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Council session — 2026-03-11

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (34,413 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 morning. Before we start our official council meeting, we have a pre gavel celebration. I'm turning it immediately over to councilor. Angelina Morillo.

Thank you so much council president. Good morning everyone. This is going to be my first pre gavel and I'm pretty honored to get to do it for d.o.j. Og one. This morning I have the honor of bringing forward a proclamation that was awarded by mayor wilson, officially recognizing November 30th as d.o.j. Og one day in the city of Portland. David, who's here before us, aka dj og one jackson is more than just a dj in our community. He is a cultural force in Portland and a true ambassador for our city. For decades, he has helped shape the spirit, sound and identity of the rose city. Many people know him as the official dj for the Portland trailblazers, where his music has energized thousands of fans inside the arena. Game nights wouldn't feel the same without his sound, his presence, and the energy he brings to every moment. Over the years, he has become part of the soundtrack of Portland basketball and a beloved figure in the franchise's history. But dj og one's impact extends far beyond the Portland trailblazers. In the streets and neighborhoods of Portland, he has been a powerful voice for unity, peace, and community. He has played a vital role in promoting gang peace and bringing people together across divides. Through music, mentorship and leadership, he has used his platform to advocate for understanding, healing and opportunity for young people throughout our city. Dj og one has always believed that music can be more than entertainment. It can be a bridge, a bridge between cultures, generations and communities. And he has spent years building those bridges here in Portland. In the music industry, he is widely respected as a pioneer. He has worked with hundreds of artists, including internationally recognized talent, hosted major events and represented Portland on a national stage. Through his work, he has elevated portland's presence in the music world and demonstrated what's possible when talent meets purpose. But perhaps even more important than the stages he has performed on are the communities that he has stood beside. From mentoring youth and supporting local schools to uplifting community programs and social causes, dj og one has consistently shown up for Portland with integrity, passion and a love for the city. This is why recognitions like this matter. City proclamations are more than symbolic gestures. They are a way for the city to publicly recognize the people who shape our culture, strengthen our communities, and contribute to the story of Portland. They acknowledge the artists, leaders, mentors, and changemakers who help make the city vibrant, resilient, and connected by honoring individuals like dj og one, we preserve an important part of portland's cultural history while also inspiring future generations to use their talents and voices to make a difference. Few people embody the spirit, resilience, and cultural influence of Portland. The way that he does his work has uplifted countless people, amplified voices that might otherwise go unheard, and brought communities together through the universal language of music. So today we celebrate not only an incredible career, but decades of service, leadership, and dedication to the people of Portland. It's truly a moment to give him his flowers. So please join me in celebrating a legend, a community leader, and a proud ambassador for the city of Portland. David dj og one jackson. As we officially recognize November 30th as dj og one day.

Thank you.

And if we could give him five minutes to speak. And colleagues, if you are willing to take a quick photo right after this so that we can celebrate.

Wow. First of all, thank you council and the mayor for this very special historical moment for me. I think about 1980, I bought my first award from the first black mayor in los angeles when I was 13 for community service. So my work started over 40 years ago, and I knew something was different about me. I didn't know quite what it was at the time. I just knew that I how I felt in serving others. And so once landing in Portland and being embraced by the community of Portland, I knew I had a purpose that was bigger than just music. But I thank god that he gave me the tool of music to connect with with people. And from that, being able to a lot of the faces that I see, even andre being a a student of mine in gang peace years ago and being able to see him in a position of leadership and influence within the city. To me, I don't get this type of recognition without the testimony of those that I've served. And so this moment, you know, dj og one day is bigger than just recognizing me. But it really is about recognizing what I stand for, putting people over profit. Encouraging people to live life with purpose and intention. My mantra is move different and different. Be fluid. And that stands for bold, engaging, having faith, having love at the foundation of what you do, and having unwavering values that you stand by. Living life with intention and be determined about where you want to and what your legacy will be once you leave here. And I'm hoping that this recognition and dj og one day will always represent that. And I look around the room at a lot of the faces in here, and I'm thankful not only for the relationships I've been able to build, but I thank the people of Portland who welcomed me and was patient with me while I was growing into this thing called manhood, learning how to be a father here, learning how to grow into being a businessman. And, and I'm glad to say that I have some successful businesses because of the support that I have in this city. And it was able to grow a brand here. And those are the things that I look forward to continue developing. You know, the next generation of leaders here, the next generation of entrepreneurs to be just as successful and not even more better than I have become at this point. And lastly, I want I want to thank my family, my family, who, who has shared, who has shared me with this community over the years and allowed me to really live out, live out the purpose that I feel I've been called for in this city. And hopefully I'll continue to do that as long as I have breath. So thank you and I appreciate it. And I thank all of you who have poured into me and invited me into your city, into your spaces and into your lives to become the person I am today. So thank you.

Colleagues, if you'll entertain this, we're going to go step outside and do a quick photo and we have a packed agenda. So let's get to it. Welcome back everybody. I'm now calling to order the Wednesday, March 3rd, March 11th a m meeting of the Portland city council. Keelan. Can you please call the roll?

Here?

Is that councilor?

I'm here. Sorry.

Okay, great. Okay. Thank you. Kanal.

Good morning. Here. Pirtle-guiney here.

Ryan.

Yeah, I'm here remotely. I'm really sorry. I'm not there. It's really is not fun. I'm dealing with an eye infection, so I'm quarantined until this evening. So anyway, thanks.

Koyama Lane. Yeah.

Aye, Morillo here.

Novick here.

Clark. Here. Green here. Zimmerman here.

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

Thank you. Council president, welcome to Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the council agenda at wwe Portland.gov/agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. 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 today should address the matter being considered when testifying. Please state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent and virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls their name. Thank you.

Thank you very much, colleagues. Our first action is to approve the agenda. Are there any requests to amend the agenda or to reorder items? Looking, seeing no one objecting with no objections. Do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda?

I just have a point of order, mr. President.

Go ahead.

Many of the items have been bumped today, but there were other items that did not automatically get bumped from last week's. And I was wondering. That seemed to be our general practice in the previous year. Can you address that? Because certainly we had some pressing items that I was expecting to see today that you have not selected, what how are we going to approach those moving forward? And I know that they're your discretion, but it's a change in practice. I was hoping you could address that.

Yeah. In general, anything that was well, the majority of we didn't get to about six items last week. And between the items that were already noticed about land use or some other items that had already been told ahead of time were going to be happening today, I ended up bumping a number of things off of this agenda as well. So the the rule generally of first in, first out continues to be the rule of the day, but I'm trying to get to 17 items on a schedule is too much. And we have a limited agenda for Wednesday of next week, the evening's meeting, and then we do not have a meeting on the week following. So it has been a bit of a challenge to try and schedule items and get them heard in timely manners. So was there something in particular?

So in specifics then in terms of the business income license tax issue and the legal protections package or legal defense package, can you estimate when you will schedule those since they're already scheduled?

Yeah, those will be coming the first week of April.

Okay. Thank you.

Council president. I also have a specific question. We also postponed the ordinance for slow the flow, and I'd like some kind of direction on when we're going to get those put on the agenda, because I had an ordinance and councilor Zimmerman had an ordinance and they were put together. And so I want to know when they're going to be heard, because we had 15 people in the queue who sat there, and then we got interrupted by protesters and shut down, and they never had a chance to tell their story about why they wanted to use those funds. So it would be great to let those folks know when they should come back, when we're going to hear those two ordinances, and if they're going to be, you know, indefinitely postponed.

Yeah. Those two ordinances and the resolution, will all three be indefinitely postponed? They will not be coming back to the council, and there will be a new ordinance tied based off of the work session that we had that will be filed.

I think that's very that's highly inappropriate to do that. I've never seen that happen at this council ever since we've been here to take two ordinances and indefinitely postpone them when there is so much need for housing in this community. We are in a housing crisis.

Well.

To have you take that off is unacceptable.

The majority of council voted for it and we're talking about the agenda for today.

They did not. They they voted to postpone. They did not they did not vote to.

Councilor the.

Permanently.

Indefinitely postpone. If people don't read what the definition of what they're voting for is, that is not on me.

I didn't vote for it.

You did not. That is correct.

And again, as I said before, vulnerable and underserved communities always get put to the back burner.

And as I said, there will be a new ordinance that will be coming forward with that is based off of the conversation this body had.

Are you suggesting that we should put a new ordinance forward?

A new ordinance will be coming forward. Coming?

No, I mean, are you suggesting that me and Eric Zimmerman put a new ordinance forward?

Colleagues are always welcome to introduce whatever legislation you want.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Colleagues. Is there any other concern about approving the agenda today? Okay. With no objection, the agenda is approved. Can we please move to public communications?

First up, we have monica corey.

All right. Good morning, council. Thanks for having me here. My name is monica. I live in the wilkes district number one, and I've lived there for over 50 years. And I'm here on behalf of the silent majority. We're the people who pay the metro housing tax, the preschool for all tax, the arts tax, huge property taxes and see that despite all the money that we've poured into our community, our city continues to stumble and fall apart. It looks terrible. Every time I step outside, I see increased litter, trash, graffiti, reckless driving, open drug use, boarded up businesses and bike paths that are not safe to ride. I rarely see a patrol car, and this is daily proof that Portland has stopped taking care of itself. And on behalf of the majority of us who are footing the bills, we're just tired. Our city has a malaise, and we've allowed our city to be destroyed by very few unchecked and unaccountable people. And now we're in a budget crisis again. And yet, last week, I saw that opb reported that the climate fund has more revenue than projected. And if that's true, then I'm going to ask you sincerely to start fixing what's broken right in front of us. It's time to expand the climate fund into an environmental cleanup fund. Portland once led the way with environmental causes. You'd never know it. Now we need to deep clean our Green spaces, our waterways, our sidewalks, and our roadways. And we need to bring back regular street sweeping. We need to power wash public sidewalks and clean up the hazardous areas where people have been allowed to live unchecked. We invest in bike paths and salmon habitats and then allow those areas to be trashed. We built a beautiful bike bridge over the freeway. Granted, that was federal dollars, but garbage pours down on the hillsides next to it. No city that looks like that can attract investment and tourism. And for those of us who've lived here for our entire lives, it's depressing. It's just not the city we built. It's not the city we funded. When I think back to the summer of 2020, my heart breaks for what could have been at that time our society was facing confronting systemic racism. It was a wake up call and protesters took to the streets, but things went off the rails quickly. Imagine the difference Portland would be in today if those leaders in 2020 had joined hands on the justice center steps and said, we hear you, we see you, and we're committed to working for a better future, but stop damaging and destabilizing our city. We're setting up boundaries and we're establishing a curfew. That kind of leadership would have changed our trajectory. I'm asking you to reshape the climate fund into an environmental fund. I'm asking that you understand the silent majority is paying attention and that we're asking you to do better with our money. We're praying for your strength. And I'm sorry I ran over. I tried real hard not to. And I want to thank the district one councilors who did a great job last night. And candidly, I'm sorry I'm overboard, but I'm going to tell you that I am hopeful. But we got a lot of work to do.

Thank you for being here.

Next up we have don jones junior.

Morning councilors, especially the district three councilors. My name is don jones junior. I'm a resident of and a housing provider in the hosford-abernethy neighborhood. I'm here to highlight safety concerns surrounding the proposed alternate access redemption center operated by the people's depot at 1109 southeast brooklyn street, corner of powell boulevard, milwaukee avenue. This is one of the busiest, most dangerous intersections in the city, and the people's depot has estimated approximately 300 scanners will visit this site every day, with most arriving on foot or by bicycle. Increasing foot and bicycle activity in this location directly conflicts with the city's vision zero policies and commitments. Portland has formally adopted vision zero, committing the city to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries, and to prioritize safety for vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and people experiencing homelessness. The vision zero action plan explicitly recognizes that people walking and biking, especially those experiencing homelessness, face disproportionately higher risks and require extra extra precautions, not increased exposure to danger. The danger is documented and significant. Multnomah county recently reported that homeless individuals are 23 times more likely to die in traffic accidents than the average county residents, 54 times more likely if there are pedestrians and bicyclists. Vision zero demographic data indicates that people experiencing homelessness were 80 times 80 times more likely to die in a traffic crash than the population overall, citing a high volume facility that primarily serves vulnerable pedestrians and bicyclists, bicyclists at a high speed intersection directly contradicts vision zero's core principle that the transportation system should be designed to anticipate human vulnerability and prevent fatal outcomes. Vision zero also directs the city to avoid creating new traffic hazards and to focus activity generators, especially those serving vulnerable populations, away from high crash corridors whenever possible. Southeast powell boulevard is a designated high crash street, and this intersection is already complex, adding hundreds of daily foot and bike trips to this location is not a mitigation strategy. It amplifies a known risk. It has been suggested this site would be significantly safer than the current location. However, TriMet staff has raised safety concerns about the adjacent bus stop. Vision zero does not ask us to choose the least dangerous, unsafe option. It requires us to eliminate preventable risks altogether. I respectfully urge the mayor and the council to communicate with the Oregon beverage recycling cooperative o b r c that this location is unacceptable for safety reasons, and they should find a building on a quieter street, of which there are many in our neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up we have peggy mcdaniel.

Good morning.

Good morning. Councilors, especially district three councilors. My name is peggy mcdaniel. I live in the abernathy neighborhood where I serve on the hand board and represent our neighborhood at southeast uplift. I also live near the clinton triangle shelter and helped develop the good neighbor agreement for that site. I still serve on the oversight committee at the clinton triangle and volunteer at the site. Recent bottle bill updates allow a new kind of bottle drop called an alternate access redemption center or arc. I'm here to raise grave safety concerns about the proposed location of the first arc to be operated by the people's depot. The proposed site is 1109 southeast brooklyn street at the intersection of southeast powell and southeast milwaukee. This is one of the largest and most complex intersections in southeast Portland. Milwaukee runs five lanes there. Powell runs six and both carry two fast, two way traffic. It is also two blocks south of a busy train crossing that complicates traffic and pedestrian flow. The site also faces a slip Lane, channeling traffic from milwaukee onto westbound powell. Slip lanes allow cars to move much faster than a standard intersection, creating a real danger for pedestrians crossing southbound where the traffic approaches from behind. For comparison, the people's depot current location on mlk is along a four Lane corridor that is largely one way and often reduced to three lanes by the streetcar. It's a very different environment. The data backs this up. Vision zero figures show that wide streets, four or more travel lanes accounted for 53% of all deadly crashes in Portland from 2020 19 to 2023, and 57% of pedestrian deaths and serious injury crashes. The people's depot does do meaningful work, and we are supportive of them. They are operated by ground score for scanners by x scanners. They support people who depend on container redemption. But location still matters. The people's depot expects around 300 visitors per day. That's their estimate right now. The bottle bill changes are designed to consolidate canners within a three mile radius to a single location, and with the delta park bottle drop closing this summer, there's a real uncertainty about how this is going to affect neighborhoods really across the city. I'm also mindful of the progress we've seen at the clinton triangle. To do a shout out to Eric. Thank you for working with us on that, particularly among guests in the wellness program. Decisions like this have ripple effects on the people that we're all trying to serve. So I'll close with this. We respectfully ask for 12 month pause, 6 to 12 months time for the aac advocates, neighbors, local businesses, the city, TriMet and many others to identify a site in our neighborhood that is logical, safe and sustainable for everyone. A 12 month pause to get this right and prioritize safety for all. Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here today.

Next up we have bridget robinson. Bridget robinson. Next we have mark sherman. Mark sherman. Okay, our alternate is xiaoyong wang.

The consultant.

Good morning.

Good morning. My name is xiao yang wang. I'm with the Oregon falun dafa association. We are the presenter of performing arts in Oregon. I would like to bring your attention to the challenges shen yun has been facing and seek your understanding and support. Oh jin yin was founded in 2006 by falun gong practitioners, many of whom fled china for religious freedom. Its mission is to revive traditional chinese culture, which has been destroyed under the communist rule since 1949. Over the past 20 years, shen yun has toured the world, including the keller auditorium and host center in eugene. The company has grown from 1 to 8 troupes and is performing for 1 million over 1 million people annually. However, something has been hidden from most of people, which is the frantic effort of the chinese communist party to stop people from seeing the show. The ccp started by pressuring theaters and government officials to not contract with and cancel their shows. In recent years, attacks has been have been dramatically escalated, including bomb and death threats, lawfare, inflammatory comments by ccp, paid social media influencers, influencers, weaponization of us institutions, and manipulating American media. All the tactics could be traced back to the chinese regime. For example, in 2004, a federal court convicted two chinese agents for bribing an undercover fbi agent posing as a. As an irs official, their goal was to strip schengen of its nonprofit status. Most recently, the australian prime minister was evacuated from his residence after a threat, claiming that if shen yun were allowed to perform, his residence would be bombed and even some. Portland and eugene local media have echoed the new york times biased articles to slander cnn right before the shows. Why is the ccp so afraid of shen yun? Shen yun shows a, shen yun shows. And while china's authentic culture a culture before communism, it has made people realize that the chinese regime is not the real china. It does not represent chinese culture and its people. Therefore, the ccp sees shen yun as defiance. Shen also exposes the regime's religious persecution and persecution of falun gong and the forced organ harvesting. This is what the ccp does not want the world to know. The most genuine is a faith based arts group among a variety of programs. Some displays display the determination and faith of chinese people facing ordeals. The traditional belief in the divine is in conflict with ccp's atheist ideology. I hope you can come to see shen yun.

Wrapped up here.

Auditorium. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That completes communications.

Thank you very much, colleagues. I'm holding time on our calendars to give the administration an opportunity to provide updates to the public about the ongoing federal response and any other emergency matters. At the beginning of council meetings. City administrator lee, do you have anything to share?

No new updates, but I will just reiterate some things that we mentioned last week. And as council may be aware, an appeal has been filed with the hearing officer for the notice of land use violation at the ice facility. We are still awaiting the hearing officer to schedule a hearing date for this appeal. Keep in mind, staff across many bureaus continue to work towards a permanent administrative rule for the detention facility impact fee as well. And as of today, we're on week two of the immigrant affairs lead role being on board. She's coordinating the city's efforts related to federal presence and sanctuary policy implementation. The work includes directives called for in the protective protect Portland initiative, meeting with immigrant immigration advocates as well. And she is doing a tremendous amount of work being new on board. Also, the Portland bureau of emergency management is also developing response protocols and scenario planning for citywide federal response as well. And I just want to keep council abreast of those key items.

Thank you.

Thank you, city administrator. Item four on our agenda is the committee referral list. A very small number of items were referred to committee this week. Those are available online at Portland.gov/auditor/council-clt keelan. Can we please call our first time certain item number five?

Item 2020 6-063 adopt the public infrastructure environmental code project to streamline environmental zoning regulations to accommodate needed infrastructure projects and support ongoing natural resource management. Amend code title 33.

This is the second reading of an emergency, not a non-emergency ordinance. Thank you. Reading colleagues, is there any further discussion on this item, councilor Ryan?

Dan Ryan: Yes, please. Thank you, council president. I was unfortunately not at the meeting that this was passed in or the first reading. So allow me to say a couple things. I appreciate that you're bringing this forward. It's making things faster and quicker for our bureaus to do vital work in a timely fashion. As my district two colleagues know, we hugged two rivers and we hear from constituents about the hurdles and confusion that they experience as well, trying to navigate these systems while trying to utilize their land. This is both definitely individuals and residents on this issue, more so. And this evening I will actually be visiting with residents in north Portland about the zones. And because of quarantine ends at five, I would like more engagement with our river facing neighbors and how we can help them as customers alleviate some of the same headaches that they run into, like our bureaus are experiencing. So I think, yes, I will be supporting this. And we need further conversations that when our own bureaus notice such challenges of red tape, that we have shared empathy for our customers, portlanders, who are also experiencing these challenges. The long and short of it is you think it's tough to manage public systems when you're in them. Imagine what it's like for our customers who pay the fees. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Ryan. Colleagues, any further discussion? Seeing no one in the queue. Keelan, can we please call the roll?

Smith.

Aye, Morillo.

Kanal aye, Morillo. Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan I.

Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick.

Clark I Green. I Zimmerman. Absent. Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with 11 yes votes and one absent.

Point of. I'm not sure which point this is. Maybe order, but the councilor said I as he walked in before the roll was called.

Can we.

Are we allowed to count his. His vote?

Yeah, I'll make that adjustment.

Thank you.

The ordinance passes with 12 yes votes.

Thank you. Keelan can we please call item number six?

Item 2020 6-055. Amend campaign finance code to maintain enforcement of voter approved regulations following court order. Amend code chapter 2.10.

Thank you colleagues. This is a continuation of the first reading of an ordinance. I'm going to turn it over to auditor rede.

Thank you, council president. Good morning councilors. My name is simone and I'm the elected city auditor of Portland. For anyone who is watching or listening, my office's mission is to ensure open and accountable city government and having an elected auditor meets the highest independent standard for the city. The auditor's office is home to the elections division, which oversees city elections and enforces the city's campaign, finance and lobbying regulations. As a candidate in the November 2026 election, I delegated my elections and campaign finance duties to chief deputy brodersen last December. However, I maintain my independent authority to establish rules for the office to carry out our charter. I'm here today to reintroduce this agenda item that my staff has worked with you and our legal counsels to develop so that we can build a fairer system for everyone involved, one that will work in the election cycle that is already underway. As an auditor and as a portlander, my priority is to have a system that works, in this case an enforcement system that is fair, just and constitutional, one that portlanders can trust and that they can rely on to hold candidates, campaigns and donors accountable. The proposal that my office is bringing to you today makes our city's campaign finance code legally viable and enforceable. It is a technical fix to make a section of the city charter that voters approved in 2018 valid, that the court the circuit court rendered invalid in 2025. I know that February 26th council meeting raised some really important questions, and since then, chief deputy brodersen has taken steps to address those. Last Monday, he shared more information with you all over email about the interaction between small donor elections and our proposed code amendment, and shared updates from the conversations that my team had with susan vote yea, the susan or the small donor elections director. Those conversations resulted in an amendment that limits the auditor's discretion to extend enforcement timelines. And I want to thank councilor Morillo for sponsoring that today. My deputy also explained the process that we've taken to get here, which started before the legal dispute was resolved last July. This process has included engagement with honest elections and outreach to organizations like common cause and the league of women voters. Finally, he confirmed that changing the enforcement timelines is necessary to be responsive to the court ruling and reduce legal risk to the city. I have full confidence in my team, their analysis and the work they've done in concert with you and others to develop this proposal, I ask that you advance it to a second reading today and ultimately adopt it so that we can prepare to enforce our city's campaign finance regulations in the November 2026 general elections. Thank you.

Thank you, madam auditor. As the auditor mentioned, there are an amendment from councilor Aye, Morillo. There's also an amendment from councilor Kanal. I'd like to let councilor Morillo introduce the amendment at this time.

Thank you colleagues. I passed out some printed copies and the highlighted yellow portion is the language that would change. Really appreciate you guys working with a small donor elections office to correct any miscommunications or misunderstandings that may have happened originally, and the. To put it very simply, what this amendment does is it limits the auditor's discretion to extend all deadlines all the time. So we want investigations to move quickly, especially if they're doing basic reviews of sufficiency, things like that. But they will still be able to extend deadlines for more complicated investigations. And the purpose of that is, you know, when we are getting investigated, obviously in the media, if something just keeps getting extended long term, that can be harmful in our democracy. As far as what are the actual outcomes, people need expedient answers for some of those lower level things to be looked into, and then for higher level offenses than or, you know, things to be investigated, then you would be given more time. So that's the purpose of that amendment if folks have any questions.

Thank you. Councilor. Morillo and councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Yeah, mine is not printed, but it is pre-filed as well. And I'll note that there's a we'll need to update a four to a five if they should both pass, but it restores the provisions that require the auditor to notice that a complaint has been filed to each person who is the object of a complaint within two calendar days of receipt. By amending the section there. It also requires that when there's an extension that that's publicly posted and that public posting is done every 14 days. Thanks.

Thank you. Keelan is there anyone signed up for testimony?

No, this was the second reading, so it was closed to testimony.

Thank you. Thank you colleagues.

Discussion to the I guess to the amendments. Wait, are we formally moving the amendments at this time? Councilor. Morillo. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Yes, I would like to move my amendment.

Great. Second.

Councilor. Morillo. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

I need to correct the record. I'm sorry. This is actually a first reading. It was continued. So we it's a continued first reading, but no one signed up. Thank you.

There we go.

Thank you very much. Councilor Morillo moves her amendment councilor Kanal seconds it. Colleagues. Discussion. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: I have a couple of nitpicky editorial suggestions that I realize there's no such thing as a friendly amendment, but I'd like to see if the sponsor would be willing to remove. Based on these. It. At the top of aye, Morillo one. We'll give no weight to conclusions unsupported by specific facts. I'd suggest that the allegations of specific facts. Otherwise it might sort of imply the facts have already been proven.

Causing you. That part is not my amendment. The Green is not my amendment, only the highlighted yellow.

Oh.

Sorry, I thought that. I thought that the yellow was like an update of the amendments that you had already done.

No. My apologies. I think it looks a little confusing, but my amendment is only the yellow. So I just realized that when you were trying to communicate with me, I misunderstood you.

Okay, well, in that case, I might be offering my own amendment to say allegations of at the top of number two. And then the next one, sub three, is make take notice of any facts that it deems reliable that are readily and publicly available. A fact I think is always reliable. So I was going to suggest that it's a. May take notice of any facts that are readily and publicly available from sources that it deems reliable, which I think is the meaning. So I would move those nitpicky amendments.

Can we see those written out? I think that might help us.

Yeah.

Councilor. Yeah. Councilor. Novick would you be able to write those out and we can move those as a a, a separate amendment?

Yes.

Okay. And. Councilor. Ryan.

Okay, thank you, council president. So we're back to discussing the amendment that was moved and seconded.

Yes.

Okay. My question is this and I can't. Oh yeah. The auditor's up there. Hello madam auditor, we had a pretty long discussion in governance about this. And the small donor office was there. It passed 5 to 0. So I'm still trying to get to the heart of the matter of what problem this is trying to solve in terms of ensuring that we have fair and just elections. And of course, the public wants more immediacy in rulings during election season, because it's truly that a very urgent time period. So could I have more? I need to be persuaded more ya50 vote out of committee needed this amendment to make it more fair and just for our elections.

Councilor Morillo or to the auditor.

Angelita Morillo: Madam auditor sorry, one last thing. I'd love to hear about the workload implications of these amendments, both this and canals. Thanks.

I guess to quickly answer. Councilor Ryan, I think some of your feedback is maybe unrelated to the amendment, and I'll let you speak. Auditor. But we made these in conjunction with the auditor's office and the small donor elections office to make sure that it wouldn't be too burdensome.

And I will allow my deputy and our elections manager to speak to the general purpose of this legislation.

Yeah.

Thank you, councilor Ryan. So I think the biggest concerns that the small donor elections program raised were that we we ideally, we try to enforce on a shared complaint close to the same time. The biggest risk is that we enforce first, and then they come after and enforce and might overrule ours. And so but but I think the program still had concerns that they might go first and ours might be later. And in the public's eye that might be confusing. So the concession here really was that we we could keep the strict sufficiency review timeline, which is 14 days. We agree that there would be minimal kind of administrative and due process concerns if we held to that and limited our discretion, which I think helped the program help, ensures that we're not continuing to grow that gap between enforcement unnecessarily. I don't know if that summarizes it for you, but this is kind of a newer issue that came out of conversations after committee, which is why we think it's necessary and support it.

Now, I realized, upon reflection, even when a governance committee spends a lot of time on something, there's new people that put eyes on it and they catch more things. And I commend councilor Morillo office for that. I just had to hear it a little bit more of a crisp when you just provided read was very helpful. That was what I was looking for is a little more straight talk on how exactly this became an additive amendment. And I can see it now and I appreciate the dialog. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Ryan councilor Zimmerman, thanks.

As I said last time, I was prepared to pass what came from the auditor's office and out of committee. So I'm walking in today fairly. Skeptical of amendments, but but this one seems just in this this yellow language. It seems somewhat innocuous, but now there's some stuff that was discussed, I guess. Why wasn't it included before? And you mentioned. That somehow this language keeps you to a 14 day sufficiency clause. Is that to say that without it? Because actually in this language, it doesn't say those words at all? Is that to say that without this amendment, you don't have that 14 day sufficiency clause? I'm very confused on, again, kind of the reason behind it. And this was both, I think, to the auditor's office, since you guys consider it friendly and to the sponsor of it, I'm missing something here. Can anybody speak to that a little bit more?

I want to just express my thanks for your support. Councilor Zimmerman, and also let my deputy respond to your question.

Thanks. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the great question. So the section f that's being amended is really what defines the discretion. The auditor has to extend deadlines. As we originally wrote it, it was kind of on par with many of our peers and how this process works across the country, which is we can extend what we need to in order to run a fair and just enforcement process. Yeah. You know, I think, again, we, we decided that we can stick to that 14 days generally, again, that's a period where we are going to try to answer complex legal questions, consult with partners like s, d, e and prepare for an investigation. And we really couldn't quite think of too many extreme examples where we would need to extend that in the same way that we definitely might need to extend the 30 day window. I'm sorry. I think there might have been a second question. I'm not quite answering. Would you remind me?

So I guess, all right. We're going from language that says the city auditor may extend one or more of the deadlines to the city auditor may extend the deadlines. To me, that is no substantial change.

Apologies.

Councilor then the next part of it, it references. We go from the city auditor's opinion to the city auditor finds good cause to extend. And that's the only language changes I'm seeing. And so that that language seems somewhat, you know. Okay. Got it. I'm not sure the difference between good cause and opinion is. But how does that. There's been some discussion about something has happened since last week to this week with respect to the small donor elections about alignment. So what what has happened in terms of making this amendment now makes the process better and more fair?

Yeah. Thank you councilor. So I think a few things there. If you look in that in the aye, Morillo one amendment, there's a small numbering inclusions. Now it says e four instead of just e. So we're now referencing a very specific set of deadlines only as they relate to our investigation timeline. So if you missed that I can see why it might be confusing. Okay. I think the broader pivot here is that, you know, we're hearing from some councilors, but as well as a small donors elections program, that there's some concern about the level of discretion that this code provides and that there could be a bad actor in the future as an elected auditor that might abuse that discretion. And so, you know, I think we have faith in our institution that that won't happen. But I think this is in response to that, there might need to be, you know, some kind of curtailing of that in infinite discretion and also to canals amendment, some more public accountability so that that discretion is used judiciously.

And okay, so if I read that correctly. And so previously f referred to everything in section e and now will only refer to paragraph four of section e, I guess, you know, last time I spoke I was in favor of these changes because I am worried about the weaponization in the old system of everybody, every crazy under the sun can make a complaint. And you have to, quote, open an investigation which has a real weaponization aspect to it, given the previous system does this. And so your previous set of amendments made a lot of sense to me. Does this make it easier or harder for you as the auditor to. Ensure the system is sticking to its origins, its core, and not being used as a weaponization election tactic, which I feel it was quite susceptible to in the previous go round. And I can't tell if limiting limiting your discretion on timelines to only subparagraph four does that, or if keeping it more broad to the entire section gives you more. I think professional and elected scrutiny, and I will recognize I'm also an election season. It's weird to be asking to make changes to something I want. I thought the best practice for us was to pass this with very few amendments, if any. Because of that, and you and I are both in the same position, madam auditor. So I will call the awkwardness out and just be like, but we got to do it, so I'm hoping we can talk. Does it make it harder or less in terms of that discretion and protecting the sanctity of the system?

Well, I can speak. Thank you. Councilor I think broadly, this process of developing this legislation and the ruling that we received, you know, it it made clear what the gaps were in terms of providing more checks and balances in the in the process. And then, you know, my staff, I think, is probably more equipped to answer more detailed questions about these nuances.

Councilor deborah scroggin, elections division manager I think the existence and the creation of this efficiency review will help with that concern that you mentioned. And it also addresses the court's concern about lack of time to engage folks in the process. So we have a sufficiency review. We can review a complaint on its face. We can see whether it is necessary to open up a full investigation, and that still exists even with these amendments. We just now don't have the discretion to continually extend that sufficiency review process. So on the whole, I do think it's an improvement and addresses some of the concerns the court has and that we've had with weaponization.

Okay. So to to make sure I fully. So this is really about sufficiency review must be completed in a certain amount of time. But overall, you making a determination as an office, you have discretion based on the situation of that case. Easy, moderate, really hard, difficult, etc. And you're going to make that call. And that doesn't you still have that protected here. I think. Thanks for for going through that. I will turn to the I want to make sure to the sponsor of this. Like that's your intent. This makes this is all copacetic in terms of what you're, you were hoping to, to get out of it as the proposer of this. Councilor. Morillo.

Yeah, that's correct. I mean, I think it's just meant to address the problem of continuously extending the sufficiency review while also making sure that there is a thorough investigation if there's a broader issue that needs to be looked into.

And. It didn't come up previously, you didn't you didn't say, hey, we'd like to put a limit on our time to do sufficiency review previously. Was that a deliberate because you thought, well, sometimes it takes a long time to do that, or was this just not a discussed point? I guess I'm trying to get a sense of, are you considering this a favorable amendment? Because we're trying to get through the moment and this is a compromise amendment, or is it truly was just not addressed? And you kind of consider it like, yeah, we have never taken more than 14 days to do a sufficiency review. This is just not a thing. I'm trying to get a sense of the, of the size of a change here. Yeah.

That's a great question. Councilor. I think, you know, as we were preparing these proposals, I think we can imagine kind of a worst case and a lot in a lot of ways. And, and I think that's why we really felt initially that discretion was important. But I think through further conversations with the very folks who sufficiency review is kind of meant to help engage with. So the small donor program, I think we kind of realized that maybe we're over building in too much caution into that particular element of discretion. So I think it's mostly just through further conversations, we refined what our particular need is here.

Okay, so I want to just I think my final thought here is, so if a complaint comes to your office. Three weeks before an election, you would by code have to end your sufficiency review at the latest one week before an election, and then essentially make a headline that says a week out from an election. We are opening this thing so that that gets to the comey concern that I had last time. And I feel like this code now puts you in the electioneering position, the way that I thought you were trying to get yourself out of, given the timelines from the previous system. And I think that. After what we watched in other places, it's a real concern for me. But I want to make sure I understand that this would force you to get involved in an election days before, regardless of findings, but simply because it seems like a credible concern. And that will be the last headline likely before the election actually concludes, because you wouldn't have time to then finish the investigation in many cases. Am I understanding that like this puts it in code that you shall you must in that short amount of time, you must get. Now get into the election atmosphere, I'll say, versus the enforcing thereafter.

Yeah. Thank you. Councilor I think the short answer is yes. And I know that's an unfortunate outcome, but I think the reality is, you know, the decision to extend criteria would not include kind of public perception. I think that's actually a concern that our decision, the auditor's decision would be politicized. So I think it actually benefits us to have, in this case, a very strict timeline so that those decisions aren't questioned as political. So I hear you that there's a policy outcome that is unfavorable. But I think to build trust in the system, we would not lean towards making those decisions based on those types of outcomes. You know.

I believe that too. Don't get me wrong. I fully believe that. But because we don't have a media scape and a and a and a public consuming of information that really differentiates the difference between substantiated and you, you did violate it. And so here's your fine versus yeah, there's enough here, which is that burden of proof is, yeah, I think there's enough here that we should probably look into it versus this is just the crazy commenters on the back end of a newspaper who are now just like filing erroneous complaints. But but that gets the headline and that is now part of the election discussion. And I thought that your your work previously that protected those those what I would call the most influential weeks and the most apt for abuse. But now I think that protection is kind of waning now with this, because we're putting code back in to say you must do a certain thing, because I think actually having an auditor who says, you know, weighing in within the 30 day mark, doing the james comey thing is not a good idea. There's a reason the federal government has generally tried not to do that, because the accountability never leaves. It's just when you decide to hit the headlines with accountability.

May I direct respond? Councilor.

I don't know that this wasn't really for you. It's more about it's this discretion piece. I mean, I think it's a fine point for discussion, but.

It is my amendment.

That's fine. But you're taking it out. What I'm talking about is that was a big part of the discussion last time.

It's not an attack. I'm trying to explain my amendment. Yeah. Okay. I think I completely hear your concerns about that. And I think that having a set timeline removes the political decision aspect of it. I think you're absolutely right. The reality is that we live in a media landscape where there are headlines that are used to attack political candidates when investigations aren't even finalized, where they may be innocent, all of those things. Right? But the alternative is that the auditor's office has discretion to choose when they extend the deadline, which to me is inherently could become a political decision. Whereas if we have those set timelines, then that removes the political decision out of their hands. As far as that equation goes. So choosing to extend a sufficiency review to avoid looking political in the public eye can be a political decision. I, I completely agree. I think we have a really messed up political landscape where people do attack ads. People do all sorts of things just based on investigations that aren't even finalized yet. And that being said, I think that's a broad discussion for politics under under this form of democracy. You know.

Yeah, I agree with you. And I don't think that I'm actually too worried on the auditor and on the staff side, what I'm really talking about are, are some of the, I'll call them the bad actors that exist out in the community, which I think having the auditor with discretion to understand who and what the motivations are on some of those has been positive, because in this case, we'll remove that discretion by code. And the two week timeline becomes very weaponized to those who know how to work the system. And so I actually have less of the concern about politicizing by the decision making of auditors. Like, I hope it's very clear I'm not talking about y'all. I'm talking about some of the others who I fully expect will be in this part of it being like, when do I time it so that the auditor has to come out so that then we can do the thing? I think that's what I am hoping to. I thought the last one was going to. So I'll be clear and I'll wrap up. I'm very on the fence of this because I. One of the things I really appreciate about the first version that passed governance was that I thought that this that it did more to combat that. And this it this chips away. It doesn't eliminate it, but it chips away a little bit at that. So I'm going to think through the rest of the discussion. Thank you. Thank you for answering everybody. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Okay. Councilor Kanal did that thing where he put himself after me, I wasn't prepared. Hold on one second. Let me get my notes up. Yeah. Been interesting hearing the conversation. I mean, I think more broadly, the concept of, you know, it passes out of committee unanimously and therefore it is done is just very strange to me. I don't know why we keep doing that. So I think that the whole point of it coming out of committee into council is for other councilors to weigh in and talk to their communities, propose amendments that are going to be relevant based on what happens between committee and council. So I think that is an expectation that continues to get brought up, and I think we need to have a serious discussion about what it looks like to legislate, especially for councilors who aren't on committees and should be able to put forward amendments, especially when they're in conjunction with community and with our partners. I think that we all recognize that the we need to respond to the court's ruling so that the Portland campaign finance laws remain enforceable. And the court found that our current process did not provide sufficient due process protections, particularly because there's not a meaningful hearing before penalties are imposed. And so I think adding that hearing process is an important step to ensure our system is constitutional and fair. At the same time, the broader case is not yet fully resolved, and an appeal may still move forward once the final order is entered. And so given that uncertainty, I believe that we should take a careful and narrow approach and avoid making broader changes than what is clearly required. Right now, we know that 87% of Portland voters approved these campaign finance reforms, and I think we have an obligation to respect that voter mandate and touch the law as little as possible while the legal process continues. So I want to appreciate councilor Morillo for bringing forward this amendment that helps address some of the concerns that were raised about discretion and timelines in the enforcement process. And my understanding is that both the auditor's office and the small donor elections program are comfortable with this change. And so I appreciate that collaboration between the offices to make sure that this process works in practice. For me, this amendment represents a more careful step forward, and it allows us to address those due process concerns identified by the court and ensure that we have an enforceable system for the upcoming election, while also putting additional guardrails in place. So once the legal process is fully resolved, then council can revisit whether any additional changes are necessary. At this point, I am comfortable with the amendment and I plan to support it. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Councilor Kanal thank you, council president. I want to first note that there's a few different things in here, and I seconded it because this is a good conversation to have. And I think there's a lot in here that's really positive. I looked at the deadlines that are being affected here that would become, if this amendment passes, would become not able to be extended. There are three of them. It's in two b2c2e. And I think it makes sense to say c and e seem non-controversial at this moment. So I just wanted to to kind of clarify that. And that's why I think this amendment is worth worth doing. But I also want to say, I, I have agreed with much of what councilor Zimmerman said on the weaponization concern. I think we came at it from different sides last time. But but said many of the same things, and I also see that concern. In fact, I believe I also worked on the amendment we're going to get to in a minute with the auditor's office. And at that time in those conversations, I said, I wouldn't mind if the if there was less restriction than even the 14 calendar days in the underlying on a sufficiency review, I'm trying to understand that because I think one thing that we haven't figured out in any of the amendments or the underlying, is what happens in those special time periods right before an election where things are heightened and where the time spent is. It matters more because every day matters more to both the candidates and to the auditor's office and to the complainants, I imagine as well. So I'm trying to understand the distinction there and just wanted to kind of daylight that piece for those who might be following along. But I do think it makes sense to say that that if the auditor dismisses the complaint, the complainant may within 30 days request an administrative hearing. Don't think that that necessarily needs an extension, even in those heightened times. And similarly, the auditor will, within 14 days, issue a notice of investigation. I don't think those need to be able to be extended either for the sake of the the, the integrity of the process. So I just wanted to, to kind of focus on those two pieces and say those are directly positive. I am interested in if there's any solutions that that we can talk about that might alleviate concern around to b, which is the portion related to the extension potential of extending the sufficiency review, because I think that piece of it more than the flexibility in that piece to me, is better than flexibility in the actual investigation because of the exact point that councilor Zimmerman raised. But I don't know if that's something that affects that. That's possible within the due process, concerns that the court raised. And so I wanted to to understand that a little bit better. And I feel like if that's not possible, it probably makes sense to do this. And so I kind of need a little more information there, if you could provide that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, I think when we look at an alleged violators due process rights, that is multi-pronged, right? But generally it means they need to be able to participate in a process and defend themselves. And so that happens in a couple of ways throughout our investigation. That might be they participate in interviews to be able to talk with us and answer questions. We have provide documentation, emails, receipts, etc. And potentially, ideally, actually respond to a draft determination where they can defend themselves, correct inaccuracies. That all happens in that second window in the investigation period. So none of that happens in sufficiency. So really actually, before your amendment councilor Kanal an alleged violator may not even know during that first 14 days. So again, I think that's why we're more comfortable limiting discretion there because there is really limited impact on due process. Whereas I think we absolutely need discretion in the later half. That is where based on our capacity, based on the complexity of the case, it's really those due process rights that are at jeopardy. We just don't have the time to engage folks in a way that they deserve and is constitutional.

Can I this is related to this amendment and the other amendment and the underlying. So I'm just going to ask it now because chronologically we're doing this first. Was there an ad package requested? We've talked about capacity quite a bit in the conversation here. We as far as I'm aware, I haven't seen all the requests from the bureaus yet. But when we get to that point, we will that will be attachments to the mayor's proposed. Will we see an ad package request from the auditor to resolve these capacity concerns? Because I think democracy requires investment, and I'm willing to look at that very strongly. And depending on the trade offs, vote for it. But I don't know if we even got that request. So did you ask for the capacity you would need.

The two parts? I mean, I think I think you councilor First, I think the proposal we put forward, we believe we can staff adequately. And so, no, we do not have an additional ad package. I think what depends on what comes out of council here may change our approach there. And the last thing I'll say to you again is we really called to this at all because of a court ruling that identified due process as the concern, not weaponization, but due process. And we can throw many more staff members at this. And it would help. But ultimately, we still need that alleged violator to have the time to to do their part. And no matter how much resources we have, it doesn't change that, especially in complex cases, right? Where they're doing multiple interviews, potentially hundreds of pages of documents, a 26 page legal brief that that just needs time for them and resources that they need to engage. So I appreciate the concern. And I think the auditor can reinforce that we appreciate your leadership and funding our office, but that's only part of the equation here.

Yeah. And I don't I don't mean to imply that that these are at odds with each other, but I also don't want to create a weaponization concern in how we resolve the due process concern or create a capacity concern that we don't have the the information to be able to address with either of those things. So I'm just trying to make sure that the sort of wrapping the scaffolding around this conversation is also acknowledged, because I want to make sure you have what you need. And if whatever outcome comes of these two amendments and the underlying requires more capacity to do it, I would hope that we would get that detail, because regardless of the mayor's guidance, which doesn't include add packages, we need that information. And I'm hoping that in the future, we always ask for those things in every year's budget from every, every part of the city. I don't have anything else on this right now, but I'm curious how the conversation goes. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues, I will note that we are we have spent 25 minutes on the first amendment so far. It is adding nine words and removing nine words. And we have a very full agenda today. I will say nothing more than that. Councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: I was going to say the exact same thing. Council president yeah, just very quickly, I'll just say, I think that the concerns that I've heard so far can happen under the status quo. Someone can file a complaint two weeks out before the election. They can feed that to a journalist, and then the journalist can publish an article on it. And that can happen right now. This is about depoliticizing the auditor and not having to put whoever is in that seat in the position of having to make a choice about whether or not a complaint is frivolous. And the complaint, wouldn't you know, it wouldn't be entirely baseless. It has to pass sufficiency review. So I think it's fairly straightforward, and I would urge us to move forward. And if it passes, it passes. And if it doesn't, so be it.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Green.

Angelita Morillo: I only just got in the queue to hope that we can just take a vote.

Great.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Is that a legacy hand? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan, can we please call the roll on the Morillo amendment?

Yes.

Yep. And just to clarify, that was moved by councilor Morillo. Seconded by councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Correct.

Aye, Morillo Smith no.

Kanal I pirtle-guiney.

I Ryan no.

Koyama Lane I. Morillo I. Novick I.

CClark.

I Green. I Zimmerman.

No.

Dunfee I.

The amendment is approved with nine yes votes and three no votes.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you. I would like to formally move Kanal one. I can speak to it if there's a second.

Councilor Kanal moves. Is there a second or do you want to speak on it first?

Sure.

Second.

There we go. Thanks.

So as I mentioned earlier, this does two different things. It is it is formatted similarly to aye, Morillo one in the sense that the there are two types of red line here. There's the underlying red line. This amendment is what is yellow highlighted as well. So it adds a new part to e two. And then it also adds an f two. E two says that within two calendar days of receiving, a complaint will issue a notification, including a copy of the complaint to each to every person who is the object of the complaint. And what that means is that instead of waiting until after the sufficiency review is complete to let the candidate who is alleged to have committed a violation know that there is a complaint, they would find out within two days of the complaint being filed, which I think is a important part not only for avoiding weaponization, but for also the due process part of it. And then the second piece is down at in f, actually, there's a third part, f one adds a sentence. The city auditor will put the same information on the website, which is to say, the reason why an extension is necessary needs to be publicly expressed, and then the new f2 would effectively mean that the extensions are not limited in time to this section. In terms or sorry, there's no max cap on the number of extensions, but that they have to be informed every every 14 days to the public. The public has to be informed. Every 14 days is the right way to say that. And I'll also note, this is something that I worked on with with the auditor's office and appreciate the the conversation there, because I think the again, this is about making sure that we're not just addressing the due process, but we're also putting some guardrails on the other parts.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Vice president Clark.

Olivia Clark: Thank you, council president. I'd just like to hear the auditor's response or opinion about this amendment.

Thank you. Councilor Clark. Vice president, I think that the notification requirements are enhancements on the fairness and transparency of the legislation that's been proposed. It's not terribly onerous for our staff to provide that information. So we are supportive.

Okay, colleagues, any further discussion? Counselor Zimmerman?

I want to make sure I I think you said, but it's a notification of, hey, you've been complained against. Here's who complained. Here's the substance. You get the whole thing, right. That's what we're talking about here.

And we are extending timelines. When we do, we would make that publicly obvious.

Why is the reason that that isn't already a normal, or maybe it is already a practice. We're just putting it in code. Is this already a practice?

Let my staff speak to that. Thank you.

The notice that you've received councilor. The notice that you've received a complaint is already two business days. So we already rushed to try to get those in as fast as we can. This just says you've received a complaint. Here's the copy of the complaint. We're proceeding on the rest of our process. The request to extend isn't currently in charter or code, so that would be new and would be daylighting that will be extending a deadline. And for what reason?

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.

I want to just ask a clarifying question here. Counselor Zimmerman just said the notice will include that you have a complaint. Who it's from, all of the details, what I see written and what I think I heard you say is that you get a notice that there has been a complaint filed, but maybe not all of those details. So can you clarify for us whether under this language, somebody who has a complaint filed against them is going to get a notice that just says, by the way, a complaint has been filed against you, here's the timeline. Or are they going to actually get information about what that complaint is, who it's from, etc.

Yeah. Thank you. Councilor. So I think including the copy of the complaint will include that information. We have a online intake form that includes name of the complainant. And you know, so I think in receiving that copy they would receive all of those details.

Okay.

So we will get. That information will be included when somebody gets notice about a complaint under under this amendment. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney colleagues seeing no one else in the queue for discussion. Keelan. Can we please call the roll on Kanal one.

Pavlo's aye, Morillo.

Smith no.

Kanal aye, Morillo. Pirtle-guiney.

Hi. Ryan. Aye, Morillo Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark I Green. I Zimmerman. I dunfee I. The amendment is approved with 11 yes votes and one no vote.

Thank you. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: In the interest of time, I withdraw my nitpicky amendment, stressing that the current language will be interpreted the way they want to be interpreted anyway.

Okay.

Thank you. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Just to clarify, I don't think there was a second. So there there's no official withdrawal needed, so I think we're set.

Perfect. Thank you. Colleagues, is there any further discussion on this item? Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: So just.

Clarify this is a first reading. So we'll be voting on this next week. Correct. There's not immediate urgency, I think, except in the context of complaints that are happening theoretically in the next the week of of any potential delay. So I just wanted to ask if, to kind of follow up on my earlier question about the legal side of it around sufficiency review extension versus. Investigation extensions, because read in your response, you mentioned that unless the amendment that I had proposed passed, the complainant would not know or sorry, the object of the complaint would not know during the sufficiency review. But now that we have passed that amendment and that object of the complaint does know, I would love it if you could circle back to us on whether or not the due process concerns could be could be resolved by giving more flexibility on the sufficiency review and less on the on the actual investigation, because I think that might help with some of the concerns that both councilor Zimmerman and I raised around potential weaponization. Does that make sense?

I think so, yeah. Councilor. Thank you. So I do think it helps insofar as the alleged violator now does have time to prepare. And that might mean they're going to go find a lawyer, right? Because this is really complex stuff. It might mean thinking about the documents they need to prepare, but they won't have any of the actual information that will need to provide them to, to do that. So they won't have our list of questions, our document reviews, they may not even have clarity exactly on what law they've been alleged to break. So I do think it helps, but it doesn't really erase the need for them to be able to engage in the multiple steps of the investigation process after sufficiency closes.

So.

So I understand your point around list of questions, document reviews. You said they may not have clarity exactly on what law they're they've been alleged to break. Isn't that not part of a completed complete complaint?

I think you councilor. So so it is. But I think as we're seeing, these cases are getting increasingly complex. And so there might be multiple layers of state and local law that are at stake. And so sometimes the complaint is just scratching the surface. And our interviews and our document requests might need to get to multiple angles of one question.

Okay. Thank you.

I appreciate the clarification. I might have misspoke or overly simplified.

Yeah. And if anything comes up, I'm just asking if between now and next week, if there's more information to share on this particular question, I'd love to have it.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thanks. I think that's an important thought that councilor Kanal brings up. In fact, I think in large part we could probably expect people go, oh my gosh, you're right. I like, I totally did. I didn't even realize it. There's, there's this many people that are involved in my campaign. They printed something without it on it and yeah, full stop. I get it and it ends up being not a big deal. Like we're really talking in like the biggest deal. But if you've been around election world enough, most of it is not substantial. Oopsies all over the place, right. That is the nature of it. And I think that this is very helpful to that. So I think your amendment is, is, is good. And and most people are trying to do the right thing. And in a complicated system, just being able to say thank you for the course correction. Got it. I'm going to be better on the on the way out. Here's my you know, either my hand slap my bad boy letter or my $50 fine, whatever it is. You know, I think that that's really helpful. I think you guys have set up a system. So sometimes in this amendment process, we kind of lose the thread, which is this thread was basically taking a system for enforcement that was completely neutered some months ago. And I think that this is an important action. I just want to be very supportive of the auditor's office work on this, the governance committee. Thank you for taking it up and getting it to us. And, and, and thank you for for putting the lens on it. I think the work has been good. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue to discuss this item now moves to second reading next week. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can we please call item number seven.

Item 2020 6-087. Appoint members to the community involvement committee.

Thank you. Claire adams with council offices here for a committee summary report.

Good morning, council president and councilors. For the record, claire adamczyk, council policy analyst and staff to the climate resilience and land use committee. The report before you document number 2020 6-087, was heard in the climate committee on February 26th, where it was referred to council with a recommendation to be accepted. The report requests the appointment of seven new members and the reappointment of three members to the community involvement committee, each for a three year term from March 11th, 2026 to March 10th, 2029. The appointees are by name to sara weller, lauren elizabeth sommer, bing theobald, jenna ringelheim, jacob duggan and caitlin burke. And the appointees are susan novak, calvin hoff, and james gorder. The full impact statement on this item includes information on community impacts and community involvement. No written or verbal testimony was submitted on this item prior to committee action, and that concludes the committee staff summary.

Thank you.

Thank you, claire councilor, Morillo and Novick. This came out of your committee. I don't care who was taking any further comments.

No, I think that was. Thank you claire. Great summary. All of these folks, we didn't flag any issues with them. We were happy to move forward with them. So should be fairly straightforward.

Perfect. Colleagues, is there any technical or clarifying questions? No. Keelan is there any public testimony?

No one signed up.

Councilor Ryan.

Dan Ryan: Yeah, thank you, council president. First of all, thank you to all the the appointees and their willingness to serve. It looks like a wonderful group of volunteers from the community. I wasn't able to be at that meeting, the committee meeting. And I just wanted to ask, are there any of the new of these new committee members? Any of them have experiences operating businesses in the public right of way?

Or inviting some staff up? Hi, harmony.

Hi. Harmony. Dashiell. She her pronouns equity and engagement manager for the bureau of planning and sustainability. I don't believe so. Councilor Ryan. But that wasn't a specific question that we asked as part of their application. So I can't definitively say no. None of them have ever done this.

And that's fine. I think that the reason I bring it up is because what I've experienced on council is when we don't have that lens, when we're doing big planning projects in many times, whether it's a transportation planning issue or some other big issue that we're working on for code change, that we don't have that voice in in the process. And so often they're the ones that are most disgruntled when they find out later that we've made a big code change. So I'm hoping that someday we can figure out how to have that type of diversity of opinion at the table. That's all. But I will be supporting this. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor. Ryan councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I will also be supporting this and I was at the meeting, so I won't restate everything I said about the members and how I think they'll be great at it and the sort of requests I had for them. But I did want to mention two things for future. One is that we have seen some. The documentation. Super unclear about the amount of turnover, but I did want to understand. I'm looking like 4 or 5 years ago, but trying to understand our recruitment process and how we can get more applicants in the future. In particular, as per usual, district one as a as a focus area. And I'd love to see not each and every staff for each and every commission do some special thing to create that equity. But overall, citywide guidance from both the legislative side and the office of community engagement to assist in ensuring that we are getting the information necessary out to district one residents. And then also that this this is one of the most extreme examples of a commission that is defined as having a very broad range of members. It says 5 to 12, which is kind of absurd, even within the context of a few that are defined this way. And I just wanted to mention for my colleagues that that's something I'm going to be looking into with the committee of the whole later, is how we can create clarity around that. So but thanks. I do intend to vote for these folks and I think they're going to be great.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. Can we. Does this require a motion? I would entertain a motion to accept this report.

So moved. Second was.

A Kanal seconded by Clark. Sounded like. And can we please call the roll?

Aye, Morillo Smith. Absent Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick. I Clark I Green I Zimmerman. I Dunphy.

The report is accepted with 11 yes votes and one absent.

Thank you very much. Can you please call item number eight next?

Item 2020 6-073. Amend civil rights code related to sexual orientation and family status definitions and amend nondiscrimination clauses. Amend code section 14.50 .110 and code. Chapter 23.01.

Colleagues. This is the second reading of an ordinance. Is there a further council discussion, councilor Ryan?

Dan Ryan: Yes. Thank you, council president. Good morning, colleagues. Again, I wish I was there in person. I really need to get my voice out on this item, since much of the discussion that I witnessed when I watched the the the council meeting from afar, I was in a lot of this conversation in my absence at the February 25th council meeting. I have been a long supporter of this legislation. I was a co-sponsor. I am a co-sponsor with the other queer councilors and also councilor Koyama Lane. As a group. We work since August 2025 together in good faith and with a lot of transparency. Unfortunately, this was scheduled for council meeting when I was traveling for work. In fact, I was on a flight going towards taipei. I was in the back of the plane coach and it was, you know, probably 2 a.m. International date time on Thursday. And of course, there was no way I could call in. So just know those that didn't have that information. I have talked to a couple councilors who didn't understand that and said, you know, comments that made it seem like I was slacking and please know I wasn't. It was really hard for me not to be there for this conversation. I'm really grateful for my colleagues, councilors, pirtle-guiney and councilor Zimmerman, both of whom eloquently discussed the fidelity of this legislative process, transparency, the concerns about the amendments. And I also want to thank them, just thank them for representing my lived history as well. It was very touching to listen to that part. And thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am a proud member of the LGBTQ community, and I stood up for the rights for decades, and I've put blood, sweat and tears into it. And have many stories to explain that I would have preferred that we have maintained the broader, inclusive language of the original legislation, as it had been agreed to by all the queer councilors. The majority of them on that writing this, but developing a list of who is protected means that that we risk excluding groups. And I will move all past all that. Now, I anticipate that we may have to deal with that, just that that decision in the future. But for now, I will align with my colleagues whom I trust and I have a lot of admiration for. Again, both councilors pirtle-guiney and Zimmerman, they got behind this legislation. And so I don't want to add to any changes or bring up any more political lightning rod issues at this time. And so I will accept the ordinance and the resolution as they are, and I don't want to ever get in the way of justice for those who have been working on it for years. And, you know, my spouse has been a member of the trans and non-binary community since high school at las vegas high in the 90s. And, you know, I obviously have firsthand opportunity to understand the complexity of that discrimination. And I experienced as an ally the pain of that for years. So I think I was just so in solidarity with wanting to celebrate that. I got confused when a throuples and, and plus and poly was introduced at the last second without any warnings. So I'm, I just had to get my voice out again since I was discussed quite often on the 25th. And I thank you for listening to my experience and, and my point of view on this topic. I really appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor. Ryan. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.

Thank you, council president. I try not to speak on second readings, but I had a few members of the LGBTQ plus community specifically reach out and ask when we were going to do this and when we were going to protect rights. And I realized that through some of our important debate when this was up on first reading, we might have lost sight of some of what we're doing and why it's important. So I'd like to ask you to indulge me in taking just a minute to remind us. By passing the package today, we are eliminating outdated code that has been used to stigmatize and marginalize people for simply existing. It's a win for dignity. It's a win for Portland. It helps us show our community members in the world what we stand for. This package ensures that transgender portlanders can use public restrooms without fear of criminalization or people second guessing them. It's a win that could completely transform portlanders daily lives. It's a mental health win and a basic human dignity win. It expands civil rights protections so that no family can be discriminated against in housing, employment or health care. We modernize our definitions of sexual orientation, so our nondiscrimination code protects people as we understand ourselves and not as outdated. Language once described us through the resolution, we make it clear that Portland will not ever use city resources to help other states punish people for accessing health care. That is legal here in the state of Oregon. It's a healthcare access win, a provider protection win, and a family security win. At a moment when hundreds of anti lgbtqia to plus bills are moving across the country, we are saying clearly that Portland is not neutral. We stand with families seeking safety, with providers delivering evidence based care, with members of our community. With this package, we are reinforcing oregon's broader commitment and portland's very clear, ongoing commitment to equality and to continuing to be a leader on basic rights and freedoms that, frankly, every city ought to be guaranteeing as its residents. I often say that I want Portland to be a place, the best place to raise a family. And when I say that, I mean every family with our votes today, colleagues, we are taking one more step. It's only one step, but an important one to make sure that Portland is the best place to live for all families, not just some. And I want to make sure we ground ourselves in that. Thank you, council president.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: Thank you, councilor Dunphy. I'll be very brief. I'm really grateful that we're here at this moment to pass this legislation. And I know a few of our council offices were approached to carry on this policy, and it's actually been transformed over time by a lot of people on council who care about this issue, regardless of identity. Because at the end of the day, our wins are shared together. If someone is harmed in the community, it is harming all of us. And solidarity and true liberation means that we are all standing side by side in this moment. I want to thank some of the early writers who had worked on this policy. Actually, most people don't know councilor Dunphy had worked on some of that language early on. We were a lot of us were approached to take that on. And then ultimately, councilor Koyama Lane and her fantastic staffer, aubry, I want to give aubry a special flowers in this moment, because they have been working on this policy for many years. And really, you know, brought us to this moment today when some of us didn't have the fortitude to pick it up and to push it forward. And so that's happening because of of that labor, and it is acknowledged and it is respected and is cared for. So thank you for that. And I, I am grateful for the amendments that we passed. Obviously, no community is a monolith, and there may be some disagreements, but I think that those amendments will add additional protections for folks who needed to be named, and especially within the queer community, different types of families that are not always don't always fall under the nuclear family for our communities because we are sometimes ostracized from our families. So I really appreciate all of us having those hard discussions coming together to pass this. And thank you, everyone, for getting us to this moment.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll? On the ordinance? Yes.

Unless I Smith.

Oh absent.

Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan I.

Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with 11 yes votes and one absent.

Can we please call item nine?

Item nine 2020 6-074. Declare the city of Portland will defend the rights of transgender people and all of the LGBTQ i2s plus community.

Thank you very much colleagues to discussion of the resolution which we have also talked about previously. But. Councilor. Koyama Lane.

Thank you, council president. I won't take too much time. My team has a north star written up in our office on the whiteboard with these questions. Who did we talk to about this? What did they tell us? How was that reflected in our work? Thank you to everyone that talked with us. Thank you to the co-sponsors of this package, to all the staff who work, the council staff who worked on this legislation, especially luke and devin. Thank you to the city professional staff who worked on this package over the years. Michelle rodriguez, former head of staff for commissioner Mapps and milligan, senior deputy deputy attorney chief bob day. Lex yakubovsky, senior policy analyst with the office of equity and human rights. Thank you to the many professionals and lawyers across the country who volunteered their time to weigh in and provide expertise to shape this work. Special place special thank you to stacey mcclarty, lead attorney at chosen family law, texas. Hannah cohen, legislative counsel at the new york city at new york city council, and andy eisenson, staff attorney at the harvard law school. Lgbtq, LGBTQ plus advocacy clinic. Special thank you to all of my constituents, d3 families and advocates who came here and took a risk by sharing your stories with us. Thank you to scott moore, community affairs officer for the quest center for integrative health. To katie cox from the marie equi center to the achilles, and to everyone who everyone who came time took time to come testify or write our offices. Thank you for talking with us, telling us what we needed to change. Help ensure that your stories are reflected in our work. Thank you for helping us make sure our city policies continue to advance. Justice for all. Thank you to my amazing staff. Shout out to my head of staff, queer hero mary lee, who married her long term partner becky kennedy in March of 2024 when Multnomah county briefly was issuing marriage licenses to same gender couples and until a state judge put a halt on them, mary and becky never cared about marriage. They went into it for people who couldn't safely do it on their own, but couldn't otherwise do it. And they're the lee and kennedy in the lee and kennedy versus the state of Oregon case, which petitioned the governor and registrar to record the marriages. And then that November, Oregon voters approved ballot measure 36. And it is real that they didn't care about marriage because they currently live in sin today still, but are very much in love. Thank you for your your advocacy then and now. Thank you to aubri qian. You deserve so much. Thanks. Your continued leadership and advocacy for the LGBTQ plus community is incredible. You've been working for years on mental health equity, leadership development, transgender equity. Through your work on this package, our team has seen up close just how much you've invested in strong, meaningful relations throughout the community. You're so important in the community and you're incredibly important part of our team. Aubrey's asked me to dedicate her work on this package to cecilia gentili, who passed away two years ago, unexpectedly. Thank you to all the advocates who paved the way and are no longer here with us. And aubrey, thank you for grounding our team. In the words of marsha p johnson, there is no pride for some of us without liberation, for all of us.

Thank you. Councilor. Koyama Lane. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks. I'll keep this brief.

But I'm proud to be a very, very small part of this moment of helping make a big step to protect protections and rights for the LGBTQ plus community, both with the ordinance and with this resolution. The only other group that I don't maybe it was mentioned earlier that I wanted to make sure got shouted out in this. In addition to lex and aubrey and milligan and michelle rodriguez was the city's queer alliance employee resource group. I know they were very heavily involved in this as well. Today, we make clear that our city will remain a welcoming, affirming community where everyone can live authentically and thrive, and I'm happy to be a part of it. Thanks to all of the sponsors.

Councilor. Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thanks. I appreciate this coming today. You know, there's the saying nothing about us without us comes to mind, I'm reminded, and I'm sad that councilor Smith had to step out for a second. But I'm reminded just in terms of how these types of resolutions, they evolve over the years, right? With the with the topic or sometimes the threat of the day of the era, because I'm reminded in 2011, I think it was when commissioner Smith asked a young employee of the tax department at Multnomah county to come and be an employee at the dais and talk about what national coming out day meant for him. And he talked about. You know, working in the military and being genuine to yourself. He talked about what it's like to work at home here in Multnomah county and just those differences. And when councilor Smith gave me that opportunity to highlight, we were in a different conversation back then. We were still in the fight. Only it seemed like at times for marriage or for employment. Right. I was a product of the don't ask, don't tell policies at the department of defense. And councilor Smith highlighted that. And so I think about that and how far, just in my own professional life, this topic of LGBTQ rights has come. It is rewarding to now be a co-sponsor and author on this side of the dais. And I didn't think that we would have to outline at any time for members of our public that if you are a resident of Portland, we won't help another state prosecute you. But here we are. We're having to say that. The it's incumbent upon you and the press who are covering these items to listen to the words that came out of councilor Pirtle-guiney in the last item, and listen to the words and talk about the substance, the main effort, the the main thread of what we're of what these different resolutions and ordinances do. It's easy to pick up on one sentence, but talk about the whole. Talk about the entire shift, the title shift, the, the, the movement overall when you cover this kind of language, because in the same month where other states are invalidating people's identifications as a form of government id, Portland is saying noted. If you're here, though, we're not going to help that I was about to curse. We're not going to help that stuff come into our city. So, you know, for for all of us at a different time, if you've ever been a part of any minority community, it may seem like your time in the spotlight is now. I think that the old idea of it gets better is not lost on me. It's not as cool as it was ten years ago, but it sure certainly still rings is that it does get better and that your time in the spotlight spotlight of the of society spotlight, which is usually not a great thing. We'll move on. And I think that these statements at places like the city of Portland are important. And now that councilor Smith has walked back in, I'll just nod to her and say, thank you for our efforts in 2011 at national coming out day. I look at these as an extension. These are natural evolution. And I am thankful to all of you because I know you're all going to vote to pass this. So thanks to that and those in the staff who I've called out previously in this discussion, again, thank you for your work.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan.

Dan Ryan: Yes, first of all, councilor President, thank you for holding off this vote so I could be present to actually vote on it. I do appreciate that. This movement and councilor Zimmerman reminded me of this, really took off when people did start coming out. I don't think a lot of you maybe know this, but it was so unsafe to be out in the 60s and 70s even in the 80s. And my friend who rest in peace, rob eichberg and his friend jean o'leary started national coming out day in October 11th, 1988. The first one was actually. The first one was 1987. The first anniversary was something I attended in 88, and it was a simple act of love, and it was encouraging people when they go home for thanksgiving, to start telling the truth about who you're dating. And so it wasn't until that time where it really started to take off. It was never really safe before. It still isn't safe. And, and, and we keep including in the queer movement, we keep adding. And that's what I love about it. I remember I was on a, the head of the seattle lesbian and gay commission in 1990, and a woman wanted was there always was a lesbian and a gay. I was the gay co-chair and this woman wanted to be the co-chair. And she had made a transition as a woman a couple of years prior. And it was such a debate with the other women. And so I found myself in, at that moment in time, advocating that I don't get to tell anyone that janice isn't a woman because she told me she was. And she shows up that way to me. And and so I just think that it's so important to keep opening the heart up to who you need to protect and who you need to make safe. And I actually look forward to having some conversations with those from the poly community so I can understand their pain better. I thought the testimony that we listened to at councilor After dark, albeit what's happening right now moment. It was very it was the couple that were really poignant. I don't hang out in that world, so I needed to understand what their pain was and what their discrimination was. I knew what it was for my trans friends for decades, but I didn't understand it from that community, and I need to continue to be brought along so that I can just show up and be an ally. But I think that it's all about telling your story, believing someone when they tell their story. And remember, we're on the shoulders of so many people that got us to this place. So in celebration, I look forward to the unanimous vote today. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Ryan. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan, can we please call the roll?

Avalos aye, Morillo. Smith I. Know I. Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan I. Koyama Lane I. Aye, Morillo I.

Novick I can't resist adding to councilor Zimmerman's point about how far we've come. I remember Multnomah county in 2004. I remember in 2004, we lost a public vote on same sex marriage in the state. Ashley coughlin, currently the mayor's chief of staff, ran the noble campaign on the right side. So when I think about all the bad things that have happened in America over the past 20 years, one really good thing to hold on to is the progress we've made on this issue. Oh, and by the way, councilor Koyama Lane. As an old guy, I appreciate anyone ever using old fashioned phrases like living in sin, I.

Clark I.

Green aye, Morillo.

Zimmerman I I I.

Dunphy I.

The resolution is adopted with 12 yes votes.

Colleagues, I am going to give us a ten minute recess so that we can stretch our legs. We will be back at 1135. Please be prompt. Thank you. And we are back. Colleagues, thank you for being back promptly on time. Keelan, can we please call item number ten?

Item 2020 6-022. Amend the Portland clean energy community benefit fund climate investment plan.

Colleagues, this is the second reading of a nonemergency ordinance. Is there any further discussion on this item? Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks. Council president, I just wanted to ask if there's anyone here. I had a question that came up in written testimony that I wanted to ask if anyone here could potentially answer. Sorry to put you on the spot, director engstrom.

Good morning. For the record, Eric engstrom, director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. And also note that sam barrasso, pdf program manager, is online on zoom, I believe. So if the question is technical, he may be the best person.

Yeah.

And sorry, I'm pulling up the exact text just to to make sure that I have it correct. But it's, it's about page 24 under strategic program 25, there are some changes that related to the mayor's executive order, and I would love to. I don't think that's come up in committee or in our first reading here at all. And I just wanted to understand that.

Correct? Yes. There were a number of changes, and we've been working with the city attorney over the last year, as many of you know, to to implement the mayor's executive order. The primary impact on PCEF is that the definition of priority populations that we work with in that program has, has been flagged as something to look at, and we have amended that that definition within the cip to to comport with our current understanding of the law.

Okay. So I see that there's an amendment that that strikes a couple pieces here or there, but then there's also a removal of the entire section on program specific workforce and contractor equity considerations, which includes the equity and contracting program, apprentice and workforce diversity program as well. And then there's the definition you talked about. So but I don't see any new text added. So is that actually an amendment?

Yes. The we have suspended use of the workforce agreements with our PCEF program and are in the process of developing substitute for that.

Okay. So in the interim, there's nothing.

There is not a correct there is not a workforce agreement in place that we can use right now and sam's online if there are additional questions.

Okay. And I want to apologize for not bringing this up earlier, but I also want to note that in the red line, and if you actually look at exhibited exhibit a as amended, which is the one I was working off of, those lines are not red. So I just wanted to flag that might have come up a little bit earlier had that been in the update. I think it might have been in the original version correctly, but I would love any clarity. If sam has it.

So as director engstrom just shared there, the in councilor Kanal, you're regarding clarity.

Sam, introduce yourself for the record, please.

Apologies for the record. My name is sam brosseau, program manager for the Portland clean energy community benefits fund. Council president councilor Kanal. We've. Yes. In response to the mayor's executive order, we've been working with staff to adjust how we approach workforce and contractor equity. And a lot of that has been focused on really shifting the direction and working with our grantees, our contractors, to state their approach and how they were approaching workforce and contractor equity, as opposed to coming in, leading with essentially a specific numeric goals or metrics. And so it's something that we're continuing to work through and we expect to work through with our aye, Morillo advisory council, as well as the pcf committee as we tease out what it means to have a different framework for for managing that.

I'm uncomfortable with that for two reasons. One is the, the, the temporal aspect of it, that the time where we've been told that a lot of the future changes are going to wait till next year. So what is the timeline on this? And that might address the first of my two concerns. And I want to again note this is because of written testimony that came in that I'm asking this.

Councilor Kanal I it's going to the universe and the realm in which we've done regionally, workforce and contractor equity agreements and plans have been designed based on, you know, leveraging and using the state's certification office for business inclusion, diversity, equity, using different numeric goals and targets. And so we have to sort of step back with our partners and broadly take a new look and reevaluate our approaches for doing that. So it isn't I don't have a direct answer to that because it isn't it isn't a singular problem. It isn't a singular thing related to just PCEF. It's a regional challenge. It's a challenge more broadly at the city as a whole that we're going to be negotiating. We're certainly tackling that right now. As it stands, we we just had a retreat with our aye, Morillo advisory council last week to tease out how we're going to be moving forward. And in negotiating that in the interim, our work is it is more tailored with each of our grantees and working with them to make sure they're thinking through their strategies, how they do their outreach. But in terms of in our reporting remains, we still capture our reporting in our data, but in terms of having those clear numeric targets that we used to have, we we we've got to come back to the drawing board on that. And that's going to take a little bit of time and working with our our partners in this space.

So just to be clear, that that did not involve a hard timeline in that response. And I understand that you might not be able to give one. So I'm not faulting you for it, but I would have loved to have one that is not the default of a year from now. But also there's text in here that's not numerical. I understand the bullet points under each of these sections are numerical. And if you. I'm referring to page 24, the entirety of which is struck by the way the intent of fbs equity and contracting program is to promote best practices and ensure that fb housing projects provide business opportunities for bmw, sb, sd, vb, all of which are defined down below. Construction focused firms to build economic growth, increase capacity, and expand competition in the workplace, in the marketplace. Right? Then you get into the goals, and I understand that the program is on pause, but I'm not clear as to why. The entire idea of even what the values are is being struck here. And I made a pledge, and this is my other concern, that I wouldn't change a comma of this program. And I understand that was primarily about code. Without taking this back to the voters. And I think that this has the net effect of limiting the impact of code. So I have I have concerns about that because it's not a change to code, but it still has that impact.

Councilor I would just add that we have been working with the city attorney on this language, and this is where we landed.

Okay. Well, I respect that we can land in different places.

So thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Ryan.

Thank you, council president. I wasn't here for the earlier discussion, but I to vote on this out of the committee. But I really did enjoy the dialog we were having in committee prior to that. I really appreciate all the in-depth conversations we had in general, and I just want to lift one project that did get in here and I'm I'm going to be supporting this, but I thought that when councilor Novick brought up some of the transportation items, I wanted to just acknowledge one that was the james beard market. And as I understood it, councilor It was to test some innovation that I think we're ready for, which is having bike cargo, if you will, deliver the goods and services daily of the fresh products that would, you know, envision them being at a industrial slip somewhere, maybe in in northwest Portland. And I hope that as we move forward, we look at those type of items that really can help us really move forward with a Green economy and really lower our footprint by allowing that type of bike cargo infrastructure to become a part of the the daily life of a downtown Portland. So I also think the bigger conversation that we need to keep having, and I respect what voters pass. I always think that what we pass and how we implement always has some tension in terms of interpretation. I, I think there's a struggle sometimes for the last council and this council to know when we're supposed to weigh in, when do we have a chance to give feedback? And I, I know that what I've experienced from the committee, sam, is a lot of adaptability. So I just want to acknowledge that and also from you. But I think there is a confusion sometimes on when is it our opportunity to just be curious and work with them, and sometimes it always feels like it's too late. And I think my experience in the last council was different because there was a commissioner That was openly connecting with us in each office all the time, so I felt like I was brought along, if you will, more consistently. This isn't a criticism of you, sam. It's more of a growing pains moment. And I hope that as we move forward, we can continue to be our role. Clarity becomes clear because sometimes it feels like the community already has made the decision, or the people that are getting the funds have already made the decision. And how dare you question anything? And I think that that's not the democracy we want to live in. And and I'm just saying this because I respect you and I know that you, you, you take feedback and you always elegantly figure out how to implement it. So thanks for listening.

Thank you. Councilor. Ryan. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.

Thank you, council president, I actually want to go back to the piece that. Councilor Kanal. Raised, because I also saw the black lining and assumed that because everything else was in red, these were previous edits and not something that we were voting to change today. And I am surprised to hear that this was the outcome of working with the attorneys, because colleagues, we put together a workgroup when the mayor passed his executive order to meet with our attorneys and contracting staff who were reviewing changes to make sure that we are compliant with federal requirements. I sit on that workgroup, as does councilor Kanal, as do two of our other colleagues. And every time in that workgroup that we have looked at removing language, we have looked at replacement language, and we spent a lot of time, in fact, looking at direct contracting that the city does, including workforce standards. And I believe and I look to councilor Smith and Kanal and Dunphy to see if they remember differently. But I believe that when the city developed changes to our contracting and workforce language elsewhere, we developed replacement language. I'm very concerned that that is not here. So I have a question, sam, and that is this is not the only place where we have workforce programs in pcf. Pcf has three goals and workforce is one of them. Are we removing our workforce standards in every single pcf program or just in housing development?

We are investments, so we have our grant investments that stands on one side so that our grant investments in workforce development, pre-apprenticeship training programs and such that remain unchanged when we make investments in infrastructure. And those investments are going to have workforce or contractor equity standards, those are effectively being pulled back. Now, our wage criteria still remains. Our prevailing wage criteria still remains. But what is getting and actually we are still maintaining our apprenticeship criteria in everything. But what is getting pulled back across our programs is essentially having these numeric goals and targets. And so that's that's the space where that's the work that we're doing to figure out what what comes after that we don't have, we don't have that with certainty, with clarity right now. That's, that's the work we're doing with stakeholders. Say, okay, now that this particular tool is off the table, how do we approach that without, without, without numeric goals?

And have you asked for recommendations from our city procurement staff and attorney's office, who have been working through the project of making sure that our language broadly is in compliance with federal requirements, because they do have alternate language.

We have we have been working with the city attorney's office, including on this, I think, here and in particular, the specific place where the housing bureau that folks are honing in on. They're. They're just. Housing will still have their programs they administer and their, their policies, they hold in place a lot of what we had done was capture and mirror what their language was. And since they're working to adjust that, we don't have the replacement language. And so we removed the older language until we figure out what they're doing there. So I want to name sort of the housing bureau. It was it was a recognition that that no longer was relevant. But we don't have that replacement yet elsewhere. We. And that was and that that that was in collaboration and working with the city attorneys that that flagged that particular piece elsewhere. We have gone through our workforce and contractor equity criteria and, and have been in those conversations with the city attorneys around how do we maintain that? But we still haven't fully landed that on the other side.

I'm struggling to understand how we have that in other parts of the city, but they haven't been able to share it with you for sef. Mr. City administrator, when do we expect the disparity study that the city of Portland is a part of? To be complete?

I'll have to follow back up with you on that date. I'll get something to you before the end of today when we're expecting to have that.

And would that disparity study? This language is about programs within the Portland housing bureau. Will that disparity study provide information that if the outcomes show that there are individuals within our community, populations within our community that have historically not had opportunities, and therefore we are legally allowed to prioritize opportunities. Would that apply to the Portland housing bureau, work that is being funded through PCEF?

Typically I haven't seen that in that study to that degree, but I can follow up and see.

If we are in the process of a disparity study, which would mean that this deletion is not necessary depending on the outcomes of that disparity study, I am not able to support pulling the language out, knowing that just a month or two from now, we might want to add it back in. I'm not sure if anybody can answer that question right now. Council president, it looks like councilor Smith might have some additional information though.

Yeah. Councilor Smith, please.

Thank you, council president. Councilor pirtle-guiney, we did not solve for the housing stuff we were solving for the small, small business contracting. And I don't think that I mean, if you wanted to bring it back up again, that it would be something that you could possibly do, but it was not in that disparity resolution that we identified.

Okay. So what we are currently doing is not broad enough to capture this.

I don't think so. I don't think so. I, I do not I don't see our procurement director here, but that's not what I remember from our disparity study that I the resolution that we passed, I don't remember dealing with the housing piece at all.

Okay. Thank you councilor. I'm hoping some other people say some things so I can think about what I want to do here. Thank you, council president.

Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I want to just go back and note two things about this. I was looking at the exhibit a as amended with the strikethrough showing. I verified that the original one also has it formatted the same way, but the black line just is the removal. The red line was the formatting for the additional text and just about every other case, it's either new text added or text being replaced. So there's red on the page somewhere. So I'm not trying to imply there's any bad faith or anything like that here. I just wanted to clarify that as it relates to this particular program, I haven't had a chance to go back through all of the the particular text of the study, but I am interested in checking on that particular point as well. But I think the broader point applies here, which is that we would be going to nothing with no timeline for when we might have something while we're a couple months away from at least a potentially related study. And more broadly than that, this is all part of a broader conversation that we haven't had on this dais about the portions of the executive order that need council affirmation or approval. I think my approach to the the executive order has been, you know, you have administrative rules. The administration has control over administrative rules. We're we're going to give our advice. And I appreciate the conversation there, but that it's different when it comes to in particular code. But even this, which is something council has to approve. And this is where the broader concepts about complying in advance with the federal government become super relevant. And I think that's a conversation that we need to have. And I want to appreciate doctor thompson. It's a third written testimony on the page. If you go to it, that brought this up in written testimony, because I think it's fair to not just look at this as a purely nuts and bolts and dollars document, but also as a statement of how we are engaging with this particular type of work in housing specifically. And right now, we are sending a pretty clear message, and I'm not very comfortable with the message we're sending, and I understand the need to remove some of the numerical pieces, or at least the perceived need to do that. But there are other parts of this that do not that do not necessarily. For example, p h, b is dedicated to equity in contracting is removed. The rest of the sentence and workforce goals for minority women owned and emerging small businesses on its affordable housing projects. I'm not sure if that even needs to go either, but fb is dedicated to equity and contracting. Had to go. I got problems with that. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. Thank you, councilor Kanal for raising this issue and catching that written testimony. Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney for your line of questioning as well. I'm deeply uncomfortable voting on something that just scratches all this out at this at this point, I'm trying to think about what the best procedural way to, to, to address this. And I think I don't think we should try to amend this on the fly. I think that we should hold this over or do something to sort of schedule it out so we can fix this language so that we can amend it and take it for a vote. That's my proposal. Just procedurally not making any kind of a motion, though.

Can I do a point of information because this actually relates to your line of questioning last week. Councilor Green that I understand was because of a procedural reason that we were not allowed at that moment to divide out a portion of the underlying. But I do believe we should. That under robert's rules, the underlying is itself a proposal or motion, and that we are allowed to divide it out at some point in the process. And I think it was just when that question came up. But I think to avoid having the whole thing held up, it might be worth pursuing simply separating out this change for a few and continuing that and considering the rest of it all together. I just wanted to ask the attorneys if they could confirm that there is a path to do that and how to do that. Now, before we get too too far into this process to to go backward.

Hi. Robert taylor, city attorney. Great conversation. I, I do think councilor Green's suggestion of postponing the item to a date certain to give folks time to address the issues that were raised and perhaps come up with some alternative language. I think that is a, that that makes sense to me based on the conversation I have heard on this question of. Can you divide the question on final passage of an ordinance, the. Our rules allow you to divide the question on a motion. So a motion to amend. For example, you can divide the question on that. This is the final passage of a of an ordinance. It's on for second reading so that you cannot divide. We need to have the thing in front of us so we know what we're passing. If there's parts of that that you do not want to pass today, you can amend it out. So just sever it. So it's not even part of the thing that you want to pass today. That's a possibility. There was it's been a few weeks ago now, I believe there was a report making some appointments. And you divided the question on that. The difference there, of course, is for reports, we have a motion to accept the report. And on that motion we said you can divide that because there is a motion pending for these final passage of ordinance, final passage of resolutions. There's there's not a similar motion pending to be divided. So if you want, I, I do think this is a good conversation. And I recognize this issue of just striking language without anything to replace it. I think that is an important conversation. The idea of trying to draft something right here is makes me anxious. So I do like the idea of postponing to a date certain so that alternative language could be drafted.

Point of order.

Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Okay, thank you. So if we do that, is there a way that we can that this body would want to vote on part of it and get those projects who are on timeline that need to go to permitting to be able to do that, or are you? I'm just concerned. I'm concerned that we've we've postponed this. I didn't hear about this last week. This is new information. And it to me, I'm I'm tired of being a recorder on this. But god dog, I mean, we're trying to get some resources into community. And this would be the fourth week and I, I just don't understand it. I've never seen anything like this before. So I think that if we want to change language, we can do that and we just need to vote on the other part of the report. Just amend it out like city attorney taylor said.

Alternatively, colleagues, there's an option to bring an amendment to this in the or bring this back to council in the future. But at this at this moment, if we were to postpone it the soonest date, I would be able to get. It is April 1st because of the council recess and the schedule that has already been posted for next week. So, or not posted, but can.

Point of order, mr. President. Can someone from one of the projects, if they're listening, can they speak to this? Because sam.

Answered.

It's not a point of order. It can't. That's that's just not a point of order. But I will get to you in the queue to ask that question.

Okay? I just don't want us to make amendment before we talk to the people who it impacts.

Okay.

Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks. And I just continuing the question that I had here on the procedural side of it, I want to get in later to talk about main motion and whether or not we can divide that and whether this constitutes a main motion. But I won't take up everyone's time with that. I just wanted to flag that for later conversation with the attorneys. The other thing is that if we amended it out, we would have to take a week anyway because that would make we would need a third reading on this ordinance in that scenario. So no matter what we do, unless it is simply approving or denying this entire package, we are going to be in another week. Unless we can come up with something that allows us to emergency ordinance it. So I just wanted to flag that for the future. I see robert has a response.

So I thank you for that. I think what the council president was suggesting was you could you could pass this today on second reading with the language that's struck. So we would have something in place to proceed with. Council could take some time, develop the appropriate language you want to add back to it, and then bring the item back before council and add it at a later date. So that would allow it to move forward as it is, with the understanding that council is going to work on some language and amend it in the future.

Okay.

Just one and you can give me I don't want to force you to give a yes or no, but I would accept a yes or no if you were only able to give that are not ordinances and resolutions main motions themselves.

They. They are main motions. They are main motions. We do not make a motion. We do know that that is the. That is the item. I will tell you candidly that when we divided the main motion on that report, making appointments. That was very unusual. I don't know that we have ever done that. And I think to point to that as precedent, to start doing it on final passage of ordinance and resolutions is very dangerous. I think it's especially dangerous to start dividing the question on final passage of an ordinance, because that may very well violate the charter, because it may constitute an amendment to the ordinance, because now you are changing it on the same day that you are passing it. And under the charter, if you make an amendment to an ordinance, you have to wait at least five days before you pass it. So I think the risk is quite a bit higher. If you are going to start trying to divide the question on the main motion on an ordinance, and that is why I would recommend that you not do that.

Yeah, I'm not going to do it today. I'd love to circle back as to the first reading implications of that later, but I I'm still going to vote against this as a result because I think the gap here, this is what happens, right? We, we say we'll get back to it later. And we as councilor Smith always reminds us, we know who is left for later. So but I do think it's likely to pass today, and I look forward to working with colleagues on it again in the future.

Thank you. And I just want to briefly give an opportunity for dca oliveira. To clarify.

I thank you, council president donnie oliveira. For the record, I apologize for my casual appearance right here. More dressed than Saturday. I, I just thank you. I just want to clarify the language that was struck from the c. I p was verbatim taken from a fb website that was published in October. So essentially that that web page, you can see that, that that hyperlink, not, not taking anything away from the deliberations about replacing the language. I just want to clarify that it wasn't an arbitrary strike. It was language that was taken down out of the cip because it was taken down from the city's web page. That's that was that's the one for one. The verbatim. It was verbatim taken from a web page that no longer exists on our city web page. That's why that language was cut. And again, not taking anything away from the conversation about replacing, just want to make sure that was on the record about why that language was was taken away.

Thank you very much. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you. Council president dca oliveira. Is operating under replacement language that has been developed by our attorneys and our procurement team around how we approach our contracting and workforce development in a way that provides opportunities and is also in compliance with federal law. Is there some replacement the dhb is using right now?

Currently working with procurement and the city attorney's office to reestablish that that work. As we all know, they've been focused on other more immediate priorities and responses. But yes, that work is ongoing as well.

When do you expect that work to be complete?

I'll have to get back to you on the specifics, but we'll get back to you asap on that deadline.

It seems if this is tied to fb work, that council coming up with a replacement will leave us in a bind later because fb will come up with something that is different, presumably, than what we would come up with here. But I'm hearing a number of colleagues, myself included, who are somewhat uncomfortable moving this forward. What I was hoping to propose was that we move this forward today with the deletions and with a commitment from the council president to make time for us to bring replacement language directly to council. I understand that that bypasses the normal PCEF process. I don't love doing that, but I do think we need to get a replacement in soon. But I'm now hearing that we probably need to wait until there's a broader fb replacement. So I'd like to understand the timing on that before we vote to move this forward. Ideally, what I would like us to do is have that language within the next month. And then council president, I don't know what your timing is looking like for that April 1st meeting, but I would love to know if you would be willing to have something come directly to full council at that April 1st meeting or the April 8th meeting to replace this so that we can move quickly in getting the the changes that PCEF needs moved through our council, but also having a very minimal delay before we get this language replaced.

Yeah, absolutely.

Councilor if I may offer this maybe middle ground recommendation, because the original language was verbatim taken from a web page, we could suggest that the next replacement will be the verbatim language from the replacement web page. If, if, if that is, you know, an option to contemplate, mainly that the c, I, p was essentially just capturing fb's work and they didn't alter it. It was word for word. And so we're going to replace that language ultimately and logically, that the cip would reflect that change from the fb program.

Dca oliveira do you think that that can be complete within the next month or two, or is that 6 to 10 months out.

Not 6 to 10 months out? I'd like to get back to you about 30 days.

You'd like to get back to us in about.

30 days? No, no, about if we can do it in 30 days.

Okay.

So if we move this today, we can expect to see additional language in 30 to 45 days. And council president, you are telling us that you'll bring that straight to council to prioritize moving it quickly once we have it.

Happy to. Okay.

I think that provides me the least uncomfortable space possible to move this forward today. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you.

I have a question. Council president, if we move this forward, will that include the amendments that we also have approved like Avalos one?

Yeah, the the amended package under the underlying package will move forward. Yes.

Okay.

That's that's what I needed to find out. I really urge everyone to support this. We can't have an indefinite timeline because many of these projects are waiting to go to the permitting process. And that is a long process. And the more days that we delay, that's more cost added to this to to many of these projects. So I would urge you all to support this today.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Fascinating discussion. Colleagues, I would propose something I'm willing to do. I'm willing to bring forward an amendment to amend out the specific language that we're finding problematic today, and also bring forward an amendment to add an emergency clause pending passage of that language. And then we vote this out today. I don't know if there's the votes for it. It is risky. But councilor Smith, to your question, I do think we need to move this forward. This solution would be able to move this forward today. And then we would we will have not passed forward. The equity in contracting language. So it's an idea I'm not formally making at this point, but I want my colleagues to think about that as we finish this discussion stack.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Ryan.

Dan Ryan: Yes thank you. Council president almost took my hand down. I really appreciate that. Council pirtle-guiney got to a place where she could see how this could move forward. This is our fifth time. Just so you know, that this has either been at council or at the committee meeting, and we need to move some dirt, and people need to pull those permits like councilor Smith said. So anyway, I look forward to voting on.

Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Just two.

Quick questions. First, to robert, can the things that councilor Green just mentioned be done in a single motion? Could could he move to both add the emergency clause and remove the alterations to page 24 of the exhibit in a single motion?

I was. Was he asking to remove the the strikethroughs, or was he suggesting that we add some alternative language.

It was just removing the strikethroughs. I don't know what that alternative language would be today.

Got it. Okay. All right. I thought that was a good idea to to have some alternative language to put in there and add an emergency clause so we could pass it today. To your question, you could have a you could have a combined motion to amend to remove the strikethroughs and add an emergency clause. That would be a combined motion. Any member is a matter of right. Could ask to divide the question on that motion. So they would. So you could vote on the amendment separately than the emergency clause. But that's a possibility. Yeah.

Thank you. And then the other question I had was we councilor Pirtle-guiney raised this, I think, by talking about how a fix to the problem might have to bypass the normal PCEF committee process. But I'm realizing that in accounting for how we got this language, the only groups that have been mentioned so far are the attorney's office and PCEF staff. Was the committee involved in this conversation? I'm seeing nods from director engstrom and. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. I think this is an appropriate thing. If councilor Green would indulge that, I would make the motion that he suggested as a single motion to to add the emergency clause and remove the strikethroughs to page 24. And I would hope that we pass this with either nine votes or don't pass it, so that we know that we'll have the emergency votes in that scenario.

Point, point of information. Or is it just limiting to page 24 or is it beginning at the end of page 23?

Oh thank you. Yes. The I'm going to be very specific for the for this. Now, it is the portions that begin on page 23 of the exhibit with the header program specific workforce and contractor equity considerations and go until the bottom of page 24. So it would still have the other strikethroughs that exist on on page 23.

One. I think as as mr. Olivera explained, the this language came came from a website. That language no longer exists because that language no longer exists. All of that language was removed from the cip. So I think that's sort of the history of it. The language was removed from the website and the cip because there were legal concerns related to compliance with federal law. A suggestion might be to. Keep the parts of the language that are, that are just more general and, and keep the strikes, the language where we strike the actual numerical goals. That might be a, a path through this because I think. Councilor Kanal to your earlier point about, look, there's some there is some general language in there that seems seems fine. It's when we, we start to get into the more specific language where I think we're running a higher degree of risk. So I just wanted to let council know if you leave, that there was a reason that language was taken out. If you vote to put that language back in there, then we will have that risk that we were trying to avoid. And.

I think we could spend a lot of time figuring out the details in that. So I'm comfortable putting this up as it is, knowing it's likely to fail because I'm I'm getting pretty. This wasn't in the presentation presented a committee. It wasn't in the summary that was brought up. And this keeps happening. The administration keeps bringing us things. And then it's always it's too late to change it. So I'm I'm going to put this up. I think it'll fail. I think the underlying thing will pass. I'll register my objection, but I won't. I don't want to take up more time getting into the commas on this, because we have a lot of other things to get to. But I will ask, why does this keep happening? And please help us, new city administrator, to not be in this position repeatedly of things that just get buried. And thanks.

Councilor are you able to put your amendment into writing?

I'll withdraw it.

Okay.

If I have to, yeah.

Vice president Clark.

Thank you. Council president colleagues, this is so frustrating to continue to amend on the fly. When I thought we had a pathway through that addressed the concerns that have been raised about this. I'm clearly a no vote on amending this here on the dais. There could be unintended consequences, which we frequently experience. So I would urge us to not amend at this point to forge ahead. I thought we had a pathway, and we'll come back in 30 to 45 days and fix this thing. And let's please move on. We are beating a dead horse here. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice president Clark councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: Yeah, I appreciate the the need for urgency on this. I think also I do want to reaffirm what councilor Kanal said, that this was not included in the presentation materials at committee. So when we talk about sussing things out through committee and then bringing it to the full council, we can't do that if we're not being given full information. So I think I will be a no vote on this. But that's where I land right now, unless we can correct it later.

Thank you. Councilor. Morillo. Councilor. Green.

Yeah, I know that the I know that the on the on the floor amendments are frustrating and I'm actually looking forward to, I'm increasingly of support of a code change that bars that. But we're not there right now and we would not be in this position had this not been slipped in in a way that had to be caught through written testimony. And I don't want to go out to my constituents and explain why I did not think preserving our commitments to equity in contracting. That that I have deprioritized that. So I did offer a path forward. I don't think there's the votes for that path forward. So I'm I'm going to be a no on the underlying.

Thank you. Councilor Green councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Just trying to get a summary of the discussion and what we're doing. So it sounds like the amendments that were proposed are being redacted or retracted. That's my first question. Yes. Okay. And those amendments were originally so that we could, I guess, was it your belief, councilor Kanal, that the amendment you are retracting would have helped you get to. Yes, on this and you're not doing it because you don't think it has the votes. Is that what's going on?

Yes.

And then to clarify, the amendment would have what. Just restate it for me, please.

The amendment was withdrawn. So there is no amendment right now. But what it would have done is the very end of of page 23. There's some strikethroughs there and all. Page 24, there's some strikethroughs there would have reverted that, and then it would have added an emergency clause. So we could still pass it today. I think robert taylor raised a fair point about the idea that there may need to be more than just a blunt instrument in either direction on this in order to do it. And so to avoid getting into the weeds on that, I did not I withdrew it before the ask for a second was made.

And then. Yeah, just based on the discussion, I don't. Is it also my understanding that we will be able or there is an opportunity to propose amendments in the future? Like is that not is that why also you're withdrawing because you think that there is possibly a potential to do it later, or you're just withdrawing and voting? No, I just want to understand. I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out where I land. And it's unclear to me where everyone's landing. That's what I'm trying to get understanding on.

The latter.

Okay. Yeah, I, I, I'm struggling with this decision. I obviously understand where everyone's coming from and agree that our communities have been experiencing the brunt of the effects of this executive order. I've been hearing about it from my communities in various ways, and so I'm glad that this has been risen. It sounds like there's some frustration around what we thought we heard in committee versus what was raised to our attention in written testimony. So I honestly don't know where I'm landing, but thanks for helping me understand.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: So can you state the question where we're at and what we're doing right now?

We are still in council discussion. There are no amendments formally proposed at this time. My preferred path would be to have us move to a vote of this right now, and then work with colleagues to find an amendment to the language and bring that amendment with urgency to the full council bypassing the committees, because there's this is directly relevant.

And with that, if you get your way, would that release the money in support? Avalos one yes. And the projects will be able to get their money.

That that would be my understanding that this project would get to move forward the normal timeline. And we also have additional our folks from procurement here. If there are further clarifications or questions around the disparity study that we're talking.

About, they might do it.

Good afternoon. Council sylvester johnson, chief procurement officer for the city.

So anybody want to clarify specifically? There we go. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Council president I don't want to belabor this if we don't have a lot of time, but I'm happy to restate the two questions that I had, if you'd like.

Sure.

Thank you. Sylvester. I had asked when we expect results of the disparity study to be complete.

The staff has already engaged with the with with the potential vendor, which is keen. And they're estimating it should be early fall at the latest.

Okay, it's later than I had hoped for, but I.

Understand there was some delays in regards to. Of course. Interestingly enough, executive order exerted over language. So it's kind of a cyclical failure. So we are working with the workforce in terms of fair contract reform to kind of speed the results up to a formal presentation to council.

And part of the language that we're looking at right now relates to. Workforce, which of course is not part of the disparity study, but part of it relates to equity and contracting language. That was previously a Portland housing bureau standard. Will the results of the disparity study be applicable to Portland housing bureau policy? Meaning if the disparity study finds that there have in fact been disparities, which would allow for us to ensure that we work with populations who we have not previously provided opportunities to, would that apply to hb, or is for some reason, hb not included in this disparity study?

That's a. Maybe it depends upon the funding models and the coverage of engagement. So I would rather say maybe a definitive yes at this time.

And anybody here who can collectively provide us the answer to that question.

Depends on the funding, the $1, basically, the funding model rule, whichever is more stringent, would be applicable to to the to the rules of actual study. So for example, if there's a federal requirement, the $1 rule would apply to a federal because it's more stringent in terms of requirements and engagement and disparity study applicability. So that could be the case if it's a public housing model hub project and we're using funding and it's identified as part of the pool, then they would of course be able to provide that. If you would drill down to a sector by program itself, we can probably ask that of qin and get a definitive answer probably within the next couple of days at the latest and say, can we drill down to an actual program? Applicability. We can try to do that as well.

Dca oliveira are you able to tell us in one sentence or less what the funding streams are that this language applies to, so that sylvester can answer that question?

It can be any it could be PCEF money, of course, it could be resources from str short term rentals, it can be resources from housing bond. It's anything that the housing bureau puts towards contracting for housing projects.

But that can be included. I can find out from qin if that can be drilled down to the programmatic level as well, instead of just a general pool in terms of workforce or contracting to be drilled down by program as well. I can ask for that as well.

Okay.

Thank you colleagues. I think if the disparity study is not going to be available until fall, we unfortunately can't wait on it, which is a broader issue that I have a lot I could say about. And I'll spare you all from that today. I do think that we need to move forward to release the other dollars and programs that are in here, and I have already sent a message to my staff asking them to make sure to follow up. Dca oliveira with you and the attorney's office and others to ensure that we do everything we can to help get language back to council within 30 to 45 days. And thank you, council president, for agreeing in advance to prioritize that when the administration makes it available to us.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney colleagues, we are an hour and 15 minutes over our schedule at this point. Let's please try to either move forward or not.

Councilor Avalos yeah, I think we should move forward. I plan to support this. It sounds like we have a plan to get some amendments in the future. We've got to deal with all of the structural problems later, but let's not delay getting these dollars out. So I'm going to support moving this forward today. Thanks.

Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll?

Aye, Morillo Smith. I Kanal.

45 days from today is April 25th. No.

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

Aye, Morillo no.

Novick I.

Mark aye, Morillo Green no.

Zimmerman I.

Dunphy more to come on this I vote aye.

The ordinance passes with nine yes votes and three no votes.

Thank you very much. Keelan can we please call items 11 and 12 together?

11 2020 6-082 approved the cully tax increment financing district five year action plan item 12 2020 6-083 appoint and reappoint members to the cully tax increment financing community leadership council.

Thank you very much. Ashley hernandez from council operations here for a committee staff summary report.

Council president councilors, for the record, my name is ashley hernandez and I serve as a staff for the arts and economy committee. The resolution document number 2020 6-084 and report document number 2026 083, were heard at the arts and economy committee on February 26th, 2026. The resolution was moved to full council with a recommendation to be adopted and the report was moved to to full council with recommendation to be dissected. The resolution document number 2020 6-082 provides the declared tax increment financing district five year action plan included as attachment a. The resolution directs. Prosper. Portland and Portland housing bureau staff to work on city staff, committee members and other public and private sector partners to implement the project's initiatives and in. And identified the action plan. The report document number 2020 6-0. Eight three. Request the appointment of one new new member to and the reappointment of five members to the tax to the cully tax increment financing and district community leadership committee at c, l, c each member will serve a four year term from March 11th, 2026 to March 11th, 20 2030. The full impact statements included included our economy and real estate development impacts, community impacts, and economy involvement. There was no verbal or written testimony in this on this item. Previous committee action. And that concludes the staff summary.

Thank you very much. Councilors Green and or Ryan came out of your committee.

Councilor Ryan presided over that. I'm happy to speak to it either way.

Oh.

Co-chair okay. Thank you. This is an important step in the establishment of the cully tif district. This is a five year action plan. The action plans guide council's framework around its role in approving processors budget as a budget committee. So it's an extremely important document. We had a robust conversation. This did not pass unanimously out of committee, but I want to note that some of the questions that dissenting committee members had raised, we did get follow up from prosper Portland. I got a higher level of detail. And so I think it was a rich conversation, and I think I'll just leave it at that.

Coach, I'd like to add the conversation here. I am getting the elephant out of the room around overhead. And I think both the definition of that and the percentage was felt by the room. And I think like some of our discussions earlier, there is a big picture dialog about that because I think it's somewhere between this more of a hunt, because we didn't really dive as deep into it as I thought. Maybe a councilor Coach co-chair Green, you got some feedback on that that you could share if in fact, that's the whole the rabbit hole I'm going down that you discussed. But I do think that the confusion around that is necessary. I think that the way we define overhead is different in different systems. And but the market rate that we were listening to in that meeting was uncomfortable for, for me, and I think for most people. So it was a moment in the meeting where we had a pause. And I see that we have leslie goodlow from fb. I don't know if we have someone here from prosper. I don't know if councilor Green. Oh, your hands up. So maybe that was when you got some follow up on. Did that help? That's what I recall being the, the dialog that made us pause for a minute. Yeah, yeah.

I'll just say I think we all received an email from cornel west with the additional attachments that was responsive to each committee member. If you if you didn't get that, then then I can share that. But but it's precisely to the point you're making. Councilor Ryan. We had questions about what was constituting and how do we measure the degree of, of overhead relative to the tif districts. And we received responses that disaggregated that into different buckets. And with the specific emphasis that clarified that if you're going to have a community leadership council that's community driven, you have to support them with resources to do that. And so that gets lost in the overhead bucket category. And what I found in the response was some nuance there that I was thinking we might need to get into. When we get into the broader discussion and debate, which I'm happy to enter into that conversation with as well.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you. Councilors, colleagues, we're moving to technical or clarifying questions. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you, mr. President. I was wondering if we in terms of answering that question and what what is the definition? Could we have either leslie or cornel give us that. Come up to the mic and give us that definition from a technical standpoint.

Welcome.

Good afternoon. Council. Cornel wesley and I proudly serve as the executive director for prosper Portland. I'm joined by our chief financial officer toni barnes. Your question, councilor Smith was defined the administrative cost, I presume.

The overhead. Yes, yes.

So good afternoon. Good afternoon, toni barnes, cfo, prosper Portland. So that we define in three different buckets. Number one, there's the district wide financial, administrative, financial, administrative bucket that covers overall district administration. But the two more significant buckets that we talked about several weeks ago included program delivery, which is more of a direct cost for direct program delivery and project delivery. And then there's also the administrative cost, which is more like an indirect or overhead type cost. And those costs are both within the housing, the affordable housing set aside component, as well as the economic development component, as illustrated in some of the follow up materials. And those percentages are approximately 14% for prosper Portland and php combined for program delivery and 13% for administration. Now, these are estimates and forecasts over the six year period. And we anticipate over the life of the district, there might be a different percentage as there's more capital, more proceeds recognizing the district in later years, those percentages could be adjusted downward relative to the overall proceeds. This recognizes a more conservative forecast.

Okay, so you're saying there's a possibility that that 14% could go down.

That's correct. Councilor okay. There are estimates.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Councilor Kanal so are we discussing both of these together?

We have both items open at the same time and we're in technical questions. Actually, let me just verify, has anyone signed up for testimony? Okay. We are still in technical and clarifying questions at this point.

Then I'll wait.

Okay. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you. Just because we have toni up here. So this is the first five year action plan. So we're in the early stages of the ramp period. So would you say it's fair to characterize that we should normally expect there to be a higher percentage of kind of indirect or indirect, direct or indirect overhead in that sort of ramp period relative to further into the 30 year period.

Yeah, thanks for that question, councilor. We can define it in three different phases over a 30 year period. Over the first 5 to 6 years, there's often a higher, more intensive amount of staff and administrative involvement and less resources in that time period. Over the period between year six and, say, 25, there might be a lower percentage and then the closeout period again higher as we're closing out the district. Historically, when we looked back at this question over a 20 year period, approximately averages have been about 25%. And that includes all direct program delivery and administrative type costs, indirect type costs for administering the entire district, both for all types of projects. That ranges from both more capital intensive to more neighborhood type plans. It ranges depending on the level of of volume of transaction and other activity.

Thank you, tony and I, and I ask that colleagues because I just wanted to level set that this is a, this is a normal practice when when you are scaling and ramping something, you have to sort of nurture the infant infancy of the project. We want to execute for the community the clc is trying to serve. And so that is a technical question. And at that point, I'll I'll shut the heck up.

Thank you. Councilor Green councilor. Ryan.

Thank you. I'm hoping this will continue to help, but but I think that the dialog that just took place between councilor Green and the good folks from prosper satisfied that I will just say that my experience in building something big is that the overhead goes down as you move into implementation and some some systems call our research and development phase. So just know that the more I listen and the more I read the, the email, I'm satisfied with what we're talking about, but also glad that we're daylighting this so the community understands it going forward.

Thank you. Councilor. Ryan keelan can we please call our public testifier.

Clarence larkin's. Clarence larkin's. Okay.

Okay. Moving into council discussion. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Sorry.

Oh. Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Sorry.

Oops. There we go. Oh that's great. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. First, I'll just comment on what was just discussed by my colleagues. I think that it is important that we remember and as people are saying, but just to reemphasize that there's a lot of work that needs to happen when you're setting up these tif districts. And, you know, we had lots of discussions actually with prosper back in the day about the fact that we needed more resources because it takes a lot to organize community. And just there's so many little pieces to that, that that is what those admin costs go towards. And I just sounds like everybody seems to understand that, but I just want to reemphasize that because it's really important that we continue to support funding for those activities. It's it's not just some nebulous admin bucket like it actually means engagement. It, it means all of these other factors that when you're standing up a new community led tif district, that is critical that we have dollars for that. So, you know, I know that admin overhead kind of has a bit of a negative connotation and it has earned that connotation in some ways. But for this one, I hope we keep a little bit of nuance and perspective on that. On that front, I also just want to acknowledge how significant this moment is for the cully community and congratulate them for their work. Before joining council, I was there and had the privilege of working alongside many of the community leaders who fought for years, literally years. I'm talking like six, seven years in the making to make this tif district a reality. And it didn't happen overnight. The cully community organized and advocated and worked really, really hard to ensure that if a tif district was created in their neighborhood, it would truly reflect a community led vision. And through that process, the neighbors came together and rewrote the tif charter entirely to ensure that community voices would be centered in how investments are guided and how decisions are made. And so I want to also note that the work done in cully doesn't just impact one neighborhood, because that model came out. The model that came out of this effort helped inform how we're approaching the east Portland tif districts as well. And in many ways, the cully community helped set the standard for what community led economic development can look like in our city. So I really just want to congratulate the many community leaders and organizations and residents who stayed committed through many years to this work to get to this point. It was grueling. I know those in the audience who remember those Thursday tif meetings. I dreaded them because they were a lot. But I think what was helpful was that we really worked through some community conflicts. We kind of worked to build trust and relationships, and that's what I want to see out of the east Portland tif district. So that's why I'm keeping a very close eye on cully to make sure that that progress and the implementation of that vision does come to fruition and can be replicated east Portland because we deserve community led economic development. And so I just have a general question if you'll entertain it, I not sure. Let's see who's at the dais. I don't see anyone at the testimony table, but I guess I just wanted to have an open ended question of. Were there any lessons from this experience that you think the the city should carry forward as we implement other community led tif districts? Just kind of want to get a quick summary of what you think is important that you learned from this, that me and the other district one councilors can bring with us as we are engaging on the east Portland tips. Thank you.

Well, thank you for that question. Councilor. I'm joined by amy nagy as well as shari vickers, who can illuminate and address that question directly.

Thank you so much, councilor Avalos. For the record, I'm shari vickers, director of equity policy and communications at prosper Portland. And I just want to lift up our two co-chairs for cully, who are actually here with us in chambers, george and ginger, who continue to ask really great questions, including that of admin costs to better determine what it actually means. And when I think about the shift of tif in our city and what that looks like, the co-creation model, to your point, councilor Avalos, this support is exactly what folks are asking for. And so hopefully the memo really did a good job of breaking down what that looks like so that folks understand that continued community engagement, especially in the early years, is so important so that we get to set actual values alongside what community has specifically asked us for. Sometimes that means returning additional memos, getting more insight, research and development that folks might ask for. And so we have been excited about the work we've done next to george and ginger, who are here as well. Amy, any other lessons?

Good afternoon. Council. My name is amy nagy. I'm the interim director for development investment at prosper Portland. Thank you for your time and consideration of this. I would just add a few things in terms of the process and engaging, particularly with the clc. A couple of things that have been highlighted today, in particular, taking our time, making sure that everybody is understanding of the proposed process. And each step of those is really important. I think taking the time to do relationship building within the clc, as well as the capacity building that was offered, and so that we have fantastic co-chairs like george and ginger that can, can continue the work and actually have ownership over the work. And then this will continue through implementation as well. They will continue to play a really prominent role in supporting not only the engagement, making sure folks know about the resources that are available, as well as being the oversight. And I don't know if, leslie, I know you're online as well, if there's anything you want to represent from the php side as well.

Good afternoon, leslie goodlow hope everyone is well. I'm zooming in from philadelphia. Just I think a couple things I'd like to add is just the responding to community feedback and community participation. We included the a line item around the mobile home parks in our allocation for the first six year plan. It's actually six years, not five years, because this year is almost over. As well as redistributing funds into land banking based on feedback from our home ownership partners, proud ground and habitat for humanity and naya and others. So those are the two things that I think will include up front, as opposed to at the end. Thank you.

Thank you. Those are.

Very important lessons. And I'm really actually elated to hear those two particular things being added because those are. Cully problems. I don't explain it. They are cully specific problems, if you will. And so that to me sounds that this action plan is being responsive to what community has been talking about for many years on those two issues. And to see that that's included is great. I think my final note on that, you know, again, trying to prepare for what the east Portland tif districts are going to look like, you know that colleagues, we need to consider what it looks like to fund these efforts, not just across prosper, but all these bureaus, right? East Portland desperately needs the resources to do the kind of community engagement so that we can build these plans in a way that feels informed by the community. And for east portlanders, that admin money includes childcare. It includes interpretation. It includes food, it includes conflict mediation. Trust me, lots of that. That has to happen when you're working in community and, you know, having consultants and experts to guide community through difficult problems. And so I just want to reemphasize how important it is, especially as I'm going to be coming down, coming to the dais and making sure that you all are supporting and funding those efforts for us in east Portland. Thank you all for your time. I'm looking forward to supporting this.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I am so excited for cully and for all of the communities that are going to be able to use this model moving forward, that we have a different way of doing tiff in Portland. And frankly, what I see in the plan is exactly what tiff should look like to make sure that we are doing work grounded in community to support the creation of wealth in that community, while also ensuring that that goes, that that wealth goes to the people who are already a part of the community. I want to thank the co-chairs who are in the back of the room. I'm not going to make you come up, but I want you to know how much I appreciate the many hours that you have put in guiding your committee through this process and standing up for your community. I have a couple of questions. There was a note in the plan about needed community outreach, but there wasn't any specificity about what that that would happen. And I am wondering if there is a plan or some sort of commitment made beyond just this is something we want to ensure that that continued community outreach is part of the cully process moving forward.

Yeah. Thank you for the question. Happy to answer some of that. So we will continue to convene the clc, as we talked about every other month. Within that, the clc members as well as the co-chairs, they have their own networks, so they will be continuing to share their information. We will do that through social media as well as our websites. We also have community liaisons that are on the ground within the district that are there every day, meeting with businesses and property owners, doing that work and holding those conversations. So they will also be providing feedback to both prosper fb staff as well as the clc's.

Okay, so that community outreach is through the existing channels. That wasn't a reference to additional community outreach.

Well, I will say the community, excuse me, the community liaisons as they hear about new things. If we understand that a new open house should occur or something that is related to any different efforts than they have the opportunity to do that. And so these liaisons who are kind of third party neutral and who are, as amy mentioned in community, are folks that the community will see and work with on a regular basis. And so if something new comes up, we want to be able to honor that request and be able to engage, especially if any new technical items are requested, maps, things like that, that may come from community discussion.

Great. Thank you. And then on those new things that may come up, I know that the clc will continue to meet and will move into an oversight body role if decisions are needed about new requests, if decisions are needed, about changes in funding levels that come in over this five year period, as we move into the next five year plan, what will the functional ability of the clc to really determine where we head be? Will they be able to drive any changes that come forward, or will those be staff driven with clc oversight?

So our clc members engage with us on a multiple in multiple ways, especially as revenues shift or if they change first would be in our cbc, our community budget committee, which prosper, maintains and keeps it. It's an extremely important body for us to ensure that any of the shifts and changes, all the budget, conversations, questions you all ask us. We take back to our cbc, our tiff committee members and clc members serve on that cbc as well, so they get to hear on an annual basis what that looks like. And if there are shifts and changes separate from the actual clc leadership committee meetings that they would be holding while while with the tiff groups as well. So there are multiple ways that they can hear about changes and can voice their concern. Our cbc, as you all know, will submit their own separate letter to council to indicate if they are in agreement with us, or if there's something that they wish to shift. The same thing with our clc. It's actually written into the tiff plan through our governance model, a way it literally speaks about if you have a disagreement with staff, kind of what that process looks like and how you can walk through both in engaging with our board directly, obviously our executive director and then you all as council in addition. So it's written into the plan and a part of our governance model throughout the action plan and throughout clcs as they continue to develop.

Thank you. I hope that as we move forward in in this district in particular, decisions continue to be community driven and that it's not just an opportunity to react or to provide feedback, but that it is community driven work. I want to just note that it stood out to me that we're able, in this first plan, to help about 25% of the small businesses within cully. But on the homeownership piece, and I agree with my colleague, I was thrilled to see housing funding going to support the mobile home parks in cully, which are a an important piece in our naturally occurring affordable housing portfolio funding, going to home ownership as well as land banking. But I noticed that in this first iteration, we're only able to help 25 to, I think it was 50 residents become homeowners. And because stability is an important part of what we do with our resources in a tiff district, ensuring that families who live in cully can continue to afford to stay in cully even as. As the neighborhood changes and to take advantage of and benefit truly benefit from changes in their neighborhood and the increased investment in their neighborhood. I hope that in future plans, that number is able to increase. I know that that's ultimately a clc decision, and I think it's it's an important piece of making sure that we have stability.

Well, we have leslie goodloe here online who can speak to that.

Thank you for the question. Councilor leslie goodlow, Portland housing bureau. So the we initially allocated about $7 million to home ownership is that was the top priority for the clc. But as we moved through the action plan process and we added in the land banking, we shifted dollars from land bank, I mean, from homeownership directly into the land banking for permanent affordability at a later time. And so the that $4 million that we have in that line item for supporting new homeowners is 50% for down payment assistance. The committee wanted to support current folks for people to be able to buy right now, as opposed to having to wait for permanent affordability or permanently affordable units to be built. And so that's how we get to that number of. 13 folks getting down payment assistance. No, I'm sorry, 13 permanent affordability units and then 20 or so down payment assistance loans over the next five years. And I just I'll add that those loans include a home improvement portion up to 20%, which would be considered a grant and the family would not have to pay that portion back. So their the loan that they would have, the lien that they would have on their property would be $80,000. These are no interest, no payment loans. And they begin to be forgiven at year 15. And then 3% per year up to year 30 where it would be totally forgiven. So while I understand that we would really like to help more homeowners, given the limited amount of funds we have in this first six years, we wanted to ensure we were supporting the mobile home parks and providing opportunity for development in the future. So hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you. I appreciate that added detail. And those additional numbers that weren't in the written documents that we had. I want to make sure that my constituents who live in cully can continue to live in cully and be a part of the benefits that these investments will bring to the neighborhood. I hope that as we move forward through this plan and into the next plan, we're able to help more cully residents buy homes in their neighborhood and and be able to continue to be a part of the community. Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney colleagues, it is one o'clock hours. We have well, it's almost 1:00. We have a hard stop at 130 and we are only on item 11. So I'm hoping to be able to get through as much as we can today. But. Let's try and keep it short. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. I'm going to support this. I have been oftentimes one of the ones that are, I think, a little more critical, not just of tif districts, but also just this, this concept of overhead cost. I voted no out of committee. I'm going to vote yes when we have an opportunity to vote yes, because I did see that response from prosper Portland. And that was good work that you all sent us. I can see the nexus of connection to the support that it's going to bring to the clcs and deliver that kind of governance approach. And so for that reason, I'm going to support this. I think we vote next week. No vote today.

We vote today.

Great. Support it today.

Thank you, councilor Green councilor Kanal.

Mitch Green: Thank you, council president. First, let me say I really appreciate the willingness of folks to continue serving. So I'll start with the other. The appointments one, since we're in discussion together and look forward to supporting all five of the appointments, as well as the appointment of a new member, and thank everyone involved in getting them through this process. They all seem quite impressive, and I think we'll do a great job. On the other item. I really appreciate the clarity around the overhead. I had two concerns, and I think you've answered one, it was shared by councilor Pirtle-guiney about effectively displacement. And I think if the clc has felt that there's adequate protection against that. And based on what leslie said as well, who I know is a is an expert in that field, I'm feel that that concern is satisfied. The other one is what I want to ask about here, which is the $6.7 million which is being spent on commercial real estate. And I think one of the things that's happened here is a couple examples were given to me in the briefing around what this entails. And some of it seems like a new tenant in a commercial space building out an otherwise unfinished space, which seems perfectly appropriate to me and supportive of small businesses. And some of it appears to be money to the property owners to, I don't know, make their investment better. And I wanted to ask about if that is first, if that is bundled together in the 6.7 million or if that's two different line items. Kind of was a little unclear on that in our briefing.

Sure. I'll provide as much clarification as I can. You're right. So there's 6.7 million allocated to both grants and loans for property owners. In this first five years, it will be up to the clc to think through the allocations of how much of that they want it to be grants and how much they should do loans. The opportunity, I would say, for property owners is with the grant, I'll start with the grant, which is the affordable commercial tenant grant that can be made available to bring in first time renters in terms of leaseholders for small businesses. And so what that is, is they can provide a tenant improvement allowance in exchange for a reduced lease rate over three years. So it's a minimum rate. So you're bringing folks in, you're actually leasing space and you're improving the space so that it is basically what we call affectionately warm or hot chelle. So they are ready to move in right away. And it lowers and unburdens them with additional costs. That can happen when you're moving into retail space. On the loan side, this is a very popular tool that we use. In particular, it supports redevelopment. It also supports tenant improvements and building improvements at large. So as they're thinking about also leasing to tenants so that we're keeping buildings in good functional order, etc. Our loans also frequently go to folks that have struggle with being bankable, right? And so when they're going to traditional lending institutions and they get denied prosper, Portland is a place where they come and can qualify for those loans.

Thanks for clarifying that. I guess, where who does the money go to, though? My understanding is that sometimes it's going to property owners and sometimes it's going to businesses that are renting the space.

So in this particular goal area, it is going to the property owner. So the property owner is receiving the grant dollars to make the improvements in the space. It could go to a business owner. So I mean they can resolve whichever one is best positioned to do the, the actual work on the loans. It would go to the property owner.

Okay. So that's, I think the other piece of this is that it's a eight businesses, according to the presentation that are going to be helped by this. So we're talking about $870,000 roughly, I think was the math I did back of envelope on average, 6.7 million divided by eight is $837,500. Is is that accurate or I mean, is there something I missed in that?

No, I think right now it's an estimate. So that will be it will come down to how much they want to allocate towards a loan versus a grant. You also there's a range, right? So the affordable commercial can be up to 300,000. It doesn't mean though that all of those are going to be that amount. And so grant ranges depending upon, particularly for the affordable commercial, depending on what that total lease discount is over the course of the three years. So it could be, for instance, $50,000, it could be just a little north of $100,000. And so and then it will depend on the the size of the loans determined by the project. That's how much they would allocate.

Okay. This is kind of, I think, part of my broader concern about the use of city dollars to subsidize commercial real estate as the. And then the use of commercial real estate as the primary indicator of the health of our economy at the city. And so there's a context to this comment. I'm still going to vote yes on this because I think the clc has has evaluated it, but I'm pretty profoundly concerned by the idea that we're helping businesses make their investment more or, sorry, helping property owners make their investment more prudent instead of helping the tenants directly. And so my ask for the six people we're about to appoint and the to the the committee is to look at how to help the people that need it, which in my view more are the tenants. And so that's that's the concern I have here. $837,000 on average. Seems like a pretty. That lets you know who it's going to. So that's, that's my concern and I'll leave it there.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues. I put myself in the queue here. I really appreciate the additional detail on the overhead cost that was sent to me. It really did help me understand it. But I still have deep concerns for how we calculate it. And so I'm going to be voting no today on the on the five year action plan, just to break it down a little bit more fully, the lines that are specifically designated as strictly as admin and overhead come out to roughly 39 fte equivalents. If you assume $150,000 per fte. But when you include all of the overhead multipliers and additional rates that the. That housing bureau is charging roughly 94.5% as an overhead rate and prosper at 93%. Almost a third of the dollars that are designated for this district are going towards administrative costs. And I have heard how the tif is a different kind of tiff, but I've been historically very skeptical of tif, and I have three tif districts that are going to be the only economic development opportunity that my part of town will see in my lifetime. I want to make sure that this lands right. And if this is truly different, I think the city needs to have a conversation about these overhead dollars. I don't know how. I mean, I appreciate that the clc has signed off on this, and I appreciate understanding where these break down, but this is an enormous amount of money that is not actually directly going to the community and a community that has been deeply neglected. So I continue to have concerns about how the city does overhead and administrative costs broadly. I don't believe anybody has done anything wrong here. It's just this is how we do it. So I am going to be a no today. Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: I just want to say I completely understand where you're coming from. Councilor Dunphy particularly because as prosper knows, I have told them before, it has been a struggle for me to see that not enough of the admin costs, in my view, went to the staffing that we needed. And you know, again, this is not a surprise to them. We've talked about this over the years. So you're right that we do need to talk about admin and how it's distributed across the you know, who receives it. I think there's a worthy discussion there. I am still going to vote for this. I do still think that there's value in it. And, you know, I but I totally hear you. And that is why I am so vigilant about this, because I want to make sure that we are protecting those dollars for east Portland community who are going to need it more, actually, not only because they're going to need it more because they, east portlanders are harder to. Get to engage with the community. But just in general, we don't have the same kind of infrastructure that living cully did and how we created cully tiff, and I'm really concerned about that. That's something that I've talked with, like division midway alliance about like they were concerned, like who is the holder of community in the east Portland, tifs and that is a very real concern that I have and is why I'm so vigilant. So I just want to name that I completely agree. And just so that I can vocalize that back to prosper again, it should not be a surprise to you. We've discussed this, but it is good to daylight. And I do think we need to have a worthy discussion about how we allocate those dollars more equitably. So community feel they are better, best resources resourced and positioned to do the work that we expect them to do as the city. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan, can we please call the roll on the resolution item 2026-8082.

Avalos I.

Smith I.

Know I pirtle-guiney I Ryan I Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick I mark a Green I Zimmerman absent. Dunphy no. The resolution is adopted with ten yes votes, one no vote and one absent.

Can we please call the roll on the report? Does that require a motion?

We will need a motion to accept the report.

So moved.

A second. I'll second it.

Okay. Really moved by councilor Pirtle-guiney. Seconded by councilor or council president Dunphy, please.

Correct. That sounds good.

Okay. Avalos. I Smith, I know I pirtle-guiney.

Ryan I Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick I Clark I Green. I Zimmerman I Dunphy. I the report is accepted with 12 yes votes.

Thank you all. Can we please call item number 13.

Item 2020 6-084. Appoint Eric kress to the prosper Portland board of commissioners for a term to expire September 5th, 2026.

Ashley hernandez from council operations is here with the committee staff summary report.

For the record, I'm ashley hernandez and I serve as a staff for the arts and economy committee. That the report before you document number 2020 6-084 was heard at the arts and economy committee on February 26th, 2026, where it was moved to full council with the recommendation to be adopted. The report requested the appointment of Eric kress to the Portland prosper Portland board of commissioners to serve for six months, six month term from March 11th, 2026 to September 5th, 2026. The full impact statements included. Where was community impacts and community involvement, and there was not verbal or written testimony. Prior committee meeting action. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Ashley and councilors. Ryan and or Green.

Yeah, I'll just say that Eric kress showed very well in this committee hearing. He was someone I was excited to support. He's going to bring, I think, the style of experience to the moment we're in, particularly when it comes to housing finance. He's got I think he's got a he's got a deep community of practice. And if this council wants to enable our development partner, prosper Portland, to move with some nimbleness in alternative ways, I think you need Eric kress on that board. 100%.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Ryan, anything else?

No, just a 100% agree. And he's also a raising a family here. And so that's nice to see. Thanks.

Perfect. Excellent. Colleagues, is there any technical or clarifying questions? I don't know what technical questions you'd have on an appointment, but okay. And has anybody signed up for testimony?

No one signed up.

Okay. Colleagues, any further discussion on this appointment, counselor Zimmerman?

Thanks. It's a pleasure to support Eric on this. I worked with him when he was, I think it was the president of the central eastside industrial district's board. And we had big challenges back then in that in that process. And working with him as as a partner for the city, for his neighboring businesses, for other members of that neighborhood was an ease. I when you can work with somebody on tough topics through ease, that's a good perspective. So I am really glad I told him this earlier to see his name on the list and happy that he's stepping up. So thank you, Eric.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor. Kanal.

Thank you. I saw that the staff contact is named Eric. The appointee is named Eric. So I'm not surprised to see that support. But I also support this appointee. And I was very happy to see the details here. I did want to ask sort of a rhetorical question around the this process, because this was requested for five minutes on the agenda for today. And it's an agency that we've had many conversations about. It's governed by a five member board. So each appointee is a very big deal. And we really last year only got into the conversation around democratic accountability and other questions of is prosper the city or is it not? And the answer is kind of for a lot of these questions, we only really got into that during the budget. And so I wanted to kind of the rhetorical question is to see not about this appointee who I'm going to be happy to support, but about the conversation around where do we have this conversation and how do we have this conversation? Because we get held accountable as elected officials in the city for the decisions that are made at prosper and the activity of prosper, at least by our constituents at least. I certainly receive feedback on that. So I don't know if this is a question for anyone to take up or for the council president, specifically in terms of the new committee structure and any of that. But I would love to know how and when. The best way is to have this conversation about the long term and big picture.

Yeah, that's councilor City administrator.

We can have staff come up and address that. We can have dca oliveira address it.

Great. Welcome, donnie.

Thank you, city administrator donnie oliveira, for the record, deputy city administrator for community and economic development. Councilor Kanal, thank you for your question. Teeing that up, it's actually a conversation that we've been having with the mayor and with the councilor. If I'm allowed to say yesterday, councilor Green, we're teeing up this. We'd like to do a thorough breakdown for all of you with briefings to really do a few things. First, discuss prosper Portland, where it's where it's at with the new executive director on board now for about eight months. He has his sea legs under him, has some ideas on how the agency is going to go. So that's piece. The second thing is to really share an update on advanced Portland 2.0, as we're calling it. I think that will help show sort of the north star for where the agency is going from an investment and strategic initiative perspective. But lastly, it's just a chance for you all to see the governance of that program. So we can include board membership where appropriate. The bottom line is the mayor's encouraged us to do that. So we're going to be setting those up with your offices so we can start to have those briefings. So when that conversation comes up and not to put them on the spot again, but chair and vice chair of the new city life committee have been open about having the conversation about the broader economic development of our city, including, obviously, the governance of prosper. So I think the answer to your question is absolutely. We're doing that in 26 and look forward to having those conversations with you in briefings and then in the public setting of committee.

Okay.

Thank you for for clarifying that. I think that's helpful. And I want to be clear. You brought the executive director into it. No concern there. Very happy. Been very responsive from his office. And I appreciate you back there. I can kind of lean around to see around you there. Dca oliveira. But I'm my question is less about that side of it and more about the way in which we have, because what ends up happening in a lot of these circumstances is the first time you hear about it is in this room. And then it's, well, the board that you appointed made this decision or indirectly made a decision. So I think there's this this layer of between us that we're spending not really enough time on, in my opinion, to assess what each appointment means for the direction that this agency goes. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And I, and I think what we'd like to do is almost set that baseline for where prosper's going so that we can actually have that feedback mechanism with you to say, I'd like more information on that. And I'm using advanced Portland because it's on my mind right now. But why isn't advanced Portland contemplating x, y, and z? We can we can take that back to the board. Like those are the lines of communication that we need to open up and, and establish. So those feedback mechanisms are in place. On the broader question, question about contemplating the governance of prosper, which I think you're also touching on just I think we're working with our city attorneys to to understand that, to better clarify, to communicate not just to you all, but to the public, where those inflection points are, where you have direct intervention, you know, authority as a council and where the where we can just where we don't have procedurally more clarity on how we are communicating with the board to council. So I think those are things that we want to highlight for you all soon. And the city attorney's office has been gracious to, to lean in and help us figure that out.

And that will be in public.

In public. Yeah.

Okay. Because I think that that's the missing piece that I'm seeing. And to be clear, it's not just this one appointee. I have no concern with the other four members that are continuing. But as people cycle off, each one of those changes with a small board of five has a very large impact, I think. Right. So that's the concern I'm raising about not the people themselves, but the the idea of ambiguity in the nature of the arm's length relationship.

Yeah. And I hope. Thank you. The last thing I'll offer is, is that we can in public establish what prosper Portland is and isn't. And the, the work it's doing in a very clear and transparent way. So we can do a little myth busting and for the public and ensure that you all understand what their, what their work plans are and their, the course they've set for their agency. I think that's fundamental to then having the conversation about potential changes because why would you you can't change what you don't know how it exists. Right. So I think that's a fair place to start. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you. I just wanted to say that I support Eric kress. I've known him for years. He's been here working as a as an executive and as a community person. And I think that he'll be a great addition to to the work, to the work that they're doing on the board.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues, seeing no further discussion. Keelan, can we please call the roll? Oh, this is a report. Can I have a motion to.

Second.

Mitch Green: I'm going to say that was Green and I don't know who was second over here. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Aye, Morillo Smith. I you know.

Thanks for stepping up.

I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick I Clark I Green Zimmerman I dunfee. I the report is accepted with 12 yes votes.

Colleagues, we have 12 minutes left on our agenda and two items left. Councilor. Novick would you prefer to roll your item over or would you prefer to start introducing it? And we will move it to a second or to a continuance of the first reading.

Actually, I'm going to pose that question to my chief of staff, spencer knowles, because he asked his unborn child to postpone being born until today so that he could give this presentation. So, spencer, would you like to try to rush through the presentation today, or do you rather postpone it?

Come on, spencer, let's do it.

Says postponed.

Postponed. All right.

Okay, colleagues, we will move the two remaining items to the following agenda happening on the 18th. And with that, we are adjourned.

Councilor Avalos remaining.

Candace Avalos: Sorry.

Is it the two remaining? We can't do the last item. I thought it was just the item 13, not item 14.

We would need to take it out of order. We would need to vote to retake the order.

So moved.

Second. Okay, there was a motion to reorder the agenda and move item 15 to the front of the agenda item. And a second, can we please have a vote on reordering the agenda.

Point of information? Are you saying first so that we can do it right now? Or are you saying for the next meeting that it will be before the next one? I'm asking that we just take this vote now.

We there's no vote on item 14 or 15 today.

Given that I'm going to withdraw. I thought this was a vote today item. Sorry.

They are both first readings. Okay.

But but we can't do a first reading of the first one. So that way it doesn't have to go through another week for the item.

15 if we want to rush through, we will require a vote of the roll call vote to reorder the agenda in order to hear the first reading of this.

With you.

And councilor Kanal has withdrawn.

Sameer Kanal: Okay. That's fine.

Okay, we will move these two items to the agenda on the 18th. And with that, we are adjourned.