that hasn't been allocated yet. So I would ask our partners in the administration to do whatever it takes to stop conveying the decisions. Are a done deal before council approval. We used to be a rubber stamp before January 1st, 2025, and a lot of these decisions, we're not anymore. Switching gears to the transportation side, first off, you know you've made it in life when you get a bike pin from former congressman blumenauer. And if the rules allowed, I'm happy to accept it. Broadly supportive of expanding mode share for bikes. I think there's a lot of different things on the infrastructure side, councilor Morillo mentioned, so I'll leave that for a future conversation. On the TriMet side, I do want to know the data around the Green line reduction, and whether or not that being kept would help mitigate some of the concerns around line 19. I also am sad to see that line 17 was not discussed here today. That's in concordia. There's actually a community event about it. It goes through alameda and a few other neighborhoods as well. Community event tonight about trying to save the service to line 17. Strongly supportive of the investments to a and to b, but I'm trying to understand why we should continue taking on responsibilities from the state as well. I have very, very little faith in the state legislature to come through for portlanders on transportation issues, even though we have many great local legislators. So I think that if we started to put money into this, it would probably be forever. And I'm very concerned about that. The state should not simply refrain from cutting it. We should be funding to the point of making ridership fareless. The one exception to that is I do support the use of funding on youth pass. I don't want to go crazy over time. I have ideas and thoughts on the PBOT things, but I'd love more information on the other, specifically streetcar in alameda. And then the last thing I'll mention is I obviously asked for frog ferry to be here. Your commute doesn't have to suck. In Portland, we can actually work on creating a space where you get to enjoy our river and enjoy the way that you get around in the city. And I think I'd like to to understand that more, and I'll save the rest for later.
91 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
92 Thank you, chair novak. And I'm a part of the group that's fighting the crud. And I'm grateful that we can tune in in this manner. Well, this seems to be the theme of the week here. The council, we have some money and we have to figure out how to quickly respond and spend it. So different Lane, but similar vibes. So I just want to put that out. It's been it's been quite a week up here and I want to thank you, chair Novick, for taking a breath here, for allowing us to have some dialog about the fact that this was a cut in or there was an implementation of the investments in transportation, yet that's still our biggest need. So why don't we take a moment to see where, in fact, those investments could go in transportation? That could be, as the term is said, shovel ready so that we can start to see some gains. So I appreciate that logic. And so I want to give some feedback on big picture themes. I also appreciate chair Novick that your suggestion of doing the technical amendments, and whether we have another discussion in this committee before it goes to the full committee, I wanted to give some advice or some thinking that I have on how that could be more helpful. I'm very supportive of the infrastructure investments that TriMet. I can't tell you how many times when we're in a heat wave and you hear that the max lines are down, how odd that is. And I would think, why didn't they know that the the temps could get over 100 in Portland? That even happened back in the 70s now and then. So anyway, I think that looking at that investment, if in fact it could be performed in a short period of time and that we can get that, that's a quick value added. And so that's exactly, I think, what people had in mind when they voted yes on PCEF. So I'm supportive of infrastructure investments. I'm not going to choose between housing and transportation today because I'm just taking all this in. I actually think there might be a little bit of both, kind of like we're experiencing with the other conversation we had yesterday. These are all good ideas. There's not one idea here that isn't good. It's just, what are we going to do with the commitment to this 15 million that was in transportation? And are we going to keep it in that Lane, or are we going to do some splitting because there is some ready investments also for climate ready infrastructure investments and housing obviously a big priority, hence the meeting yesterday. So I'm going to keep chewing on this. I'm glad that you said we don't have to make those decisions today. We're not ready to make those decisions today. But at least we had an amazing presentations. They were all good, all inspiring, and you're left wanting to fund them all. Of course, I didn't really enjoy the comment earlier. Councilor Kanal I never experienced a rubber stamp moment in my time on the council. In fact, I actually found that we had more dialog prior to items coming to the council, so maybe it appeared like it was a rubber stamp. But man, there was a lot more time for dialog before decisions were made. And so I think in this council, we have to take some more time when we're working with our constituents, both internally and externally, so that we can really make these tough decisions. That's why we get paid the big bucks anyway. That was really rushed. Like all of this seems to be at the moment, but I'm really grateful that we brought some innovative transportation infrastructure. I'm less supportive of of doing operational funds, and I have to make this comment on the youth pass. We need an equity lens on that. I said this even when I was more connected with PPS, the poverty rates with the east of Portland school districts is much higher, and why they get such limited amounts compared to PPS has always bothered me. How to put that out there? Thanks.
93 Thank you councilor, I want to do a time check. Parks is supposed to come up in four minutes, and we'd need to figure out what exactly what motion to move. Councilor Kanal do you have a quick comment before we move on to figuring out something to vote on?
94 Yeah, I appreciate the the point from councilor Ryan. I guess I should have said the expectation was that it would be a rubber stamp before. I appreciate the clarification and the and the bringing of your experience on that council. And sorry for the delay there in respond on that. Thanks.
95 Okay, I may be misreading things, but it sounds to me that there probably are three of us here who do not want to make a final decision today on the 15 million. Claire has been working with the city attorney on coming up with an amendment that would amend the exhibit a to the proposed amendments from PCEF in a way to reflect that we would not be today moving the 15 million. Claire, can you read the can you read the amendment that we came up with?
96 Councilor Novick and the the guidance from the city attorney? I mean, I think there's the amendment is posted. I should let the public know the amendment has been posted by the clerk to this item on the website. So it it would amend exhibit a of the ordinance to restore the original funding allocations to strategic programs one and strategic program 13. So I'll just read it. Amend exhibit a on page three, restore original funding allocation to strategic program one clean energy and regulated multifamily affordable housing. The five year funding allocation would be $63,700,000, instead of $78,700,000. On page four, it's the language that reads over five years, staff will invest up to 63.7 million, sorry, 63.7 million. That's the change from $78.7 million in clean energy upgrades and new or redeveloped regulated multifamily affordable housing. And then on page five, restore original funding allocation to strategic program 13 targeted electric vehicle financing tools. The five year funding allocation would be restored as. As originally was, up to $35 million. And the notes on both of these is that. And again, this would be one amended amendment, but that the recommendation is this requires further staff analysis because there are other red line changes in exhibit a that relate to those those changes in allocations, specifically in the goal measures section, investment strategy and probably some of the program description. And so that would require and this means staff analysis from probably from the bureau from from PCEF.
97 Thank you. Claire. Can I have a motion to approve that amendment? The effect of that would mean that we're postponing the decision in the 15 million. In effect, it would be left with the second. Yep. We need a motion first.
98 So moved.
99 I thought you made a chair. Sorry.
100 I kind of think the chair isn't supposed to make the motion. I would, but can we councilor Ryan, can we consider you too? Made a motion?
101 I'm fine being either the so moved or the second. Okay, I think I think give it to us. Yeah.
102 Second.
103 No I don't.
104 That wasn't your voice. Okay. Sorry.
105 Yeah. I didn't think council moved.
106 Councilor Morillo here. I can second this.
107 Okay.
108 I ask a question.
109 Yeah, councilor.
110 Confirmation on that. If we move this money back, there's no risk that it's going to get used in some other way before we get a chance to talk about it.
111 No, there's absolutely no risk of that. In fact, the entire reason this is before us is that money was not being used, and there's no prospect of it being used.
112 Copy that. Thank you.
113 Okay. The motion has been moved and seconded. Diego, could you call the roll?
114 We had a motion by councilor Moody. Sorry. Councilor Ryan, second from councilor Morillo Avalos.
115 Please restate what this vote is.
116 This vote would be to basically to say that we're not going to now adopt the recommendation to move the 15 million. So I'm assuming your vote is no councilor Avalos.
117 My vote is no.
118 Kanal.
119 Yes.
120 Ryan. I Morillo. I Novick. I with four eyes and one nay. The amendment to exhibit a is approved.
121 And I think that I think the next thing to do is to ask for a motion to approve to send to council with a recommendation for adoption the amendment package as amended.
122 The ordinance as amended. Yeah. So can I have a motion to that effect?
123 Point of information. Does that mean that the committee will be discussing this again on.
124 This or that's that's my intent. Yeah. And my intent would be to inform the full council what we've been doing and say we're moving this without we expect further discussion of that.
125 15 councilor Novick. Sorry if you are folding in the amendment to have further discussion, but do not want to move it to full council, then you I mean you.
126 But I thought our goal here today was to move the package to full council, which simply doesn't include that $15 million amendment that proposed.
127 Right? That's correct. I heard councilor Kanal asking if the committee would specifically be discussing again.
128 So I do expect the committee to subsequently take up the discussion of that 15 million, which right now is going to be sitting in the ev pool. But meanwhile, we'd want the full council to approve all the technical amendments. Okay.
129 Thank you.
130 So can I have a motion to move the package as we just amended it to full council with the recommendation to be adopted.
131 Given that clarification. So moved.
132 Second.
133 Diego, could you call the roll?
134 Avalos.
135 No.
136 Yes.
137 Ryan.
138 Thank you so much for that clarification.
139 I Morillo. I Novick. I with four I's and one nay. The motion carries to send to full council the ordinance as amended, with a recommendation to pass.
140 Thank you so much. And we're only two minutes late. Diego, could you please read the next item?
141 Item three accept the 2024 2025 parks levy and parks levy oversight committee annual report.
142 Sonia, director sonia shymansky just went to the restroom. She'll be here shortly. Sam. Do you have anything? No. You're good.
143 I've got a. Coffee or beer. Yeah, whatever.
144 Please proceed.
145 Sorry. Good morning. Thank you for hosting us. I'm sonia shymansky, interim director for Portland parks and recreation. I'm happy to be joined by public works dca donna paul in the audience and available for questions, as well as levy coordinator claire flynn and virtually by parks levy oversight committee member jacob van balen, who joined the committee this past July. The item before you today proposes that you accept the 20 2425 parks levy annual report from the parks bureau and the 20 2425 parks levy oversight committee. Annual report from the committee and refer the item to full council. The reports include key actions, financial information and performance measures from July 24th through June 25th. We are now in year five of the 2020 levy, and we look forward to implementing the 2025 levy beginning July 1st. Knowing our job is to continue showing value to portlanders in year four of the parks, levy, we saw continued or increased community impact across the levy commitments and are particularly excited about increases in volunteerism, attendance, and proactive care of park trees. And we're pleased that an independent performance audit published in December 2024 confirmed that levy funds were used for their intended purposes, and that the bureau has good tracking and financial systems. Many thanks to the parks levy oversight committee for their work this past year, and for their insight and input as we look toward the next parks levy oversight committee. And of course, the impact you'll hear about today is all thanks to staff and volunteers in Portland parks and recreation, hundreds of whom show up each day to tend to our system with expertise and care so that it remains a place of comfort, connection and safety for portlanders. The 2020 parks levy was approved by Portland voters in November 2020 for a term of five years. It's a property tax of $0.80 per $1,000 of assessed value. We are currently in year five, fiscal year 26 being the final year, and we are pleased to be rolling into year one of the 2025 levy beginning beginning in July. Today we start with a short presentation from jacob van baalen, a member of the oversight committee, who will tell you about their annual report.
146 Thank you, director szymanski, and thank you, councilors, for hosting us. My name is jacob van baalen. I'm a member of the oversight committee, and I'm here today to share our committee's fourth annual report, which is a response to fiscal year 2425, parks levy, annual report, and then Portland parks and recreation actions in that fiscal year. We are a committee of five community members. We meet quarterly. Our role is reviewing information and verifying compliance with and progress towards the purposes of the parks levy, advising on transparency and communication strategies, and then to counsel on the annual report. My peers in the committee right now are josh norton, mayor rubel, silas sanderson, and tim williams. Our meetings are open to the public and we accept public comment. Our report is structured in three main sections. The first is adherence to ballot language. We found that the bureau adhered to ballot language and made progress on all 15 ballot commitments during year for the independence performance performance audit showed that levy funds were used in compliance with voter approved commitments. We commend ppr for a clean parks levy audit with no findings, no recommendations, and we celebrate that validation of paas framework and their implementation. Year four saw groundwork that laid in the initial years of the parks levy really paying off with increased performance. We feel it's important to acknowledge the impact of the 2020 parks levy. Basic services like restroom cleaning, trash pickup, community centers. Staying open would not be happening without parks levy, so we encourage people to continue to share how those levy funds are essential to a healthy Portland. We're also excited to see the new key performance indicator dashboard for the new 2025 parks levy. We believe that will be really helpful in communicating performance and accountability. We also found and find that nrw is fiscally accountable to in tracking parks, levy dollars in a transparent, auditable and effective way. Our contracts parks levy expenditures at a variety of levels, and this was validated in that independent audit. The 2020 levy was approved by voters to be additive funds for parks, parks and recreation services. General fund cuts mean that parks levy is relied on more heavily to support operations, and undermines the ability to fulfill commitments made to voters. So we really want to caution reliance on the parks levy and an erosion of the impacts of the parks levy by through those general fund cuts, by overreliance on the parks levy. We're also aware of the enormous unfunded need for capital maintenance to maintain parks and recreation facilities, trails and park lands. We support continued emphasis on identifying additional funding to address the condition of those existing assets. And then finally, we encourage Portland parks and recreation to glean those lessons learned from those early years of the parks levy ramp up period. So those 2020, 2021, to better understand efficiency and improve efficiency where possible. And then for transparency, parks has been responsive to the feedback of our group of the oversight committee. Particularly, we recommended additional new and visual communication methods to show parks levy performance. And in year four, those performance measure graphs are a huge element of the annual report, as you'll see, and they really help to communicate parks levy's impact over time. We were also really encouraged to see the completion of the community needs survey, the 2024 community needs survey, and that led us to suggest adjustments to levy supported programs based on those survey results. Really big example is not being aware of program offerings is cited as a major barrier to participating in parks offerings, so we encourage people to broaden those communication efforts so that portlanders are aware of the benefit, the community benefits that the that park has to offer. Overall, we were pleased with year four of the 2020 parks levy, and we emphasized that the critical nature of this funding for functioning parks and recreation system that supports the well-being of portlanders. I want to thank city council for continued support of the parks levy, and I really look forward to future years of success. With that, I'm going to turn it over to claire flynn, who will present an overview of the bureau's parks levy annual report.
147 Thank you. Jacob. Good morning. My name is claire flynn, and I'm the levy coordinator for Portland parks and recreation. And I am presenting the bureau's levy report for this previous fiscal year, fiscal year 2425, which was year four of the parks levy. The report shares key actions, financials and performance measures for the 15 commitments included in the parks levy, ballot title and explanatory statement. Each of the commitments is nested into one of three larger service categories recreation for all, protect and grow, nature and community partnerships. Performance measures are included to show impact of the parks levy year over year and as an operating levy. The parks levy is spent through a leveraged funding model in which general fund is blended with parks levy funding, so parks levy dollars support a portion of all eligible operational expenses. The full report, specifically appendix d, breaks out the spending by the amount of levy spending as well as the total spending to deliver services, so every dollar is accounted for throughout the report. We also include interviews and stories of staff, partners and participants to show anecdotal impact of the parks. Levy recreation for all means increasing access to recreation by reducing costs as a barrier, ensuring service continuity and centering, programing and outreach on underserved communities. Thanks to the parks levy, we were successful in preventing cuts and closures to recreation programs and facilities. Community centers were able to remain open and we were able to provide programing. Gene and hattie gray spoke to their positive family experience, attending programs and drop in activities at southwest community center. Safely provided swim lessons, camps and classes, fitness in the park, pop up concerts, free lunch and play, and other popular programing. In year four, we serve students through the schools to pools initiative, providing free swim instruction and also increased participation in free lunch and play and outdoor fitness classes. Teen force staff xavier and dear and participant mike spoke to impact and importance of team programing and spaces that bring community and teens together. In year four, we saw continued increase of people using paas registration system and total estimated attendance increased across a variety of programs. Two main elements of removing financial barriers to programing are the access discount and free programing. Nearly 19,000 portlanders, which is 26% of all participants, received $4.7 million in financial assistance through the access discount program. Collects demographic and income data of access discount users to understand who is accessing financial assistance. 75% of users self-identified as living at or below the current Oregon poverty line. Our next session is protect and grow nature, which means making parks and facilities cleaner, better maintained, safer and more welcoming. For all. These two commitments are focused on natural features and natural areas and the benefits that they provide. Trail maintenance provides valuable care for natural features and areas, and volunteers help to care for our natural areas through the natural area stewardship program. Ed kerns with the springwater restoration project, funded through the community partnership program, shared the impact of our funding and improving habitat while connecting youth to nature. In year four, over 6500 youth participated in environmental education programing. These programs are critical to connecting youth to nature and fostering a sense of stewardship in Portland communities. Dnr's community gardens programs give portlanders like joseph the opportunity to steward, land and connect with nature and community. Packer keeps over 150 developed parks functional and welcoming to portlanders by cleaning, landscaping, by cleaning, landscaping, performing maintenance, and more. Terrance, a north zone park technician, shared his daily activities and the impact he feels when caring for portland's parks. Both hours spent on restroom cleaning, care and maintenance, as well as total staff maintenance hours, continued to increase in year four. The park tree maintenance program, which was made possible with the parks levy, performed proactive maintenance on over 2600 park trees. Ppr is also leveraging resources from the Portland clean energy community benefits fund to plant new trees, which has increased plantings. Packer collected natural area condition move forward with a new volunteer management system to improve volunteer engagement and tracking, and is also in the process of replacing the old work order system. These efforts will improve internal efficiencies and cost effectiveness. Our final large category is community partnerships. Community partnerships are critical to centering the community in decision making and oversight, and to deliver an equitable parks and recreation system for all portlanders. The parks levy oversight committee, as you heard, continued to review and advise on fiscal accountability, adherence to ballot language, and transparency. Also in year four, we had the independent performance audit that found that parks levy funds were properly used to meet ballot commitments, and that ppr had the financial and management systems in place for clean stewardship of parks levy funds. Project connect initiative increased engagement and outreach to portlanders to connect more people to recreation offerings, and the community partnership program and teen collaborative initiative reached over 7000 youth and provided space to organizations like kids in tennis and girls on the run who shared their experience and the importance of accessing ppr spaces to provide their programing. We saw increased grants to partner organizations, as well as increased volunteer hours which help maintain parks, provide programing, and foster strong community partnerships. Ppr successfully delivered parks and recreation services to a wide variety of users and implemented initiatives such as lifelong recreation, teen force english as a learning language, and adaptive and inclusive recreation. This is a high level summary of parks levy funding spent in fiscal year 2425. The sum of total expense is the total expenditures minus any program. Revenue of services that receive parks levy funding, and the parks levy portion of expense is the amount of that total expense value that was funded by the parks levy. Using the leveraged funding model per city council direction in the ballot referral, the parks levy was also required to reimburse the Portland children's levy for compression impact, so with that, the total amount of parks levy funding spent in fiscal year 2425 was $63.77 million. This parks levy spending was more than the 47, almost $48 million that came in from the parks levy revenues in year four, so 12.76 million from the existing parks levy balance, which was generated from underspending in years one through three, was used in year four. In year four, parks levy funded 36% of dnr's overall operational spending. I also want to call out that at the end of the report. Appendix d has a detailed list of service area and workgroup expenses and the detailed amount of parks levy funding supporting each combination. We also publish a line item expense details document that further breaks down the parks levy. Spending by category personnel, external materials and services, and internal materials and services. So these detailed breakdowns really report where parks levy dollars are spent. We're excited about the progress made in year four of the parks levy, and are grateful for the support of the parks levy oversight committee and city council. That concludes our presentation. So with that, I'll open it up to questions and discussion.
148 Colleagues, colleagues. Any questions?
149 Councilor Ryan.
150 Thank you, chair. Novick. Great report. I always have to remember this is a look back a rear view mirror. And so sometimes I have trouble with that. I wanted to just highlight one item that is looking back, but also looking forward for improvement. I found the more I would ask questions about the access pass, I would become more confused. I think it's important to not have subsidies for all, but I do think it's important to have access for all. I think that those that are truly low income need to be targeted for attaining this access pass. And the way it was always explained to me over and over and over again, was that one size doesn't fit all. And my experience in life is that those who probably have means to pay the fees are going to also be the most equipped to attain such a benefit. And so I've always been puzzled by it. And I hope that as we before we go forward and we start drawing from the new levy that was passed, that we make an adjustment to that system. If we don't see more earned revenue coming into parks, we will be in a very uncomfortable situation five years from now in our levy conversations. And so we have to do everything we can to increase earned revenue and also to increase partnership revenue through, through, through through grants and such. So is there is there any been conversation about the access pass and with some relatively critical lens so that we can make some improvements to that going forward?
151 Thank you. Councilor, this is sonja. The answer is yes, prompted in part by hearing from you and your colleagues interest in reviewing that program, revisiting, refining to make sure that we're optimizing between revenue and access so that we're providing, as you say, access for all, but with an eye toward revenue. I saw our oversight committee partner, jacob, nodding. I wonder if you want to contribute to that. We've talked about it with this oversight committee, and I think with the parks board, we haven't begun work in earnest on that. But it's on the list, and I anticipate we'll start that soon.
152 Thank you so much, director shymansky. I didn't see you because now there you are. The screen is now on you. I appreciate that, and, gee, I feel listened to. Obviously you've heard me say this a few times going on, going back three years, so I appreciate it. Hi, jacob.
153 Yes, we've discussed that on the oversight committee, I think at a few different levels, both the conceptual level where we're a little curious about who's getting the access, and then also just on the descriptive statistics level, right, getting more access to what's the median use, who's the median user? What programs are they being. Is that going to you know, we on the oversight committee see that these costs are accounted for in expenses through other for other programs. But getting more dialed into actually what programs are being used for the access program is something that our committee was making recommendations on going forward. So we can get a little more insight there.
154 Now, I appreciate that. What we do know is there are levy dollars subsidizing people who don't meet the low income thresholds. We know that because it's on an honor system, and whether it's a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million, it's levy dollars that could be spent otherwise for accountability and fidelity to what voters thought they voted on. I just think we should really make this a program for low income households. Thank you.
155 Councilor Kanal.
156 Thank you, co-chair Novick. I have a couple quick. Well, one quick question and just a two comments you spoke to why the revenues are exceeded by expenses in year four because of the underspending in years one through three, we should expect that in year five as well. Is that correct?
157 Yes. That's correct.
158 Okay. I just wanted to flag that and I think you did a good job explaining why that happened. And I just wanted to be sure that was on the record broadly. I appreciate the oversight committee's work. I share the belief that we need to do a better job of communicating what specifically the levy is supporting and the tangible benefits for owners as we go forward. I think that will be a little easier in the new levy when we have some of the more minor maintenance projects, capital side as well. Full disclosure I was on the parks board in 2020 for some of the conversations in December around the access discount and that sort of thing where things I was a part of. I do want to just note, I think that and this doesn't apply to everything that that program covers, but the administration costs, all those sorts of things could be made better if we just waived fees for drop in altogether. And I think we should have universal access. I have talked about playing dodgeball in municipal community centers a lot in seattle. We don't do that here. Part of the reason for that is the cost associated with everything here are much higher. And so trying to get to a place where just there's drop in, I understand classes are going to have costs. I agree with councilor Ryan about partnerships and grants and things like that needing to find external revenue. I think the $6, $5 type of of, you know, costs are not necessarily helping to the degree with the budget that we could. And so I just wanted to flag that and give you a chance to talk about it. I know director szymanski, you've had thoughts on it in the past. If you want to share.
159 Well, I think it's a it's an astute and wise suggestion to look into instinctively. It makes a lot of sense. If you're not getting the return for the time you're spending to administer it, and there's a potential or actual barrier to access, it should be frictionless. Coming into our community centers and using and enjoying them. I in my mental list of things to look at in this discount program conversation that's near the top.
160 Thanks. And I know that right now it is a little bit less. It is more frictionless than it might otherwise be. Right now. There's already a lesser level of friction, but that has led to some of the problems that I think, or at least perceived problems that councilor Ryan has talked about in terms of an honor system, not necessarily guaranteeing that it's going that the benefits are going to the right people. Benefits would definitely go to everybody, including those who need it most. If we win that direction of of just not having a drop in fee. Thanks.
161 Councilor Morillo. And I know we've got five minutes to go and I really do want to stop on time.
162 Thanks. Councilor Novick I just wanted to respond to something that councilor Ryan brought up about the low income. You know, we don't do a lot of means testing for people to access parks programs. But as someone who worked on snap benefits before being on city council, I just have to say that means testing requires infrastructure, which requires dollars. So when we need to verify who is low income to see who actually gets to access those programs, that ends up costing us a lot more money than if we do the honor system. And I think that it's actually really special that we have a community of people who are willing to pay, sometimes more, sometimes less, in order to ensure that everybody gets it. And I think that portlanders are trustworthy enough to to use that system well. But yeah, whenever we do means testing, it costs us infrastructure, it costs us money, it costs us time. So thank you.
163 Seeing no one else in the queue, I would like to entertain a motion to have the report document number 20 2640 be sent to the full council. The recommendation to be accepted.
164 So moved.
165 Second councilor Kanal moves I think. Was that councilor Morillo seconding?
166 Yes.
167 Okay. The motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion, will the clerk please call the roll?
168 Apologies. Co-chair Novick just to note.
169 Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that we had no public testimony because nobody signed up for public testimony.
170 That's correct. Thank you. Motion by Kanal. Second by Morillo Avalos. I Kanal. I Ryan. I Morillo. I Novick. I with five eyes. The motion carries and the report document number 2020 6-040 will move to the full council with the recommendation to be accepted.
171 Thanks everybody. Thanks so much. We're actually ending with 2.5 minutes to go. Our next meeting is Thursday, February 12th. And this meeting of the climate, land use and resilience committee is adjourned.