The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-04-16

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (24,137 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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Good afternoon. I'm calling back to session. The recessed meeting of the Portland city council. It's 201 on Thursday the 16th. Rebecca, can you please call the roll?

Good afternoon.

Kanal here. Pirtle-guiney here.

Ryan.

Koyama Lane here.

Morillo here.

Novick locked and loaded. Here.

CClark here. Green here.

Zimmerman.

Avalos present. SSmith here.

Dunphy here. And can we please read the rules of decorum?

Welcome to the Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda@www.Portland.gov backslash council backslash agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's website. Web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testimony should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.

Colleagues, we have two time certain items settlements that we posted as time certain. So we're going to hear those first. We will then move to finish item seven from last night, the codification of the pccep. We will then move on to items ten and 11. From there, can we please call item number eight?

Item eight pay settlement of the estate of ashley mcgill. Wrongful death lawsuit involving the Portland bureau of transportation for $80,000. This is document number 2020 6-127.

This is an emergency ordinance. We have staff presentation here from, I believe senior claims analyst joseph jesse and deputy city attorney carolyn turco. Take it away.

Good afternoon, caroline turco with the city attorney's office litigation section. This case involves a fatal traffic crash that occurred on August 27th, 2022 at the intersection of southeast stark and southeast 133rd street. The decedent's name is ashley mcgill. Her mother brought the lawsuit on her behalf, and the lawsuit sought $15 million at the intersection where the crash occurred. There is a pedestrian refuge island. It was designed with signage and flashing beacons to increase visibility for individuals crossing the street. At the time of the crash, the signage and the beacon had been knocked down for over a year and a half and had gone unrepaired. The crash primarily resulted from the activity of speed racers, in particular one driver's failure to see the pedestrian island he swerved at the last minute, crashed into the car next to him, lost control of his vehicle, and then proceeded across the intersection and hit ashley mcgill at a high rate of speed. The actions of the speed racers were the primary cause of the accident. However, on a verdict form there can be multiple causes of of an event. Should the case have proceeded to a trial to a jury trial, the city's failure to repair the pedestrian island could have been found to have been one of the causes of miss mcgill's death. Given the risk of an adverse jury verdict. The parties attended mediation in December and reached a mutually agreeable settlement of $80,000. The city attorney's office and risk management recommend approval of the settlement. I'm happy to answer any questions. Otherwise. This concludes my remarks.

Colleagues. Start with technical or clarifying questions. We also have some folks signed up. We may have no, I'm wrong about that, but we don't have anybody signed up for testimony. Okay, great. Then we're just going to move into technical clarifying questions and council discussion. So feel free to jump into the. Q councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thanks. You mentioned that this was due to a driver who was speeding, speed racing or whatever the right term would be. How fast was he going when this occurred?

Officer david ends with pb, investigated the crash and determined that he was going 84 miles an hour.

Okay, I think powell is 30 or so. And then did the estate seek damages from the person who killed her?

Yes, the estate sued multiple parties, the speed racers and the owners of the vehicles under a negligent entrustment theory, there was no insurance coverage. The speed racers were incarcerated, so that presented different risks at trial. If the city were to be held responsible for those damages.

Okay.

I think I'm going to go ahead and stop my questions, sir.

Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. Sometimes these settlements raise issues we might not otherwise hear. And clearly the predominant cause here was the drivers. But I know that sometimes when we have these conversations, we look also at where there is future liability. And I'm wondering if we have any information about safety signage and how quickly signage like that is normally replaced within the city, whether this was an outlier or whether we often have delays this long to understand what the future potential risk is with this settlement.

I believe this case does prevent present an outlier. I will say my focus was on this intersection in particular because it involved a flashing beacon. It's known as a r f b rectangular rapid flashing beacon. Those are. Relatively sparse throughout the city and an outlier unto themselves. I don't have specific information on what other hazards exist throughout the city or the schedule for repair.

Councilor that's something we could get information on at some point.

Absolutely, yeah. Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you. I was just looking at the the resolution and it looks like it gives the city administrator permission to settle this. Is that normal? I thought it went through the city attorney's office.

Well, so procedural questions. I believe the city attorney's office has a threshold under which there is authority to settle. And I would believe that this case goes above that threshold. I could be wrong.

Stuck out to me because I don't. I'm looking. It says the city administrator is authorized to settle the lawsuit in the amount of $80,000 generally. Is there is there a a money threshold? Because I thought that all of this goes to the city attorney's office.

Yeah, I believe.

I think I see our city attorney, robert taylor, coming up.

Sure. I can give it a try. So my boss doesn't have to step in on my behalf. Go for it. I believe city code gives the city attorney up to $50,000 authority. So I would assume that because this amount is over, that that that's why that language is used. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Smith. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. First, my condolences to the family and friends of ashlee mcgill. Thank you to both caroline and jesse and everyone who worked on this issue for the presentation, for the work that you've done prior to it. I appreciate the continued inclusion of the claims data for PBOT over the last one year and five years, and I'm looking forward to helping build this out with risk management and sort of iterating this piece of information further so the public can better understand to this specific ordinance. I think there's a conversation here that I wanted to to touch on, but not get into just for time, which is that street racing remains a scourge in our communities and is something that we need to deal with. We have a lot of questions that come up about how best to deal with it, and I'm looking forward to hearing back on something that this council did last year to help create space for that conversation. During the budget, we adopted a budget note Kanal ten, which instructed the Portland police bureau to prioritize overtime spending on a host of different matters of of citywide concern that the public had been bringing up and that the police bureau also acknowledged as high priorities. One of those was street racing. We haven't had we've only had one update on that so far, and I'm looking forward to to getting that, ideally with the help of councilor Novick to schedule it in the caps committee, but we'll figure that out later. But I wanted to mention that here because I hope that we're not settling lawsuits like this in the future, because we're doing everything we can 100% of the time to limit, reduce and eventually eliminate street racing and the and the violence it causes on our streets. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue for discussion. This is an emergency ordinance. Rebecca, can we please call the roll?

Kanal aye, Morillo.

Pirtle-guiney I.

Brian aye, Morillo.

Koyama Lane aye, Morillo Morillo.

Absent Novick. I cclark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with 11 I and one absent.

Okay. We're going to take a deep breath for about 35 more seconds because our next item is a time certain at 215 and it is currently 214 213 and some change. So we're going to wait just a moment. Congratulations to the council for getting through that ahead of schedule. Always nice. Steve, you got a joke. Okay.

There's no time.

Actually, mr. President, I was saying this to councilor Avalos just earlier. I always play off something that's happening. So if nothing's happening, it's hard for me to play off anything.

Right?

Your brand of comedy is responsive.

And there has to be some sort of like, sound of silence reference you can make during this moment. Councilor. Novick.

This is an example of my colleague stepping up to make jokes with me, and I encourage all of you to do more of that.

All right. There we go. Can we please read item number nine?

Item nine, pay settlement of brothers incorporated. Property damage claim involving Portland parks and recreation for $89,106. Document number 2020 6-128.

Colleagues, this is an emergency ordinance with us as senior claims analyst. Welcome. Take it away.

Thank you. My name is rosalia radic with the city's risk management. This ordinance settles a property damage claim resulting from a motor vehicle collision between a Portland parks and recreation vehicle, and a great brothers incorporated semi truck. Oh, thanks. The collision was at the intersection of north lombard street and north harbor gate street. On September 3rd, 2025, an employee of great brother's was driving a semi truck hauling a trailer of scrap metal north on north lombard. A parks employee driving a city vehicle was going west on north harbor gate and failed to yield at a stop sign before entering the intersection, the city vehicle struck the passenger side of the truck cab and the trailer overturned, spilling scrap metal. Grit brothers incorporated filed a claim with the city for their property damage, and this resolution resolves that property damage, including the value of the truck and trailer. The cost to clean up the collision, including towing costs, cleaning up the spilled scrap, fuel cleanup and remediation, and risk management. And Portland parks recommend the settlement for the total sum of $89,000.80 $9,106.15. That concludes my remarks, but happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Colleagues, are there any technical or clarifying questions for this? Okay. Seeing none, becca, do we have anyone signed up for testimony?

No one has signed up.

Okay, colleagues, any further council discussion about this settlement? Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I just wanted to ask a clarifying question and see if there was any teasing apart that could be done about one thing that we saw in the attachment. So if you look at the attachment over the last five years, there is there have been $5 million paid out to 371 claims for parks. And just as a quick side note, I don't think it makes sense to compare bureaus to each other in terms of, you know, most or fewest or whatever, but to look at them in the context of their own trends. And there are some exceptions to that. There are some times where it makes sense to compare, but I'm not doing that right now, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But the within the last year, $3.5 million has been paid out, including this to parks. And I know there was one very large million dollar settlement. But even if you take that out, that's about half of the last five years happening in the last year. And I wanted to ask if we could get more information about the trend lines and sort of break this down a little bit and see if there's a pattern, because I, I don't know if that's just a few outliers, large scale settlements. There was the one with the, the hammocks attached to the poles. That was a very large one that might skew the, the, the statistic a little bit. But or if it's just a series of additional claims and I wanted to understand that, I don't know. Rose, if you have this, this information on hand, but wanted to to flag that.

Thank you. I can't I don't have the breakdown right now. I can definitely get that to you. I do know that within the last year there were the two hammock claims as you mentioned, and there also was a drowning. And so those were three very significant claims that I think largely contribute to why the last year is such a large bulk of the five year numbers, but I can certainly get a further breakdown for you. Would you like, I guess, how much detail would you like in the breakdown? Just sort of with those three claims removed and see if it kind of evens out more. And if you have further questions or would you like a further breakdown?

I think a further breakdown, because there may be other outliers that that existed in the five year run before we all took office. Okay. Most of us. And so just wanted to. Yeah, I think it's a small sample size, so it's hard to know whether or not it's skewed or not. I think when we are having these conversations, because now we're also not privy to as many of the settlements because in the old form of government, anything over 5000 would go to council and now it's anything over 50,000. So there are a lot of smaller ones that that maybe are not in the conversation. So I wanted to just flag that. The other piece is I really appreciate the information that parks gave ahead of time about sort of their response to this internally and just wanted to, to give them praise for that because it, it gives me some confidence that there will be fewer and ideally, none of these types of situations in the future. Thank you, council president.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues, any further discussion of this item? Seeing no one in the queue. Rebecca, can we please call the roll?

Kanal aye, Morillo.

Pirtle-guiney I.

Ryan I. Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.

Novick I.

Clark I. Green I. Zimmerman I. Avalos I.

Smith. I Dunphy. I. The ordinance passes with 12 votes.

Thank you very much. Can we please now move to, I guess a new item number ten, reopening the final hearing on or the the hearing on the codification of.

Staff and code to establish the Portland committee on community engaged policing ad code, chapter 3.23. Document number 2020 6-126.

Thank you colleagues. Last night we made it through technical. We didn't make it through technical or clarifying questions. We made it through public testimony. Now is the time for technical clarifying or council discussion. Additionally, councilor Kanal, as one of the chief sponsors of this, did not give opening remarks. He asked to delay that today. So I'm going to turn the start over to him to councilor Kanal. So councilor Kanal take it away.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. Let me first start by thanking the community and the spirit of cep, where the community comes first. I also want to thank the members and past members. The list of names read yesterday who have contributed from the membership and from just regular attendance. And of course, the partners of cep. These partners include the mayor's office, Portland police bureau, city attorney's office, the staff at the public safety service area who supported the facilitators, the albina ministerial alliance, coalition for justice and police reform, the mental health alliance, the Portland police association, all of whom are generous with their time and expertise and often collaboration. There are also numerous other volunteers around the city the citizen review committee, the focus intervention team, community oversight group and previously the police bureau wide advisory committee and police accountability commission who have contributed to or partnered with cep. Finally, I want to thank some specific people who've contributed to sep over the years but are often unsung. A frida who we heard from yesterday, and nikita also teresa alonso leon as facilitators, city attorneys sarah ames and heidi brown, former mayor wheeler and his staff, primarily stephanie howard, current mayor wilson and his staff, primarily christopher taft and former interim project manager judith mowry. And the psa, which includes mike myers, elizabeth perez, emily mann, liz taylor, and, of course, project manager victoria grabinski. I flag all that to say up front to note how many people are involved in the work of this entity and how important it is that it be continued on. I had the privilege of working with the Portland committee on community engaged policing for just shy of three years in my last job, including as the interim staff member for about two months until permanent staff came on board. In that time, I've learned a lot about cep, and just about every question that begins is cep more a or more b is best answered to with both or yes, it's a place to hear from the police and the mayor's office and a place for the people to be heard. It's a place that shares information with the public and a group that makes recommendations. It's a place where members are advising the city directly, and a place where members are conduits for the broader community. Cep is unique in our system, and it also has additional responses that are unique in the sense that the mayor must respond to cep recommendations or the chief, depending on where the recommendation goes, within 60 days. Cep exists as a creature of the settlement agreement with the with the federal government, but it is so much broader than that. It is one of a few places where portlanders from various backgrounds and with various viewpoints come together to discuss issues of intense feelings that relate to their core values, histories, and, in some cases, their traumas. While it is true that people have come to cep often to discuss the trauma faced at the hands of police, people have also come to peace to discuss a trauma that police helped them with. Different elected officials and leadership, including chief day and his representatives come not only to talk, but to listen. These impacts transcend the context of the settlement agreement and could continue, in fact, must continue after the settlement agreement no longer deals with cep or after it ends entirely. And that's why cep codification has been in the conversation for years, going back before my time started at the city, but including recommendations in 2022 and 2024 to codify the urgency. And this is a rare time while I will be giving my full voice to the emergency clause, is that the judge's order could take effect to take out the paragraphs from the settlement agreement related to cep as early as April 17th, and that is tomorrow. But even setting aside this particular urgency, this is a really good thing to do. City code has some of our most important and some of our most unique appointed boards and commissions, including everything ranging from the election commission to the golf advisory committee and the sustainability and climate commission. Cep is both important and unique, and it is thus fitting that it be made a permanent part of our work as a city by adding it to city code. I want to conclude by saying I really appreciate everyone who is involved. You may have seen when christopher taft presented the slides about when different parts of the city system, the volunteers, the mayor's office, my office and councilor Novick office as well, were involved in bringing this forward and starting with that first conversation with cep and then with the mayor to help craft this together. I really appreciate the collaboration. I've wanted to get that done for a long time, and combining these two threads has been really helpful. So thank you so much. I urge you all to help pass this today as an emergency.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Okay. Thank you. Let's start by acknowledging the importance of the Portland committee on community engaged policing and the role that it has played in advancing community centered police accountability. I want to thank all of the folks that came out last night. And, you know, something is important. If the legendary doctor, leroy haynes, stays until almost 9 p.m. So thank you to the folks that stuck it out to share their voice, because this is a critical moment to codify pccep. As someone who served on the crc, I've seen firsthand how critical it is to have community voices meaningfully integrated into these oversight systems, and I see codifying pccep into city code as an important step towards formalizing that work and ensuring that it's stable and consistent and not dependent on changing administrations or priorities. This ordinance helps establish a clear structure and code that creates transparency and accountability and community engagement. So thank you so much. I know, councilor Kanal, you've been working really hard on ensuring that there's transparency and engagement in these processes. But one thing I want to note over the years, the city has had multiple police accountability bodies and at times, their roles and authority authorities have overlapped. And when that happens, oversight can become fragmented or unclear, which ultimately weakens the system that we're trying to build. So it's important that as we're codifying cep, that we also have clarity on how it fits within the broader accountability framework. And so that's where some of my questions are coming from. So my first question is, how does codifying cep impact or interact with the role of the new community board for police accountability? I'm wondering if someone could speak to the relationship you plan to see it have with the new cbp and how we're ensuring clear lines of responsibility to avoid duplication or fragmentation. And I'll just add one other note to say, because I heard you say the current crc chair yesterday, share. And it's true that cep has always been kind of our community engagement arm, where the crc has to be much more structured because they are doing discipline. And so but I know that the new cebpa has capacity and interest to do a little bit more of that engagement work to be more broad. And so I just want to understand how you're seeing both of these two bodies interacting with each other as it relates to community engagement on policing issues.

Thank you, councilor Avalos, council president, council vice president and councilors generally, heidi brown with city attorney's office. So I'll defer to dory to explain somewhat, but the the piece is to gather community input, create that trust from to try to help create trust between community and police, and to present that community feedback to the police bureau and to the mayor, and to have that that loop available and an ability to communicate with each other and the cbpa. Oh, thank you. This is great. The cpa's role, the community board for police accountability. Their role is distinct in that they focus on accountability. They have the authority by charter that cannot go to another group because it is with that board to oversee allegations of misconduct and to give appropriate discipline where warranted. Additionally, as you as I'm sure you know, but for other folks, they also have the the authority to provide policy recommendations to the police bureau. So there's, there's somewhat of an overlap because pccep also can give recommendations on any number of things. And they're not limited in that sense. However, the feed, the way that the city that the response happens to pccep and to the community board for police accountability is different. There's different processes established by code.

Grabinski program manager for the record. Yeah, I think, you know, as we all know, the cba is brand new. It is just getting set up. And none of this is that relationship is not clearly defined yet. I guess as heidi was kind of speaking to, I think about, I guess I sort of think of like the cbp is looking at individual trees. So, you know, individual cases of misconduct and doing investigations and things like that. And I think pccep is is positioned to sort of look at the forest. So if patterns are emerging, if there are things that our body should be responding to based on the work of the cbp, I think that is something that historically, this body has been interested in. Our current membership is interested in. And so I look forward to seeing that relationship, you know, being defined as we move forward with both of these entities. And yeah, that's how I think about it.

Thank you. And I think the reason I bring it up is just because over the years, there have been all of these different kinds of boards. I know in 2020, there was all this conflict around the tac and the cag and the crc and the cep and all the other acronyms of different groups that, you know, supposedly are there to advise the council, the mayor, the police bureau. But then what happens is when it's not clear what each of their roles are, then what we were seeing was, well, we this board feels this way about a policy, but this board doesn't. So then for us as leaders, we're like, well, who is the community board that we're supposed to then act with a policy lens on? Right. So I hope and I think this is a broader conversation as cba gets put on that, we have a deeper discussion about the entire universe of these community groups because there's plenty. It's not just these couple. And I think, again, about streamlining so that as we are trying to implement this level of community accountability, that we're also being held accountable to who we're answering to. And that can be confusing. So that's why I raised those questions. So let's keep talking about that. But I wanted to get your first take on how you're because we're codifying pccep, how you were seeing it nestling into the broader system. Did you have something to add?

Thank you. Councilor. Yes. One one more thing. I just want to make really clear to so that there's not a misunderstanding by any of our unions, is that the pccep doesn't have the authority to discipline. So that that when we're talking about accountability, as dori was just saying, they might be looking for trends and things, and then they would have the ability to raise those issues to the mayor, to the chief of police as a recommendation, but they don't have any authority to enforce things, and they've done that sort of thing in the past. So it doesn't actually change what their role is, nor does it change what the oversight board's role is.

Yes. Thank you for that clarification. I know I'm using the term accountability very broadly, but it does have a unique definition as it relates to this. So appreciate the clarity. Another thing is that I see that the code requires that the mayor and the chief of police respond to pccep recommendations within 60 days, which is great. And that's also something we baked into the cpp. Cebpa. But I was curious if council will also be receiving those recommendations and responses, or where's council council's role in reacting to their policy recommendations?

Just so, from a legal perspective, I think the plan of the code was to incorporate the existing structure for sap. So from their pccep makes recommendations to the mayor and the chief of police. Obviously, the council has the ability to request a report on any number of a wide variety of topics and including on this topic. So. So in that way, I think council could request request a report and get information that way.

Okay. Yeah, I understand the channels. You know, I guess I'm just wanting to make sure that council is able to be responsive because a lot of what the pccep is going to do is provide policy direction, and that's where, you know, council should be stepping in to legislate. Lastly, the code states that pccep is not subject to Oregon public meeting law, but will follow it to the extent it determines appropriate. Can you explain the rationale? And I feel like is that a change or is that how pccep has been working and has that been different than crc?

And because crc. Yes, it is different than crc. Pccep has been working that way because they are a body that gets advice to the mayor and or make recommendations to the mayor rather. And so they're they're only giving recommendations to one person, and therefore, they are not considered a body advising a governing body and that a single a body more than a single individual, different crc had that ability to appeal things to council. And so you were they were.

Seriously, it was a bad example. I'm also thinking of all the other boards. Do all the other boards not work on opml as well?

Correct. Yeah. All the other boards we talked about except the community board for police accountability. They are governing body in and of their own. They're not even advising a governing body. They're they're in, in their own existence, a governing body and therefore have to follow public meetings laws. So my understanding.

You're saying they do they.

They do. They're required to.

Because the tac and the.

No, I'm sorry. That was the community board for police accountability. Okay. Yes, yes.

But all the other police, the cog and all those other things are all not opmail. Correct. And it is legally because they're advice is given to one elected as opposed to the whole body.

Right. Or for tac, it's the chief of police. But it's not somebody. It's not more than one final decision maker.

Okay.

I'll keep noodling on that, but thank you. And I do know that they do work hard to adhere as much to opml and I get the legal thing, but just because we were baking it in, I just wanted to raise that and make sure I understood what our practice was. Thank you for your time. That's all.

Thank you councilor.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor zimmermann.

Thanks. Really appreciated yesterday's members who came and talked to us. So thanks for giving us two days now. And in reviewing the documents, even before we walked into yesterday's meeting, I was I was considering the change in. Currently, the youth positions are 16 to 23 years old and in what's being proposed, it moves it to 15 to 25. So. It got me thinking as. So I think back about what do we want from a youth role and how do we protect that? Because I think it's an important role. I was a person who was appointed to a school board as a student rep. I was a person who was appointed to a special budget district committee at some point in my youth and those about years for one of the counties in Oregon, I think they're important roles. And I also, given what pccep advises on, I think about the age of 15 or 16, does it matter? And I actually think it does. And I think about the difference between a 15 year old and a 16 year old. And for a lot of us, while we are definitely still minors at 16, it's also the beginning of adulthood, right? We oftentimes will have our first job at 16. It's when we're allowed to drive on our own without our parents. Is it 16? Which means it is also the time in our life when we most likely are going to interact with police without our parents nearby. And I think about that in this role, because I think that having dedicated youth members on the committee is something we should be proud of. And so I appreciate the attention here, but I but I do think that and then the other piece here is just given what we heard in terms of the intensity of the work. Working generally starts at 16, and I want to be cognizant of that. And given that the topics that come up, I think there is something about that that I that I find preserving. 16 has become important to me. And then going to the other side, going up to 25, 25 for a youth position, by all means a young person, I get that. But you know, I have members of my own staff who are not yet 25, right? Working in city hall advising me on lots of senior policy. I myself was leading a platoon full of soldiers in iraq at 25 years old, certainly probably didn't qualify for a youth seat. And so I'm just thinking about those because when we dedicate space to a youth seat, we take on the challenges of having a youth member, which means school can get in the way, which means homework can get in the way, which means being 17 and not really keeping a calendar on your iphone. The way that adults does is part of the role and what we actually are inviting. And I think that those challenges come with it. And I say that because I think if we go up to 25, I think over time, unless we were very careful, I think over time we would probably cut out really the youngest of youth who are eligible because it would be easier to have a 25 year old who is closer to and living as and working as, and probably has rent issues as an adult. Then it would be to have a 16 or 17 year old on. I think those challenges that come with a youth member are are designed and we should protect it. And so I have had some conversations with the mayor's team, I've had some conversations with the staff, and I appreciate you sharing the background on this and opening the field a little bit more. But I offer it as I think I'm going to propose to move Zimmerman one colleagues, which moves this age back to 16 to 23, which is what it currently is, because I would like to preserve those years of middle high school driving on your own through what I'll say are the the grand majority standard deviation of your college years. And I think that those are an important voice to make sure we preserve on sep. So I'll move Zimmerman one and I would appreciate a second on that and your consideration.

Second.

Councilor Zimmerman moves. Zimmerman one I don't rock paper scissors between the two of you. Smith councilor Smith seconds colleagues. Discussion on amendment. Zimmerman one. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for sort of articulating your motivation for this. I'm speaking in opposition to the the motion, largely because. You know, a lot a lot of folks do actually start working before the age of 16. Young people do a lot of work that's invisible and shoulder a lot of burdens in their homes and in their families. I think that we've got we place a lot of burden on young people. And we, we, we, we deserve to give them the opportunity to engage in civic life at an earlier age. And so I think that the expansiveness came out of a community driven process, if I'm not mistaken. And so I, I'm hesitant to amend that back. Without sort of a broader discussion. And I'll just kind of leave it there for now.

Thank you. Councilor Green, councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: I'm curious as to one thing I love to hear councilor Kanal co-sponsor weigh in on this amendment. I'm wondering if part of it is part of the motivation for the change, the fact that ages 15 to 25 are the ages of the, frankly, the greatest amount of criminal activity. But then by inference, probably also the greatest amount of interaction between people and police.

Generally speaking, yes, our understanding of the intention of having these reserved youth seats is that people in this demographic have different kinds of interactions with police, different nature of those interactions. So generally speaking, that is part of the rationale. Yes. Yeah.

I also was about to say that my understanding is that research shows that brain development ends at age 25. But then I like google that and discovered all sorts of neurologists saying, that's a myth. So. So I'm kind of torn on this, and I'm curious to see what my fellow councilors have to say.

Thank you. Councilor Novick. I had a question about this. I put myself in the queue. Every clause and sentence of the settlement agreement has been carefully negotiated and talked to with lawyers. I assume that the codification of this, as part of our settlement agreement also was carefully negotiated. Does us changing anything in this, even this complicate the process? Does it screw up things with us? D.o.j. Does it? Are there any unintended repercussions that may come by us amending language right now? I would hope not.

But aye, Morillo council president heidi brown, again, nothing in the. So the the provisions that apply to the doj settlement agreement, provisions that apply to this portion of the sap have been terminated. The city has successfully been in substantial compliance and for a sufficient amount of time that this is no longer part of the settlement agreement. So there's no prohibition on adopting this. And even otherwise, there wasn't language in the doj settlement agreement that said exactly what the youth age needed to be anyhow. So where, where, where, wherever you decide to land on that, that's a policy decision for all of you. Legally. There's no prohibition one way or another.

Great. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure we asked that. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you. I really appreciate this conversation. And I'm I'm a little conflicted in a couple of ways on this because I think some of the, the conversation around what it takes and what the unique challenges of youth members are that councilor Zimmerman brought up are 100% accurate. And in line with my experience, I have been one of the people who has called to try and remind, you know, youth members, you are on this thing and you know your attendance matters and all that. I won't, in my experience in multiple advisory groups, I wouldn't say that that is limited to youth. As it has been pointed out, it manifests differently. And so I appreciate this bring up being brought up, but I don't think it is. It is unique by any means to even the full range of at most 15 to 25 or whatever sub set within that comes up. The other point that I wanted to to raise here is when you look at the conversation, there are very, very few changes that have been done to this in this codification process. All of them are things that have been discussed for a long period of time, and all of them were negotiated, not in the context of messing up the settlement agreement, as heidi pointed out. That's and that's not a conversation that that's super relevant for, like, given the context of the paragraphs being terminated. But in the broader general Portland political context and the specific piece of context these conversations have been, have been, have been in progress for a while. And this particular age range conversation has not landed at this particular point at at this range that's being proposed. I do think that pccep members, as I recall originally, that the age range that was suggested in this ordinance did come from pccep members. In one of the codification proposals. I'm going to verify that. Actually, I'm not sure. I'm really sorry to put you on the spot, doreen. Heidi. But can you recall if that's a particular piece of the recommendation either time in terms of the age range?

Christopher taft from mia wilson's office. Councilor are you referring to the meeting when this maybe first was introduced? Is that what you're asking? Just to clarify?

No.

Just trying to if you could speak to the the rationale for why it's this age range is, I guess, the underlying question. Christopher.

Understood. I'm going to defer to dori, but just when I when we were meeting, it was brought up that youth members. It's difficult to retain and to fill often. And expanding the funnel would perhaps make this easier to maintain and have youth members stick around, but I don't know if. Dori, you want to add anything to that.

I don't know if I have much to add. My recollection is that in the in the planning meetings where staff members were invited to participate and give feedback on the draft code language, that. This was originally a discussion brought up by the members who attended that meeting. And again, speaking to sort of the concept of what having these reserved youth seats is, which as we've, as we've discussed, is to reflect that different experience with police and how that might not map very neatly onto, you know, it's just everyone, you know, 123 year old's experience might be different from another's. And then also, yeah, some of those logistical realities for both staff and members themselves and some of the challenges in keeping these seats filled.

Thank you.

I would add to that. So, so this question helped me just to, to recall, because as has been pointed out, this has been a multi month process of conversations leading up to this ordinance in anticipation that it might be that these paragraphs might be terminated at some point. And also the the conversations with some members. I'll also mention one other thing in the broader conversations, the forest level conversations, there are major generational differences in different communities in Portland, not just racial and ethnic communities, but also, you know, people living in with mental health issues or mental illness. And having youth seats allows for us to not simply on the side of whatever age range is already represented in city advisory groups. Over the course of many years, that has proven to generally be more likely to be retired folks just because they have more time. Having these dedicated youth seats allows, in part for those other generational perspectives to be acknowledged as well. So just wanted to contextualize that to the specific proposal. I think what I, what I noted from the testimony that called for a change yesterday was that they felt that this one member felt that the the change was being imposed without a full conversation. And I think that that we shouldn't double down on that. In my personal opinion, there's a lot more work that could be done on piece structure, and I look forward to having those conversations with the mayor after this underlying ordinance passes. And I'd love to include this in that rather than amending it now. Thank you.

Thank you. Council president. Okay.

Sorry, can I clarify. I misspoke. I think I said earlier the settlement agreement didn't have the specific age and it does. I just want to and it has 16 to 23. Thank you. It still doesn't apply. But thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. You know, as I was when I when I first read the proposal before us, I noticed that this was one of the only changes from the current language that sap operates under. And I was curious, curious about that change to 15 to 25. And I started thinking then and then thought more or less at night about this age range as a parent and trying to think about and hold both at the low end, when are most we're operating in most, because there are always kids who are exceptionally ready or who take a little longer to get there on any topic. But at what age are most kids ready to hold the weight of what sap here's? And on the other end, when does that relationship with policing and that space of you done did something stupid because you're a teenager wear off for most kids? And I actually appreciate this amendment because as I try to hold that thinking, especially on the top end, when does that relationship change? It feels like the way that a 17 or 18 or 19 year old interacts with our police is often different than what that looks like at 24 or 25, and I do think it's important to make sure that we hear voices from those late teens and early 20s who are able to hold the weight of what pccep hears, but also have that different relationship where, frankly, they're testing things out and pushing limits and need to be able to share with those of us who are a little past that point in life, what they need from our policing structure to be able to learn their lessons in a safe way and move on into adulthood responsibly. So I will be supporting this amendment today. I think had it been changed to something other than the original, I would hold the weight of the conversation that went into this new age differently and might ask for us to to hold before we did something. But returning to the age that it has been is something I'm very comfortable with.

Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Just a bunch of hands disappear from the q councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you for that. And I want to say, when I first started hearing councilor Pirtle-guiney comment, I, I understand the point on the top end of the range, but I did want to say something on the lower end of the range. And this is something I don't really talk about a whole lot, but I will say, as the only man of color on this council, I can tell you that it is not at 16 when your relationship or perceived relationship with adult structures changes, and that includes the police. It's not limited to the police because 15 year olds can get permits, 15 year olds are going to be out, and about 15 year olds might be in schools that have a police presence or crime presence, that might involve a police response. And there there were two young men of color who served on pcp a few years ago. They both had the same first name. So I, I, I'm not going to say which one it was, but I remember talking to one of them about his experience going back to middle school as part of this. And as someone who has been deeply involved in trying to get young people to apply for this and reaching out to every school, every college, everybody having the the expanded range is helpful for that. But I also don't want to minimize that. There is something that changes and it changes at a different age for different people and for many of the same communities, I imagine, and I've heard from people in other advisory groups that this is the case for the other target population for pccep as well, which is folks experiencing mental health crises, that you might become an adult earlier and you might have different experiences earlier. So the low end of the range, I want to really talk about that as a reason for opposition here, because in my experience, that wasn't magically at 16. I don't think there's ever a clear line. And I want to be upfront about that. There's nothing inherently better about 18 than 17 and 364 days in terms of your legal responsibility changing, but your capacity doesn't change much mentally. But and we've talked about that in the context of voting and other kinds of things, but in the context of when your life changes in terms of how you're treated as an adult by governmental systems, I think that that doesn't happen at the same age for every population. And I feel obligated, given my role on this council, to bring that up. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. What's the longest a pccep meeting goes for?

The scheduled time would be 2.5 hours.

Okay.

I asked that because. There are restrictions and it kicks in at three hours for a 15 year old who works, which is part of my motivation that I talked about. So if there's anything like this city council, it busts through its timelines on a fairly regular basis. And I don't know that to be the case, but I appreciate kind of knowing we're still in compliance if we have. 15. And that's and I appreciate that. I think that we are the adults in the room. I think that when you are the adults in the room, you can make no solution. That works for everyone in every single situation. But the state of Oregon, the united states has said that 16 is kind of when things kind of start to change in a lot of ways, knowing that any sort of standard deviation is going to be eaches out there. I really, really value colleagues that if you think, why do we have a youth seat dedicated to any system, or why do we have a senior seat dedicated to any system? Or why do we have name the group? And it's because that system generally doesn't automatically put that demographic into the seat. And so we've we've articulated that youth is important. And I, and I guess I would like to underline a part here, which is the further we extend the youth number into the 20s, I think that the system is less likely to appoint a member who is a youth to that seat, and that is a motivator for me. So I share that you may disagree with me, but I think that the system will generally pick a 25 year old to serve over a 17 year old, and I bet they can do a good job. But I want to make sure that that 17 year old voice is always able to be heard, because I think it's important to a lot of the points that you all have made, whether you're agreeing with this or not. And. Good, bad or indifferent. But I'll just from what I understand that perhaps this decision was made by the cep committee while the youth members were not present, and that the youth members also are in favor of a 16 to 23. When you ask youth members to be a part of a thing, they're going to make you mad sometimes. But in this case, I both agreed with it and then I it happened to get testified to. But it was already a thing on my paper that I circled of, you know, I have some concern about this. So if you're on the fence, then you should vote for no change, which means you vote for this amendment. If you feel strongly, I get it, but I think no change. Making it 16 to 23 is a yes vote for this amendment and we can move forward and codify.

Thank you, councilor Zimmermann. Colleagues, I'll just note that it is currently 3:00, and we still have two additional items to hear today. Councilor Ryan.

Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. Well, you know, councilor Zimmerman just brought up such a fascinating amendment. So here we are. I think that one thing that you said at the beginning that really got me awake was that youth often have the most interaction with police. I'll speak for myself. My I had a really fun childhood and youth, and so my most active time with police was definitely started around 15 to early 20s and. And so I was thinking 15 was great, but you had me at lowering it to. 23 because of other remarks that you made. But what's really awkward right now is I see horror out there. And you testified last night, and you are a youth member of the commission. And I would like to hear I know you testified last night, but you're now here in person listening to us have this conversation. And so I would like to hear your perspective on what we're saying. Would that be safe, council president? We may have him come up. I know I helped you get you applied for another commission. How many commissions are you on?

I'm on three bodies. Wow. Portlanders policy commission, the cdc and the Portland committee on community engaged policing. And for the record, jordi sanchez bautista, community organizer and interim co-chair for pccep.

Yeah, I knew the new portlanders. So anyway, thank you for your service. So you've been listening to all of us. We're not you and we weren't in the conversation, and we are not a youth that's been serving on this commission. Tell us what you really think.

I think, and I and I did draft something afterwards and I'm happy to happy to read it. But, you know, I wanted to say that, you know, pccep members were brought into the conversation, as I stated in my testimony yesterday evening in, you know, formation of this language and agreed with almost everything, everything that past members had drafted with former mayor ted wheeler. I will note, though, that, yes, I was not part of those conversations and nor was the other youth member. And we had both talked about it before yesterday evening about like, hey, we both weren't part of this. What did you think we both agreed to the suggestion that I had offered to keeping it to 15, because two points that some of the councilor That some of you councilors have made. 15th may be young. Yes, but there is a lot of facts that you have presented that that's the reason why we thought, okay, let's keep it to. 15 the big concern that we had was the the. 25 range. That seemed a little bit too high for us. And so we had suggested perhaps lowering it to 23 to actually focus on making it very youth centered. We do one thing that we are thinking about when we did think about that 15 to 22 range is because it's, you know, very centered high school, but also college age and transitioning out of that. The other other, the other thing I will note too, is we do have now an on board community engagement person who we have had our conversation and based on what their conversations have been, is focusing a lot more on schools. Their background is in youth violence prevention. And so I'm happy that if this age range is lower down to 15 to 22, it holds it holds staff accountable to ensure that they actually bring someone that's in that age perspective. But also we have our community engagement person that's doing the work in our schools and in the community and getting that, you know, out there that, you know, peace exists, pccep does this, etc. Then that likely will bring in these actual, you know, young people that we want to bring into the body. So that's my perspective is that I would say, you know, I still agree with that clarification, still should still go move forward. I still agree with everyone's concepts that like, this is a bigger conversation on how we bring young people into government and into these types of bodies to provide their voices. But I also want to ensure that it doesn't, you know, keep it to where we keep expanding the age range that it's going to mainly be focusing on 20s. You know, I came on because I got an email about advisory bodies and I saw pccep and I thought as a young, young colored man in the cully neighborhood who, you know, hears gunshots every night that, you know, I want to say something. When it comes to public safety, the other youth member and I can speak and from what they had told me, and they were open to me speaking out on this, you know, they came across it because they were doing public safety research and they were interested in a job. And so how young people like myself have been coming across this has mainly just been miracles, not through community engagement. And so with this, I want to really change that. And if councilors have more specific questions, I'm happy to provide answers.

I thank you for coming up and being so articulate and also just explain your experience. I thought it was really helpful. Councilor Zimmerman right now, based on what we're experiencing with this dialog, I, I, I heard two things. I heard 15, I heard more of a debate about the end point and, and, and also I heard that perhaps the process wasn't complete because you weren't in the meeting where this was made. So I, I'm going to get out of the way now and let others decide. But at the moment, I don't think I can support this amendment based on what I just heard. Yeah, thanks.

Thank you. Councilor. Ryan. Councilor. Koyama Lane.

Thank you, council president. I promise I'll be quick. Thank you for that. Councilor Ryan, that was very helpful and thank you for engaging youth voice right in front of us and and taking that seriously. I when councilor Pirtle-guiney talked about how can really depend on the kid. I absolutely agree with that. A lot of things can depend on, on where kids at, how they're developing. And glad that she mentioned that. And I will add also connected to that, but also separate beyond just some cognitive developments, identity and experiences also can really vary with different kids. I will say when I was teaching fifth graders at fabian school in the concordia neighborhood there in on north east d.kim in for those that aren't, aren't sure. Kids come in usually ten years old, 11, some might be 12 and fifth grade. There were absolutely kids that had thoughts, experiences, things to say about law enforcement in a way that not many kids at sunnyside environmental school, predominantly white school, would maybe have those same experiences. And in my classroom at fabian, my fifth graders were predominantly kids of color, predominantly black, african American. I find this conversation really interesting. I like the idea of 15 and having also just kind of a wider, wider range there to get more applicants and think that we can have more conversation. And for councilor Novick, I think it's true that 25 is not a universal finish line for the brain. I love talking about the brain, but it is typically from what I read. Tell me if you see something different. Research says that's when the prefrontal cortex is, like I say to parents, is like more fully cooked. And that's that part is connected to weighing consequences, impulsivity, being able to suppress impulsive and holding multiple pieces of information at the same time and, and planning and then and also for governmentally, that's like that 26 is, is how long you can be on your parents insurance and okay, that's it.

Thank you. Councilor. Koyama Lane. Councilor. Kanal.

Yeah, I just wanted to add one other thing. And then the staff may be able to verify this because I don't have an exact stat, but it's, it's pretty clear the vacancy rate in the youth seats is significantly higher. And so I want to I want to pause it. Three options here and just say that the idea of having a 24 year old member is maybe not ideal to represent youth if it's all 24 year olds, but it is significantly, significantly better than having no filled position at all. And I can tell you that I personally went to many places to try and solicit applications, and I want to acknowledge that it started out in more general spaces before the youth side came on board, because of how challenging that that is, to figure out the right entry points. But it also included the more youth focused part. I'll also say that there was a member who was recruited of a couple different groups that have had sort of youth assigned seats, two different people that I'm thinking of right now where you recruit somebody and then you have to recruit them again for an at large position, or reappoint them to an at large position, and then go find another young person because you found them at the end of the age range. So it's quite the opposite to that. There is an incentive to recruit at the higher end of the range. It's there's actually an incentive to not recruit at the higher end of the range, because you want people who are going to stay and you want people who can continue to fill that seat for more than a single year. I think in this particular case, it was like 6 to 8 months. Is the person I'm thinking of before they had to be reappointed as an at large member. So all these three options. Yeah, it is factually accurate having some people in the in the high school age and some people in the college age are the highest preference. But I definitely wanted to note that if you're choosing between a plan b and a plan c, it is significantly better to have someone who is very recently out of the high school and college age years on it than a vacant position. We are really fortunate at the city right now that a lot of our positions are filled, and that there's a lot of staff doing good recruitment, not just in this space, but I think we've talked about it in the sustainability and climate commission, which is having youth member appointments coming up pretty soon too. And but I want to just clarify the incentive structure is not to leave it vacant, and it's not to have it be people at the top end of the range, because it's more work and it's more chaos when you have to churn through people. So having an upper end of the range allows for that conversation to continue, but does not in any way presuppose that we're going to be recruiting 24 year olds. And I just wanted to flag that differential.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues, it's 310. We still have two more items. There's no chance we're going to finish this today. Councilor. Novick.

I just wanted to say that I personally would be inclined to let the youth members suggested a 15 to 22 while acknowledging what councilor Kanal said that that might that there is a problem with vacancies, but I think that 15 year olds have so much. There's a lot of 15 year olds have interactions with police, so I would be supportive of keeping that that end of the range, but I'd be open to cutting back from 20 from 25 to 22.

Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor. Ryan.

Eric Zimmerman: I think I have a friendly amendment. I'm hoping. Councilor. Zimmerman 15 to 23.

Sounds great.

Move it all. Seconded.

I move that the age range is 15 to 23.

Second.

Did we already move yours.

Yes. Amendment to it.

We need it.

It's not really a thing. We have to. We're supposed to withdraw it and then introduce a new one.

Point of order. You can you can amend an amendment on the.

All right. Cool. Great.

That's what just happened.

Okie doke.

Okay, that sounds great. Colleagues, any further discussion on the now amended amendment? Rebecca, can we call the roll?

No, no. Point of order.

Yeah.

What do you mean? The now amended amendment. We still have to vote on the the new amendment.

Yes. Right.

Right. Proposal for an amended amendment.

So right now we're going to call the roll on councilor Ryan's new amendment, correct?

Yes.

Right, right. City attorney is walking. Up drum roll.

Sorry.

Robert taylor, city attorney george, what have you gotten us into here?

Apologies.

No. You're good. You're doing great. I was here last night, and when I heard him give his testimony, and I've appreciated this discussion today, and it's an important one. So if there's an amendment that's been made and seconded and that's before the body, and then there is a desire to change that in some way, there's there's three ways to handle that. Friendly amendment is not one of them, but the three ways you can handle that is withdraw the thing that's in front of the body, wipe the slate clean, and just offer a new amendment in the form that you want.

Okay, so I'm offering to co-sponsor this amendment with councilor Zimmerman. It's 15 to 23.

Perfect. So that's one way to do it. So councilor Zimmerman can withdraw his. You make a new one and the way you want it. Now, that would be before the body. That's one way to do it. The another way to do it would be to adopt, adopt or reject the amendment that's currently pending. So if you could adopt zimmerman's amendment and then offer a brand new one to tweak it a little more to change one of the ages. So that's a second way you can do it. The third way you can do it is

There's.

An amendment pending. Somebody can make a motion to amend the amendment to make a tweak to it. If there's a motion to amend the amendment, you have to vote on the motion to amend the amendment and then vote on the amendment itself. So those are three ways to do it.

Thank you.

I think the I think often the easiest way to do it is if there's a if there's a wordsmith better way to pose an amendment. Just withdraw the one that's pending and replace it with a brand new one.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Thank you.

That'll save us a few minutes.

Councilor Smith, since you were my second, I'll pull back Zimmerman one and propose Ryan Zimmerman one, which is changing the age from 15 to 23. Councilor. Ryan, did I hear that right?

Yes.

Are you amenable to that? Councilor Smith as the second? Second. Thank you.

Okey doke. Great. Thank you all. Now we have a new amendment.

Thank you.

Robert taylor.

To councilor Ryan to the amendment.

Dan Ryan: Oh, no.

Okay. Councilor Zimmerman to the amendment. Councilor Avalos to the amendment.

Candace Avalos: Yeah. I appreciate the discussion. I think at the end of the day, I'm just going to keep it original. I think it's been discussed. You brought it forward as 15 to 25. There's logic for enhancing that range. I don't plan on changing it so I'm voting no.

Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Yeah, I think it's worth.

I agree with councilor Avalos. I'll just note I think it's worth noting and the reason I said this earlier, but I didn't make clear why the legislative intent is to still try to get people who accurately represent youth from. I'm speaking as a as a co-sponsor of it here, and I imagine the mayor will agree, or the mayor's office will agree that it's to accurately and adequately represent youth, which is impossible to do with two people. And but the best you can do. And so I think that that legislative intent for me is sufficient the way it is. And that's why I'll be I'll be voting no on the change.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Rebecca, can we please call the roll on the Zimmerman Ryan amendment calling?

Yep. Ryan Zimmerman one Kanal.

No.

Pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane. Absent.

Morillo.

I Novick.

In part because Ryan Zimmerman was for a period my favorite baseball player.

I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos Smith. I Dunphy I. The amendment is approved with 9i2 no and one absent.

Colleagues, any further discussion on the now amended. Emergency ordinance? This will require nine votes to pass. Rebecca, can you please call the roll on the now amended emergency ordinance?

Calling the roll on the emergency ordinance document 2026 126 Kanal.

Thank you.

I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane absent Morillo I.

Novick I.

CClark I.

Green I.

Zimmerman I.

Pavlo's Smith. I Dunphy. I and the ordinance passes with 11 I votes, one absent.

Thank you all very much. And thank you for your patience. This call item 11.

Item 11 future vision commission presentation document number 2020 6-129.

Colleagues. Our colleague councilor Pirtle-guiney is joining us from the other side of the dais along with. Councilor gonzalez from metro. So welcome. I will turn it over to you all.

Thank you so much council president colleagues I appreciate the time today. We are excited to have the opportunity to share some of the work that's been happening on metro's future vision commission, and I want to thank councilor, juan carlos gonzalez and jessica. I believe there's other staff with us here today, too, for partnering on the presentation and councilor Your staff. Robin, nice help in getting this organized. It's an honor to serve as Portland city council's representative on the future vision commission and one of the city of portland's representatives to that commission. You'll hear more briefly in a presentation about the future vision commission. But in brief, it's a metro led effort to develop a shared 50 year look at the greater region. It brings together leaders from across jurisdictions, sectors, local government, business, nonprofits, academia to hopefully create a framework that will guide future regional plans at metro, yes, but ideally within all of the cities and counties in our region. Our metro region is a growing region. And as we grow, we're either going to do that as separate cities that bump into each other physically, yes, but also philosophically or we're going to build an interconnected future together, united by a shared vision. If we want this to be a great place for our kids and our grandkids to grow up, we need to do that. From portland's perspective, this matters. We are geographically toward the center of the region, and we know that our work impacts our neighbors and there's impacts us. So in this role, I've tried to bring portland's priorities forward. But I also know that today's timing is important because I can't bring that work forward alone. And the future vision commission is in an outreach period. You'll hear more about that. But at the end of today, I want you to know that I'm asking for your help. I'm asking for your help because if we do this visioning work, right, if we reach out to everybody across the region and hear all of the good ideas that all of our constituents have and that folks from our neighboring cities have as well, we will create an incredible framework for the future of this region that we are a part of. And I know that I can't do that alone. I am excited to turn this over to councilor Gonzalez to share a little bit about the work which he is leading, and I hope that we all can engage more in it moving forward.

Thank you so much. Councilor council president Dunphy, Portland city council. For the record, my name is juan carlos gonzalez and I am a metro councilor for district four, which is western Washington county. But I am the proud chair of the futurevision commission, and I want to thank councilor Pirtle-guiney for inviting me today, giving me the opportunity to share some of the work with you. And I just want to start by saying this, that moments like this don't come along very often for regions or for for cities like Portland and those in the region. We are at one of those moments where our future is still flexible, where the decisions that we make now will genuinely shape how millions of people, millions of people live, move, and thrive for decades. The metro future vision vision isn't just a planning exercise. It's not a document that sits on a shelf. It's an opportunity. One of the biggest that we've had in a generation to decide what kind of region we actually want to be. Portland knows how to do this. This city has a long history of leaning into the future, of making brave, regional choices before they were popular, and then watching them become models for the rest of the country. Change is coming, whether we plan for it or not. And the real question is, do we want change to happen to us? I'd argue that we want to design it together. Metro's role here is to create alignment so that the values that Portland already leads with can show up at a regional scale, with real support behind them. This vision is strongest when Portland is at the table, helping shape it. When regional direction and city leadership are pulling in the same direction. And my purpose here is to invite you and your communities into shaping this vision with us. Because when Portland and the region move forward together, really powerful things can happen. So if we can go to the next slide, I'm also joined by jess adeb, project manager, futurevision, who will be talking a little bit later. But first, let me start at the beginning. The year is 1992, it's November. Whitney houston's I will always love you has just been released and is quickly climbing to the top of the billboard charts to replace boyz two boys, two men's end of the road. What else is happening in 1992? Bill clinton has just been elected locally. Vera katz beat out earl blumenauer for city of Portland mayor. The dream team is making basketball history in the memorial coliseum. The local photo is the local photo. Here is one of the lovejoy viaduct that used to run from the broadway bridge to 14th avenue, the removal of which helped open up to the pearl redevelopment. And also in 1992, yours truly was born and important for metro. In 1992, Portland Portland area voters approved the charter for unique regional government called metro. Next slide. Sorry, jess. The charter states that metro's most important service is to be is is to be regional planning and policy making to preserve and enhance the quality of life in the environment for us and for the folks that come after us. As such, the first order of business prescribed for the agency was to create a future vision, a long term visionary outlook for at least a 50 year period. This document is not a policy itself, but it is a guided development of key policies for the region and the updated future vision will do that again. Next slide. So the current vision is almost older than me because this vision was adopted in 1995. Again, it is not a regulatory document. It is a shared vision vision version covering the region and not just metro as an agency. And I think when most people think about a regional vision for metro, they think about the map here, the one that you see to the right, and that is the 2040 growth, the 2040 growth concept, and also the regional framework plan that unites metro's adopted policies related to land use, transportation, parks, water quality, and more that was adopted in 1997 and includes the 2040 growth concept. And the framework plan forms the basis for coordination of city comprehensive plans and implementing regulations across the region to implement the concept. And I love the list of engagement tactics, tactics that were used to create some of these foundational items. So there were videos at blockbuster, there was comment, a phone line, a comment phone line that you could dial into. We mailed paper surveys to households. There were 3d glasses, like the little red and blue things and maps that were placed all over coffee shops around the region. I can't think of a more Portland thing than that. Next slide please. So the outcomes of this vision have included the redevelopment of all parts of Portland and all parts of greater Portland. Here. We wanted to make sure to pull some out that I think speak to each of at least one of each of your districts. We see lentz, alberta division, south waterfront. Each one of these communities and neighborhoods included a pretty significant thing in in the future vision, which then informed the 2040 growth concept. And we also know that not every outcome that we hoped for has been achieved for every resident in the region, because different communities have experienced this growth and changed differently. And we as government actors have changed our approaches over time, as we've also had to learn hard lessons from community about things like displacement. In some ways, we have more tools than before. One tool we have now that we didn't have before. City of Portland and metro have passed affordable housing bonds, which have had a really important impact on our planning. Next slide. So why update this vision now? There's no question that right now we are in a tough time. I think we see it every day in the city and in the region. But it's also a time when having a designated space to look up out at the horizon, rather than our day to day, allows us all the license and space to dream a little bit. 50 years is a time horizon where so much can change. So many of our biggest issues today are the ones that cross jurisdictional boundaries, and we want this process to be one where we open up the conversations about how that scale can help us envision a different future together, and then work across silos to do that, whether government boundaries or those perceived divides between government, business, community organizations and philanthropy. And while a lot of the values we see in that 1990 1995 vision still resonate, the welfare of children is critical to our present and future well-being. All residents are supported in being well informed and active participants in civic life, and people are enabled to live close to the beauty and inspiration of nature. There are others that are dated, and a discussion of our 21st century concept of equity is wholly missing, along with considerations of key issues such as climate change. I think this is again a perfect time for renewal and recommitment. So I got to say, I'm super excited about this project, y'all. The future vision will be co-created over several phases. This is one of our best efforts at trying to delineate a process over 18 months. So I'm here with you today as a part of a call to action, so you can help us understand what it what it means to have regional values and this community feedback that we get from you and from the region will be synthesized and confirmed by community alongside what we are calling drivers of change. And then those drivers of change are things like climate change, artificial intelligence, remote work, the rise of disinformation, decrease in the trust in government, etc. And drivers are broad long term trends that are likely to have a significant impact on our future. So in this research, we are working to understand big questions like where have we been? What does our past growth and outcomes tell us about who has impact, but who was impacted and how? Where are we going? What types of major shifts could happen that may define our future? What will vision? What will that vision look like? How will metro represent and translate the region's values into a future forward vision to the public and its partners? So I just want to recognize that so much of this good work has already been done around the region to define a vision for for our area, for this area. So we want to start this work with a scan of both government and non-government visioning work. And this work has ranged across multiple geographies, and we wanted to pull out some of the plans that specifically impact and influence the city of Portland efforts. The prosper, prosperous advanced Portland plan, the 2035 comp plan, albina vision, I mean, you name it, there's no shortage of plans that build on this foundation of the future vision, even though this old document is not something that we always think about. So without further ado, I want to hand it off to jess to help talk about some of the more tactical things that we're doing to implement this. And thank you again for for having us.

Great. Thanks, councilor. So for the record, again, my name is jess adev. I'm a principal regional planner at metro and the project manager for this effort. This really is councilor Gonzalez and councilor Pirtle-guiney has have said is something that needs to knit together who we are and have been as a region. So it's really grounded in this place and the people who comprise who we are, who we identify as and who we want to be in the future. But it needs to be looking forward as well. You know, people have lived at the confluence of these rivers for generations and will be here for generations to come, and it's a weighty responsibility to be thinking in that 50 year time horizon and helping create that future. One thing that we've really been talking about is the way that people live their lives don't doesn't stop at city boundaries. You know, residents of Portland go see shows at the recent Beaverton. They truck their kids to soccer tournaments in damascus, and then people from all corners of the region come to Portland for the blazers soon, for the fire, for medical appointments and for work. And those systems that are shaping our future also don't stop at city boundaries. And that's one of the reasons why doing this at a regional scale really is so important. And we're lucky to be guided in this work by the future vision commission, of which councilor Pirtle-guiney is one of the members. This is a body that is stood up as a one time organization for just this purpose of updating the vision. They were appointed by metro council last year. Part of their role is to act as project ambassadors to their communities, whoever that may be. Today, the community we're talking to is Portland city council and the residents of the city of Portland. Other folks on this committee represent small business owners. They represent folks who are larger business owners are involved in the business community. They represent folks who lead community based organizations, folks who are involved in nature and conservation organizations. And then there are also some folks on this group who just saw the opportunity and took it, because they really care about this region and they want to help make it better. So this group so far has done work to review those existing visions and long range plans, some of which councilor Gonzalez just showed up on the screen. And one thing we did in that review with this group was ask people to inhabit a different role. So I don't remember what vision councilor Pirtle-guiney was tasked with reviewing in that meeting, but we made everybody switch it up so that they were taking a different perspective. I will guarantee you that she did not read a plan from the city of Portland and that, for instance, mayor pace from hillsboro, who is also on this body, was not reading her own plan. We're really asking people to expand their perspective and live that that regional crossover that we're really looking for. One other thing we're doing with this group is often they are meeting at the metro regional center. But again, to broaden that perspective, we are moving these meetings around the region to get people exposed to different parts of our geography, but also exposed to things that are really important pieces of who we are and assets of the region. So in March, we were able to meet center court at the moda center. Realizing councilor Gonzalez's longtime dream of having a meeting in the moda center, we will be meeting at the beautiful new east county library in Gresham. Once that's open very later in the process, we'll meet at the port of Portland and sort of get to experience the the great asset that pdx is to this region. So really trying to make the experience that the folks are having on this commission be something that is unique to this process and kind of embodies what we're trying to get out of it. These are the principles upon which we are doing our community engagement. I was just talking about the commission, and it's really important that that's a diverse and representative body of the region, but their job is to interpret and hear from us what we are hearing from the community overall. You know, we are seeing using these principles that encourage us to build on and grow relationships, create a vision with a sense of ownership from the broader region. That's something that's really community created. Challenge ourselves to engage with more creative and accessible engagement tools so we can meet people where they're at in a way that feels both meaningful and fun. And as we have said, to lift up and recognize past visioning work from around the region. And. So this is just a very high level of how we're doing that. Councilor earlier mentioned that we're in the middle of this round of engagement on regional values. We will have another big round of engagement near the end of this year, beginning of the next, where we're asking people to review that draft vision and tell us what their key priorities are for moving into implementation. This summer will be out in community at events, reminding people that we're doing this work and hopefully engaging in some fun, family friendly activities to get people into that futures mindset. Thinking on a 50 year time horizon is not something that most people do every day, so it takes some work to get people to think that way. We are also in very conscious in this process of engaging with youth, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. Obviously, you all have a lot of thoughts about how youth can be important to public processes. And so we're trying to do that with this project as well. And then lastly, I want to point to the the part of this process where pen will really be put to paper on the aspirations, the meat of this vision in the early fall will be bringing together cross-sector leaders from government, business, community based organizations and philanthropy to be the folks who are the first putting pen to paper on what those aspirations look like at a summit, and then some subsequent tables after that. One thing I really want to call out is how we are pushing the boundaries with community engagement. 50 years, as I said, is a hard timeline to think on. And who better to help us think creatively and imagine unknown futures and flex our muscles than the artists of this region? Bringing arts and culture into this work makes it more human, more relatable. It also gives folks a way to engage for whom words on the page are maybe not the best way to express themselves, and it's also just so much a part of who we are as greater Portland. To do this, we've contracted with an amazing artist to be our arts lead. Subhashini glisan. Forbes is a name that might be familiar to some folks here. She was the former creative poet laureate of Portland, really engaged and involved advocate in the arts world here in this region. She is guiding our staff work to integrate arts and engagement into this project process. One of the most powerful ways we've done that so far is a brief artist residency at metro, where for multidisciplinary artists came together to create a piece of work in two and a half days that they then shared with us as staff members of the public, invited guests, members of the future vision commission and metro council. It was a really powerful opportunity to be reminded of the importance of emotion in our planning and government processes, and to not separate the way that we feel about something from our work, and also to recognize that arts can really bring people to the fore, the humanity that we have to deal with, and we have to serve as public servants. So we're also looking ahead to potential grants to artists later in this process, which is really exciting. So stay tuned for that. And then lastly, for me, our future vision youth committee. This is not the first time metro has stood up a youth committee for a project or a process, but it's something we're really excited and happy about for this because thinking 50 years in the future, these folks are significantly more likely to be around than your mostly middle aged project team. So this group is going to be deeply involved with the development of the vision meeting 12 times over the next year. Our engagement strategy really is written to ensure that their voices are heard first in the process and embedded in our work. Along the way, they'll advise us on how to best message opportunities in this project to a younger audience feeling, figuring out how how we can make it feel relevant and important. We've outlined multiple events and activities so that this group feels meaningfully integrated with. The commission, has opportunities to engage with metro council and invitation to expert panels and other project events. It's really designed, as well as a learning opportunity for these committee members who will be able to bring this experience into other civic engagement opportunities around the region. One of their biggest roles will be convening and guiding the form of a youth summit, which will be an opportunity for broad youth engagement across the region. These folks will also be liaisons to their own committee or their own communities throughout the region, whether that's their school, their teams, their clubs, just the folks that they hang out with on a day to day. So we're really excited about the opportunity that bringing these voices into the process has for expanding our thinking. Last week was the first time that they came and visited the commission and shared some of the thoughts that have come up just in their first two meetings. And, you know, it's striking, I have to admit, that I don't spend a ton of time hearing from folks ages 15 to 24, and it's a really enlightening process to just sit and listen to the opinions of young people and how articulate and thoughtful they can be, and just the ways that they break open our our thinking. So super happy to have them. I'll turn it back to councilor Gonzalez to just close this out with a little bit more about our current engagement.

Yeah. Thank you jess. So our ask is super simple because what we want your help with is just to get this current engagement phase out to people that might not always participate in regional processes. We have this, this values engagement that runs through mid-may. And there's multiple ways for us to do that. There are there's an online survey, we have conversation kits, bookmarks. There's a qr code here. I mean, I would welcome you to pull up your phones. It's just a really simple survey actually, so that we actually are able to, to, to pull information from folks. We believe that regional values, they form from the foundation of every element of, of the vision because we want to think about housing, transportation, climate, the economy, equity. And we know that we want to get these values right. And in order to do so, we need to hear from a broad range of perspectives. And so you've heard a lot about this theme of cross-cutting reaching different parts of our community. Next slide. Just to wrap up here and with the final thank you from me. And as we wrap up, I hope to be able to come back and share, especially with with what some of these drivers of change are, what what futurists are looking to 50 years from now. But we really want to thank you for being engaged in this. Again, a huge thank you to councilor Pirtle-guiney and to you for your hard work, for this beautiful city that we all love and may we be good stewards for for this year and next year and the next 50 years. Thank you.

Thank you very much, colleagues. Now is an opportunity for us to ask questions or discussion. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Thank you. Councilor. Carlos gonzalez I forgot that there. Councilor. As well, so I wanted to ask a little bit just in terms of the, the desired end goal of this process, I have looked at the 1995 outcome, the actual report, that vision report that came out at the end. And I was really struck by not only the values, but the actual suggestions after it. I don't really know the, the, the header on it. If it's, you know, portions of the, the vision itself. But is that the sort of way you anticipate the final document looking in terms of the level of specificity of the recommendations, in terms of the types of, of topics that'll cover?

Thanks, councilor. I love that you look that up. I'm going to lean on jess here because we are actively thinking about what does the specific document look like and what we want to build on and some of the gaps from from the last plan. Yeah.

Thanks for the question. Councilor Kanal. For one, we definitely want the actual form and format of this document to be significantly more engaging than the one from 1995. We want this to be something that someone could either pick up and read, that they could watch a video about, that they could hear their neighbors talk about in a video. There are a lot of other ways that we want folks to actually engage with the content of that. To the question about the the content of the vision, the topics, the level of specificity, I think that it will end up being similar to the existing vision. In that sense, when you look out 50 years, there is so much uncertainty inherent in that timeline that we have to really rely on those values, those bedrock, foundational things of who we collectively want to be as a region and what we want to see. I think it's fairly likely that it will end up being structured in a similar way. For those who have not dived in and read the 1995 vision, it is structured much more in a set of scales. So what do we want to see for the individual, for the community, for this place? It makes a lot more sense to think in those kinds of topic areas rather than what do we want to see for transportation, for the economy, for the environment? When you're talking 50 years and things are so integrated as systems. So I would anticipate that it is more similar to that 95 vision in the structural sense than, you know, something like a comp plan that is more structured around those ways that you implement and move toward a vision. You know, transportation is, is a means to an end of a thriving region. Preserving the environment is a means to the end of a thriving region also. And so we're really thinking about those more topical based areas as ways that we will implement the vision at metro and at other, other partner agencies around the region.

And importantly, we want this to be a vision that is distinctly greater Portland and not just something that we feel like could be plopped in another major city that truly reflects, I think, the values and what makes us special.

Thank you for that. How what has the process been at metro for evaluating progress towards that particular vision, and what do you expect it to be for this one when it's completed?

Thanks. Yeah, we, we're dedicating quite a bit of time and auditing and looking at different equity assessments of the work that we've done. I know that we have a panel coming up as well, led by acting president duncan wong, to look at some of the iterations of the plan. But jess, do you want to talk about how how we're doing that on the on the staff side?

Sure. So the most direct outcome of the prior future vision was the creation of the 2040 growth concept. That map that councilor Gonzalez had up earlier, which is the land use policy for the region. So what we are doing in looking back is looking at what the outcomes have been from implementing that that particular piece of policy, because it is the most direct line. In the early 90s, metro's remit really was mostly around land use, policy, transportation. And, you know, our agency's role in the region has greatly expanded and changed since then. You know, we didn't have a housing department. We didn't own, you know, upwards of 20,000 acres of parks and natural areas at that time. So really, what we've been looking at is what has implementation of that growth concept looked like? The first taste of that was just presented at the commission meeting last week. That material is going to come to metro council in may. So that's that's really the way that we are evaluating how the vision has has impacted the region. We do not have a plan yet for how we would evaluate the impact of the vision we're currently developing over the next 50 years. Just want to be honest that that's not something that we've developed yet.

Yeah. The reason I'm asking.

And I understand very well what you're saying about the part that has the most clear deliverables, being the part that most directly relates to the mission of metro at the time, as you vision, I would note that the 1995 vision has categories that relate to things outside of metro's current remit as well, not just things that have been added subsequently. And that disparity can create a a push to limit what you're talking about. And I wanted to or to expand what I would say is the way out of that, because I do want you to keep talking about these other issues too. And I'm going to give a specific example in a moment is to maybe partner with the counties and the cities to help with that evaluative process you mentioned. And I really appreciate the note that there are a lot of things that have changed in terms of forward looking on issues like equity. I read the equity section is very class oriented, very poverty oriented. It doesn't have quite the same lenses that we now have, but there are some really forward looking things that I was very surprised to find in a document from that time frame, and I just wanted to know it's on page 12, it's the safety section, and metro doesn't really have much of a direct role in this, but I don't want you to shy away from it as part of this process, because I would love to iterate on this. If you copied and pasted it, it would be a good vision for today. I think that, you know, we can, we can learn from that too. And I just want to, to note that it includes, you know, our definition of personal safety extends from the elimination of prejudice to the physical protection of life and property from criminal harm. Our hope and society is our hope. And expectation is for society, whose residents do not expect safety or protection to rely on guns or physical violence. That was not a common way of talking about things in government in the 90s. And I think it's really incredible that a community centered process led to that. So I encourage that as well. And if you, I don't know, being remote, I can't tell if you were in the back of the room earlier for some of the previous items, but there are groups like pccep that I can help, and I know other councilors would love to help connect this process with. Obviously through our representative, councilor Pirtle-guiney, to try and connect that better into the process, because I really do appreciate what's been what's been worked on there. I have other questions, but I'm going to let I see other people in the queue, so I'll come back around.

Thank you councilor for that.

Councilor I'll just mention that in one of the exercises that the commission did, there actually was conversation about safety and what a safe community feels like. So I don't know exactly what will be in the report, but that has been one of the topics that commissioners have at least started to, to grapple with and think about.

Love to hear it. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor. Kanal. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Yeah, thank you so much, councilors. I really appreciate the opportunity for us to be directly engaged with this regional planning work. Councilor juan carlos gonzalez you know, I love regionalism. I'm glad that councilor Pirtle-guiney is engaged on this directly. I think, you know, I have all sorts of ideas on what I think a 50 year plan would be, and I'm sure I'll fill out the survey myself. Thank you. And you'll hear my ideas at many different junctures. But I guess my question is, is I want to understand specifically what your ask is for us because councilor Pirtle-guiney, you started by saying we need your help. Are you just. I see that there's a deadline of may 15th for the survey. Is it sort of like help us boost the survey? Is it sort of thinking about structuring our town halls in a little bit more of a facilitative manner around the importance of the document? Is there something else that you would like us to to orient around that maybe came out of the conversations of the commission? I just want to be as helpful as possible.

Thanks for the question, councilor Green. I think for for I always want to have like a really tangible call to action. And right now, the very tangible call to action is that we do have an important engagement on regional values. And beyond that, I would absolutely love for for you and for your peers to consider how as you're engaging the community more broadly over the next 12 months as people are talking about, you know, fear of the future or desires for the future, to also mention this project as an opportunity to, to weave that in. And we have no shortage of materials and things that we can bring to you or share with you for you to be able to drop off or to or for, to give to folks, because there are subsequent engagement opportunities. And we have summits for youth, summits for, for adults, I mean, you name it. But I also want to lean on councilor Pirtle-guiney here.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Yeah, I think I'll give for concrete ways to engage, two of which happen right now and two of which will happen later. You asked about town halls, and I had hoped to be able to come to everybody with an ask to incorporate this into town halls, but because of some timing hiccups with getting this scheduled and the budget season, that didn't feel like an appropriate ask at this time. But more on that in a minute. For right now, I think it would be fantastic if as many councilors as possible could help boost that survey. I'd like to make sure that we hear from as many portlanders as possible, and I know that I can't reach as many portlanders as possible on my own, but with the 11 of you helping, we can reach a lot more people. So that's the first ask. The second ask, which goes along with that is, I believe there are postcards that people can fill out if an online survey is not the right format for them. If you are interested, I am happy to facilitate getting postcards for any office that has upcoming events that would like them for your constituents to fill out from our partners at metro. Those are the two asks right now. The third ask is when the youth summit comes up this summer, I would love to be able to get materials to everybody to make sure that youth between the ages of we're doing 15 to 24, right? We've been throwing out a lot of numbers today, youth between the ages of 15 and 24, who you are in contact with, get that information to help boost participation. And the fourth ask would be when the second public engagement period opens, which is toward the end of this year, to think about perhaps boosting that engagement through your town halls and your other outreach, and using that as an intentional time to share information with people, since the timing just did not work to do that, as we all do budget town halls right now. Is that concrete enough?

Thank you for being. Yeah, that's very clear. Direct call to action. I'm an organizer, so I always want to see us leave that with with those things very clear. I, I, I'm, you know, I'm happy to tap in. We will help with that. We were already planning some sort of youth engagement stuff. So this is a great opportunity to fold that in. I look forward to being supportive and just, you know, while I have the floor and while we're on it, you know, the next 50 years, this time period, it's, it's all about climate change, resiliency and building cities that allow us to, to decouple from carbon and allow us to, to be affordable. And so that's already what I'm hearing from my constituents. And so I'll do my part to help pull that conversation into this planning process. So I thank you so much for presenting today.

Thanks, councilor, and for your commitment to regionalism too. I appreciate it.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. Thank you all for for giving this presentation today. And I'm glad you gave us some marching orders. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Because my question was going to be, do you have an equity lens in terms of the the youth interaction that you're going to have? Because I think it's so important that we make sure we have east Portland youth that participate with this. And knowing that you're going to have a summit this summer. So that was that was good information. Just wanted to to get your ideas. When you were thinking about this, how were you thinking about engaging the youth in east Portland?

Thank you, councilor Smith. Jess, can I tap into you on that? I mean, we've tried to be very expansive with our partnerships and ensuring that we're leading the council. When we initiated this process, wanted to make sure we led not just with a geographic equity, but with a strong racial justice lens as well, which is a driving principle of our work. So I want to open it with that. And then as we know, our staff help implement and operationalize that vision. So, jess, if you could please speak to that.

Yeah, thanks for the question, councilor Smith. I will say, I know that the information about the youth who were on that committee is now on our project website. So you can see the names and the districts that metro council districts that those youth represent. I mentioned that we're working to we worked with next up and blueprint foundation to recruit the youth for that group, and they helped guide our selection of who's on that committee, the committee. I will not state demographics here. They are a very diverse group of young people. I'm not entirely sure who on that group is from east Portland, but if you look they are identified by metro council district. So councilor Simpson's district one would include east Portland. I will say that one of the other government representatives on the commission is commissioner Jones dixon, and he has very strong interest as well in making sure that his district is very well engaged, you know, covering east Portland and east county. We are asking the youth themselves to tap into their own networks. And so we, with their help, they will help guide us on what are the venues within their own communities that are most helpful to get the word out. But you know, if honestly, if you have suggestions about reaching young folks in your district, do please.

I want to caution you and I, and I like all those organizations you talked about, about being too political with this. When you say you have next up, that that that triggers something for me that we're not getting all the folks, we're getting the most engaged folks because they, those folks are highly engaged. And I'm talking about an equity lens that will work with, say, our summer works program, and we get the most underserved kids that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure that they have an experience either in city government or county government. And so I was interested in knowing if you one, where is all this work being paid for? Do you have a dedicated source of funding that that's paying for this 50 year vision?

Yeah, I mean, it's funded by metro general funds.

So it's general funds. So you and so will you have a a youth coordinator.

There is a staff member within the planning department who it is her job to work with. Next up and blueprint to guide the work of that commission, that youth committee. Yep, yep.

And I don't have a problem with pushing this out to our networks, you know, through social media, but I want to make sure that we have a well-rounded group of young people to participate, because part of our job is to also make people aware. And if we're if we're not engaging folks that are not aware and bringing more to the table and we're just talking to a particular type of student who's already engaged, then I think we're not doing our job the way we need to do it, but I appreciate you and appreciate you doing this youth summit because anytime we can, we can gather all the young people together and engage them about what's going to be happening not just next year, but 50 years. That's that's a task. So so thank you.

Thank you. Councilor we will certainly we'd love to follow up with you as well to make sure that.

We can you can you because I want to give you some emails and ways to engage our our summer works folks.

Yeah, that sounds like an excellent opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Ryan.

Dan Ryan: Yes, thanks.

Council president councilors carlos pirtle-guiney and jess. Right, jess, thanks for being here. This is great. I love stuff like this. So I'm just kind of riffing on what I just heard and here it goes. I really appreciate you lifting youth and definitely the arts I trust with su be involved. You included the report that she was really passionate about. It's very good. Our creative future. Is that part of your chest? You know about that report?

I do, yes.

Okay, great. And it just underscores a lot of what you already know. But I think a lot of times the arts gets dismissed as being such a big economic driver and countless cities, when they're in challenges like we are right now, have you the arts have been that catalyst that takes you from blight to bustling, and countless neighborhoods are turned around from the arts. And our downtown plan must include the arts to bring us back. So I just am happy to hear that I couldn't find a list of participants in what I have in front of me, but it must be on the website.

It is. Our website is Oregon metro.gov/future vision. Okay, so on that there's overview of the project and you can find the names of the participants of both the future vision commission that councilor Pirtle-guiney sits on. And then also the members of the youth committee.

Okay. How many are.

On the.

The meetings that you.

Go.

To today? I can make sure that my office gets links to both of those lists, as well as some of the other work of the commission and the link to the survey out to everybody's offices.

And thank you for representing us. Little jealous, but thank you for representing us. You know, I'm old enough to know what happened in 1992. It's really fascinating to be old enough to sit up here and listen to someone like you say you were born then, but I think we have to remember what was going on then. Like we were just coming out of our timber dependency that was big. Like a lot of us had to leave our home town. I'd be one of them because I didn't come from a connected network. So I had to leave Portland because there were no jobs. When I got out of college in 84, 85, 86, there just weren't any. It was pretty bad or we had an economic hardship, and we worked really hard to figure out how to get out of that. We figured out how to become a hub. Well, we had great stories. We had a little tiny sneaker making company that like had this waffle idea. And before you know it, they became a bustling small business. And now we know it's our only fortune 500 in the state. That's nike. And that started as a small business. And intel, of course, really grew as a chip making manufacturer and provided so many vendors. And, you know, you were living out that area where there's actually still a lot of economic prosperity. And we had tektronix before that, which really brought a lot of intelligence to the region. We recruited so many brilliant people that don't get lifted enough. My point is, I think a lot of us are wondering, where are those people today, what's happening? And I think some of it is, I think the political sector and we're a part of that. There's a distance between the political sector and people who are working in the private sector, who are working their tails off, trying to make bank right now and are trying to hang in there. And I'm just noticing that distance more and more. And it concerns me, and I just want to make sure that we have people at the table that have that voice. I also am concerned about population trends, where we're seeing we still have pretty good flow of 20 somethings moving in. But in the 30s, when people move into, usually they're more earning potential years. There's more of a trend where they're moving out of the region, and that's when they create entrepreneurism, create more job offerings for, for as their companies grow. And so I think we need to get the heart of the matter of, of what's, what's going on. I know that when you look at data, Multnomah county is a little bit of a donut. So I see that you have Clark county represented. Is that correct? I thought I saw mary anne in one of.

The photos.

On it.

Yep.

That's really good. I just hope that we continue to include that voice that might not be always comfortable for the political sector to listen to, because I want to hear I'll just say it. I want people who are young and ambitious and want to build amazing things and, and grow companies. I still believe in that, and I think they can do it in a way that's not harmful to the environment, but just keeps attracting other creative, ambitious types that want to build something here. And I hope that that's part of the dialog. So now I'm going to ask you, has economic challenges that we're currently exist today. Is that coming up? Are we having those hard truth conversations at the table?

I would say certainly. So. And I think councilor, I see that represented both in the conversations that are being had and also in the people who are around the table. There are folks from the business sector, including investors and entrepreneurs at the table, as well as various community leaders, as well as young people who wear both those hats and other hats at the table. As we have talked about some of the greatest challenges facing our region, certainly the economy and wage growth and ensuring that everybody has access to a good job is something that has come up from multiple people around the table. Good jobs is something that I bring up in almost any space that I am in, and I have been beat to saying it almost every time as we go around the table thinking about challenges. Not that alone. I know there are many other issues that that our city cares about and that I have also been representing there. But specifically to answer this question.

That's good to hear because I listen to people who are multi-generational Oregonians that are giving up, and that's not good because you want people that have a lot of love for this place, this place where they feel connected to, and they want to continue to be able to be prosperous here and losing those type of accounts, if you will, if you're thinking of sales are never good for any organization and that includes the public purse. And so I'm really happy to hear that, but I hope that we continue to have some humbling moments in the in the political sector as we listen to what they're going through so we can figure out how this region can be prosperous in the future. And so I just had to make that that case. And it sounds like you heard it, that you're welcoming them to the table. I hope the meetings you're not, you're allowing them to sit next to people like you. And I'm a real big believer in seating charts at such meetings because too often people clump with the same people that they already know. Don't do that. Y'all need to. Y'all need to do the seating charts.

Yeah, of.

Course.

I do the seating chart before every meeting and make people sit next to different people.

All right.

Jess, I just became a big fan of yours. Probably because I used to do that and I people would wonder why I did that. I know exactly why I did that because it allowed the organization that I was leading to be so much more successful.

Yes. There's, there's a lot of dinner party thinking that happens before this.

Portland stop being so nice. It's like you. We have to we have to let tension be a positive thing in a meeting. When there's tension in the room, then you're getting to truth, and then you're going to get to some new action that's much needed. So I urge you to welcome those moments where people aren't in agreement. Because if you leave every meeting where everyone just thinks everything's great, I don't believe you and I don't believe we're going to have whatever this report is called, a prosperous future.

Yeah.

Yes. I'm remembering the meeting where we were working on our future thinking, and we were asked some open ended questions and then told to stand up and move ourselves across the room, depending on where we fell on the spectrum of our answer to that question. And then the facilitator intentionally chose people from both extremes in the middle to share their perspective on each question, to make sure we were sitting with those different perspectives.

Okay, now I'm curious, who's your facilitator?

I don't remember who facilitated that session.

Yeah. One of the members of our consultant team is an organization called institute for the future who are.

I got a giggle out of.

Councilor I know got a giggle at. They're they're a decades old futures and foresight research and education organization that works with lots of different types of clients, including us. They're actually also currently working with 1803 fund. They did some work in the past with thousand friends of Oregon. They. Yeah, they're, they're really helping us break out of planning and think about futures and visioning, because 50 years is not a planning time horizon. And that's, it was something that was very important to us in building the group that was going to be our consultant team on this project.

Okay, there's so many more questions, but we're running out of time. Thank you for seven minutes. I just had appreciate it.

Thank you. Councilor Ryan. I put myself in the queue just to say something. Let's call attention. Let's do it. I have been on a bit of a crusade since I got elected, and in many ways for the last decade that the city of Portland is the city that plans. And it's sort of a going expression that you're not going to get anything done unless it's in a plan. But it just because it's in a plan doesn't mean it's going to get done. And I hate the culture of creating beautiful pdfs that live on someone's desktop and never see the light of day. And even a finer point, I am now getting feedback from my constituents in east Portland who have said, why do you keep asking us to show up to roundtable meetings with a carafe of coffee in the corner? When you ask us what kind of housing we want in our community, we tell you, and then you don't do anything with it for ten, 20, 30 years. I hope that you all recognize that you're being very intentional about creating the plan. But the plan is a means to an end. It is not an end in and of itself. And so we have to drive towards progress. We have to drive towards actionable steps. And I hope that implementation and next steps are the core driving focus as you are finalizing this plan, that it is formatted in a way that it is approachable, but it's not so high level that it is useless and it's not so specific, it's so relevant. That is attention, obviously. But but you know, and I applaud you all the amount of work that has gone into this point to, to really get the right table set and bring all those perspectives is phenomenal. But and then is my big thing. So please drive towards and then and then that's all. No need. That's all.

I can, I, can I just say, I mean, I think I'm on a similar crusade. Good. And I really hope that what this future vision helps us achieve is, is one, a sense of alignment because we do need to activate, activate that next generation of civic minded leaders from every sector because, I mean, no one's going to save us but us, right? And this is we live in the most extraordinary place in the world. I really believe that in my heart. And we have so much great leadership and ideas. But what we need is that will to act, and we build that will by doing things like this.

Absolutely awesome. Thank you. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: First of all, it's really exciting to hear about this work, and I will just let my network know about the engagement opportunities. Since my network tends to trend old, I will ask them to tell their children and grandchildren about their engagement opportunities. Councilor gonzalez, you're young, so I'm going to forgive you for this. But if you ever again become come before an audience that includes old people, and you talk about 1992 and you talk about bill clinton and you talk about songs and you're talking about a future vision for the love of god. Mentioned that bill clinton's campaign theme song was don't stop thinking about tomorrow by fleetwood mac.

I'll take a note of that. Councilor. Yeah.

Loretta Smith: Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor Kanal. I'm sorry. Councilor Smith are you still in the queue? Okay, sorry. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president Dunphy so I really just want to a couple points that I didn't get to before. I appreciate the conversation about youth. I also love the work with. Next up, I want to shout out to the young people who are involved. Whatever gets you involved is a good thing. And also agree that looking at places like summerworks is a good place to look. I wanted to agree with councilor Greene's point earlier about climate change being central to it, and specifically suggest talking to sunrise pdx as well. And I also wanted to agree with both councilors, Ryan and Dunphy about the arts, and recommend coming and doing an event at the all ages music venue in my district. The the offbeat. Yeah, and would love to help with that in any way I can. And obviously it's also councilor Pirtle-guiney district, so I'm sure she has the, the the interest there too. I had a question around the slide that had the flowchart in it. It talked about and you mentioned drivers of change and you mentioned a few things on that list, some of which are completely inexorable, like climate change, right? We can affect it as a, as a human race, but we can't necessarily stop what's already baked in. There are other things that aren't fully the die has not been cast on them. You mentioned ai, and I think Portland and the metro area could very easily be a leader in advancing ai and regulating ai in opposing ai, or just be a floating leaf that goes wherever the country or world as a whole are going. And so I'm trying to understand, do you have a list of what you consider drivers of change? And can we talk for a moment about how baked in those are as assumptions to what is going to happen or what could, what this has to.

Fantastic question. I mean, we have an army of people working on those drivers of change. I'm looking at jess here.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Councilor that work falls within the scope of institute for the future, who I just mentioned. They are just getting going on that. And the purpose in this project is not necessarily to investigate every last driver of change that's out there. There are so many different forces shaping where we're headed as a region where the world is headed, the country, but really to hone in on those that have been identified by the commission, by metro council and, and the communities that those bodies represent as the things that people are most interested, concerned, worried about coming at us in those next 50 years. We are going to be meeting with them very shortly to hear about what those initially three areas are that they're going to be investigating and bringing research to us about that will be available publicly. We're going to be asking them not just to create a boring 15 page report, but also to be creating ways of communicating that research that are publicly digestible. So you are likely to see videos that are really pitched at a public audience to communicate. What are those drivers? How could they impact this region? It's not decided yet whether one of those will be ai, whether it will be sort of technology more broadly writ, whether it's demographics. We're still working on defining exactly what those topics will be. That will be coming to metro council on June 16th, is where they're going to have a little bit more of a public preview of what those drivers are. Will also be talking about it at the may futurevision commission meeting. So those will be sort of the first public spaces where we're talking about what the topics are and deciding whether or not there are other further ones that those groups and their communities are interested in hearing more about.

Okay. So earlier.

Councilor gonzalez had mentioned three specific things ai, misinformation, climate change. You're saying those are examples, not necessarily the three that will be leading the charge?

That is correct. Those are examples.

Yeah. Just trying to illustrate some things that I, I think we can anticipate, you know, will, will be drivers of change, but I think many of us feel are really influential factors in, in our society right now.

So would it be, would.

I be understanding it correctly if I said, these are things that are currently trends that are leading to some anticipation that they might have an effect on the context in which our visioning might live and might be implemented. Is that a am I understanding correctly? How are you using this? This concept.

That I'd say is a fair characterization? Yeah. I mean, a driver of change is a major trend that is moving in some direction that will influence this region. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm asking this might seem like a really small thing to ask about. The reason I'm asking about it is because I think so many things in the ai space specifically, nobody asked for some company is just ramming this down your throat. Nobody. We have to opt in to opt out of things that should really be opt in. And you know, I don't know if anyone saw this, but the shoe company allbirds.

Yeah, I saw.

That switched.

Yeah. They for those who don't know, they decided to stop doing sneakers and start doing ai. And the stock went up by like 175, 200% immediately for. So there's a, there's a incentive to chase this, but the consumer activity, I don't want it to necessarily be considered that it's absolutely going to be a thing that we're all using in the future. And I think this applies to a lot of these trends. But I think the way you described it indicates that that there's an opportunity to say this isn't necessarily baked in. And that's that's the the context I'm leading to.

Definitely. And oh, sorry, I will say, I think that one of the other sort of themes and just philosophies of this work that we've been trying to inhabit is that a driver of change might be something that's doing a right now, but it could do b through z in the next 50 years, right? Like it's a time horizon of uncertainty. And so that's also just something that we're really trying to continually bring up as a theme and really imbue this process with that. These are things that are happening right now. They may move in different directions where, as you said, you know, Portland could be a driver of this thing and influence it in a particular way, or we could just go with the flow and that we're also really trying to give people a sense that there is agency in their role in the future, right? It's not predetermined. So uncertainty is uncomfortable, but it's also a space of change and agency.

Yeah. And I think on top of that, recognizing that these drivers of change will be out there. But how do we want, how do we want to, how do we want to like push back on those things or push with them as well? Right. I think for the conditions of the humans that will inhabit this place or the animals or our rivers and whatnot, we can, we can see these things and then kind of try and anticipate, well, what are the hard questions that we want to delineate from that and then use that to make, make, make aspirations and decisions. Really, I was talking with someone that worked on the 1995 plan a few months ago. And, you know, they're like, well, you know, we didn't even have an iphone. We didn't have. I mean, it's just crazy to think the amount of things that could change, even even within a few years of that plan. And we might miss the mark on some things. But for the most part, I do think that the 95 plan, when I read it and when I see the 2040 growth concept and some of the elements that came from that, I'm like, wow, we're really living in a world that someone designed for us. And now that our generation gets this opportunity to, to, to kind of revision, that refresh, that feels important. So I want to make sure we have as much information as possible to, to kind of cast the future. And this future vision will inform the next growth concept, which influences, I mean, a significant amount of our region's growth pattern and our infrastructure. So there's like the really tangible things like what are we going to build on this street corner? But then anyway, yeah, yeah.

And I really appreciate the way that that was characterized that we're talking about building the world as opposed to having somebody else's vision applied to us. I would just wanted to, to throw into the conversation around this the idea of increasing diversity, declining overall birth rates. There, there are trends that are demographic that are part of this, this context, increasing economic inequality, hyper inflation, these are all things and increasing resource costs. Specifically, many of these are related to each other. For example, increased costs of water is largely tied to the use of ai. But we'll get to that. I wanted to quickly last two things. I appreciate councilor Ryan's comments on the age distribution and people moving in. Good jobs are really important. I know councilor Smith, pirtle-guiney and Ryan will talk about this, but I also want to bring up affordability because the people young. The reason young people aren't buying houses is that they're generally broke. Inequality is skyrocketing, taxes on the rich aren't high enough, and costs are going up faster than wages. And so similarly, when we talk about school enrollment, not building enough housing units with two or more bedrooms and cramming in more studios in one bedrooms in the same space directly correlates with whether or not young families can who are renting can move into an area. And I think that that that there's conversations on the city side about how to do, you know, moving away from measuring the number of units to talking about the number of people housed. And I wanted to just shout out the section on carrying capacity in the 1995.

Report.

Which was super interesting as well. Yeah. And then lastly, I want to pick up back on the thread from council president Dunphy and connect that to my earlier question about how we check back in on this, because they're going to be parts of this that are not implemented by the local jurisdictions that have authority over it, for those things that are in the gap between what this vision might include and what metro directly does. And those things might be because of political differences. And that's okay. If the election yields a mayor or council who has a different vision, then obviously the voters have spoken. But sometimes it's going to be because of the lack of communication or coordination or planning at the level of the people that can actually do it. Or, as councilor Council president always points out, implementation of those plans. So I'd love to see like a built in cadence in this of how that's checked in on to have it be something that isn't just a beautiful pdf or I guess to, to the 1995 folks, a beautiful binder that sits somewhere. Thanks.

Okay, colleagues, we are an hour and ten minutes over at this point. Councilor Ryan, you get the last word.

Okay. Thank you, council president. That's a heavy responsibility. Councilor Kanal first of all, thank you for the ai dialog. That was really smart. I appreciated that, and I do have to say that the young families I'm talking to that are moving out. It's it's yes, everyone's complaining about affordability everywhere. They're saying that it's impossible for them to justify staying here because they can't make, they can't make it here where they can if they move somewhere else, because it's just not a climate that allows them to build their entrepreneurial spirit like they'd like. And I think that's a hard truth for us to sometimes just sit with. I wanted to just ask a very technical question. Do you have anyone at the table from the cannabis industry?

Directly? No.

There's not someone on the commission from the cannabis industry. I also just want to note, like the commission is the body that is developing and recommending this work, but their job is to hear from the community. And so we are trying to set tables that, you know, supplement the the people who are on the commission, but interested in why you asked the question and sort of what.

About cannabis?

Yeah.

Because it's our number one cash crop that we made legal a while ago and somehow we're squandering the opportunity. And when I go out and listen to that sector, they're full of challenging complaints for all of us to listen to. And so I think we have an opportunity there and we don't need to squander it. I kind of say wine, wine, weed and women's sports. Those seem to be like part of our positivity and prosperity right now. So you better lean into it and not squander what's close to you that's organic to you. And so that's why I ask. And so I assume you have the other industries that are connected to that. Councilor ws.

Council president, I think that you're having us end on the future vision being wine, weed and women's sports. I just want to note that.

I had a lot of fun with my final word.

Pretty good to me. Yeah.

The meeting minutes show, it's.

Just hard when you are from here and you know, that's our number one cash crop. And then we finally make it legal and somehow we're not taking advantage of that. Like that's something's wrong with that.

Yeah.

So I think just to wrap up, I mean, I think you're talking about specific industry and their involvement in this. And I just want to end by saying it is not the metro vision, it is the people's vision. And we will be successful if once the document, if people from across the region, from every walk of life see that and they say that is that is why I am here. That is what makes me an Oregonian. That is what makes me a member of this region. And so I think there's a lot of heavy work to do there to update from the heavy lifting from 1995. But I'm excited. And again, thank you so much.

Thank you for this organic conversation and for the marching orders.

Thank you all for being here today.

Thank you.

Colleagues. It is 426. I need to give our staff a ten minute break and then we're coming back here. Please be back here at 435 and we are going to start the next item. We will not probably hardly get into it at all since ten minutes. Do I need to hold anything over? Okay, colleagues, we are back. We do not have enough time to get into the substance of this item today, unfortunately. So we are going to postpone. We're going to reschedule this for another future date without a if unless there's any objection, I'd like to move to adjourn for the day. Any objection?

No objection. I just would love to make sure we get to this at some point in not too long.

This will be at the top of an agenda, hopefully very, very soon. Any objection? Okay. Seeing none, we are adjourned.

Agenda.