The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-05-07
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (24,083 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On May 7 (per the transcript, described as a Thursday), the Portland City Council held a work session covering the second part of the Community and Economic Development service area's budget presentations, including the Office of the Deputy City Administrator, Spectator Venues, the Office of Arts and Culture, Prosper Portland, the Children's Levy, and the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF). Presentations covered organizational realignment of staff into centralized service functions, budget figures for each program, and proposed decision packages, including the Downtown Market Initiative, permit improvement funding, arts grant restorations and reductions, workforce program funding changes at Prosper Portland, and PCEF administrative staffing additions. Figures presented for certain items, including PCEF budget totals and FTE counts, were stated inconsistently depending on how program scope was defined. Discussion topics included spectator venue leases and management transitions, downtown marketing and small business grant programs, workforce and IBRN funding reductions, graffiti abatement, tree code compliance staffing, possible PCEF funding for Moda Center renovations, budget authority over PCEF, communication and information access between bureaus and Council, and contracting oversight. Votes were referenced as occurring in related council actions, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The session adjourned with further work sessions and an executive session scheduled.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good morning. I am now calling to order this work session of the Portland city council. It is Thursday, may 7th at 9:30 a.m. Bing. Colleagues, we have a tight timeline today. Again, as we do every time we show up on this dais, we're going to be hearing from the the second part of our community and economic development service area. As I mentioned, we have we have three well, we have four big areas to get through today. We have the d, cas office, the spectator venues, arts prosper children's levy and Portland clean energy fund. In three separate presentations there is. I'll be direct. There's not enough time for everyone to speak on every topic today. This service area is too large and too diverse to be handled in two days, at least not with its current organizational chart. So you all have the agenda which shows the timeline. So you should have the agenda. I don't know that you do. We need to finish our work today, so please maintain situational awareness so we can collectively do the work we need to do. So I'm going to welcome up dc a donnie oliveira. And as we've done, johnny, would you rather do all the presentations and then q&a or would you rather do presentation, q&a, presentation, q&a?
1 Thank you for the question, councilor. Council president, it's.
2 I would say do all the presentation, then go to q&a, get it all out of the way. Okay.
3 Let's do that then. So we're going to hear all of our presentations and then we will jump in. So take it away.
4 All right. Thank you. Council president vice president donnie oliveira for the record, this is part two of our service areas presentations to you all. Next slide please. All right. I'll just go to next slide. Let's get through this part fast because we have a lot to cover. So councilors you saw this slide yesterday. But I want to acknowledge that we have updated this slide to shift from showing our proposed budget in millions to billions per councilor Smith's request. So just acknowledging that and once again, just for the for the public who are tuning in today, that's 695 per person number reflects the full service area staff, including prosper Portland staff who are vital part of our service area but are not technically city staff. Next slide please. Again, just showing our organizational structure. Just noting that prosperous prosper Portland is noted distinctly here to reflect their unique partnership with the city. Although they are not a city bureau, they are essential to the work that the city does to deliver community and economic development goals and strategies and directions from this this body. Next slide please. I also shared this slide yesterday, but again, it's important just to reflect for for those watching that, a significant portion of the service area's budget goes directly to community, whether it be through the children's levy, the clean energy fund, arts tax investments, our tax increment financing investments from prosper and the housing bureau. The point is, is that we have a lot of different resources through grants and loans, direct investments that really deliver a resilient, equitable, sustainable and prosperous future for the city of Portland. Next slide please. And again, this slide was shared yesterday. Just sharing our financial overview by both bureau and by fund. Obviously the most significant portion here is in bts, which reflects the full balanced budget of the Portland clean energy fund. Okay. Next slide. Okay. This is the first new slide of the day. This reflects the changes to our service areas, staffing capacity through the core services realignment. You'll notice that the most significant transfer is in the technology area, which is largely coming out of permitting development and bts. A majority of the staff, though, will stay in their home bureaus to support the specific needs of the bureaus. But this is a part of the citywide strategy to gain more efficiency through realignment and core services model. I think what we're looking for here, and we've seen this already through communications, which is already been implemented, is a chance for us to balance our resources where they're needed in any particular time. Okay. Next slide please. All right. So this is the beginning of our our content. And I will I will take this one to start before handing it over to the directors to cover their respective areas. So the office of the deputy city administrator is, is my shop that provides the overall service area guidance on policy and project coordination, focusing on on the ability to work with you all in your offices to get things through council, whether it be your policy agendas, whether it be new programs that we're briefing you on, we coordinate that out of the service area. The proposed budget is inclusive of of smaller programs that make up the office of the deputy city administrator. Note the proposed staff includes the fte as a part of the core services realignment. Not all those staff report up. To me, that's those are just we're just capturing that to show that the staff that are moving from the bureaus to the core services at a business ups are just captured in this in this particular way. This for this slide. Next slide please. For our particular budget, a significant portion of the funds that you see here are coming from other funds. And we make a very modest amount of general fund just making up about 2.5 million for the staff and the internal services that make up our, our, our service area. The the key takeaway here is that, you know, when we, when we think about these roles and what we're doing here, it's really in support of our coordination with council and ensuring the bureaus are working on the same page is the idea of a one city model starts with the. The office of the d, c, a and and so forth. Next slide please. And again, this is just the the fte summary will flag again just for situational awareness that that large fte number reflects the realignment positions and really the core group of fte in the dcas offices is six. All right. Next slide please. Okay. Now we're into the decision packages. We wanted to start with this one since it gained some interest. The downtown market initiative is a component of a coordinated multi year recovery strategy focused on downtown. This is focused on overall reputational improvement. It funds several different programs in the downtown area. This has been an ongoing initiative. This is not new. In fact, this is in our current budget that was adopted by council. It has a long history going back to funding from from PBOT, where you see it like in this way, today is a chance for us to to daylight. It it used to be a special appropriation. So it was largely not as explicit as a decision package. So this year for increased transparency, we brought it up. And so you can see it in this way as a decision package out of the service area. It would it would be implemented by prosper Portland. But we wanted to just to daylight that for you here. Next slide please. And this one is more administrative but important just to continue the work of our permit improvement team. This was a group that we spoke quite a bit about yesterday, but as councilor Ryan mentioned, the prior form of government created the permit improvement team to work across the service areas to it says in the name improve our permitting processes. This is a request to carry over the remainder of that, that funding, which is 120,000, that specifically focuses on the digital services division at ppd, which this is us improving our technology systems and how we do our intake for customers with with ntpd. All right. Next slide please. Okay. So now we're specifically talking about spectator venues here. It's a small but mighty team of three that focuses on the oversight of our largest venues. It works on supporting travel and tourism and visitor development efforts. Collectively, these venues that are seen with overseeing the spectator venues program attract millions of visitors every year and generate millions of dollars that support our local economy. The team is led by carlisle, who's our spectator venues program manager and supports the operation of the city owned sports venues through long term agreements that are tailored to each specific venue. So think providence park, moda center, etc. Generally, the city pays for some facility capital costs and debt service associated with major renovations, and receives revenues from ticket fees and parking in the city's garages. The spectator venues program also plays an active role in supporting travel, tourism and economic development through partnerships with our partners at travel Portland and sport Oregon. Next slide please. So this is a breakdown of the of the fund. It's funded through the spectator venues and visitor active activities fund, with the revenue originating from ticket fees, parking revenues and an allocation from the Multnomah county visitor facilities trust account, which is funded by a 2.5% transient lodging tax surcharge and a 2.5% vehicle rental tax surcharge. The program is maintained at about a $30 million base budget. You'll notice that this particular program does not have any decision packages. It's largely self-sustaining, although it did occur. Incur a $287,000 realignment cost, which was fully offset by the contingency from the fund. Next slide please. And this just shows the once again mighty team of three at the spectator venues program. All right. Next slide please. Within the spectator venues fund and activities program, staff will continue providing oversight and planning for the future of the city's venues, including providence park, moda center and the veterans memorial coliseum. The team manages the spectator venues fund to collect revenues from event activities and meet all city financial obligations, including debt service and repair and replacement expenditures. The last phase of the vmc renovation project will be completed this fall, which we're very excited about. And if you haven't had a chance to see the the recently remodeled and renovated building, it's spectacular. I highly encourage it. The team is working with the Portland timbers about sustaining investments in the stadium, which turns 100 years old this year, and in ways to support their efforts to bring more summer concerts to the venue. The goal is to continue to support providence park. It's. It's an excellent condition today, but we know that we need more investments to continue to make it viable through the length of that lease agreement. We also want to acknowledge that as a as a stadium that is largely dependent on people getting there by transit, continuing to support activation around the park is is highly important to the sustained success of both the timbers and thorns. And of course, any concerts that may be hosted there. Unless, of course. And at least this team is leading the work to negotiate a new lease with the Portland trail blazers at the moda center. And that with that, I'm going to turn it over to director montez to talk about the office of arts and culture. Thank you.
5 Good morning, councilors. For the record, my name is charity montez and I'm the director of the office of arts and culture. The office of arts and culture is another small but mighty team of five with a vision of arts and culture at the center of public life in Portland. We support this vision in several ways. First, we tend to the impact of the arts tax, which you heard all about yesterday. We support arts education coordination and help expand access to arts learning for students across portland's public schools. We provide grants and sponsorships to Portland based arts organizations, individual artists and community partners who create public programing, performances, exhibitions and cultural experiences across the city. We also steward some of the city's key cultural assets, including the city owned Portland five centers for the arts, the city's public art collection of more than 1700 works, and the Portland, Oregon side trademark and licensing program. Together, these programs support portland's creative economy and access to the arts and help ensure that arts and culture remain visible and accessible in neighborhoods, schools, public spaces and our civic life. The proposed budget totals approximately 10.6 million to support this body of work, which I will detail in the next slide, please. So this slide provides a high level overview of arts and culture budget. The top line shows the current service level totaling approximately $11.2 million, and the bottom line shows the proposed budget of approximately 10.6 million, which reflects reductions and realignments that I will walk through in the next few slides. Next slide please. This slide shows the office of arts and culture fte summary. The proposed budget does reflect a change to one vacant coordinator position that was moved through the city's realignment project, but the office remains a five person team responsible for arts education, coordination, cultural planning, grant making, public art stewardship, Portland five oversight and the Portland, Oregon sign licensing program. And we work really closely with the office, the grants management division on all of our grant making. Next slide please. So this budget preserves several core services that are central to the office of arts and cultures mission and important to portlanders. First, the office is preserving unrestricted grants for established nonprofit arts organizations through our operating support program. Operating support grantees, demonstrate artistic excellence, provide public programing, serve k-12 students and underserved communities, support creative workers, and contribute to neighborhood vitality. Maintaining this grant program helps provide stability for arts organizations that portlanders rely on for performances, exhibitions, arts, education, and cultural programing throughout the year. Second, although there is a reduction in the number of awards, the office is preserving our small grants program that serves individual artists, emerging arts organizations and arts collectives, culturally specific programing and community based arts activity. The small grants program is key because it provides critical resources for individual artists, and that's not something that all cities provide. It also creates an entry point for artists and groups that may not have the scale, staffing or operating history to participate in larger institutional funding programs. It helps support public facing arts experiences that are often neighborhood based, culturally specific, and directly connected to community. Third, this budget maintains general fund resources for our public art program. This funding helps preserve our ability to steward public art as a core public service. That includes maintaining the city's public art collection, which includes works like the recently reinstalled elk statue, as well as supporting public art planning and capital improvement projects as required by our percent for art code, advancing community informed projects and ensuring that public artworks remain accessible, safe and meaningful in public spaces. Public art is especially important because it reaches portlanders outside of traditional arts venues. It shows up in our parks and civic buildings, in our streets and rights of way and libraries, neighborhood gathering places. It's one of the most visible ways that a city can invest in arts access for the public. Next slide please. So first decision package in the fiscal year 25, 26, budget process bureaus were directed to take an 8% reduction to ongoing general fund resources. The office of arts and culture inadvertently received a double cut during the transition from the vibrant community service area to community and economic development. The proposed budget restores $357,184, which represents the portion of the reduction that was applied twice, and this restoration supports, grants, public activations and the office's ability to provide direct, community facing arts and culture services. Next slide please. And then our second decision package for fiscal year 2627. The proposed budget includes a $373,384 reduction in general fund resources. As I mentioned earlier, the office is preserving our small grants program. However, this reduction will reduce the number of small grants and event sponsorships the office is able to provide. This includes a reduction of approximately 15% to the small grants program. We estimate this reduction will result in approximately 45 to 55 fewer publicly accessible performances, exhibitions, or other works of art available to the community via grantees, and this budget will also result in approximately 5 to 10 fewer community event sponsorships or activations, which is about a reduction of about 35% compared to previous years. Overall, this reduction means fewer opportunities for portlanders to experience arts and culture in their neighborhoods, fewer opportunities for artists and small arts organizations to receive support, and fewer cultural activities that contribute to portland's creative economy. At the same time, the proposed budget preserves the office of arts and cultures, core functions, arts, education coordination, cultural planning, grant making to individual artists and arts organizations, sponsorships and stewardship of the city's cultural infrastructure, including our public art collection, our performing arts venues, and our iconic Portland, Oregon sign. Thank you for your time this morning. That concludes my remarks, and I think I turn it over to director wesley.
6 Good morning. My name is cornell wesley. I serve as the executive director for prosper Portland. As presented on April 21st, prosper portland's fiscal year 2627 proposed budget includes 202 million in planned expenditures across all funding sources. The budget incorporates the mayor's proposed general fund of 13.1 million in ongoing and one time funding, and 3.2 million in recreational cannabis tax, supporting the inclusive business resources network and reimagined grant program. Total staffing is proposed at 94 positions. Next slide. Prosper Portland. Current service level for general fund is 13.4 million. However, this included 2,000,000 in 1 time funding that replaced ongoing funds. Last fiscal year. The mayor's budget includes an additional 1,000,000 in 1 time funding for the storefront program and net reductions of 1.9 million in 1 time funding and ongoing funds from current service level that will discuss in the next slides. Next slide. Total fte in the current year is 104 positions. Expiration of one time general funds. Ongoing spin down of existing tif districts. Slower deployment of siff and delays on new tif factored into our recent reduction in force that is, reducing total positions by ten for fiscal year 2627. This includes 13 existing positions across the agency nine field, four vacant and adding back several new positions to reconfigure the work. The three new positions are in hr and I.t. Replacing several other positions in those areas, and one new position resource development to support new grant and revenue generating approaches to improve long term financial sustainability for the enterprise. Next slide. Of the 94 positions funded in next year's proposed budget, 33 are funded via general fund in ct. This includes the office of small business, the business advancement team, office of events and film inclusive business resource network, reimagined grants, as well as lending and small business support and related back office staff. Also, 40 positions are funded by tif districts, including residential district program income. Ten positions are funded via pcf agreements. Seven positions are funded by cf investment earnings. Three positions are funded. Three positions are funded by other funds such as e zone or other contracts. Overall, of the 94 positions, approximately 63 are budgeted as direct program delivery and 31 as administration and indirect includes hr, finance policy, I.t. Procurement and a significant portion of comms. Legal, exec and overall department management. Next slide. The general fund reductions focused on maintaining the following. The office of small business, a new office that has successfully successfully addressed community needs for centralized intake, navigation and resource support. With strong momentum and scaling, this small team of four has worked with nearly 700 companies in their first year. Secondly, the office of events and film critical to leveraging private investment in foot traffic and economic impact around cultural events and film production in 2025 provided support for 43 events, which drove more than 782,000 visits and leveraged more than 9 million in industry investment in fiscal year 2425, film navigation provided support for 107 productions and generated 191 million in local spend as compared to arts and culture event support. The office of film events and film provides both technical assistance via grants and technical assistance via permitting navigation to event and film producers. We prioritize activations in the central city and neighborhood business districts that stimulate small business spending and other economic activity. The office leverages corporate and other private sector engagement, technical assistance on the event side can also include facets of event support from initial event planning and site logistics, coordination with city partners, event promotion and marketing and impact tracking, post-production. Thirdly, the business advancement team continuing to build industry ecosystems is essential to population growth and quality. Job creation our priority industries are major employers and contributors to the city's gdp and to our tax base. Over the last two years, the business advancement team has supported our targeted industry clusters to achieve 52 retention, expansion or recruitment projects. Over 600 new living wage jobs for portlanders and $240 million in new private investment into our city. Next slide. 1 million added as one time funding in the mayor's proposed budget will support implementation of the storefront prosperity investment program grants city wide. The funds implemented across Portland will complement prosper's existing tif district programing for grants and tif districts, and through the use of some allocated program income in the new tif districts. The funds provide matching funds for tenant improvements, including. Downtown. Grant funds can support both facade improvements, including signage and interiors such as paint, flooring and shelving. 800,000 of this funding will go to these tenant improvements and would provide up to 100,000 for grocery stores, 50,000 for new restaurants and up to 25,000 for other retail businesses. 200,000 of this funding will be reserved for ongoing repair grants. Grant funds can be used for both external and internal repairs, such as window and door replacement, as well as security prevention and insurance premium increases. This strategy captures the vision of activation and the ongoing commitment to reactivating our commercial spaces across Portland and supporting our small business community. Some staffing impacts expected the workforce program delivery add back will provide some resource support to support implementation. Next slide. With the expiration of 2,000,001 time funds, the mayor is requesting an add back of $1.3 million in ongoing funds to support the adult and youth workforce development programs. The remaining 1.8 million of expiring funds is part of the recent reduction in force that is reducing 10% of prosper's workforce, supporting economic and urban development activities. Next slide. Reductions to existing ongoing funding include impacts to workforce development and small business technical assistance for 798,000, a 260,000 reduction is with workforce. A 532,000 reduction is with ibn. However, when combined with other expiring one time funding from 2526. The net impact to workforce programing will be closer to 445,000, eliminating service to an entire program or reducing service in all three programs. Currently, the total number of participants served by each program are 600 adult economic opportunity program participants, 500 youth participants through next gen 250 adult workforce participants through the community workforce navigator. Now, since the release of the mayor's proposed budget, we are working with our partners at work systems about how to minimize the programmatic impacts of a budget cut of this size. Next slide. The 532,000 reduction to ibn would eliminate 2 to 3 partners from the network, reducing community based capacity for business advising and technical assistance, and likely affecting partner staff. The reduced capacity from fewer contracted partners would eliminate technical assistance and business advising. Access for 175 small business owners from the 600 total currently served each year across the network. I will now pass to director mcelroy.
7 Thank you, director wesley, for the record. My name is meg mcelroy. I'm the interim director of the children's levy. I use she her pronouns, and I want to take a moment of gratitude before I get started with my formal comments to say thank you to the councilors and city staff who extended yesterday's city council meeting to hear testimony on ordinance 2020 2026 132. Thank you. The Portland children's levy works to increase opportunity for portland's children. Its goals are to prepare children for school, to support their success in and out of school, and to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in their success and well-being, as required by the authorizing legislation approved by Portland voters. The children's levy grants funds to specific program services for children prenatal up to age 24 and their families in six areas of focus after school child abuse prevention intervention, early childhood foster care, hunger relief and mentoring. For context, in fiscal year 2425, the children's levy grant funded services reached over 20,000 children and their families. The children's levy fiscal year 2627 budget includes 6.9 fte. To implement the functions of the levy, which are grantmaking, grants, management, community engagement and administration of the levy. The total proposed budget for fiscal year 2627 is 33.8 million. Next slide please. The children's levy fiscal year 2627 budget of 33.8 million includes all costs associated with current multi-year grant obligations and contingency for pending allocation. Committee grant decisions that are being considered by city council through ordinance 2026 132. It includes costs for grants, management and community engagement, and the budget also includes administration such as levy, financial management, oversight and staff supervision. The children's levy does not receive any funding from the general fund. All resources and grants. Excuse me. All resources for grants and administration are under the children's investment fund, which was established in 2003 to account for all revenues and expenditures related to the children's levy. Revenue from the levy is legally required to be spent on grants that support children and families, and cannot be used for other purposes. Next slide please. All fte who support the children's levy are funded by the levy as shown in the table under the core services realignment, the change in current service level is one fte. The levy communications director, fte is now part of the city communications office and the city operations service area, and the position remains embedded in the children's levy bureau. While that position is no longer budgeted and levy personnel, the costs associated are part of the levy budget contingency. As we understand it, a cost model is being developed for bureaus to contribute towards centralized realigned services. Next slide please. As required by the levy authorizing legislation, the allocation committee is presenting grant. Recent grant decisions to city council for consideration. Budget decisions by the levy's allocation committee continue to support community priorities for children's programing in the levy six program areas that I mentioned earlier. The levy does not have any decision packages for city council as part of this budget process. Children's levy fiscal year 2627 budget, as I said, includes contingency for pending allocation. Committee grant decisions being considered by council through ordinance 2026 132 and again, the children's levy does not receive general fund. All resources used by the levy are from the children's investment fund. I'll now pass it over to director engstrom.
8 Thank you. Excuse me. Good morning again. For the record, my name is Eric engstrom. I'm the director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. And as you all know, we talked about the rest of bts yesterday. So I'm going to skip over some of the overview about what the bureau does and dive right into pcf. As I do that, I want to say one thing up front about terminology. You're going to see me refer to the pcf core administrative team a few times in the presentation. And what I mean by that is that that's the core team within baps that's managing the overall program. That does not include folks in other bureaus that are doing pcf work. It doesn't include pcf funded positions or work in the c, f o office or other baps funded activities like our bureau administration or our climate team, which received some pcf money. So I want to just get that clear about terminology and then also want to acknowledge that depending on how you query the system, you may get slightly different answers in terms of how many fte or the overall pcf budget and the difference the range there is, because if you query the just the piece of program, you'll get one answer. But if you query the pcf funded activities, you'll get another answer. And so when you look at the fte numbers, you're going to see here in bts, the pcf numbers range from 47 to 55 fte. And that's because depending on whether you're looking at that core team only or the pcf funded positions. And then similarly with the overall budget, you're going to see numbers in various places that range from 695 million to 712 million. Same explanation. It depends if you're looking at the core pcf program or if you're including all pcf funded activities. So I just wanted to start with that because it can be confusing. Next slide please. As I said yesterday, pcf accounts for about 90% of baps budget, around 700 million. That. I also want to make it clear that that number includes the roughly $425 million fund balance, which is the set aside for future years. It's the ending fund balance, the unallocated balance. That's what's set aside for future years of the cip that we have in hand. So the actual budget for the year, you have to subtract that. And again, this is the overall budget. What you're seeing here. Next slide. So diving into specifics of pcf, this given the broad collection and long term commitments of the climate investment plan, this is a complex budget. The budget shown here includes current and future years. As I mentioned, it subtracts out also some direct payments we make through the water bureau and bureau of environmental services. Those transfers function slightly differently than some of the other bureaus that receive pcf money that that received the money directly into their budget because of the ratepayer nature there, so that those are in dps's budget. But I'm not I've excluded them from this slide. So again, it's around 695, inclusive of the 425 million of future year work. Next slide. So this shows all of bpes and the pcf specific funded staff. Again, that's all the staff in dps that are pcf funded. It includes some of the folks that are in our bureau administration. And that's largely the realignment you're seeing there. The reduction is that there was one communications staffer in our pcf program that was realigned and cut in the in the communications realignment that occurred earlier this year. So the rest of the realignment, pcf is shown there. The six this includes staff from hr, tech services, communications finance and our director's office that. That was the subject, obviously, of the realignment work, the additions. The proposed budget includes a package to add four fte to the pcf administrative team, the core administrative team, and then there's one fte in that decision package. Additionally, that is for bureau administration. And again, the people that are being realigned will be embedded still within the overall service area internal services team that donnie spoke of earlier. So they'll still be serving the the ceds team overall and including some that are dedicated to pcf. Next slide. So this dives more into bp's operating budget for pcf. Again, if you exclude the 425 million that set aside, I left that off this chart. So you can see more accurately what's actually being spent this year. This does show the 26 million going to the general fund from interest in the Green. This will require, by the way, code action, a code change as you did last year in order for it to be implemented. Although the pcf staff team has grown in recent years, it remains fairly small as a proportion of our overall spending. That's in the dark blue there. The 9.5 million piece of code limits us to 12%, I believe, as the administrative overhead. And we're we're tracking at 8% something right now. So we're well below that. The contracts and iga portion includes funding for the collaborating for climate action grants, strategic programs, and capacity building support. This is the gold and largest portion examples of the kinds of things that are being covered this year under that include the agreements with the school districts which which are now getting underway. Our contract for the bike program, which is also launched several fairly large contracts that were launched last year for building energy programs, both the single family retrofits and the affordable multifamily retrofits. The other category there, the 44 million in tan, includes. That's the miscellaneous column that includes transfers going to prosper, which are treated a little bit differently because prosper is outside the city. So those have to be shown in our external or as an iga, essentially. And then this includes some bureau of fleet and facilities for the cutter garage, administrative functions, including the overhead and things like that that they're paying into the city and bts. Next slide. So again, you all know this, but the climate investment plan is the roadmap that drives our overall investments over the five year period, including allocations to the various bureaus and grant programs, outcomes and goals that advance climate action and resilience across Portland. The funding pathways in the cip include the collaborating for climate action grants, the strategic programs I've talked about, and then the the community grants and of course, the direct funding to the bureaus. The cip, as you know, is updated annually to be responsive, accountable, and aligned with community needs. And program performance and updates are recommended by the PCEF committee to city council. And as you wrap up this budget process, we will be launching the next 2026 cip amendment process this summer, with the goal of sending the next set of recommendations to you at the end of the year into the calendar year. Next slide. You've seen this before. In some form. This shows the current distribution of the climate investment plan funding across our primary funding areas as defined by code. These buckets were determined by the community through their input into the cip. As you've discussed a number of times, they're not necessarily exactly matched to the percentage of our carbon emission sources. And as you know, the cip was assembled in several stages. So I know a number of you have pointed out that there hasn't been that holistic look of of how that all lines and the next cip will give us that better view. I think, as you can see, over half the cip resources are allocated for renewable energy and energy efficiency, followed by transportation and Green infrastructure investments. Well, this chart reflects where we are today. We know that you have interest in seeing sfs transportation, decarbonization investments better reflected, given the scale of emissions in that sector. And as we consider future adjustments in 2027 and 2028, we want to be thoughtful about not only where the additional investment is needed, but where the projects can be realistically delivered within the current investment period through June 2029. And again, the next cip will will allow us to step back. Beyond that, we're going to continue to work with council, the subcommittee and bureau partners to identify opportunities that are climate aligned, equity centered and feasible, and responsible to fund. Next slide. This is by the breakdown by the implementer. And as you can see, PCEF contributes to many services within the city. And I want to take a moment to just thank the community for their vision that allows PCEF to contribute to these ongoing core city services, where there is clear alignment with the pcf mission. If not for that, that many core programs and functions would go unfunded to call out a few programs that fit within this. It's where we fund the housing bureau to make sure affordable housing developments are energy efficient and more sustainable. It's also where we fund PBOT to make investments in safer cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, and it's where we fund urban forestry to do groundbreaking work, to taking on the management of the city's street trees. To remove that burden from residents. We talked about tree permitting yesterday, too, but pcf is also making a large direct investment in tree planting and tree care. And you can see significant investments in our community grants, externally managing managed contracts like the bike program and the schools, school districts and TriMet. Next slide. This slide summarizes the decision package I meant. I mentioned earlier to add four positions to the pcf administrative core team. And as noted earlier, one overall goes to bureau administration. These positions overall will strengthen sfs infrastructure as the program continues to grow in scale and complexity. And I want to emphasize that this is planned growth as we scale up to match the scale of the community's investment. Remember, we started with one staff in 2019. As we move into 2027, we are getting closer to our intended long term sustainable scale. The two of these new positions will support our internal operating standards and provide a clearer structure for pcf reporting, and will also serve as leads to start developing the next cip beginning in 2027. The other two positions will expand grants and contracts, administration capacity to support timely, consistent and accountable implementation. Next slide. I want to just take a moment to remind you what the core team does at bts. I'm not going to read off all these things, but just to say this group provides oversight for over $350 million of funding. That's in the budget this year. This is a tremendous amount of work that goes into ensuring accountability for that level of outgoing funds. Next slide. So pcf will continue to to grow in the coming year. The slide reflects examples of pcf supported projects that will continue the community grant program. The heart of pcf's work will continue to award and fund projects led by community based organizations. The recently launched e-bike program will scale up this year and get more low income portlanders navigating our neighborhoods, businesses, and workplaces in ways that are cleaner and more affordable. We'll continue to make efficient home upgrades for vulnerable and low income portlanders to scale up our clean energy infrastructure investments across Portland school districts. That work is just now getting underway, which I'm very excited about. Having school aged kids agreements have also been signed for the affordable multifamily program, which will launch this fall. And that's an important element of our overall effort to decarbonize multifamily buildings and provide more affordable housing and more affordable utility bills for renters. The round, one of the clean industry hub grants will also launch this fall. And as I noted earlier, PCEF committee will grapple with another annual cip amendment process starting this summer. And that concludes my remarks.
9 Council president, that's a wrap for us. So we're open to q&a.
10 Okay, colleagues, let's hop in the queue. Colleagues, I'm gonna ask you all to keep to five minutes. You're welcome to jump back in the queue after that. Start with councilor Green.
11 Thank you so much, donnie and the rest of the team for the update. I know there's a lot. You have a very large service area. I guess I just have one question as I'm digging through these. The position reports in this proposed budget, I just I'm curious in the spectators function, is there a reason why that the leader of that group is a manager? One great question. There's two direct reports there. Yeah. Great question councilor. That's sort of a product of a team that existed in the old form of government that got separated. Arts and culture. Sorry. And spectator was once one unit and it made a little bit more sense. And then we separated those two. And it is you were touching on something that hopefully in the next fiscal year, we'll be able to work with the city administrator on is is addressing some of the smaller units and the appropriate size of what that means. But that's a function of of I'm just use his name because you mentioned it. It's carlisle who's the spectator venue's manager. He's been a manager one and we haven't addressed that with the change of government. Appreciate that answer. I mean, I obviously it's awkward when you're talking about a specific person, but I do I do note that, you know, in the city of Portland, there's 198 manager roles. And in this proposed budget, there's only one reduction at a manager, one level. And that's beyond the scope of you. This is the city wide thing. But I'm, you know, talking about it in the context of the choices we've had to make in this in this budget. Meanwhile, we did cut 34 public safety specialists. And so I'm just airing that out. It was helpful for me to hear from you that this is just sort of a legacy of, of organizational changes. You know, that's sort of a role to me, seems like it should fall in an analyst series because it's a, it's a may supervisor, not a must supervise. So I think that was my one question on, on your presentation and I'll let it go from there. Thanks.
12 Thank you, councilor Green, councilor Smith.
13 Thank you.
14 Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I had a question about summer works and next gen. Next gen you are funding. And I'm wondering is that a work systems for the apprenticeship programs or is that something else?
15 So next gen is is in partnership with our workforce systems. It's the youth focused workforce program, fiscal year 24, 25, 84% of the participants were considered low income and 67% were bipoc. Of these participants, 193 received employment opportunities and 359 completed their geds for high school diplomas. Now, both eop and nextgen programs use city funding through prosper, combined with other federal and state resources that I can access.
16 Okay, so I just wanted to go for the record. Thank you for that, that I will be proposing an amendment to the mayor's budget for summer works, which faced drastic cuts in this budget. It reduced its funding from 776 to 244,000. And I believe that this vital program not only offers critical work experience for bipoc youth and from low income families and neighborhoods, but also places many of our participants at city hall and city of Portland bureaus. Last year, we passed the resolution to designate programs like summer works as a priority in our budget and workforce development initiatives, and I propose funding for this amendment to come from the million dollars in the cannabis revenue allocated within the transportation department that was in the restricted funds, that was moved by the mayor to close the gap of $171 million. Allocating these marijuana funds to summer works. It will ensure that we continue to support underserved youth and communities effectively. Thank you.
17 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Novick.
18 Thank you, mr. President. I've got about five questions. And so in order to get them all out in five minutes, I'd ask each of you to, like, give me the short answer. Maybe you can give me the long answer later. One is in terms of the tree permitting program that we have tree strategic programs within PCEF. So I just want to know if consideration was given to taking some of the money from the current tree program and using it to save the jobs of the tree permitting program.
19 Thank you for the question, counselor. I'll take a stab first. And Eric, please contribute. Counselor, when we move the program from parks to p p and the emphasis was landing on the directive of council, right. So we didn't start to contemplate a different funding model. We took the resources that were directed with the responsibilities, and we said, this is the program we can build now that we know what the gap is. Absolutely. And I think I alluded to this yesterday, but p and d and park staff have started having the conversations about are there resources that parks can send over in addition to the approximately 3.8 million that is now at p, p and d? And then the last thing I was able to say yesterday that I wish I would have the. The trade off, of course, is a substantial part of the urban forestry investment from PCEF was to both the planting of new trees and the care of trees. So it was really emphasis on the canopy itself. And while obviously the title 11 support and the permit is incredibly important, we're talking about trade offs of planting less trees for more regulation, which is important. I just want to say that's a conversation that the bureaus are going to have to have to, to rightsize that.
20 I really appreciate that. Now, last year we had a cip amendment come to us that was basically, well, there's some programs that are underspending. So the committee looked at that and decided to shift the money to somewhere else. And then I came in saying, well, what about other places you can spend it? And I was told, well, these decisions have already been made. The community groups have been promised the money, etc. Now, it may well be that I should have known to insert myself into that discussion earlier. So but I just want to be sure that in this next year, as we lead up to cip amendments, as you and the PCEF staff identify, here are things that here's potentially available sources of money that the committee, the subcommittee is going to start considering. You let the council know, hey, here's what here's potential sources of money because of underspending. So you can think about it along with us.
21 Yeah, councilor. And on behalf of the city administrator and cfo biery, director levine from cbo and our team. Absolutely. This budget process is over. We're going to jump in earnest to calibrating that, that underspend so that before we even get into the next cip, there's situational awareness of what we're working with. And I also just want to use this moment because it comes up a lot. And underspend isn't always a bad thing. There are scenarios where the underspend was part of the plan. Just because it hasn't a dollar hasn't been spent yet doesn't mean that's that's something's wrong, right?
22 Totally.
23 I mean, we're going to capture that too.
24 Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Finally, I just want to once again express my frustration over the idea. I mean, the idea that the idea has been floated of $75 million for the moda center. And I asked, well, have they asked the mayor's office, have you identified which PCEF programs that's going to come out of? And I was told we're working on that. And obviously, if there's $75 million that the administration thinks could reasonably be diverted to the moda center, then council, I think, should know where you think that money might come from so that we can think maybe there's other ways to spend it. So the impression I have and this is this is really on the mayor of franklin, the question of the mayor. Is it true that at this point you have no earthly idea where within that 75 million for the moda center would come from?
25 I'm going to refer that question to my.
26 Councilor Novick. I think the answer is the same as the last question, which is that we're working closely with the city administrator and the cfo to examine where our underspending is right now.
27 And actually, I'm sorry, that really is a question for the mayor. Is it true that at this point, you have absolutely no idea within PCEF where that 75 million might come from?
28 You know, I work with my team, councilor Novick, to determine and contemplate areas in which we can find the financing for moda. There are significant amount of improvements that we can do that are emissions reduction focused. I'm going to turn to my team of experts on how we move forward, and I've been having conversations with all the councilors on how we can address that, using PCEF to determine how we're going to renovate the moda and make it obviously leed platinum going forward. But PCEF does have a nexus, I believe. But in the end, these 12 councilors will determine whether that nexus is appropriate or not.
29 Mayor, I take that. I take that as confirming that, frankly, I mean no disrespect, but the all the money has been allocated, so the 75 million would have to come from somewhere. So I take your answer as meaning we do not, in fact, have any. We floated this idea of 75 million. But we have no idea which strategic programs that would come from. Finally, I've got a question that probably can't be answered right now. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are grouped together in the cip. I think that when the ballot measure was passed, people probably had the idea that most of the money would go to renewable energy projects like solar panels and things. So I'm curious, can you break out how much of the money has been spent on renewable energy as opposed to energy efficiency?
30 Off the top of my head, I can't, but I will get back to you on that.
31 Okay. Finally, how many core administrative staff do you have in sff now?
32 The core team is around 47, and then the when I mentioned the 55 number, that includes some PCEF funded positions in the administration and the and our climate team as well.
33 I just wanted to say that actually sounds to me like a very modest number of people to manage a program of this magnitude. So the idea that you're adding four people to help manage this multi hundred million dollar program sounds to me eminently reasonable. And it's quite possible it's not not enough. So thank you.
34 I'll just add that that number includes 4 or 5 vacancies right now too, because we're actively trying to hire, which as you can imagine is tricky right now with layoffs happening at the same time.
35 Thank you.
36 Thank you, councilor Novick councilor Morillo.
37 Thank you. I just have a few questions here for the office of the dca regarding the spectator venues. It looks like two positions are transferring out of vps into the dcas office. What will their new roles be and what is the impact expected to be on bts?
38 Thank you councilor. I'm going to. So one of the positions that are going to be moving over or have already been functioning in the the service area, they're going to be providing service area wide support. So one of the staff, for example, is the person who handles all of the council filings. We're a very active service area at council, as you all know. And so this is the person that collects all the information working with the bureaus to get it filed, make sure everything is true to form works with our city auditor's office. It's a pretty heavy lift for us. They do all of our service area public records requests and function as like sort of our council coordinator for, for that perspective. And I believe the second person is our is our finance or service area finance person. Given the wide range of, of funding sources that we have in the service area, we're we're very dynamic in that way. And having somebody who can coordinate across the service area, especially when you think about the arts tax and PCEF and all the funds, of course, and the housing bureau, just given the nature of the distinct funding site that we have, having a person who's able to coordinate that on on behalf of in partnership with the cfo and cbo was pretty essential for our service area. It's I don't know if it's unique to us, but it was definitely a glaring need. And then I'll let Eric kind of describe how that's how that's landing for bts.
39 Yeah, well, those two people in particular still serve us essentially. So there's just a change in the context of where they sit. But we're largely still those functions are still being provided to us.
40 Okay. Thank you. We also keep hearing about how the city budget office needs more staff, but I see that an analyst for is moving from cbo into the dcas office. Can you tell us more about why that's happening, what their role is going to be?
41 Yeah. Councilor that's the position that functions as the cbo rep in the service area. So it's consistent across all the service areas. So this person functions as a cbo analyst for distinct for the service area. So so our financial analyst works hand in hand with the cbo analyst to both trip the budget with our larger funding structures. So it's a, it's a, it's a, they're a team essentially within the service area to support that. But that person functions as a cbo person.
42 Okay. So we're not going to lose them as another analyst.
43 No, not at all. In fact, it's it's going to help with, we hope and the person who's been working with in this capacity already, and he's been he's been a great asset to us navigating the budget process. And we'll continue to improve that. But the idea is that it'll allow for cbo to have line of sight and more granularity into the functions of the bureaus.
44 Okay. Thank you for that. I have two more questions. Sorry. My next question is around the prosper Portland recreational cannabis tax funds. Can you tell us a bit more about their support for in prosper?
45 Yes. So the record, the total amount of recreational cannabis tax totals around 3.1 million. And it's broken out to support to support for programs that being the reimagined Oregon program, which receives around 2 million. The ibrn inclusive business resource network, which is just above a million. My people's market, which is around 56,000. Mercatus directory, which is also around 56,000. So those is how that is how it's broken out. And it's through those particular lanes, specifically. Two that serves the cannabis community. The reimagined grant is where you can apply. And through our partnership with affiliates and ibrn is how we extend those resources as well.
46 Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Because I think, you know, when we talk about those cannabis tax dollars, I think there was a lot of discussion during 2020 about making sure that they're going towards undoing harm for the black community that's disproportionately incarcerated for this. So I think we want to make sure that that continues to be a focus. My next question is for the bureau of planning and sustainability. Do we have any data that shows how we remediate graffiti at a property and then have to go back and do it again? Because I feel like we spend millions of dollars sometimes getting rid of graffiti and then doing it multiple times at the same location. Are we looking at any other options?
47 Thank you for the question. Yeah, we could get some data on that. We do. There are instances where we go back. I will say that a repeated cleanup can have a deterrent effect over time. If we continue to clean it up, the taggers will sometimes not return. I also want to make it clear that the graffiti program also distributes the request for work to a variety of bureaus. And so we're the keeper of the overall database of where the complaints and graffiti instances are. And that's a key coordinating that is a key element of we coordinate with the police bureau with that data, and that's a core element of what they're able to use in their enforcement actions as well. So it's not just that the money is going to clean up. There's some of this resources going to actual coordination of of investigation, and then a reminder that the money is going to small businesses. So it's not city cleaning up city offices. It's, it's being spent with small businesses. So if you want to look at it that way, it's a, we're helping small businesses survive during what might be otherwise a difficult time.
48 Okay. Thank you so much. That answers all my questions.
49 Thank you. Councilor Morillo. Councilor Avalos.
50 All right, so let's start with the dc office and realignment. Looking at the scale of the realignment within the dc office, especially the jump from 6 to 58 positions through transfer functions. I want to know what the long term governance vision is here. And specifically how will this improve communication transparency and responsiveness between bureaus and council? Because frankly, from the legislative side, many of us are experiencing the opposite. We are experiencing less access to information, less direct collaboration with bureaus, more centralization occurring during a major, major structural transition, and in fact, via the news on a records request, dc are telling their employers not to work with councilors. And that's very frustrating. So how will you assure that this scale up in bureaucracy will not further decrease councilors access to information that we need to make budget and policy decisions? And this is to you, city administrator.
51 I think in any situation where we have a change in form of government, where we're trying to scale an organization to be more responsible, more accountable to the changes that are happening in the organization. You see these type of expansions in staffing to ensure that we have proper span of control as it relates to the functions that we're being asked to respond to. Overall, when we look at a communication to council, from my perspective, I've been very transparent with council as it relates to information and responsive to any inquiries that council may have of me. And that's the same thing that I'm requiring of our dca's as well. If there are situations where you feel as councilors that you're not getting that type of responsiveness, I would implore you to please let me know so I can work on those type of situations to address those things. So council has been responded to in a timely fashion with accurate information.
52 And councilor.
53 I appreciate that, but I feel like we have been talking about this. I haven't seen a change and it is continuing to be frustrating to me, especially as I'm entering a budget cycle where I'm being told council has the final say. We have the final say. Meanwhile, you've already shaped the budget through a lens that is, in my opinion, trying to put blame on council. And I'm pretty annoyed right now. I'm on one because I've been sitting through these presentations, and I do not feel that we have been given the tools to be empowered to do our jobs, and I don't need an answer to that right now. My next question I continue to hear from east Portland constituents that they don't feel that downtown centered recovery strategies reflect their lived experience or priorities. Many residents are asking for investment in neighborhood commercial corridors, community gathering spaces, safer streets and basic infrastructure. So why is the city prioritizing an additional $200,000 toward downtown marketing and reputation management? And how are we evaluating whether these recurring downtown focus investments are producing meaningful public benefit versus subsidizing older economic patterns that may need to adapt to new community realities? And that's a question for prosper.
54 200 marketing I.
55 Well, councilor, you're correct that these are very challenging times. The 200,000 in terms of marketing in downtown, specifically, our gdp resides within our central business district. The bulk of our impact resides there. That is a lived reality. And it's important that while we are using all of the tools available, because the 200,000 is just one tool, we have many other tools that are being used to target and address needs of the east side of our city. And so this is one small pocket, but it is one important piece to generate interest in the assets that generate the most amount of income and impact for our city.
56 Well, on that note, the reduction to the small business support is projected to reduce technical assistance access for about 175 small businesses and eliminating several community based partners from the inclusive business resource network. So can you explain how we arrived at cutting community based entrepreneurial support while simultaneously increasing funding for broader economic, marketing and recovery strategies? And how are we prioritizing between direct neighborhood level stabilization versus macro level branding and attraction efforts?
57 So it is not an easy task, and I appreciate you calling that out, but we have to be able to be targeted where we can see the most impact in the shortest amount of time while we are generating and building a broader scope or a broader strategy to impact our city at large. Again, we have to use every tool at our that's available to us. And I hear you when you call out the reduction in ipr in these decisions did not come in isolation and they were difficult decisions, but we had to be married to where we could see, given the reduction in force, the talent we have and the resources, even if they are shrinking where the impact can reside in the shortest amount of time. Given that we are in recovery.
58 Are you answering my question by saying that you all believe that the direct impact or the thing that the areas of the budget you believe give the most return are the areas that are not on the east side, because that's how it's feeling in the budget.
59 No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying I'm truly honoring the fact that this isn't easy. And that impact and reductions in programing is not something or space that any of us want to be operating in. So these are very difficult decisions. And the choice between particularly operating and recovery is where can we get a quick return to, to, to hope in hopes that there's impact that can be received and experienced across the city?
60 Where is the quick return when you say the quick return, what do you mean?
61 When I'm defining quick return is in terms of impact. If we are married to data and we can see that $1 can turn into one and a half dollars in this area, then that has to be a focus in times of recovery.
62 I don't agree with that strategy, but I'll leave it at that. Thank you.
63 Thank you, councilor Councilor Koyama Lane.
64 Thank you, council president. I have some questions about pcf. And so I think I will need ruth or someone else from cbo for my questions to be available. I could go. Thank you. Ruth, can you help clarify the relationship between proposed staffing changes, reductions across the different bureaus, some that we've heard about today and the connection to pcf specifically where programs are positions have been supported in whole or in part by pcf and. And can it be clarified if where we're seeing those proposed reductions or cuts, are those funds now being moved to other priorities within the mayor's proposed budget, like where we see the money for pmo? Can we get really clear on that, please?
65 Sure. Well, I'll try. We might need to follow up, but I think the two sort of places to talk about. We talked a lot about tree regulation yesterday. So that's obviously the pcf dollars for that program moved from parks to p, p and d in this in the 2526 budget. And so I think you're kind of asking about what is sort of if those are pcf funded positions, why are some of them going away, which is similar to councilor Novick question and sort of the.
66 I think I understand that situation a little bit more, but we're looking at some other pcf.
67 Okay, so then the other. Got it. So then the other main changes around pcf in the proposed budget are the shift from. Of about $5.8 million into Portland solutions into primarily the pmo program in Portland solutions. And those are coming from three strategic programs that are in bts and PBOT. The details on the bs program. I don't have the. The position like if there are any positions funded by that, I'm looking back to see if anyone knows, I don't know. So we'll follow up on that. If that would have any position impacts of sort of taking that money out. The led street light program is not funding positions. So I think we'll just have to get back to you on that bs program. Does that answer your question at all?
68 Yeah. I mean, for example, I have an email this morning from a constituent that is saying pcf allocated funds in a certain way, and now the mayor's moving those to other priorities. That is accurate.
69 Just the $5.8 million. Yeah.
70 Okay. Thank you.
71 The sorry, just to be clear, though, it's the it's all within the cip. So the, the it's the same. It's it's aligned with the programs that were initially funded through the cip. It's not changing the cip allocations. It's kind of saying, instead of delivering this through bts and PBOT, it's being delivered through Portland solutions.
72 Thank you.
73 Yeah.
74 Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. Councilor Zimmerman.
75 Thank you. Danny, you've got some interesting stuff in your portfolio here as a service area, but I'll take it. The fact that prosper, who has its own independent board, still submits a budget to us that has to be approved by us. I'm getting a nod. Yes, that we can change it. Yeah, there's pretty broad agreement about that, but it often comes up because the other group that's sitting up here is passive. It often comes up that for some reason, the city council isn't the budget authority for pcf. And I don't know why that continues to be this lagging concern that if a group of community members say so that it just shall be, why do you think that continues to plague this discussion? As something happened at the staff level and the way that they train the advisors? Or what is it that leads to this? Because I don't get this in other areas as much.
76 Councilor, I'll do my best, but I want to acknowledge the question is highly speculative. I don't want to I'll just say what our relationship with with the fund as as a service area, as a bureau program is to work within the confines of the climate investment plan, which was definitely community led and involved and informed, ultimately adopted by council and continues to be amended by council. And that is the overarching framework. But every single year, this body is the ultimate decider on how those dollars are appropriated and operated. And of course, there's some mechanics between what you decide if we have to go back and clean up the cip to reflect that, that's a thing. But at the end of the day, it is it is absolutely true that this body is the ultimate decider for the budget. Whatever narrative may be in the in the zeitgeist about how piece of is is programed or spent, I'd like to balance that with what the truth is. And the truth is we have a very complex program with a lot of initiatives that take a lot of staff time, not just at baps, but across the city to deliver on. And I think it would do everybody. And I'm just going to riff here because the question, you know, framed it this way, is for us to be disciplined enough to allow the teams and the bureaus to deliver on the psps. We've we've committed to we have had since day one a piece. I'm just going to riff now, if you don't mind, since its inception, the scrutiny and the armchair quarterbacking that's gone on has been. And I was there from day one too, has been insane. I've never seen a program all my professional years nitpicked at the way this one has been. And the hardest part is the staff working with community, working with electeds are doing their best to deliver on what they think the intent is direction, and that gets really murky when we have an investment plan and a budget process. But at the end of the day, they are delivering on what you all determine is appropriate and your budget process. That really is the facts. And again, if we if you decided to make a change that wasn't in line with cip, we would go back and update the cip to reflect that. So that just shows how much agency you all have.
77 Well, not only the budget, but you're the final authority on the cip itself too. So I think from a staff perspective, our interest is to have an orderly process that's regular and happens each year, and that is informed by analysis. But we completely acknowledge that that decision is council's at the end of the day.
78 Yeah. So thank you. I agree with you. And I, I find it to be at times the third rail for unnecessary reasons that it's reasonable to have a conversation about the, you know, the right place or the right program to deliver on one of those initiatives from the cip is, is an okay thing to talk about going into. I just want to make sure because. Right. Eric, you presented for several slides today, but I'll just say, as far as I can tell, there's only one page for stuff in the budget that I was handed. So there's a lot in your budget, but let's just go over some numbers so that we can be kind of clear on what we're talking about. So in 2024, actuals for the revenues by fund, I'm going to circle here that p cf was at $167 million. In 2526, it jumped to $848 million. And in the proposed budget, it's $701 million. And in the program expenses in 2024, it was about $51 million. In 25, 26, it's $500 million. And now in this proposed budget, it's $233 million. So there's some big changes here. And last year, we got into a conversation about contingency versus reserve allocated for outyear programs and, and things that we know are like five year implementations. And so we're sitting in the position where we have some money in the bank, so to speak, because we know we need to spend outward, but we've got some broad jumps here. But am I, am I reading correctly that the the staff that works at pcf is essentially putting out $233 million worth of work this coming year? Is the proposed. Thank you. I'm getting a nod.
79 Right.
80 And in the bank account though will draw against 701 that we're expecting to have in the bank account. That is the reserve. We've changed from contingency to a reserve.
81 425 is the stuff we're not allocating this year. That is the leftover at the end of the day.
82 Okay.
83 And that's what's in the bank for the future year investments.
84 Yep, yep. So exactly. So drawn against the expenses. We get to that 701.
85 Two other things I want to say about the numbers changing. Yeah. One thing and I'll look to the cfo to acknowledge this, but I think we changed the where we put that future year reserve a couple of years ago. And so it wasn't in the same place in the budget. And so that's partly why the numbers jumped.
86 I'm acknowledging that.
87 The other thing that is going on there is this last year was the first time that we we actually spent our spending more money than we took in, because it took us a couple years to really ramp up the spending. We launched a couple very large contracts this year for the multifamily and single family energy, the e-bikes program. So yeah, the, the program is now operating at full speed. And that represents some of the changes you're seeing there.
88 That is good news and I'm happy to hear it.
89 And that's what keeps me up at night is us not spending this money appropriately.
90 6.5 minutes.
91 Okay, so I would love a proposal, given the given that the shenanigans that have gone on with the parks bureau and what staff did or didn't cover with respect to code compliance, I would like the assistance and I'll offer it now to consider an amendment to this budget to use additional dollars to preserve the tree code. Compliance officers that were moved to p and d. So in an effort to use y'all's work and your numbers so that they can speak for themselves like parks did, I will request your support in drafting that amendment to bring that forward with $500 million in the bank. I do believe that we can probably squeeze out a couple of fte to keep that program as it is. Thank you, thank you.
92 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
93 Thank you, council president. First of all, we have some more detail in this presentation than in others, specifically around how realignment is working. And I appreciate that. I also really appreciate having prosper here so that we can talk about economic development holistically and not what are we doing within city bureaus and what are we doing as prosper. So I don't know if that gratitude goes to the city administrator or the dca or the council president, but whoever made those calls, I appreciate that. That's how we're having the conversation today. I would like to understand what's going on with our workforce programs in the prosper budget. There are a lot of moving pieces. I got some additional information from prosper staff, and I still want to make sure I know what's happening here, because it seems as though we are cutting pretty deeply into our workforce supports, which is a lot of what we've depended on for economic development in our city in the past. So as I understand it, there are three different things happening with our workforce programs. There were one time resources added to workforce programs last year that have expired and are, for the most part, not being backfilled. There is some backfill, though, of those programs. There is an additional cut outside of those. One that that loss of one time resources of about $260,000. And then there is maybe some money moving around in the backfill dollars that are going in, in a different split between grant dollars going out the door and staff at prosper to maybe administer those grant dollars, but maybe do your own workforce programs within prosper? It's not totally clear because it looks like it's more staff than you had doing that work previously. So can you help me understand? At the end of the day, what does this look like for workforce supports from our city? Do we have more that we're doing within prosper than in the past? Do we have the same number of staff administering less grant money going out the door, or do we have fewer staff administering less grant money going out the door?
94 So the bottom number that you that is the real net is the 445,000 that's been mentioned. I can back up and say, you know, the 2 million, if you want a historical walk through of the 2,000,000 in 1 time funding and how we arrive at the 445, or do you want to just start at the 445?
95 Let's start at the. 445.
96 But what I'd like to understand in the historical net is the impact of service delivery. I don't need to walk through the numbers, I just need to know then compared to now, what are we doing and what are we not doing?
97 So in simple terms, we're adding back a million that will support adult and youth workforce. And that's.
98 Money going out the door in grants.
99 That's correct. And there's a portion of that to help in a limited term capacity implement that program. So that will present itself in the form of a person.
100 Why do we need funds to implement that in a limited term? If these are grants going out the door to a single service provider who we have worked with extensively in the past, I assume these are dollars going to work systems.
101 So how it goes to work systems. But there's additional resources or rather talent that's required to, to administer the that relationship. So staff time still is embedded there in that partnership. While we are not the direct provider, they're still staffing that time dedicated to it. And currently with that reduction in force, we don't have that in place. So it's really trying to continue doing the work we're already doing and replacing it, leveraging this, this financial tool.
102 So did we have that staff person doing this work last year, or are we adding a new staff person to do this work? As we are cutting the amount of grant dollars going out the door.
103 We have, we're doing more with less as, as, and that's what our that's what we've been doing. Now, hopefully under this current structure, we will be able to have some relief to the team and replacing that that loss via our reduction in force.
104 So my concern is that we're cutting the dollars that go to actually support individuals in our community, in workforce programs. At the same time that we are adding a staff person to administer those programs. And I'm trying to understand if that's what's happening here.
105 Well, I think the mayor is very clear about his commitment. With a million going back into it, with the intent is we're just trying to do our best job to to operate within the spirit of that tent.
106 I hear that, I understand that, and I understand that folks might make different decisions on what we want to do, but practically, are we sending less dollars out the door in grants and therefore supporting fewer portlanders in workforce programs while adding a new staff person who we don't currently have to administer those programs.
107 Councilor we're sending less money out the door across the board. And so that answer would be yes in in several programmatic lanes where we can cover and, and try to right size the implementation and operation of those and, or, and, or the facilitation of those relationships is what we're trying to accomplish. But we are reducing resources across.
108 The board and we're in a cuts budget. But are we adding a new internal position, or is this a position that exists?
109 It is a position that has been cut, and we're trying to bring additional support in.
110 Was it cut in this budget? But it existed last year, or was it cut in last year's budget? And we have not had that position for the past year.
111 Let me get some historical context on that for you.
112 Okay. That would be great to understand. It looks like the bulk of prosper's cuts are in workforce and ibrn and then there is a shift in what used to there was $1 million in repair grants last year, and there's a shift now to reduce that to 200,000 and put some of those dollars toward the recruitment of new businesses. Is that a fair way to summarize the main changes in the prosper Portland budget reductions to workforce reductions to ibrn and then that shift in the supports that are available for storefronts,
113 That's I'd say that's mostly correct.
114 Okay. Council president, I may get back in the queue, but I want to pause there and ruminate on those things.
115 Thank you. Colleagues. I'm going to give us a I'm going to say 13 minute break. I'd like everybody back here at 1110, please. Thank you.
116 Staff, for that. Some flexibility there. Yeah, I was I checked. What out. Yeah. So. During the early years there are. Jeff baer and. So because it didn't really happen that way. So miserable stuff like. With all the reductions and changes were made in a similar proportion. Staff. So they were there to the director of oh I see. Yeah, you put the reference in. Yeah. So packages it wasn't that bad. Yeah. Definitely want to follow up. Yeah. But overall. Overall. Yeah. I would say I think yeah, we'll get a chance to. Unbalanced. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah. Horrible to keep up with 1000 years you know revenue.
117 And we are back. We are going to jump back into councilor Questions. There's at least. Actually, I'm gonna put myself in the queue. Councilor Clark, kick us out! Vice president Clark, kick us off, please.
118 Thank you, president Dunphy. Thank you everyone. It's been a good discussion. I've really enjoyed the give and take. And I want to say to dc donnie that I really appreciated that riff. It is murky. It's going to get murkier. I'll just betcha. But I really appreciated that. I just have a couple of comments and questions from observations just on slide 22 about the reduction of art, small grants for artists and event sponsorships. This is kind of concerning to me. I'm just wondering, I'm going to overuse this phrase about penny wise, but can you talk a little bit more about the how this is going to affect downtown activation and how it might impact p5? Is there a connection here? I'm just concerned about what you're saying as approximately 45 to 55 fewer publicly accessible performances. Is that something you can just give me a little more detail what the impact would be. It's want.
119 Me to. Yeah. Please, please.
120 Thank you. Thank you for the question. Council vice president. So when we talk about our small grants program, the awards range from 1000 to $5000. So they're very small grants. So we're talking about awards for individual artists, arts collectives, emerging arts organizations, or organizations that are not eligible for operating support grants. They're really like project grants. And there is oftentimes, you know, that's where some of our. Small grants for musicians go. And there is a nexus. They do have oftentimes a public, a public performance or an exhibition or some publicly engaged way that that art is available. But it does not impact these. This reduction would not impact, would not likely impact any of the kinds of performances that you would see at Portland five centers for the arts.
121 That's really helpful, charity. I really appreciate that response. Then on to slide 28, the investment program. First of all, I just want to say I really support the small business program. I've had contact with it, put the office in touch with some of the small business associations in my neighborhoods, and I really appreciate that work. I hope we can continue and maybe even eventually strengthen it. And I wanted to address that focus on the downtown because to me, it's very, very important. The downtown, I think we we tend to forget that so much of our property taxes that fund the programs that we want citywide come from the downtown. So anything we can do to activate it, to change that reputation, I think, is very, very valuable. I did have a question, though, about the the grants that you talked about, that the mayor has talked about the 100,000 for grocery stores, the 50,000 for restaurants. Are you are you targeting those or in districts or how is that going to work?
122 Yeah. So, you know, there's still obviously some formation taking place on how you program. And, and we want to honor the spirit of data and geographic priority areas. But full stop, you know, as the mayor has indicated, we want to be first money in. And so we will obviously market this opportunity extensively and measure those who illustrate interests based upon the impact that they propose, limited resources. And so we have to go with the highest amount of impact, with the limited amount of resources that we have. But we also have obviously some logic in how we approach that work.
123 Well. Do you have any idea when that might hit the hit the streets, so to speak?
124 Well, you know, contingent upon this council's approval of the budget, we will we will work efficiently as fast to get that resource deployed.
125 Gotcha, gotcha. Well, you know, the first thing I think about when I think about grocery stores is think about gateway. I think about district one, even though I'm I represent district four, I think there's a real need on the east side for some of these dollars. Okay, great. And then lastly, thank you for that response. I just had a comment or question about piece f back to the murky. It just seems to me that and I'm not an expert in the cip and I know we're going to have an update that will be really interesting, but it seems to me that the moda, if there are emissions reductions and we're looking at a leed platinum, that it would fall under energy efficiency, renewable energy, or even Green infrastructure. It just seems like there's a there is a nexus there for the moda. And I know I'm jumping ahead, but it just seems that that that's a logical connection. I don't know if you want to comment on that murky area or councilor.
126 Thank you for the question. And I just I want to acknowledge, because it's come up a few times around the relationship between the motor renovations and potential use of piece of dollars. While we think there's, as the mayor said before, and we've said, generally speaking, there's a potential for the use of piece of dollars at the moda center. The fact remains, as we sit here today, we have not dove into anything that even looks like final blueprints or plans or engineering for us to even contemplate what eligibility would look like if there's existing sp or strategic initiatives, or there need to be amendments to the cip that works going to come very shortly. But first things first, we actually have to have something to work off of. But to acknowledge this, when we are looking at the renovation, it's already been operating as a leed platinum facility. We think we can go above that, especially during the renovation. There's opportunities to look at everything from further investments in localized solar, but also battery storage, increased transportation demand strategies, etc. The point is, there's a lot of opportunities of developments of this scale. So there is a nexus with the missions us landing it specifically to the to pcf. And the cip is work to be done over the summer.
127 I appreciate that, I really do, I just thought it just made logical sense to me and the big picture. And you mentioned transportation demand management, and I see that TriMet received 55 million plus. Is that for the 82nd street bus rapid transit? Correct. That's exclusively for that. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I think those are my questions. Thanks very much. Thank you, president.
128 Thank you, vice president Clark. All right. Colleagues, I'm going to make sure I can prioritize folks who have not asked first. So I'm going to go next. Four is going to be Kanal Ryan Novick Zimmerman.
129 Thank you, council president. Thanks, everybody for the presentations. I got a bunch of questions. I'll try to to pick and choose and then get back into the queue. I did close with something up there. I do want to talk about slide seven. There's a question around prosper staff. In a previous work session where we heard that prosper was losing two equity positions. Dca oliveira you said that the presentation includes prosper staff, but slide seven shows no reductions to equity. So can you briefly explain if this slide is an exception to the rule or if there's more info out there?
130 Yeah thank you council. I appreciate that distinction. I was specifically referring to that slide that showed the full fte for the service area. In this particular case, these are only city employee machinations because they're moving from bureaus into the business ops service area. So this is specific to city employees. Not not prosper.
131 Okay. Thanks. Let's go to and this is a question for the mayor. It's about slide 18 and it's about the arts and culture office. There's $4.2 million in general fund here. And mr. Mayor, I know that in a lot of other places in the budget where there's braided funding, you have reduced or eliminated general fund allocations to groups that have other sources of funding. And I would just like to understand the the rationale for when that was used and when it wasn't. I think this applies to to prosper as well, but specific to arts and culture, when sometimes general fund remains and when it was removed, like with PBOT, for example, is removed.
132 And I'm going to ask donnie, I'll let you take point on this, but let me understand, you were talking generally about how we moved funds around.
133 Or how we stopped putting general fund into bureaus that had other sources.
134 When we looked at the global view of how we set the budget up, we looked at general fund going to restricted bureaus, restricted revenue bureaus, for instance, water, sewer, transportation had rate based, fee based or different revenue sources. And that's really what we looked at for the nexus. And then when it came to PBOT specifically, yes, we had seen a degradation of their revenue every single year except for the tough. And I'm grateful for you that you passed the transportation utility fee. We built the budget based on the hope that that would get passed. And it did. And so we pulled all the general fund into the general fund, out of transportation, into the general fund to distribute arts and entertainment is different, though I do. They don't. I'm going to turn to you as far as what revenue generating opportunity they have, but they are a general fund, bureau or program.
135 It was the arts tax is the question.
136 Oh, I'm so sorry.
137 Well, related. The rest of it, I imagine, is the arts tax is that.
138 If I could answer the question, part of it is the arts tax, and part of it is the percent for art fund. And both of those are very restricted. So the arts tax funds that come into our office can only be used for arts education coordination, which covers our arts education program manager and coordination work with all of the six school districts and oversight of our of the arts access fund oversight committee, and then grant making out cash that goes out to arts organizations per the code. And then the other piece is just for percent for art projects. So those are required by the person for art code and in capital improvement projects with our with our infrastructure bureau partners. And those are often over many years because they're it's things like the north Portland aquatic center, which is going to take a couple of years to build. And that would have, you know, that has percent for art funds that are shown in those other funds. But we can't use that for anything else. So all of the rest of the work that we do is general funded.
139 Okay, thanks. Slide 34. There was a question about how this comms person is funded. I that didn't make sense to me. Is it funded now out of out of general fund or levy dollars?
140 It's funded currently at levy dollars.
141 And that will remain either way regardless of where it lives.
142 My understanding is no, in the realignment, the amount that had been budgeted for that person, the amount we spent or are spending. For example, in this current fiscal year.
143 I just I just need a yes or no. I'm sorry, I'm running out of time. I just need a yes or no.
144 The levy is not being asked to pay for it for next year.
145 Thank you. Okay. With relation to visitor activation portion of spectator venues because I don't want to get into too deep into moda. That's a whole. If there's time, I'll come back to it. But the lease goes till 2032 in providence park. Is that accurate?
146 I believe 36 councilor 36.
147 Thanks. What is the condition of naming rights for p5 right now? Are we able to talk about reselling and renaming those venues?
148 Thanks for the question. So for specifically for the Portland venues. As a reminder, they're still under the operational management of metro. Yeah. And we'll working on the process to on July 1st, 2027, to take that responsibility back over whether directly or through a third party management company. And we'll be able to contemplate those sorts of interventions around naming rights for those venues at that time.
149 Thanks. I know we've had a conversation about providence park breaking even or not. Does vmc also have the same conditions as it veterans memorial coliseum? Is it also breaking even, or is it subsidizing others or being subsidized by that ticket?
150 Great question. Councilor vmc is part of the city management oversight of the rose quarter. So it's part of the rose quarter blend, including the moda center. But generally speaking, the vmc is part of rose quarter is is breaking even from an operational perspective.
151 Okay. But it's lumped in together in.
152 One as one one, all the funds, all the all the revenues go into one fund, spectator fund.
153 Okay. And then the other last question I think I have time for here. I actually have two. Does the program oversee pir just a yes or no on that? Is pira part of this too? No. Okay. Is there more you can give us later in terms of the program offer side for what that program does with relation to the non spectator venue side, because the spectator venues and visitor activation. Yes. Okay. Because that's a piece that I think has gotten lost. I'll get back in the queue. Thanks.
154 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor.
155 Ryan thank you, president Dunphy, and good morning, everyone. Thank you, esteemed panel. Thank you, donnie oliveira, for being so candid this morning. I really appreciate it. You've been up here a lot this week, so I want to acknowledge that it's always good to see you. Charity. I have a big picture question to start off, because I've been on a theme about where we were ten years ago with fts. And so it says we have 130.45. I don't think I've seen a 4 or 5 very often in my life. And now. And where were we in 15, 16 says 99.12. So I guess there's always some fascinating numbers after the decimal. Does that include p cf the current number of 130.
156 Was that a question? Pardon me. Are you asking about bts?
157 I'm asking about the entire work area now. No, sorry. I'm sorry about that.
158 Yeah. Ten years ago that that would not include cf the current number would.
159 It does. Okay. So could I get you could send me an email that just shows what it would look like without cf in the ten year comparison. Yes. Or you could tell me right now.
160 Yeah. We've actually been working on that based on yesterday's conversation. So we'll get that to you.
161 Okay. Thank you. I know that we've been asking those questions, I appreciate it. I want to acknowledge that the p5 so that when we're talking about spectator venues, that was clear. But p5 is now in the arts office, correct?
162 Councilor that's the current plan is we're still working on the machinations of it, but. Yes.
163 Okay. And I think it's important to just make sure we're all listening to that, because metro and merck have been operating p5, even though it's a city asset. So I think it's been a slow journey to try to get the operations to the city for p5. And it does make sense, of course, I think, to eliminate some of the bureaucratic clutter at the top when it's an asset of ours. So since we're stuck with the responsibility on our general ledger g, maybe we should also have some more control over the operations. Who, if that's moving to arts office, what's the. That journey's been gone a while. Can you tell me the timeline now? Anyone, please?
164 Thank you for the question. We have 419 days until the metro no longer manages the venues. And so.
165 No, that was a great answer. Actually, I think I got enough information and which committee would be looking at what, let's say, city life would like to be updated on that journey. Okay.
166 Absolutely.
167 Does that make sense? Chair?
168 I'm happy to make sure we have time for that.
169 Yes. Thank you. It's a big deal. Now, moving along, the events, conversations fascinating to me. I'm looking at both you, cornell and charity, because I was here in 2021 when no one was downtown. I mean, it was really sad. And we wanted to ignite foot traffic. So there was a push to get events. And we we had events in marts office. We had events at prosper. You could say we had a lot of events. Sometimes there were more staff at the events than people, but we spent a lot of money to try to get energy back downtown, especially when you made the decisions to eliminate some of this. Did your two offices work together to look at where? I do think there was some overlap, and how we could make sure that we're having the best impact with this decision.
170 I would say the entire service area has worked collaboratively in this exercise.
171 I hope that you continue to do that. I just think that we sometimes do aye, Morillo or somewhat high visibility with little impact. With some of those events. As in my career, I couldn't wait to not be a special events person anymore. And I've done a lot of work to try to get development departments, if you will, to not do so many events because they are a lot of work and not a lot of impact. And so I'm hoping that we continue to look and, and study what that impact looks like. Are the retail outlets around those areas getting more? Are they getting more sales on those days with a big events? I don't question that. I hear that from nordstrom's the night we have a concert at the pioneer square. That's one of their best days of the week for sure. So I think we have ways to figure that out. And I'm kind of looking to cornell to say that I just keep wanting to hear, what are the big rocks you're pushing up the hill and how the heck are you going to do that when you have all this stuff to do? And so when I think of omsi corridor, I think when I think of the omsi district and I think of the broadway corridor, when I think of montgomery, those ones that we've been working on for now, up to decade, who's working on those projects at prosper? When I look at your your chart.
172 Yeah. So uniquely, you know, we have several different ways that prosper that are led by our amazing executive team. And so what you're speaking about is development investment, which is currently being led by amy nagy, who's our interim director. But then she has amazing support right underneath her as well. Names like sarah harpole, who are, you know, everything you want to know about broadway corridor. So we're well positioned and thoroughly immersed in the work. Obviously, we're doing more with less. So yes, you're right, we have to walk and chew gum at the same time.
173 Yeah. And I think part of that exercise is knowing what we don't need to do anymore. And because I think this is high yield and I don't think the city can move forward without that focus on safe. I'll just have a question. And that is we've had some hard conversations about theft. I really appreciate what director olivares said. I've experienced everyone weighing in very loudly, and I've also experienced the journey from, should we invest in our bureaus when they're having impact for Green infrastructure? I was really comfortable with that, supportive of that. That was the journey from just doing nonprofits to looking at bureaus. Then we had the conversation about, will we do investments for construction, for high energy projects, high energy efficiency for schools, not in our portfolio, not a part of our general assets. But I got there pretty easy for me to get there. Being a schools advocate my most of my life. So I do question why we're being so resistant to the honest conversation that we can have about our premier asset in the, in the, in the activation of sport in our region. That would be the moda center, which we have an opportunity to use largesse eventually to invest in that facility. That would make it the premier Green efficiency facility in in the association. So I think that if we're not going to consider that, then we probably have to stop considering giving investments to schools. So let's know that that is in our asset. That's a portfolio that's in our portfolio. So I hope that when we have the conversation of how we use PCEF assets, that we look at it holistically, that we look at the journey that we've already been through. And if, in fact, it's okay to do that because we own it, that we own that the person who just bought the franchise does not own that. The city owns the moda center. Thanks.
174 Thank you. Councilor Ryan councilor Novick.
175 Yes, I just wanted to go back to the issue of graffiti. Councilor. Morillo is saying, are we just removing graffiti that pops back up the next week? And I'm just curious how decisions are decisions made about what graffiti to remove. Because if what's happening is the city is going around seeing graffiti and saying to the building owner, hey, you want us to remove that graffiti? And the building owner says, sure, it'll just come back next week, but knock yourself out. No skin off my nose. That is wasteful. But if we're being asked to remove graffiti, that's a bit different. So I'm just curious, how are those decisions made?
176 We we take in reports of graffiti and we reach out to those businesses. And again, I'll remind you that the bts money in graffiti is primarily focused on. In addition to the small amount we spend on staff, on the on the remediation, on the small business side. So businesses under a certain number of employees are eligible. When we hear of graffiti report, we offer that funding to eligible businesses. They usually take us up on it for the reasons you stated. And, and I'll just reiterate that we a lot of our staff time is spent actually on the coordination of the data that we generate from all this and the coordination with, with police and, and, and Portland solutions and others.
177 So if a business did say, yeah, sure, knock yourself out, but it won't make any difference, then we probably wouldn't do it.
178 Again. I think we have observed, and I can get you follow up on this, but we have observed that that there is some deterrent effect on cleaning it up.
179 Okay. No, but I'm just I'm asking if this is something we're forcing on the businesses or whether the businesses are welcoming.
180 They're generally welcoming. We're not forcing it on them. If they say no, they're they're still responsible to clean it up. It is a, it is a, there's a code requirement to clean it up. And so we're, we're approaching them from that perspective.
181 Okay. Thank you.
182 Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Zimmerman.
183 Hey, I'm staying on the same topic. I was actually going to be very complimentary. And thank you, mayor, for including a graffiti abatement budget. You know, for those of us that have worked in it, I'll say from a world of where the city has a lot of authority to tell private property owners, you must clean up your graffiti. This may be one of the most work with the owner programs I've ever experienced. And I think that the way that that work happens is really good. So if you're unaware, this budget helps with things like the community groups who want graffiti abatement kits and they exist all over the neighborhoods, by the way, particularly in your small business districts, the little micro downtowns where the community has asked, and Portland has funded the abatement kits. And in every situation I have ever worked in, the business owners have said, thank you for helping me get ahead of this because it is a huge cost. It is a huge distraction and I know I'm out of code compliance. When I get tagged all the time. And an interesting thing about the graffiti industry is that, you know, this is why we do so many murals, right? There's a code within that culture, if you will. But I just want to it is easy to cut dollars like this, mayor. And you did not because it gets straight to the livability. It gets straight to small business support. It gets straight to neighborhood enhancements. And I am just very glad you kept it in your budget. So thank you and Eric for your team who administers it also. Very good. I did want to. Our timing today is so funny. So we're all trying to to get things in quickly. It makes us a little bit more abrasive or abrupt. But I did want to really appreciate the work that is continuing on the design reform packages that we have. And the briefing that your team gave to me on a one on one in my office, just in terms of the history of and what design review's intent is and how it goes forward. If anybody wants to know how to brief me, that was the standard. That was the gold standard. And it was very appreciated. And so thank you for that. I know the work is continuing forward as your as your bureau, you know, tackles a lot of future will lok like. Again, mayor, I want to keeping the the downtown initiative alive and well. Right. I think that we can we can thread this needle of individual support in small business, as well as the large economic impact, knowing that certain areas, the roi affects and helps us enable programs across all neighborhoods, all districts, and downtown serves as one of those for us to pay for a lot of things across across the entire city. So I want to give you compliments, mayor, for keeping an eye in a tough budget on it can't all be about belt tightening. It does have to be about enabling the market, the public, the private sector, the neighborhoods, others to go forth and conquer. And I think that's a lot of our job. And I see you threading that needle in this. So I want to commend you for that. You know, this is this is an area where we have a lot to be thankful for. We have a lot to be thankful for in terms of what the arts program puts into our community, what it keeps bolstered, what our children's program is able to enable that, as councilor Dunphy says, and I have now completely stolen the 3:00 to 8:00 time frame is one that it just matters a lot. And when I look at the programs out of the children's levy, I see that enhancement. So not an easy budget, a lot of confusing stuff in terms of documents, but in the explaining and going through it, we're in a change year. We're in a consolidation year. Some of those are general funds, some are not. I appreciate working through those details. I, I think that you have successfully talked about consolidation, not just as first, for whatever reason, there's a little bit of this idea that consolidation or centralization has to do only with budget cuts. And therefore, if you're not a general fund bureau, you're immune to it. And that's just simply not the case. And I think that this service area has done a good job of kind of showing the direction, you know, good, bad or indifferent. But, but you are you have an idea where you want to go and you're requesting the funds to do that. And so you'll have my support in that. And then I'll reiterate that I'll work with you a little bit to see what the last couple percentage points or tenths of a percentage points exist to help us make sure that the tree code movement is finalized and brought healthy forward so that that team has what they need to do our job. Thanks, everybody.
184 Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman, put myself in the queue. I have two questions for director wesley. The first is about the office of small business grants. Is it? My understanding is that the grants right now are are primarily, if not exclusively reimbursement only. Is that still intended to be the model going forward?
185 Yes, sir.
186 Okay. That's my whole question for that one. My second one is with regard to the the grocery store incentive program. I'm very excited about it. I mean, we, you and I have had a number of conversations about it. We, I will continue to talk about gateway and the, the, the perils of getting groceries in east Portland. Yes, sir. But I was made aware that in 2011, then mayor sam adams and the then Portland development commission pulled together a work group on grocery store incentivization. And the outcome of that was that there was nothing that the municipality could do in order to incentivize grocery stores. That was the official report, was that they could not find anything within the power of this to actually incentivize this. This is a 2011 report. Do we have different information at this point, 15 years later, that we think this program will work? Have we talked to grocery stores directly to see if this is the kind of incentive that they actually are looking for?
187 Yes. So from a data perspective, I'm going to lean heavily in my lived experience and having crafted incentives for grocery stores in many walks of life and other different roles, and understanding the industry itself, the thin margins that are embedded within it, slip and falls can make a big deal. And so when we're thinking about the new model of a grocery store, the shrinking of the square footage, a lot of the days of 150,000 monstrosities are not as efficient. So you're seeing grocery stores move to 50,000ft■!s of less. It takes resources to renovate those spaces to those smaller suites, and that's the role we can play. That's where we can incentivize that behavior and supercharge them, occupying occupying spaces in a very different way. So I've seen this, I've done this. It works. We just got to be ready to deploy.
188 Perfect. Thank you very much. That's my questions. Moving to councilor Green.
189 Thank you, mr. President. I'm back in the queue because I wanted to pick up on this downtown advertising line item. And I'm not sure who the correct person to ask. Maybe be a tag team effort between the dca and director. Wesley. But so this is another $200,000 in this budget. I don't know that it was there last time. It was okay. So it's a continuation. So my question is, so the clean and safe contract that we have with the city, that we collect rates on behalf of ratepayers for that esd outlines that this is a core function of that of the services they do. They describe it as visit Portland or visit downtown. So there's there's an ongoing advertising budget. Do we have any metrics on whether or not the spend on that advertising has actually resulted in an incremental uptick in business activity and space activation? And I asked that because I don't see that in the annual reports from from downtown Portland, clean and safe. I don't see that anywhere in our stuff. So I.
190 Councilor thank you for the question we have asked to get that that data for you. It was a little cleaner last last year when the esds were in the service area as well. Those have since moved to Portland solutions. So a little bit more line of sight. But in partnership with prosper, we can definitely get you the information, both where the money went and how it was spent, and then the outcomes of those investments.
191 That would be helpful. And I'll just note that there's not a 2425 annual report posted to downtown clean and safe website if that doesn't exist or if it does exist, they should put it up on the website. The other piece is that we did raise rates for that esd in 2024, I believe it was, and that was about 11% increase on the rates. And so that had a forecasted increase in revenue of roughly $300,000 for this next fiscal year. And so I'm just wondering. Why not just pay for this out of the rates that are already collected, that are growing and have expanded? And I know it's awkward for you, dca oliveira, because this is a Portland solutions thing now, but you know, this is you're presenting it today.
192 So yeah, no, I appreciate the question. I'm happy to it's one team working on here. So the the $200,000 just just to offer this for just general awareness, it goes a little bit beyond just downtown clean and safe work. There's a lot of investments and some like the bigger, you know, initiatives and activities in downtown. So I think winter light festival or the, the Portland staycation events that we've been hosting that was reinforced by this. So the money is often activating more campaign work. Like how do we get, you know, feet on the ground downtown, but absolutely got your questions and we'll make sure we get back to you on how those additional revenues are working and how they're distinct from this, this $200,000 amount.
193 I'd appreciate that. And the ratepayers of the esd will appreciate that as well. Thanks.
194 Thank you, councilor Green councilor Kanal.
195 Thank you, council president. Okay, I just wanted to quickly touch on a few things that I appreciate councilor Green's questions, too, as it relates to councilor Novick, I did want to say that I think councilors having to go through this is all primarily PCEF related, except for the second one, that the hoops that we need to go through to get something even into the cip conversation are frustrating, but they're fine as long as it applies equally to all electeds, and it hasn't felt that way. I also think I agree with councilor Councilor Novick that if we're asked to commit on any number of dollars for anything outside of what has traditionally been funded after a cip has been approved, that we have very clear numbers on what is currently funding so that we know what would be moving money from into. As it relates to councilor Avalos question on the realignments. Realignment to the service area is something that my experience on the other side of the street thinks is a really good idea. I don't support realigning all those positions to the central operation side, but to the d, cas office and the service area makes sense. But having said that, councilor Avalos point about not feeling like we're getting the information is accurate to my experience as well. I think many councilors are not feeling informed and not feeling access. Let me ask you this to follow. And by the way, this is not specific in any way to dca oliveira you just happen to be here today. Let me ask you this. There's a news article that shows that a d, c a specifically said in an email that communication with council wasn't allowed, given what you said to councilor Avalos, and excluding any potential discipline or personnel issues, focusing on practices or management philosophy, what are you currently doing with relation to the phenomenon of denial of information to council?
196 I think in any situation as we work towards communicating to council, we want to have an open and transparent line of communication as it relates to that information. I believe the article, and I haven't read this article that you're referring to completely, is referring to as it relates to budget during the budget time frame of requesting meetings with directors at that point in time. At that point in time, we were still gathering information as it relates to the budgeted information and what we potential proposals that would be moving forward in that process. And we wanted to hold off on that meetings before we had a full comprehension of what those proposals might be, because bureau heads didn't even know at that point in time what those proposals that may potentially be moving forward in the mayor's proposed budget. Now, any time we have any type of communication of of a councilor Reaching out or trying to get information, I want to make sure we're getting that information to them. And that's the stance that we'll continue to have.
197 Thanks. So does that mean that that email is no longer in effect right now?
198 No.
199 No, it does not mean that or it's no longer in effect.
200 It's not in effect. Thank you.
201 All right. I want to speak to staff on the interest question. There's $26.89 million that is being moved. That's about 10% of the total spend this year. That's interest that's in the proposed budget going to the general fund. It's a pretty big chunk that's accruing largely because of the the way the cip is structured and the level of expenditure you have now. There have been some proposals to change how PCEF has what it's able to fund, including putting fairly large more than 10% new expenditures on its ledger. If those happened, is it safe to say, and this is a series of questions, so keep them brief, please. Is it safe to say that we wouldn't have money left over to accrue interest if we had a giant new line item put on the PCEF budget?
202 The interest is a function right now of two things. The interest rate is, I think, higher than what we originally forecast when we estimated the total five year amount just because of interest rates being high. And then our spending rate has a direct impact on interest rates too, in the sense that if we if our fund balance is higher than we thought it would be, it's generating more interest. So our interest.
203 Spending went up very significantly.
204 Spending has gone up. So. Already has gone up. And so yes, if you add a big line item in spending, of course, that reduces the interest that we might get next year or the year after.
205 From an accounting perspective, is it safe to say that when a dollar goes to the general fund, we can consider it as being split proportionally among all the things the general fund spends on this? This is probably a series of questions how they think about it, or jonas biery.
206 Yeah. Councilor for the record. Jonas biery chief financial officer yeah, so when a dollar goes into the general fund, it goes to that general fund, and it's not directly allocated necessarily to a specific thing. It goes into the bucket. And then the bucket is sort of distributed among all of the things that that the general fund pays for.
207 So from an accounting perspective, if, if a, if a bureau is getting 1% of the general fund and a dollar is added to the general fund, we can safely say, or a dollar is part of the general fund can safely assume $0.01 of that went to that bureau.
208 I guess that's a way of looking at it, I don't know. That's the way it's tracked in in the accounting of it. But yeah.
209 And when when a when doing that, is it fair to divide among the general fund of 917 million or just the 798 million of discretionary.
210 In this case, if we're putting putting these if you're talking about the piece of interest that comes in, then it would be applicable to the discretionary.
211 Discretionary only. Okay. So I'm going to just look at these big chunks parks, police, fire and shelter, you know, and of the general fund money, $267 million goes to police. Just as an example, this 33.5% of the general fund discretionary. So right now, given what we just heard, about 9 million of that interest goes to police. And maybe a better example is fire, which gets about 21% of the general fund discretionary, which means about $6.64 million goes to fire. And I'm bringing that up to state that in the hypothetical where we added a a large new expenditure to sfrs budget, that would not create that interest going forward. I wanted to just highlight that that's that's actually taking $7.8 million away or, or 6.6, $4 million away. And I wanted to just walk through the logic of that. To councilor Zimmerman's questions earlier. I wanted to just follow up on the conversation and say, I know councilor Novick expressed this to I don't think the question around PCEF. The budgetary authority is about the members of the committee or about the staff. I think you're often put in the middle of the sort of frustration there, and I want to just acknowledge that when it relates to people trying to make a change and the question of when you should be involved or not, I think there's a very, very small fraction. I want to stress a fraction of the people who are receiving PCEF funds that are actually pushing the narrative that council has no role in it, and the mayor might not have a role in it, because they perhaps think that the committee has is more favorable to their work than councilor Mayor might be and have come to us and said, you have no right to make changes. And I wanted to appreciate you all for clarifying that this is incorrect and that we have the right and frankly, the responsibility to exercise budgetary authority. Having said that, I also think we have the responsibility to work with community, in particular those community members. And so the only thing that relates to this conversation on the staffing side is a request to please help us. And I think you've talked about this dca oliveira please help us be involved at the right time, because getting a. And this is true for the. I think your entire service area amendments to a large technical document at the time it comes to us on council is not the best way to go about it. And this past year it was the only way we were given to go about it. And so I think the way to, to get around the sort of metaphorical timeline, posing a gun to everyone's head and the desire to be involved is if. And so my request is if you can help us be involved at the right time for this year, because I think councilor Novak's point about talking about whether or not transportation should be a greater part, for example, is a worthwhile conversation to have that we're not able to have at effectively at the time it comes to us at the end. And so I think similarly, the mayor's request on office to residential conversion is another example. We did not really have time to have a full conversation around that. And so the degree to which we have time for that is, I think, the helpful piece of this. I could go further. I'll stop. Thanks.
212 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Koyama Lane.
213 Thank you. A question about the downtown marketing director, wesley responded that right now there is heavy reliance on downtown for tax dollars, which is true. I hear colleagues bring that up often, but what I'm not hearing as much about is how we can be moving away from that. And I know there's been some work done on planning to redevelop areas like gateway into an uptown that might reduce our reliance on downtown, and I'm wondering if someone can speak to that.
214 Absolutely. You bring up a great example, the efforts that are taking place currently in gateway. Currently we have, without giving too much away via non-disclosure agreements, but we have some pretty robust interests and a pretty robust pipeline that, quite candidly, will result in some short term transactions here, hopefully within the next 12 months. We also, as you've heard the mayor talk about the grocery store initiative we are prepared to unveil with our board, with our board support, a community health initiative of which will include an additional incentive for grocery store activations, namely, identifying the fred meyer in gateway. There's a lot to that. There's a lot of interest happening currently on the east side. And so as we are still doing the work that we have to do around the central business district, we are leveraging our resources and our resources to other areas of the city.
215 Thank you. Councilor kimberly councilor Morillo.
216 Thank you everyone. I just wanted to quickly go back on the moda PCEF discussion and put this on the table. The reality is that the decision for the city to purchase the moda center for $1 was done in 2024. There was only one member of that council that is here today, and that was a deal that was, you know, designed to be a gift to community, that we were going to get to do something. And it is not lost on me that immediately after that purchase. And now with the new council, after we have been forced to inherit what I think is a very bad deal, to maintain an asset that we don't have the money to maintain, now we are getting blackmailed by a billionaire who is threatened, threatening to remove the blazers if we don't do everything that he asks with regards to that building. So when we talk about whether or not PCEF dollars should be used on an asset that we own, we have to also talk about the history of that deal and why that came to be, because this city council body has, frankly inherited a lot of bad deals. We also inherited the ten year clean and safe contract that we cannot change now. And this history of saying this is going to be a community asset that we are purchasing for a dollar, that means that we as a council body, have a duty then to get as many community benefits out of it as humanly possible if that deal is going to be made, and the tangential ties to PCEF dollars, just because they might use led lighting or change random upgrades that could apply to literally any building with any building upgrade any new building that is being constructed. Now, you could argue that technically it is a more clean energy building because it will be more energy efficient. That is not enough of a metric for us to say that we should be using these dollars for that renovation. While we are not funding transit, we're not able to fully fund clean energy housing. We are making incredibly difficult decisions here at the city about which employees were laying off which core services we are cutting, and have already backfills a lot of those projects as well that are tied to those programs. So I just want to be very clear that we are in a very bad deal, and it is not the fault of most people on this council, because we did not agree to purchase the moda center for a dollar, to now be blackmailed by the billionaire owner of the blazers. Thanks.
217 Thank you. Councilor. Morillo. Councilor.
218 Ryan thank you, president Dunphy. I wanted to loop back because I didn't get to say a few things. Children's levy. Meg, thank you so much for you and your team's service. You are mandated at 5% admin, which is a discipline that other offices and bureaus don't experience. And so you do so much with with not much money. So and also we lost our long esteemed leader, lisa pellegrino. And I just want to acknowledge and thank you for your extra hours that you put in as the interim. I also think it's great that well, of course, I personally attached to this. I advocated hard for the to go up to age 24. I've been an advocate for that most of my life because it's a fake cut off at age 18. And we know this from the foster system. We know this from any family that doesn't have resources. And because family with resources definitely are engaged with their children's investments, at least until age 24, is what I've always heard and what I've experienced myself. So thank you. I do think there's opportunity with cannabis fund and the workforce funds that are going like, say, to Portland youth builders, there's a way for children's levy and prosper to work together a little bit more on that, especially through the investments that come through cannabis and a little bit more on that. In my career, I've spent a lot of time in trying to get kids to go into the trades because our school system, quite frankly, the cultures at schools, just forgot about that for a couple decades. And so we're trying to bring that back. And the biggest hurdles this is from people in the industry were math and weed. So poor math scores and the fact that they were showing that they were using cannabis for the two reasons why many were eliminated from that. So there's also an organic connection there. So I hope the two offices can work together as we go forward. So thank you. Portland children's library, prosper Portland. When it comes to the investments for storefronts, I do want to say that the 200 k. What did we spend last year in repair grants expand or the year that we're currently in. Does anyone know that figure?
219 I'll get you that exact number shortly.
220 It seems like this might not be enough, but I'll tell you what is also frustrating from every storefront owner I've met is they don't see this as a grant because they're so cash poor. They leave their windows boarded up because they can't do the down payment. And so I think it I hope that your customer service can lean into being more of a grant and less of a reimbursement. I'd like to have you please consider that as soon as possible, especially as you take in partnership, that you're working with us on storefront, because that is something I've heard over and over again.
221 Well, it while it is a reimbursable model, I put an asterisk with that because we will allow direct payment to those vendors if they supply. So a qualified contractor can submit that that invoice and we'll pay them directly so that, that, that owner does not have to even be involved in the transaction. We have about 220 000 remaining that we can. And again, we can pay a contractor directly.
222 How much last year did you get designated for that? I know it started at one number.
223 The full year budget was about 1 million allocated, which about. And again, we have about 220,000 of that remaining.
224 Okay. I don't I, I thank you for listening. I believe you, but I don't think the storefront folks understand that what you just said to me, they, they see it as a reimbursement and it's cumbersome. So they don't end up using it.
225 Well, I want to reiterate to all those who are listening that we will work directly with the contractors and, and we will execute payment directly on their behalf.
226 Okay. Thank you. I'll share that when I listen to them as well. I hope also, mister mayor and prosper Portland as we develop the storefront program. Well, first and foremost, we have cuts to police and fire. This is going to be pretty frustrating for all of them because they've been at the front of the line saying, we can't experience more cuts from police and fire, and continue to think it's a good idea to resign our leases. So that's what I hear from every corner of my district. And also when I'm around Portland prior to this. But I do know that it's going to be real important for us not to just do new money just to get people to sign leases, but we've got to have some support for those that have been hanging in there who don't have enough money again, to, to, to reimburse their window or to, to put the down payment on the window. They're barely paying themselves enough to live on and it's hard for them to pay. They're paying their employees, but they're not paying themselves through much of the last few years. So I hope that we lean into those that have been signed up on their lease for 5 to 10 years, and I just want to make sure I keep reiterating that point. And are you working with bricks and mortar as an organization?
227 I'm unfamiliar with that organization.
228 Their their name says a lot. So brick and mortar is a connection with small businesses and storefronts specifically.
229 Yes. I have recently been in contact with them. Yes, I have.
230 That use. Utilizing that partnership is going to be very important for this to to be supported for the longer term and for the grassroots to feel like they're connecting with this program.
231 Councilor ron, you're absolutely correct. I just want to leave you with protecting what we have is extremely important to us as well.
232 Thank you. Thank you for hearing that.
233 Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.
234 Thank you for that question. Councilor Ryan, I appreciate it. Sounds like we might need to help with. Looks like we need about 600, 000 more than the 200,000 currently penciled in to maintain the current service level for that program. The grant program, as you.
235 Said, people start breaking windows.
236 Well, yes, of course. And that's that's Portland.
237 Stop breaking windows.
238 The other thing I just wanted to mention, there was a comment earlier that we can't revisit. I think the example was used for clean and safe, but I think this is a conversation that's broader than that. We can reevaluate contracts in the context of them, them crossing a fiscal year. We've been told that on the dais, this is not about clean and safe at this moment. I want to talk about we just got the first big look in our city administrator's report that we heard yesterday about contracts, and I appreciate that again. And one of them was urban alchemy. And I think there's a conversation to be had about, when are we going to start looking at the $8.1 billion contracts collectively, of which three plus billion dollars remain yet to go in contracts that cross the fiscal year. And so I just wanted to get that on the record, that there's a conversation that needs to happen. Not all of those have anything to do with the service area or this portion of it. But, you know, we're hearing about that. There's a new contract. I just saw a news article about to do design work on the the waterfront from parks. These are big contracts. Some of them, some of them are smaller. Some of them don't cross a fiscal year, some do. Some of them are good. And I want to be clear about that. But I do think that there's a a function that council has not yet exercised, that we're aware, we've become aware that we can. So I look forward to having those conversations. When people do bring up contracts, I think I will say I'm interested in looking at urban alchemy specifically, but for the rest, I'm currently just wanting to note that that option exists and get that on the record. One last thing. Councilor Ryan is correct. It was one and so is director wesley. It was $1 million last year. It was Ryan one. And I appreciate, again, getting to work with you on that. So if we use $780,000 this year and there's 200,000 penciled in, that's where I'm getting the that's $580,000 as a gap. That's where I'm getting the $600,000 figure just for for transparency. Thanks. Good.
239 Councilor Kanal I think you'll enjoy our work session tomorrow because it includes conversations around contracting. Councilor. Novick.
240 Mr. President, I just wanted to follow up on councilor Ryan's comment about the departure of lisa pellegrino. When I was here ten years ago, we had two incredibly talented and valuable pellegrino's, martha and lisa. And I think it's it's not escaped my notice that the city seems to have gone downhill a fair bit since we lost our first pellegrino, and I am concerned that if we have no pellegrino at all will be entering a pellegrino deficiency doom loop. So I would suggest to the city administrator and all the bureau directors, if you have an opportunity to hire pellegrino, please take it.
241 Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor Kanal.
242 I just wanted to, in the context of the conversation around reputation and downtown marketing, I did want to point everybody to the conde nast traveler story that I think I see. Nods so you're already aware of it, but rose city is better than ever. Is the is the headline. And one of the many ok about Portland in a way that is, I think, very accurately descriptive of what the experience is like of visiting Portland is it highlights the neighborhoods. And I want to we talked about this earlier. It talked about the alberta arts district. It talked about the central east side. It talked about saint john's. It talked about boise. It talked about sunnyside. Right. You can come here to Portland, and I hope you do come downtown. If you do, but one can have a good week in Portland without ever visiting downtown again. Please do come downtown. But there's plenty to do. Obviously, saint john's and boise and alberta arts district are in my district, so I got to plug them. And I spend a lot of time in in all of them, in particular alberta. But I did want to mention that we need to get into a place of talking about what we are and not what trailing indicators. Like, you know, when the president sees a five year old video to say, Portland is on fire, we're doing the equivalent of that. If we're saying that there's still this major reputational narrative. When people come here once, they tend to be able to communicate back to their networks in other cities about what they've experienced and, and that disabuses them of the notions that are fed to them by conservative media around the country. And I wanted to highlight that. Thanks.
243 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor.
244 Ryan yeah, I just want to acknowledge I love that article as well. And it did make me think, whereas on travel Portland on that, on the downtown contract, are they part are they one of the partners? I didn't see them listed.
245 We can follow up. Councilor we can follow up. I'm not sure that they are, but we can ask about their nexus with it.
246 Because they're. They kind of help feed these articles to national magazines. So I thought, oh yeah, where are they on that? So I appreciate that. That's all. I just wanted to make sure that travel Portland got into that conversation. And I'm, I'm supportive of the investment for downtown. I still think the funding formula of the downtown used to be known as an. All great cities have a robust downtown. It's like a turnstile of currency. And then we pump that money out to the rest of the city. And I haven't seen an operational model for a city not include that. And so I really do hope that we can continue to do that. I want to also acknowledge the investments and impact reduction in graffiti abatement. All have been a big part of the renaissance of Portland. And if we cut those programs, I think we'll see some back pedaling. So thank you, mayor, for including those very important investments that allow us to have articles that councilor Kanal mentioned. Thanks.
247 Thank you, councilor Ryan. Colleagues, no one else in the queue. We have concluded our work session. Don't worry. We have an executive session this afternoon and we also have a work session tomorrow morning. So with that, we are adjourned. Thank you all for being here today.