The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-01-26
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Transportation and Infrastructure Committee met on January 26, 2026, with roll call confirming member presence and the body adopting December's minutes by unanimous consent. The first agenda item was a follow-up discussion on alternative transportation funding, featuring PBOT staff presentations on the bureau's budget challenges, including declining state gas tax purchasing power, prior position and service cuts, and efficiency measures. Staff outlined four potential revenue mechanisms under consideration—a street damage restoration fee, a transportation utility fee, a retail delivery fee, and a third-party food delivery fee—along with draft revenue scenarios for each, and described plans for community engagement including district open houses. Committee members asked questions and offered comments on fee design, equity safeguards, exemptions, and implementation details; figures cited during this discussion, including some revenue and cost estimates, were stated inconsistently. The second agenda item was a TriMet budget outlook presentation describing a structural deficit, proposed service reductions including changes to the Green Line and bus network, an ongoing public comment period, and future funding efforts. Members asked about security spending, ridership assumptions, school service impacts, and suburban service concerns. Votes were not indicated as occurring on funding options during this session; where procedural motions occurred, outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting was adjourned with the next meeting scheduled for February 9.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 This is councilor Smith. Just checking to see if this works.
1 Councilor Smith, can you hear us online?
2 Councilor Smith I can hear you.
3 We can hear you. Great.
4 Okay, perfect.
5 20 years ago. And I was like. Okay, that.
6 Good morning everyone. I'd like to call the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee to order. It is Monday, January the 26th at 9:30 a.m. Diego, could you please call the roll?
7 Good morning.
8 Smith here.
9 Koyama Lane. Here.
Procedural episode · turns 10–18
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10 Morillo here.
11 Green. Clerk here.
12 And claire, can you please read the statement of conduct?
13 Good morning and welcome to the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland grove council agenda slash transportation and infrastructure committee. Or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
14 Thank you claire. Colleagues both here and online. We have two items on our agenda today. First, we're going to have a follow up with PBOT, a follow up conversation on the alternative transportation funding scenarios. And hopefully we'll have a good discussion so that we can move forward on this. And then TriMet is coming in to update us on their current budget outlook and how that might impact services or how it will impact services. But first, we need to adopt the committee minutes for the month of December. Does anybody have any objection? Seeing none say the minutes are approved. Our unanimous consent. So, diego, do you mind? Please read the next item.
15 Item two. Follow up discussion on alternative transportation funding report.
16 Thank you. So we had a brief discussion on the transportation funding strategies at our last meeting. But today we're going to do a little deeper dive, a little bit of review and then tease out some of the funding options that have been recommended. We've got a great group of staff here to answer questions. Some of the questions that we asked during our December meeting, everyone on the committee should have gotten a written response to those questions as well, and they can share more detail on the funding scenarios. Today, we ask them to do a deeper dive onto what kind of revenue each funding option would provide. We're also going to talk about upcoming efforts, then to engage the public in this discussion about revenue options. So take it away. We have a great panel of folks here. I think we can all introduce ourselves. Dca paul, do you want to kick it off?
17 Sure. Thank you. Vice president Clark and members of the committee. For the record, my name is paul and I serve as the deputy city administrator for the public works service area. And today's presentation is a part of an ongoing effort to examine options for stabilizing transportation funding in Portland, as directed by council. This conversation we're having today is absolutely critical right now. The combined effects of declining state purchasing power, rising costs, and ongoing reductions of internal resources mean we are no longer able to discuss service enhancements instantly. Instead, we have to plan for ability to maintain this transportation system at a most basic level. And today's conversation is bigger than numbers. At issue is a long term sustainability of the system people rely on every day. What what you'll hear from PBOT staff today draws on their experience managing that system, and lays out the options while framing the next steps for how to move the work forward. Next slide please. This morning, staff will briefly state the purpose of this work. Respond to questions raised during prior committee meetings and outline the approach for engaging the community. We will then walk through the four revenue mechanisms that council asked us to explore, including the assumptions and ranges that would be shared with the public as a part of our community engagement. Next slide please. At the December 15th transportation and infrastructure committee meeting, we this committee received a phase one report on alternative transportation funding and directed staff to proceed with additional analysis and public engagement. And today's focus is on how staff intends to carry out that direction and what information will come back to council as this work advances. And with that, I'll turn it over to PBOT director millicent williams, to grant us in the current funding context and walk through how recent developments and prior committee questions are shaping this work. Director williams.
18 Good morning. Thank you. Dca dana paul, good morning. Council vice president Clark and members of the transportation and infrastructure committee. For the record, my name is millicent williams and I am the director of the Portland bureau of transportation. We presented this slide in our December 15th presentation, but it's been updated to reflect the changes in our funding landscape that have occurred since that meeting. The most notable change is the successful effort to refer part of the state transportation funding bill to voters, suspending most tax and fee increases included in the transportation funding legislation passed last year. In the special session, there was also discussion about repealing the entire bill in the short session and revisiting a transportation funding package in 2027. However, just last week, it was announced that state legislation will be introduced to set the date of the referendum for this may to coincide with the statewide primary election, rather than waiting until November. My team in the office of government relations will continue to monitor this situation. The potential outcome of these actions for PBOT is the loss of over $30 million across this fiscal year and next fiscal year for basic maintenance and operations. Some of you also asked for more details about the loss of buying power of the gas tax, and how that has been impacting us. At this point, state gas tax revenues are projected to drop by 1.8% per year. At the same time, inflation is expected to increase by at least 5% per year. This means that over the next five years, without an increase in state funding, PBOT could face an $85.5 million reduction in state highway fund purchasing power. This slide has also been updated to more clearly illustrate the erosion of buying power on our local gas tax, which is now the equivalent of only $0.05 as compared to 2016 when it was first implemented. This is significantly eroding our ability to maintain our transportation system. Next slide please. We've also received questions about how the last few years of budget cuts have affected PBOT. In answering this question, we wanted to share the principles that have guided our decision making process. They've evolved slightly over the years but have largely remained the same. The principles include minimizing harm to our ability to carry out our mission and address our strategic goals, such as asset management and maintenance, safety, climate and equity, minimizing layoffs to retain knowledge and expertise at PBOT, trying not to thin the soup or make many smaller cuts, or give folks haircuts which make it hard to maintain operations, instead identifying potential whole programs to cut and finding efficiencies in the work that we do. As you can see on the table of this, excuse me, as you can see on the table on this slide, we've had to cut 66 general transportation revenue funded positions since 2021. Another 80 positions were reduced from gtr revenue and are now funded by other revenue sources, including fixing our streets and PCEF and impact that you can't see in these numbers. But that is significant is the effect of these cuts on morale and retention. We've managed to largely cut vacancies rather than filled positions, and again, a significant number of filled positions were saved when we were able to find other funding, such as fixing our streets to cover them. However, year over year we've had to place employees on a potential cut list where they've had to wait months to see if they'd be able to continue. If we'd be able to fund their excuse me, if we'd be able to continue to fund their positions. This is bad for morale, and it's bad for our ability to deliver core services portlanders expect from the city. And frankly, it has led to us losing some incredible talent because of the lack of clarity and surety that people have in their futures with the bureau. Next slide please. Not only have we lost positions and considered reducing many more filled positions, we have also lost critical services. On this slide, some of the some of the reductions that we've had to take over time and the impacts are that we've had to reduce the amount of funding going to our small safety and active transportation projects. Luckily, more recently, this is one of the areas that PCEF has provided funding for. We've had to decrease both staff and funding for consulting work for a variety of planning, policy and other technical work products, as well as staff to support community events. These cuts have ripple effects throughout the bureau that can make many services slower. Our budget situation has caused us to really look at where we could be more efficient. Fleet is one of those places where we were able to identify some efficiencies and make reductions. We've also had to take some significant programmatic reductions with big impacts. In fiscal year 2324, we eliminated residential street sweeping. This year. We were asked to bring that back, which we are now doing. We've had to eliminate micro surfacing, which is a cost effective, cold applied pavement preservation technique that that can extend road life by 6 to 10 years. And while we were able to save employees by shifting some of our in-house paving work to be covered by fixing our streets, this has meant less overall paving is being completed. Previously, we were able to complete more in-house grind and pay work, plus about $5 million per year in deeper contract paving. We no longer have funding for the contract paving. As you can see, there have been significant cuts to both positions and services in our maintenance work. These have been very difficult reductions to make, but this is because this. Excuse me, but this is because this is where much of our general transportation revenue goes. Some of our other teams, like the projects and planning teams and engineering services, are largely covered by other funding sources, such as external grants for particular projects. These are the cuts that we've taken over the last several years. We are now facing another year of severe reductions and expecting to have another budget gap of approximately $25 million, which will further erode our ability to maintain and operate the transportation system. Before moving on, I quickly want to note that we've been primarily focused on our general transportation revenue challenge. This is our basic discretionary revenue. In addition, over the last year, we've lost several federal grants that we were expecting to receive, and we also have had pressures from streetcar. I believe that later this morning, you'll hear from TriMet about their budget challenges. As you've acknowledged, the reduction in staff funding you'll hear about from TriMet also means that streetcar will lose $3.5 million over two years and will have to make significant service cuts. In short, PBOT has faced years of reduction and currently there is no end in sight. Next slide please. The ongoing budget pressures means that we are very focused on trying to find efficiencies and find ways to be as effective as possible. Here are a few examples. We're currently pursuing an accreditation through the American public works association. This accreditation would provide us access to a structured, peer reviewed framework intended to help agencies, agencies institutionalize best practices, strengthen accountability, and deliver consistently high quality services to the public. We're trying to use our limited paving dollars as effectively as possible, and have instituted a new base repair and overlay treatment policy, which helps to reduce costs and preventing the occurrence of potholes. We've refined our ADA curb ramp delivery process and moved previously dispersed curb ramp staff under one division, which has allowed us to increase delivery efficiency and effectiveness, and we've improved business process through I-2 solutions. It solutions such as moving all utility permitting operations to a unified system to better track, report and manage all utility permitting. And this is separate and apart from what's happening. And I am proud of how my staff continues to innovate and identify ways to improve. Next slide. Now we'll transition to the primary focus of our presentation today, which is to share how we will engage community in this work and the more detailed revenue information that we plan to share during our community engagement phase. Next slide. We are proposing an engagement plan that balances the need to move quickly and confidently, with the need to make sure that we are providing information to the public and bringing in a wide range of perspectives. We've started updating PBOT modal committees about the work done so far, and will provide an additional update to them as work progresses. Council offices should have received a letter of support for additional transportation funding from the bicycle advisory committee, and will soon receive a similar letter from the pedestrian advisory committee. We are reaching out to the land use and transportation committees and committees in each district to provide them with background in the plan for the open houses at the end of February and early March, we will host a drop in open house in each district. The events will be designed for people to walk around and review posters with information similar to what we will be showing you today. We will also be asking questions and collecting feedback from attendees through interactive exercises. We're still finalizing the dates and will share them and will share them as soon as we have them, and hope that many of you will be able to attend. We'll also be reaching out to other stakeholders and organizations, and we will keep a website where we can share any collected information virtually. And while we've asked you to potentially attend the open houses, if there are meetings that you would like for us to attend as well, please don't hesitate to let us know and we will add those to our schedule. The following slides generally illustrate the information that we will be sharing with the public. Next slide. We want to make sure everybody has shared understanding of the need for funding, will be providing graphics that show the condition of transportation assets and trends specific to each district, as well as visuals showing the bureau's financial situation. We've already provided you with a lot of information about our need for funding, so this is just meant to be a placeholder to show that we will share this type of information with the public. Not this exactly, but something similar. We will then have visuals at the open house with more details about each of the four revenue mechanisms that we've identified in our report for further vetting with the public, the street damage restoration fee, the transportation utility fee, the retail delivery fee, and the third party food delivery fee. Now, I'll turn it over to mark lear, who will discuss the street damage restoration fee and the transportation utility fee. Next slide.
19 Thank you, director williams. For the record, my name is mark lear, and I'm PBOT policy, partnership and resources manager. The slides provide an overview. This slide provides an overview of the street damage restoration fee. This proposal would amend the existing street opening fee, which covers only the program's administrative costs and does not charge for the structural damage to pavement. This damage happens when a utility company utility complies with the state's restoration standard. This fee would be directly proportional to the specific pavement damage the utility causes when accessing the infrastructure. Accessing the infrastructure. To clarify, we currently only charge a fee to administer the program. It doesn't cover the damage caused when the street is open. The street damage restoration fee would compensate the city for the portion of the lost asset life resulting from the utility cut. By recouping these damage costs, the city will be able to directly reinvest in improving damaged pavement. Along with la, this damage recovery fee is present in a number of cities street opening programs, including san francisco, oakland, san diego and seattle. Next slide. Because we intend to invest the damage fee directly into street paving improvements, we anticipate that all right of way users from motorists to pedestrians would benefit city and non-city. Utilities that engage in utility cuts are the ones most directly impacted by this fee. For more context on permittees, the chart on this slide contains the top street openers over the last three years. It is likely that these entities will pass on these costs. Although the Portland water bureau and environmental services are the two entities with the highest volume of utility cuts, there are a number of other companies that will contribute to this program. Next slide. As I mentioned earlier, our current permit fees cover only the administrative costs of the street opening operations. For these scenarios, we have adopted the cities of la's model, which assesses a damage fee for the area of impacted pavement. The fee is also directly proportional to the pavement restoration costs. La's fees range from $8 per square foot for local roads, and $20 per square foot for major streets. Our draft scenarios are estimates based on a blended estimate of these fees. We've also built these estimates using the average number of permits that PBOT has received over, and the average length and width of street openings. Note that there is quite a range in street opening requests from a few feet to a few thousand feet, and the damage fee assessed would be proportional to the overall impacted square feet. We provided you with three models ranging three scenarios, ranging from 25% to 75% of the damage recovery cost. As you can see, the 25% recovery scenario generates $7 million per year and the 75% scenario generates $22 million per year. With regards to implementing this fee, PBOT would need to adjust the system and business processes to manage permit requests, as well as establish a damage fee rate for local and busy streets that is proportional to the city's restoration costs. This work will result in refined rates and forecasted revenue targets. There is a potential to use this fee to incentivize better coordination of utility cuts in advance of projects. The fee could be reduced or increased based on whether or not the utility cut was before or after a paving project. Next slide. Of all the potential new revenue sources that we evaluated in our report, the transportation utility fee scored the highest on our evaluation matrix. Transportation utility fee is a monthly fee charged to residents and businesses based on their use of the transportation system and all of the 31 Oregon cities that have transportation utility fees. The fee is collected on the public utility bill and is is primarily used to pay for road maintenance and safety improvements like filling potholes. This mechanism has a number of advantages, including. It is broad based, allows for substantial revenue generation at relatively low cost for each payer. The revenue is not tied to fossil fuels. It uses existing billing systems to lower administrative costs. Everyone pays, everyone benefits, and there are opportunities to address equity issues using both the low income discount program as well as well, as well as in how we allocate resources. Next slide a quick overview of how much other nearby Oregon cities are charging for the tough helps set a baseline of understanding this is not a new tool, and we and we don't need to reinvent the wheel. This slide highlights the nine jurisdictions in the Portland metro area with with transportation utility fees. It includes the monthly rate for single family homes, as well as the monthly rate for multifamily properties by unit. As of today, the regional average charge per month for a single family home is $12.08. The regional average charge per month for multifamily properties is $9.49. Based on the principles of the transportation utility fee, multifamily properties pay less per month than single family properties because in general, they generate fewer trips on average per property. For example, a garbage truck that would come to each house is coming to a larger multifamily property. Next slide. This slide provides three potential transportation utility fee rate revenue scenarios for Portland. The first scenario assumes that portland's rate is set at $6 per month for a single family home, and $4.20 per multifamily unit. This scenario is based on establishing portland's rate at 50% of the regional average. Based on trip generation estimates. All these scenarios assume that 70% of trips are generated by residential properties, and 30% of trips are generated by non residential and commercial properties. The commercial portion of the fee is proposed to be collected based on a percentage of the existing water, sewer and stormwater fee, much like the flood safety benefit fee that council recently adopted. This would be an interim approach in. In scenario one, commercial properties would pay an additional 2.2% of their existing monthly water, sewer and stormwater fee. The average business would pay an additional $31 per month. Scenario two is based on 75% of the regional average, and scenario three is based on 100% of that regional average. All of these scenarios assume that the program would include existing low income discount programs available today on portland's water, sewer, and stormwater bill. Portland's next slide portland's existing low income discount program provides substantial discounts to single family residential accounts and multifamily properties approved under the city's nonprofit low income housing and limited tax exemption program. Portland transportation utility fee scenarios and revenue estimates assume that we utilize these existing programs. Next slide. One of the advantages of the transportation utility fee is that everyone pays everyone benefits. Again, based on the estimated trips by property type, 70% of the fee is paid by residential properties, and 30% of the fee is paid by nonresidential properties. Next slide. As I mentioned earlier, we propose that if the tough is implemented, that this that we use an interim approach for commercial properties. While we refine the methodology, we could do this quickly and efficiently by adding to the flood safety benefit fee that council has recently adopted. This would start bringing in some revenue and ensure that nonresidential properties contribute. While we take the time to work with stakeholders and do the background research to build a structure based on trip generation like other cities do. Now, I'm going to hand this over to jacob sherman to talk about the two delivery fee concepts.
20 Thank you mark. For the record, my name is jacob sherman. I'm PBOT mobility innovations manager, and I'm here to present an overview of the retail delivery fee concept. Simply put, a retail delivery fee is a per transaction fee that would be charged to consumers in Portland when they opt to have certain goods delivered to their home or businesses. It is collected by qualified businesses, but it is not a fee on the business itself. There's been a growing interest in delivery fees, as we've seen rapid growth in delivery and the impacts of this industry on our streets. A retail delivery fee has been explored at the state level, but so far has not been implemented in Oregon. Last June, as part of the budget process, we were also directed through a budget note proposed by councilor Canal to conduct research on a retail delivery fee. The phase one alternative funding report that we presented to you in December represents our initial work on the retail delivery fee concept. I want to emphasize the word concept in describing the possible fee, we know that it would take us more time to develop than the other two fees that we've previously described. Two other states have retail delivery fees, but so far no other city has a fee like this in place, and without a sales tax, implementation could be complex. Next slide. Retail delivery fee would help address the growing impact that e-commerce is having on the operations and maintenance of our transportation system. The us census estimates a nearly 40% increase since 2019, and each and every day portlanders probably see several different delivery vans or trucks driving up and down their streets to make deliveries, sometimes several different vehicles from the exact same company. A small retail delivery fee that's charged to consumers who choose to have items delivered would generate resources that would benefit all road users, including motorists and the very companies responsible for collecting the fee. While this fee concept needs more work to determine how best to structure it for feasible and efficient implementation, a key next step should involve stakeholder engagement. Key stakeholders include residents and businesses who might pay the fee, and major retailers who would be responsible for fee collection. Next slide. Borrowing from a methodology that the state of Washington used to explore a retail delivery fee, we've roughed out an estimate for what this fee could look like in Portland. This slide shows a table and is very preliminary. If the fee were set at $0.25 per delivery, which is close to colorado's fee amount, then we estimate the retail delivery fee could generate about $4.5 million per year, with an estimated cost to the consumer of about ten and a half dollars. If the retail delivery fee were set at $0.50 per delivery, which is equivalent to minnesota's fee, then it could generate about $9 million per year, with an estimated cost to the consumer of about $21 per year, following in colorado and minnesota's footsteps, we would recommend that Portland consider exemptions for deliveries that include groceries and medicine, and that we also determine exemptions to reduce administrative burdens of collecting the fee on smaller businesses. Next slide. As we've explored the retail delivery fee concept, we've also developed a concept for a third party prepared food delivery fee, like the transportation network company fee that Portland charges to uber and lyft riders. This fee would be added to a customer's bill at the point of sale and collected by third party food delivery platforms like uber eats, doordash, and grubhub. This is also an option that would take some work to implement, although there are existing regulatory structures in place that could be updated, so we think it would be easier to implement than the retail delivery fee. Next slide. This fee would also be applied to consumers who choose to have prepared food delivered to them on a third party platform. By implementing a fee on these convenient services, it would send a price signal to consumers and generate resources to maintain and hopefully improve the transportation system. This is a preliminary scan of stakeholders to engage around the prepared food delivery concept. Next slide. Here's a scenario for implementation of this concept. Again this is not fully developed. So this is a preliminary estimate. If the fee were set at $0.25 for each prepared food delivery, then we would estimate it would generate about $2 million per year, with a cost to the consumer of about $4.75 in new fees. If the fee were set at $0.50 for each prepared food delivery, then we would estimate it would generate about $4 million per year, with the average cost to the consumer of about $9.50 per fees. It's worth noting consumers regularly pay a premium for these services, but the price signal could prompt some to avoid the fee by picking up their own food, or even possibly by choosing to dine in at one of portland's many charming restaurants, where they might actually spend more money on food, appetizers and dessert. Enclosing this revenue mechanism could rely on an existing regulatory framework and be easier to implement than the retail delivery fee, but it too will require more work and more stakeholder engagement. I'm now going to hand this over to PBOT chief of staff, shoshana cohen.
21 Good morning. Council vice president, clerk and members of the committee. For the record, I'm shoshana cohen, PBOT chief of staff. As we begin to do more outreach around these ideas, we know that one of the key questions that will receive will be, how are the funds going to be used? We've talked a lot about our our funding needs and our budget gaps, but we also want to engage the public in these conversations. So we're proposing to ask some questions about the type of investments that the public would like to see. This slide is really just an example slide. And we'll be creating boards at the to bring out to the open houses with more details and more examples of the types of funding and investments that we could we could be investing in. But the idea is to show different types of core services and ask for public feedback on which of the important which of these important needs feel most urgent. Next slide please. As you can see from the next two slides, PBOT has also developed accountability structures that have resulted in effective programs with high levels of public support. The fixing. We know that accountability is one of the other questions that we are regularly receiving when we ask for new funding. The fixing our streets program, funded by the ten cent local gas tax, provides a prime example of our effective accountability structures. At the open houses, we'll share information with the public about how we've provided accountability with the fixing our streets program, and again, ask for feedback around potential similar accountability structures the public would like to see. Next slide please. For the fixing our streets program. We've been very specific about how we allocate the funds within specific areas. Revenue is allocated into three overarching buckets. We have a paving program we call smoother streets, safety projects and services known as safer streets, and community street services that include citywide programs like filling potholes, signals and street light maintenance and traffic calming. We have a fixing our streets oversight committee, which meets quarterly to help ensure that we're allocating funds as promised within these buckets. And again, we we propose to share this information with the public and get feedback about something similar. And now I'll hand this back to director williams to wrap up the presentation.
22 Thank you shoshana. Thank you. Shoshana, in closing our presentation today, I'd like to thank you for taking on this engagement. It's important and challenging work and for talking about the significant opportunities to help improve the lives of Portland residents and businesses. Although our needs are immense over the last few years with the fixing our streets program, we've demonstrated that by working together, we can do great things with even relatively small amounts of additional revenue. We can stabilize our work force, we can stabilize services and address critical needs. Although a significant amount of any additional revenue will need to be prioritized for addressing the existing shortfall caused by the declining purchase power of state revenues. I am inspired by this committee's and the city council's recommendation that we also address critical infrastructure deficiencies like lack of sidewalks and unsafe roadway shoulders. One of the other questions that you all asked previously was about the potential for bonding. After conversations with our debt office, we understand that it would take about $4 million per year to fund a $50 million bond over 20 years, in addition to the revenue needed to restore services. This could be a meaningful part of the proposal we discuss over the next few months. We're looking forward to our community open houses and the end of February at the end of February to hear more from the public, and we look forward to following up and moving forward with you in the months ahead. This concludes our presentation. Thank you again for taking up this really important issue.
23 Well, thank you, panelists. And thank you, director williams. Great presentation. Good review I know we've got lots of questions up here. More questions. We're going to dig in. And we've got a good amount of time to do that. So let's start with councilor. Morillo.
24 Thank you so much chair. Thank you all so much for this presentation. I think we were all grimacing the whole time you were speaking because it was absolutely brutal to hear, but it's nothing that we haven't heard before. And, director williams, I really appreciate your leadership for the bureau during such a difficult time. I think you have led with just immense grace and foresight in a way that we really need right now. So special thanks to you. I'm also just very grateful for the outreach plan that we have and the open houses. And if there's anything that we as councilors, especially of the transportation bureau, can do to help with that outreach, like if we can get that information to post on our social media, if we can put that in our newsletters, I would love to send that out to my district. I think people would be really interested in attending, and I appreciate just how thoughtfully that was laid out. I'm just going to say a lot of appreciations right now, because I think you don't ever you don't get that enough for all the hard stuff that you do. I also really want to appreciate how the plans that you've laid out account for the impacts on low income people, and different ways that we can support people so that there is equity in how we're addressing this. That stood out to me. I would say personally, of the things that we've listed, I would reject any esthetic support money. Right now, I'm I don't think we need graffiti cleanup or flowers or things like that when our infrastructure is falling apart. I know some people in the community will their jaws will drop hearing me say that, but I think things are that dire. And I just want to be frank about where I'm at as a councilor on some of those things. I was really interested in the fees for different delivery systems, and particularly I was wondering if is there a mechanism to do exemptions for food and grocery deliveries for people with disabilities? Is there a precedent for that or a way to get that done?
25 Yeah. Thanks. Councilor Morillo. We're unaware of any precedent for that. And I think as we've begun to explore the topic, we think it could be challenging to try and single in on specific users. I think that's where other states have taken approaches, such as exempting kind of the classification of goods that are getting purchased. I think in many of those places, there's no you don't know who the end user is, and therefore you can't necessarily trigger any of those exemptions.
26 Okay, that's really helpful. I figured that would be the case, but just wanted to know in case you knew something I didn't. That's the only thing that I would flag. That would be a little bit concerning as far as like grocery and food delivery for folks with disabilities. But as far as like commercial goods that are not, you know, necessary for life, I think that's a little bit different. So thanks for answering my question.
27 And just to clarify, councilor, I think we are thinking that you would have exemptions for groceries or medical delivery. So regardless of whoever the person was purchasing those goods, you wouldn't necessarily pay the retail. You wouldn't pay the retail delivery fee.
28 Gotcha. Okay. So the prepared foods, it would only be if it's coming from a restaurant.
29 Exactly.
30 Okay. Thank you.
31 Great questions. Councilor councilor Green.
32 Thank you. I'm going to echo every all the all the flowers that were given earlier. You guys continue to amaze me in the kind of thoughtfulness, preparedness and frankly, urgency that you bring to this committee. I just want to flag that we've moved very fast with this discussion and that's it's so urgent. So I thank you for leading on that chair, Clark. But also, or I should say, council vice president Clark. It's it's not something we want to drag our feet on. And and because we're talking about fee increases, it's also very, very sensitive. One of the things that I have found when I communicate with my constituents, whether those are at town halls or at the doors, when I was campaigning for this seat or any other venue is, you know, a recognition that, look, no one likes to pay taxes, no one likes to pay fees. But if we see what we get for those fees, we that's really all anyone's asking for. And there is a lack of faith right now in this city for, for that sort of execution. So I think your outreach plan makes a lot of sense. And when you, in talking to the community saying, look, this is the condition of our assets, maybe having some sort of, you know, vignettes or storytelling around, you know, folks who maybe get in a bike accident because of a pothole or having some testimonials from cyclists who really struggle with leafs in the in the gutter. I mean, all those those are all things that can be dealt with with, with this package of fees. And so I really do support it. I want to make a couple comments on the I'm going to move in order on the specific fees. So the so that was service delivery retail fees, that.
33 Street damage.
34 Restoration fee.
35 Street damage. I, I appreciate the range from the 25% to 75% cost recovery. I would support going to the 75% upper limit just because. And this is going to be the same for all of the fees. The incentives matter a lot. And so the the strength of the fee needs to be, needs to be enough to, to actually provide that price signal for people to change their behavior. And so if a utility, in particular our own utilities want to avoid these fees, it becomes a very good value proposition to think about how to coordinate and minimize the number of permits that need to be pulled, so we can kind of get that work done at once, and that'll that'll yield benefits to our assets in the long run.
36 Councilor Green, if I may, your comment, especially about the city bureaus that have some contribution to this, one of the ways that we anticipate we would be able to address some of that in terms of the fees and the permits being levied, would be through the sip coordination effort. There are any number of times that we'll see our work or we'll see their work, and it's a matter of scheduling and timing that makes the difference between whether we would see a cut or not. It nothing breaks my heart more, and I think anyone can attest, based on some of my recent reactions to seeing fresh pavement being cut, to seeing that when I know it could have been avoided. You know, if it if it's happening today, it could have happened two weeks ago before we put the pavement down. So those are things that we, we anticipate will be addressed through the work of the sip. And I thank the deputy state administrator for her leadership in that space.
37 Absolutely. And, you know, it's can never uplift that message often enough because folks do see it. And it's important for our community to know that you're thinking about that. We're here to support that. I think with the transportation utility fee. I would want us to approach this at the lower end of of the region. Just kind of I mean, the average is kind of a lot to ask. I mean, it's almost as much as what we ask property owners to stomach in the parks levy. And so starting with $6 is a much easier time. And if we if we broaden our array of fees, schedules, there's the ability to mitigate across certain customer classes rather than lump it all onto utility bill. And so I want to be a little bit cautious on that. But I think it's an important one to go. I think I've said before that I always worry about regressive fee structures, but with the low income discount program, we we can really mitigate that a lot. Maybe we'll start at this lower end to provide a meaningful amount of revenue. And then finally, you know, with the retail delivery fee and the prepared food one. No one wants to. This is risky. But like no one wants to add fees to that kind of a bill. But $0.25 to $0.50 is not going to be a meaningful impact to get people to change whether or not like, you know, maybe I'll go downtown or I'll go into this business district for a meal, like you'll just absorb that. That's a rounding error. A delivery fee needs to be something that you notice on the bill to be like, all right, I'm done. We're going to take this bus trip into town or we're going to we're going to go down, you know, price of a bus tickets. What 250 is it's still two 5280. Okay. So so that's going up to but 280 if it's at least, you know, a couple bucks, then people say, all right, let me go in and spend my money at this place. And that will have broad benefits to our economic development. So so I think we should be a little more aggressive on that front. And I think one idea we might consider, pursuant to the kind of concern that my colleague raised about folks experiencing disabilities or mobility challenges more broadly is I know, I know how it's practically nigh impossible to ask a third party app to figure out who's got certain mobility challenges. It would be possible for the city, however, to provide like sort of a rebate model. So if you sort of applied the city like, you know, hey, I've got this condition, it makes it very difficult for me to leave my house. I don't know why we couldn't rebate them out of our own sort of administrative capacity. And so that might be a way for us to speak very directly to that population that needs that support. So something to consider. But again, you guys are in early days on this. I'm really looking forward to continuing to support this. I think it's so urgent for our city. We have a what is it, $10 billion asset backlog in PBOT.
38 6 billion for us.
39 Okay. That's so I don't need to add.
40 Another billion.
41 Another billion on top of that. That's 4 billion between friends right?
42 That's right.
43 6 billion is still a lot. Right. So we need we do need to kind of take a big swing here. So I appreciate that. And. Thanks for mentioning the bonding because we have we have talked about that as well. And so that potentially is a way to finance some of this stuff. So thank you so much I'll stop talking.
44 Thank you councilor Green. Those are all really great questions and observations I appreciate that. Let's go to councilor Koyama Lane. Greetings. Hello.
45 Hi. Good morning. Thank you so much. My I have a question around the street damage restoration fee. And I'm wondering if there's a way to limit or eliminate utility companies from passing on the fee to people paying for the services.
46 I think we would need to do some more research and get back to you on that, but we can definitely do that.
47 But to to answer your general question, it is likely that if there was a fee that was assumed by a utility company, that would potentially be passed on to the consumer, ultimately.
48 And to put a finer point on what director williams said, councilor Koyama Lane, the utilities are, you know, the funded by ratepayers. So it's more than likely it will end up with ratepayers. So you would see a rate increase from the utilities.
49 And not just ours, but pge, northwest natural, others presumably.
50 Yeah, I guess just maybe on a like zooming out on a larger scale for all these different alternative funding options, how how can we are there ways that we can ensure that we're not passing along fees in a way that harm our most vulnerable and historically oppressed communities? I know we've kind of touched on this, and also, are there ways that we can almost reward or support householder businesses that are like working to support our climate actions or reduce their carbon footprints? Is there a way to add that in there to think about that?
51 Yeah, I think maybe just building on that for a second. One of the advantages that we've talked about when we look at something like a street damage restoration fee versus a gas tax, exactly. Those two things you just mentioned, right. There's no way to there's no existing like low income discount program for gas tax. In fact, it might be the opposite, right. Poor people may have less efficient vehicles. Whereas if you're charging utilities that have low income discount programs, the damage restoration fee, there is some way, even if that cost is passed on, that there's existing discount programs. And then again, it does pull us a little bit away from like the traditional fossil fuel based approaches. I think, you know, the other comments you heard, it's hard to keep those costs from trickling down. But to the degree there are existing programs under under some of those utility programs, especially the water and sewer bill specifically, that is one of the advantages.
52 Thank you.
53 Thank you, councilor. Thank you for the answers at the panel. Councilor Smith.
54 Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you all for the report. I was listening on my way in in an uber. My garage cable broke this morning, so I was locked in and had the uber all the way in this morning. So I listened to you very carefully in terms of the transportation utility fee design. Pbot shows net revenue of 22.6 million to 46.7 million, depending on the rates. What minimum viable tough scenario keeps core maintenance and safety stable? And what does it buy us in year one? Dcl. Priya.
55 I'm going to allow director williams to answer the specifics to that question.
56 Okay. Thank you.
57 Can you repeat the two parts?
58 So the first part was that PBOT shows net revenue of 22.6 million to 46.7 million, depending on what rate is charged. What is the minimum viable tough scenario that keeps core maintenance and safety stable? And what does that buy us in the first year?
59 The minimum viable actually would be that 50% of the regional average. I will acknowledge, however, that even that is insufficient to keep us at the level of service that I believe portlanders are expecting. Again, this is a gap even in what we were expecting from the state. So we're starting at a tremendous deficit. This would just be getting us to zero. So anything more than that would provide an additional level of service. But again, that would be.
60 Just the first year.
61 But that's right. Okay. Yes.
62 So. There's a little bit of nuance in this and in this current government environment around equity. The deq says that much of the fee will likely be passed on to utility bill payers. And what kind of safeguards are we considering so that low, low income households aren't hit twice? And I mean by the fact that they're going to be hit with a higher utility bill, plus declining streets, or will those streets be prioritized first so that they're not hit twice?
63 I'll answer the second question first, which is around the prioritization of the streets. We do have a system in place that identifies the condition of roads all across the city. And using that information, we are able to determine where we should deploy our resources first. I'll also share that we have recently revamped our paving management program to ensure that we aren't waiting for a complete failure on streets that may have a fairly low pavement condition index, but rather making investments sooner rather than later to maintain the life of the road for perhaps longer. So we have systems in place that allow us to be able to see where the worst streets are, and often deploy resources to support bringing those communities up to a place of the ability to have their streets maintained. Right now, a number of streets, when people call in, they'll say, I have a whatever is happening on my street. We've declared some of those streets to be non maintained and so nothing happens. So we we have been working to change the narrative on that to ensure that we're not leaving folks who have historically been underserved and communities that have been historically underserved and streets that have been underinvested over the course of the past many decades, that they receive the appropriate attention. But those types of efforts in order to it's two things. Some of them will require full reconstruction. Some of them will need required to be constructed at all, which is why cip is an important program. But others do need to be maintained, and they may not look like they're at the point of failure. But we are trying to arrest the moment so that we don't find ourselves allowing a number of our assets to fall into greater disrepair. So we've we've shifted the way that we're doing our pavement management to ensure that we address that. That's a pretty big conversation to ensure that we're addressing equitably, equitably serving communities across the city. But we do have information that helps to inform that.
64 That is excellent news to hear. And I couldn't see the the screen. But could you name for me 2 to 3 specific small safety and active transportation projects that have been delayed or canceled? And what safety outcomes have we lost because of that?
65 Yeah, I let me just maybe talk about it just at a, at a programmatic level, like I coordinate or oversee the fixing our streets program. And we're right now like tonight I'm going to two different land use and transportation committee meetings to give a heads up about this program, but also talk about the program. Shoshana was just talking about inside fixing our streets. We have these small safety projects, right. So these are like daylighting of intersections. They're traffic calming around schools. You know, small infill sidewalk projects. And the super sad part is, you know, we just that program only gets to allocate a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in each district for those kinds of projects. And we have this long list of, of requests that come in from neighbors through our traffic safety livability hotline for these. Simple. It's heartbreaking, right? I mean, there are these simple improvements, small gaps in sidewalks, crossing improvements at crosswalks, even just getting curb extensions. It's those kinds of things that we have the potential to plus up and fund and provide additional funding for that.
66 That makes a lot of sense. I do a monthly community meeting called coffee with a cop, had one last week, and one of the issues that the neighborhood association members and I'll follow up with you, director williams, we're talking about a couple of those kinds of specifics in terms of safety issues of lights not being there, and they actually asked the police what could they do about it? And I said, I think that is a that's a PBOT question. I know that's a PBOT question, but those are the kind of things that I think that just that are small, that you can do and, and get out the way. The other piece is I. I think that when we start eliminating graffiti removal, when we start doing that, as opposed to saying, oh, yeah, we can't do that because we need to do big infrastructure projects. If we do that, I just want you all to keep in mind graffiti removal is done by small minority businesses generally. So then that means cutting them out. And I don't think that that is an option for us because as we're trying to bring in new folks to secure transportation dollars, contract with transportation dollars, and in light of this new executive order, I don't think that we can single handedly look to to those things because it's bigger than that. It's bigger than saying we're going to work something big, and so we're not going to do something small. But graffiti, to me, that's like almost like having a dirty car. Or not washing your face in the morning because that's what people see. And we have to keep our city as clean as possible and utilize those small businesses, because you put those folks out of business. When you stop doing those kind of small, active transportation kinds of things in the city. And so I want us to also have a 30,000 foot look at who we target and why we target. Because I can guarantee you if if that is taken away, my phone is going to be ringing. I already know. So just think about those kinds of things and who it impacts and who does the work. It's not necessarily us, but we contract out that that kind of work. So thank you for all that you have done. These last two transportation committee meetings on pulling all this stuff together over weeks. And it's important. It's critical, and I appreciate what you all are doing. This is this is a tough job for us to figure this out. And I don't like taxing taxpayers any more than I have to, but we have to have an accurate accounting of what does it cost to take care of our core services. And thank you again.
67 Thank you. Councilor. I just wanted to mention regarding graffiti removal, PBOT is but one of the entities in the city that is responsible for graffiti removal. There are, I think, four separate bureaus that address it in some way. And so while we are cleaning graffiti off of items or structures in the right of way, we don't typically do the contracting out on the graffiti removal. Others do. So there probably does need to be a broader conversation around how we address that work.
68 Exactly.
69 Okay. Thank you. And I know I didn't answer your first part of the first question, but it was around affordability and ensuring that we aren't hitting certain parts of the community twice with the fee and.
70 Doing the work.
71 Yeah, and not doing the work. So that's a that's a probably a longer conversation in terms of how we ensure that the affordability programs are something that people are taking advantage of, but also that because of the conditions of the roads that they're not feeling in, inequitable impact, we can continue to discuss what that needs to look like for us.
72 And you. Five other questions that I have prepared, because this is very important to me, and I'll email it to you all and I'll email it out. If you could cc my colleagues on it with the answers. Sure. Thank you so much.
73 Thank you, councilor Smith. I appreciate I appreciate the cc, good observations. And now I think it's my turn to ask a couple questions and I'll I'll maybe do the same some online as well. But I'm so happy to hear about the cip that is desperately needed to have more coordination over the street damage. But let me play devil's advocate for a minute on the street damage restoration fee. What is your answer to the utilities, the private utilities, when they're going to say, oh, we already pay a franchise fee and that should be covering the restoration? What's your answer to that question?
74 Go ahead. I don't know that I have a good answer because the utility licensing fee is one of the areas of funding that we've discussed over the course of at least the time that I've been here. And I know prior to in this role, prior to my coming back to the city, it is a challenging conversation because there is the expectation that the support that they give to the city in order to carry out the business is something that they're expecting would cover that. However, it's the definition of the work that's being done that I think we need to engage around what the utility licensing fee does versus what a street damage restoration fee might do could be defined in two different ways, but mark is going to lean in on that.
75 Thanks, councilor Clark, for the question. I'm sure you will get some of that response, which I've heard in the past, and we've talked about this, the feedback that I've gotten from the city attorney's office is that in Oregon, franchise fees and in Portland are set up for reimbursement to the city of those utilities of doing business in our city. And that's the reason under state law that they were set up. That's the justification, I think, building on what councilor Green said as well, is the other advantage of this fee is that it set up correctly. It provides economic triggers that can really result in smarter behavior by all of us in the right of way. And so again, I think you will hear some of that, but I think state law is pretty clear, and our code's pretty clear about what the why we can't have franchise fees under state law, and also why we can have additional fees on companies that are cutting doing damage to the right of way. We actually went and looked back at this as we were putting this together. And and both the state law and the code are pretty clear on it.
76 Don't get me wrong, I'm not. I'm just wanted to ask that question. I think that the franchise fees are actually for the privilege of working here, and that the street damage restoration fee is, is something altogether different. I'm shocked that we don't have it already. When you look at what other cities have done, it's really amazing that we've only asked for the reimbursement for our admin fees. That just strikes me as wrong. Let me just be clear. The our gas tax $0.10 sunsets in 2028, is that right?
77 It would be up for renewal in 2020.
78 We would have to go back to the voters to renew it if we chose to do that. Okay. I want to follow up on something that councilor Koyama Lane listed in her questions about tactical urbanism. And this isn't necessarily to do with costs, but I hear more and more about people in neighborhoods that want to fill their own potholes or put up their own signs. And I understand that we do have some ways for community members to do that. Is that something that we can expand on? Because I just don't see that we're even if we do some of these things, that we're ever going to have enough resources to fill all the potholes. So is there any interest in expanding that program in PBOT to allow to train people to fill their own potholes where it's appropriate, or to work on their own signage?
79 There is the opportunity for us to engage, continue to engage. We've already begun to engage with a number of partners in the community about how they can bring forward their energy, excitement and expertise to support the transportation bureau in its effort to make communities safer and more accessible. There are some risks associated with even with training, allowing entities to do certain things in the right of way. The misplacement of a sign by inches, not even feet, can have significant consequence that then the city would bear the responsibility of being responsive to the mis striping of a crossing that could, if a person's following it, throw a person. And that's a probably a pretty literal or graphic term, but it it leads people in a direction that's not quite right. And again, inches sometimes can make the difference between a vehicle or a bicycle. Being able to traverse a space on an even level versus just just a inch or a few inches or a few tics that that's that's important to note, because if we allow that, then we assume the responsibility for any potential negative impacts. There have been some efforts in the past year, plus where there have been some pretty significant improvements that folks have sought to make. Unfortunately, because they were a little off, we had to go back in and make corrections to that in some instances, completely remove and redo, which is more expensive than us being able to be responsive to the initial request. If someone were to file that, we do encourage people to, and I recognize it takes some time to get through a23 safe or even through 311 to get on to the list of of projects that we'll work on. But I do encourage people to do that because at least we know that there's the problem, given that we don't have eyes everywhere, we are depending on the community's eyes to help us to figure out where we should be prioritizing moving forward. And so, yes, we will engage in tactical urbanism. Yes, we need to talk about how we can do that most effectively.
80 I appreciate the cautions. I'm not advocating that. I'm just saying that there are vigilante pothole fillers out there, that if we don't do something like this, it's just going to increase and continue. I wanted to ask jacob a question, if that's okay, about the your work on the delivery fee, because we don't have a sales tax. I imagine that it's colorado. And I remember the other state.
81 Minnesota, minnesota.
82 They have sales taxes that they've been able to piggyback on, and we don't have any kind of collection structure for anything like that. Is that what you're telling us?
83 Correct. That's what I'm telling you. Although, you know, we have been doing this work in partnership with the city attorney office, as well as leadership at the revenue division. And I think they've been thinking through some of the mechanics, but have acknowledged the fact that kind of one of those key pieces of the puzzle isn't necessarily there right now.
84 Great. Well, I appreciate your calling it a concept, because I think we have a lot more work to do on that. Let's go back to councilor Green.
85 Thank you very much. Sort of in the spirit of community engagement, as we were previously talking about, I think one of the things that's so nice about our new committee structure is that we have highly active, very smart people in the community who watch these hearings and that that gives them ideas as we're discussing. So I got flagged in a social media post like minutes ago by a person named opaque reptile. And but they raise a really good question which, which the question is basically if we're going to design a retail and prepare foods fee, would it be possible to create an exemption on that fee for non-car delivery, like if it's a bike or a motorcycle or a scooter? Because if if the spirit really is to sort of mitigate the marginal impact of that mode, that could potentially be a really interesting incentive driver as well. I think the third party apps already kind of get a sense of whether you have a car or not.
86 Most definitely councilor Green. I think those are things that we have been thinking about. I think that was a level of detail that wasn't necessarily appropriate for this presentation, but those are definitely some of the considerations. We'd like to talk with you more as we develop these concepts out further.
87 Thank you.
88 Thank you. Councilor Smith, you have another question.
89 Yes. Thank you. And just going back to the pothole issue, we I asked you all this last year how much it would cost to fill a pothole. I think you said it was like 450.
90 $300, roughly.
91 About $300. So I think that for the most part, just so that people do know we do fill those, but we also for the streets and sidewalks there, it is currently the responsibility of the homeowner to pay for. But the potholes is something that we do, and it's fairly inexpensive. As you have, said director williams. We need to make sure that things are done in in an accurate way. And I appreciate I appreciate the people who do want to do those kinds of things. But I think that the the small cost of the potholes, there are ways that we can get that done quicker than to have folks doing dui projects on Saturday on our city streets, so I don't want to encourage that. That's what at all. So thank you.
92 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Green, is that a legacy? I assume so, colleagues, I think we're at time now. Thank you so much for this presentation and all the work that you're doing to ensure that we have good public engagement and we and our we all talk to our colleagues to ensure that as much as possible, they show up to the community meetings that you're setting up and that they set up their own and request your presence, when possible, to inform everyone to get feedback on their on people's priorities and perceptions about transportation. I think it's incredibly important that we get the message out that the gas tax that we've all been relying on for most of our lives is a diminishing revenue source, and that at the same time that it's going down, inflation is going up. I think that's a key message, and that we're not getting any help from the feds. In fact, they're pulling back on the promises that they made in transportation and at the state level, which we've relied on the 50, 30, 20 split, which is almost the holy grail. People are talking about changing that. We don't want that to happen, but they still need to figure out how they're going to raise revenue for us and for themselves and for ODOT and the the needs that the state has, those I know that's all in flux, and I appreciate the fact that you're following that, but I don't see anything happening in the in the immediate until 2027. So we're going to have to do something for ourselves. And that's what this is all about, folks, is how we're going to help ourselves. And I think you've done a great job on the report looking at 20 different options, zeroing in on four with some excellent criteria, applying those. I think you've done great work, and I look forward to the next step. And we'll we'll talk to our colleagues. We'll probably, if we do change the committee structure and come up with a committee of the whole, I would imagine that we would ask you to come to the committee of the whole and and provide the same kind of information and briefing for our colleagues and answer their questions as well, because ultimately, our colleagues were all going to have to vote on on this if we decide to go through with one or more of these options. So thank you so much for being here and for all your good work. And onward, here we go. Thank you.
93 Thank you.
94 Diego, would you please read the next item.
95 Item three. Trimet funding outlook.
96 Thank you. Colleagues, we've had a brief discussion on transportation funding strategies, but now we're going to shift to hear from one of our partners, our regional regional agency, my former some of my former coworkers. Greetings. Nice to see you here. They're going to share some more details on what's coming, their budget shortfall and their anticipated service impacts. I know that this is incredibly important to our community. I've seen the bus that services my particular neighborhood be cut, be changed, be whatever. I don't know what's coming. So we're anxious to hear from you and to figure out how we can best support you as well. So, jake vanita, do you want to kick this off?
97 I think john is.
98 John. Sorry, sorry you're kicking this off.
99 Thank you very much. Chair Clark, vice chair Morillo and members of the transportation and infrastructure committee for inviting us to join you today. For the record, my name is john sarah. I'm the local government affairs manager here at TriMet, and I'm a registered lobbyist on behalf of the agency. I'm also joined by jake bonetta, our chief of public affairs, jennifer kooser, our director of community affairs and engagement, and tom mills, who is our director of mobility, planning and policy. We're here to have a conversation today that we don't want to be having, talking about trimet's financial situation and the service reductions that we are proposing to address it. I want to stress that this is a conversation, and we're here today to ensure that you are fully informed about our proposal and that you have an opportunity to offer feedback. So we thank you for your time, and I'm going to kick it off to jake bonetta.
100 Thank you, john, for the record, I'm jake, I'm the chief public affairs officer for TriMet, and I am grateful for our PBOT friends who came before us who have primed the pump for this discussion. Like john said, we don't want to be here having this conversation with you. I want to set the stage. Next slide, please, john, for you on where we're at as an agency. And you all know this because you are facing budget challenges as well. We are seeing layoffs across our region. The I think that you probably all have seen the latest cbre report that said vacancy rate across the region is at 27.3%. The downtown rate is at a historic vacancy rate of 34.7%.
101 For jonathan. You don't want to be having.
102 My apologies. You also know I'm not necessarily sure if you're aware of this, but we are one of the highest teleworking states in the nation. People move here to enjoy our outdoor lifestyle and telework. And I would just also note that there is an elevated concern around community safety that still persists, even though, as we have seen as a community, things are getting better. Here at TriMet you we are. Our ridership is holding steady at 1.2 million rides per week. We do move a lot of people bringing people to where they need to go. I would note for you all that 35% of our riders are transit dependent. We have seen that number steadily climb since the start of COVID. And so we know this because there are record enrollments in our low income fare program as well as the use. A lot of people are tapping their hop cards. You'll hear more about this in the days to come, but we are seeing declining tax revenue. Our employer payroll tax forecasts are down, as well as our employee payroll tax, which is the state transportation improvement fund, and our overall fare revenue is down. And I'll go into that here in a second. We are about at 70% of our ridership. We have seen a 30% drop since the pandemic. It has inched up. But that also means a drop in our fare revenue, which is around $60 million a year. We have seen inflation costs much like the city has. They have grown by 56% between 2019 and 2025. And it also has to do with some huge investments that we have made in safety and security. What you see on the streets and sidewalks of Portland and our region, you will sometimes see on TriMet, we have invested millions of dollars in added cleaning and we've reconfigured our network. We, our tom mills and team have done a great job. We have seen the trends that the pandemic has forced on our community, and we have reacted by investing money into our reconfigured network to really get people to where they need to go. And we have a smaller number than PBOT, but we have a backlog of $700 million in capital maintenance. As you know, our max line, our oldest max line, is over 40 years old, and we have to replace some of those key infrastructure elements. So where that leads us as we are looking at declining revenue, as we're looking at increasing costs and maintenance, we have seen around a $300 million structural deficit that we face. And I say about because we're it's kind of a changing target, but we're working diligently to get there. We want our goal is to balance our budget by July 1st, 2028. And you might say, why July 1st, 2028? And it's because good government practices say that when you see a shortfall, you try to correct that within three years. So what does that mean for us in addressing this $300 million shortfall? We have laid out a plan to cut at least 93 million in administrative costs, discretionary spending. We want to raise a minimum, a minimum of $48 million a year in new sustainable revenue and service. It's about a 10% cut, but at least 159 million in service. Now tom's going to go through all of that. But I just want to to let you all know that while there are cuts in front of you today and that your constituents are reacting to, they're still yet another round to come. And those get even more severe. If we don't get more revenue. Go ahead next slide. So some internal actions. We have jumped on this goal. We have reduced our internal spending by $150 million through efficiencies. We've reduced discretionary spending. We have canceled any future planned bus service increases. And we've also eliminated 68 positions and layoffs of 26 employees. We've proposed service cuts, which tom will talk about. But just so you know, there are more internal cuts and more layoffs still to come. This was just our first round. Next slide. Some external efforts that you might have seen. We've increased our fares January 1st. We have another one that will be going out to the community later this this year, which we would increase fares again in 2028 if approved by our board. We've been working with lawmakers, much like you all have around the state transportation package. It's up in the air while we continue to have discussions with lawmakers and whoever will talk to us. We're not counting on that increase in stiff, which was a part of I know your gas tax increase because of the referral. So right now we're not assuming any increase in revenue from that. We also have plans for service changes and cuts. We've cut in November 30th. Some small changes. March 1st here. Coming up, another round of small changes. The large one that's in front of you that tom will talk to is a larger cut in August, 20th August of 2026. And then yet another round in August of 2027. We have been listening to a lot of our community. I heard chair Clark, your notions around community engagement. That's what we're doing. And I'll hand it off to jennifer, who will go through all of that for us.
103 Good morning. So before developing the proposals that tom will be discussing today.
104 Could you put your name on the record?
105 Oh, I apologize, jennifer kooser. I'm the director of community affairs and engagement at TriMet. Before developing the proposals that tom will be discussing, we consulted with the community community about the types of service cuts we could make in September and October. We asked people to rank nine general types of cuts. This was focused on the general concepts around how we distribute service across the region, frequency, or how often service comes span or what hours service operates and coverage, or where service operates. Other than shortening the Green line, we didn't ask about specific routes. It was more about understanding people's values. For each of the nine types of potential cuts, we provided information about its relative cost savings and potential impact to riders, and we asked people to rank each type of cut, in order of which we should make first, to which we should make last. In a minute, tom will talk about what we heard and how this feedback informed the proposals that we're now asking for feedback on. During that fall outreach process, we got the word out online, through news media, and with information posted at major stops. Most of the nearly 5000 responses we received were online, but we also hosted in-person events where people could talk with staff and where we connected with more than 600 people. We partnered with community based organizations to recruit, co-host and provide interpretation and incentives for people with limited english proficiency. And although we heard from a really diverse cross-section of people, there was no significant difference among responses geographically or demographically. Now, tom will tell you what we heard and how it influenced the proposal.
106 Good morning and thank you for having me again. My name is tom mills. I'm the director of mobility and planning. Excuse me, mobility, planning and policy at TriMet. Yes. I'm here today to talk a little bit about the the service plan that we have proposed to the community. I want to start by talking a little bit about our service planning guidelines. You see here in front of you five values that the TriMet board adopted, probably about 12 to 15 years ago. First, starting looking at equity and ensuring that we're providing service to low income communities and communities of color, but also looking at demand and making sure where we're, you know, taking people to where they want to go. And one of the more one of the most important ones is productivity. That is really ensuring that we're getting as many rides as possible for every dollar. We're spending connections, of course, you know, trying to connect as many of the job centers, hospitals, the colleges, training centers, etc. And then lastly, growth. And that's a hard one for us because a lot of times the growth is on the edge of the region where there's less density. And so we try to keep up with that growth, but sometimes we struggle with that. Next slide please. So as jennifer mentioned we looked at nine options that we put to the community through our survey on this matrix here. Those options are listed on the left. And when you look at this matrix Green is good. Red is bad and yellow is in between. And so we kind of ran these options through our matrix here. First looking at well how much money could we save in each of these. And so you see a lot of Green. That's good news. But then when you look at well okay what's going to be the impact to our riders, you start to see some red next to some of those Green ones where it would the cost savings. So that gave us a little bit of pause. The next evaluation was the degree of impact. So for example, eliminating a line completely has a bigger impact than, say, reducing the frequency. How often the bus comes or not coming as late at night. So you see a kind of a mix of the Green, yellow and red in there. Next was the survey results. So when we received the survey results, what we really heard from people was number one, look to shorten the Green line. Yes, it's frustrating to make a transfer, but at least people can still make their trips and then similarly try to look for efficiencies within your network where busses are running close together. You know, can you serve the same area with one bus line instead of two bus lines? Two bus lines instead of three bus lines. So that was definitely high up in the list. Some of the things they said do not cut were do not cut. The frequent service bus lines, the lines that come every 15 minutes, seven days a week, that's eight. And between the bus lines, the frequent service bus lines and the max, that's over 80% of our ridership. They also said try not to cut late night service and weekend service. And then lastly, we didn't do this for every option, but we did an analysis called a job access impact analysis where we tried to see, well, how far how many jobs can one access in 45 minutes if we make this change. So we're able to see, for example, with frequency, if the bus doesn't come as frequently as it currently does, and this analysis includes wait time, that means you're going to wait longer. And then over 45 minutes you can travel, you can't travel as far, and therefore you can't access as many jobs. So we kind of ran this analysis as well to really understand what the impact would be to job access. Next slide. So with that information we came up with our proposal that is now currently in front of the public. The first line there, the fy 26 reductions. Those are those small cuts that jc was referring to. I really kind of refer to those as trimmings. And then it includes having the Green line max only operate between gateway transit center and Clackamas town center. A number of network changes really. This proposal is weighted towards those three, followed by the elimination of three low ridership lines. Some bus lines that serve high schools that where we get a lot of trips, a lot of students riding to the school. So we'll keep those trips. But the rest of the day is really not much ridership. So maybe we just trim it back to just the high school trips. And then lastly, a couple lines where we are proposing to change the frequency late at night. Next slide. So I'm going to go just through a sampling of these changes. I can't go through all of them. There's 35 of them. But just to give you a sense of the kind of major buckets. So the first of course is shortening the Green line. Max, you see on the left is the current condition where the Green line goes all the way to downtown and to PSU. And then the second is what we're proposing. Some of the impacts of this, of course, possibly transferring for folks at gateway transit center to the red and Green lines along the banfield max service would go from operating every five minutes to operating every 7.5 minutes. So we think a 2.5 minute wait is is palatable to most people. The headway, headway meaning the frequency, the frequency on the transit mall for max would go from every 7.5 minutes to every 15 minutes, because now just the yellow orange line would be operating. However, there are a lot of busses on the mall so people could still get up and down the mall. One of the important things to note is nearly every Green line max station has a bus line going to downtown, and in fact, many of them are those frequent service bus lines. And in fact, today, even some of those max stations, if you get on the bus, you'll probably get to downtown faster than if you ride all the way up to gateway and then out to banfield, especially if you're going to PSU or the south part of downtown. Next slide please. So the next are the network changes. And I'm just going to show you a couple of these. And this is kind of a classic one here on the left I'm showing we have both bus line 44 and bus line 75 serving downtown saint johns and going up to pier park. What we're and the bus line 75, which is the blue line that runs every 15 minutes, line 44 every 30 to 45 minutes or so. What we're proposing is having line 44 just end in downtown saint johns, and people wanting to go to pier park and transfer to line 75, again, a frequent service line. Next slide. And here I think, is our only proposal in east Portland. So on the left is a map showing the orange line is a frequent service bus line. It comes every 15 minutes, seven days a week. And then you can see on 102nd avenue there. It's duplicated by that red line, line 22, and a little bit by that blue line, line 23. Rather than having those two lines duplicate the 87 on 102nd avenue and both doing loops in the neighborhood, we actually connect them together. You see this on the right and have them go to parkrose transit center. What this means is the frequency on the red line. The folks who live in that neighborhood will decrease slightly from about every half hour to somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, but the frequency on the people south of there actually increases because their service right now is hourly, and their service will then go up to 30 to 40 minutes. Additionally, there will be weekend service for those folks where they don't have it today, so there's actually some improvements here. Next slide please. So when you take those I just want to stop for a second and say when you take the the trimmings that jc had talked about the Green line change and those network changes are our recommendation or excuse me, this totals to about 5.79 percentage points of our 10%. And I forgot to mention this whole proposal doesn't get us to 10%. This whole proposal gets us to about 6.5%. As jc mentioned, we're going to have another round next year to get us the the rest of the way. But in this, of that 6.5%, just these three kind of major buckets of changes total to 5.79 percentage points. Next slide. So there are three lines we're recommending that be eliminated. None of these lines are in the city of Portland. They're in Gresham westland and tualatin sherwood. They're very low ridership lines. And that's why we're recommending we eliminate them. Next slide please. Also we we're recommending some changes to the frequency, meaning how often busses come at night. They're what we call short lines. So a short line is all day long. A bus runs the entire length. But maybe at a certain point at night when ridership is lower, it turns around early before the end of the line and then goes back. And maybe not every bus goes to the end of the line. So that's what we're recommending here. Starting in the city of Portland, it would just be line 72. I want to emphasize line 72 is our 82nd avenue line. There would be no changes to the frequency on that. It's just the killingsworth portion after 8 p.m. Would go from 15 minutes every 15 minutes to every 30 minutes. And then after 10 p.m. Every 60 minutes. I also want to point out that we would turn the bus around right where we're currently proposing breaking the line for the future 82nd avenue. So essentially, this mimics what 82nd avenue would look like. Next slide please. I think this is our last one. So as I mentioned there are some bus lines that serve high schools. Those trips are full. But the rest of the day they're really not very full. And so what we're recommending is that we discontinue the trips where in the middle of the day they're not so full. The first, of course, is line 63. It serves Washington park. That has been with us for decades. I understand it's difficult to hear that potentially going away, but it's important to remember that we do operate the max to Washington park, and that runs every 7.5 minutes between the blue and red line and from from that station. One can catch the the free Washington park shuttle, which operates every 15 minutes. In the summertime, the peak season, and then line 51, which serves both lincoln high school and ida b wells high school. We would continue to serve those trips, and but we would no longer serve the trips later in the day. Next slide. So when you add these up, they are only 0.7% of the overall 6.5% of the proposal. So again just reiterating this is really weighted towards the Green line and those network changes. Next slide please. So anytime we do a big change like this we have to fda guidelines ensure that we do an analysis to make sure that we're not disproportionately burdening low income communities. And there's no disparate impact to minority communities. Likewise, we have to make sure that there's no disproportionate benefit to high income communities and no disproportionate benefit to non-minority communities. And in all cases, this proposal is in compliance with title vi guidelines. Lastly, I just want to talk about lift. Lift is trimet's paratransit service. It provides service within three quarters of a mile of any fixed route, bus or max line. And because of that, we're able to draw a boundary around it. The boundary would retract on this under this proposal, but only in those areas where lines are eliminated completely. And none of those lines are in the city of Portland. So the city of Portland would not see an impact to the lift lift service unless somebody wanted to travel to one of these areas where the boundary is retracting. Next slide please. So we are in the middle of our comment period. It will go until the end of this month. And then we're going to take and we're already reading through the comments and kind of understanding where the pain points are and thinking about how we would want to change this proposal, understanding that it's pain for everybody. But where those real unicorns, where where people are going to be especially impacted and and trying to see how we might want to change the proposal. So in in on March 11th, we will be releasing a revised proposal. And then on March 18th, there will be a board listening session for the public to come and speak to the TriMet board. And then after a week after that, the proposal will go to our board for the first reading vote on in April. And then we are planning to have the cuts go into effect in late August. If you've been following, we at one point were saying we were going to do them in November. We are moving them to August because these do impact students, and we want to make sure they don't have to change their commutes mid school year. Next slide. And then I'm going to turn it back over to jennifer.
107 Thanks. So now we're focused on collecting feedback about the specific cuts proposed to begin in August. The proposals as tom has shared, are very data driven. They're focused on cost, ridership and what we heard from the community during our outreach this fall. Now we want to hear if we've missed anything that could help refine the proposals. We started sharing information on January 5th through our digital communications channels. And again, we've posted information at major stops and stations on the digital displays and at some of the other higher ridership stops across the region. We've also sent mail to the 253,000 physical addresses within a quarter mile of affected stops, and our customer service team has been writing potentially affected lines and talking with folks at transit centers. Next slide. This is a list of the eight in-person open houses we're holding across the month of of January across the region, some co-hosted with community based organizations. We do have one more this month on Wednesday at the rosewood initiative. We're also partnering with community based organizations for some invite only focus groups for communities that may feel safer in that kind of space. Next slide. So we also held some online open houses where people where staff walked through each of the proposals and gave people a chance to ask questions before completing the survey. So we're really trying to get as much feedback as possible through the online survey. As of this weekend, we had received over 6000 responses. Of course, people can comment during the board meetings, as tom shared, and all of this input will really help refine the proposals for August and help us plan for the future cuts that we'll be needing to make. And those are all of our slides and we're ready for your questions.
108 Thank you so much, all of you. I just have to say, before I turn it over to my colleagues to ask their questions, that I'm very impressed and confident, having worked with all of you or not, john, but with in having gone through these dips before, that you do an excellent job, an excellent job in community outreach. I have to say, as well as being data driven, I just I really appreciate none of this is easy. It's very painful. But I think you do an exemplary job of of measuring and and reaching out. And I really appreciate that. With that, let me ask councilor Koyama Lane to ask her question or make her comment.
109 First, I want to thank our chair and vice chair for planning these really helpful discussions today. Thank you to the folks from TriMet for being here with us. It's I really appreciated hearing that TriMet is prioritizing the lines that children rely on to get to and from school. I, my constituents, have been very concerned about trimet's budget reductions. I also am concerned especially about the mobility of people in my district and across the city and region. I want to encourage us to preserve services for our low income communities. It sounds like you all are thinking about this. Communities of color. Children, users with mobility challenges like older adults, people with disabilities, and caregivers. Specifically. I had a question. I'm wondering if TriMet has identified the lines that have a higher proportion of people who are transit dependent, and if so, is it a priority to preserve services on those lines specifically?
110 You? Tom?
111 Yeah, I'll go ahead and answer that question as best as I can. So we do have something called an equity index where we we look at kind of ten factors for equity. And they tend to, you know, equity aligns pretty well with transit dependency. So that those factors would include income. They would include race. They would include older adults, people with disabilities, etc. And then by doing that we can then map where those communities are to give us a sense of where transit dependency largely is. And so, yes, we do do that. And of course we are trying, as mentioned, about the service standards or the service planning guidelines, we include equity in our analysis as we make these decisions.
112 Thank you. Tom councilor Koyama Lane. Do you have another question?
113 Yeah, I have one other question. A little bit of a lower priority since it's about a different agency. But with respect to TriMet, lift reductions, can ride connection support any of the services that are being cut or are they also cutting services? Are you able to speak to that at all?
114 Yes. So every two years there's a process that TriMet and ride connection, as well as other transit providers around the region, go through where we allocate money to them. I don't have the number in my head, but it's millions of dollars that we transfer over to ride connection to help us serve the same community of people. I the a lot of the money comes from the state through the statewide transportation improvement funds. We don't yet have those. The latest revenue projections on there but yet but we hope they will at least stay the same as they have been over the last several years.
115 And councilor Koyama Lane I would add that we are looking at the lyft reductions and identifying the actual riders that are being affected by the potential cuts, and we are reaching out to them directly to discuss potential alternatives with them.
116 Okay, great. Thank you. That's it for me.
117 Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane. Great. Great questions, councilor Smith.
118 Thank you. It is a little unnerving that all of us are having to take such huge cuts in our budgets, and which means it's huge cuts to the services that the people of Portland and the state of Oregon have to experience. I was looking, doing a little research, and I was trying to figure out if you all had applied for any of the community initiated grants from either of the two senators. I was looking on the list and I didn't see TriMet, I saw metro, I saw the city of Portland. We're getting some money. 1.5 grant and they just came out this past weekend, and I was thinking that it was for the city of Portland. We got clean water improvements, 1.092 to support the city's network of pump stations. Improvements will include replacing failing equipment, which will help to ensure that the city of Portland remains compliant with the water quality requirements. And I was just wondering if you all are planning to, through any of the any of the committees to apply for any of those federal dollars, because those are due, and I think that will help you with your 2028 goal, because they will come out in 2027 to meet that gap that you may have. I don't know if you all are planning to do that at all. Is that through government relations?
119 Yes. Thank you, councilor Smith. We are absolutely working on those applications. We work with our entire federal delegation to make requests every year. I believe that we are currently working on something with one of our representatives to replace lift vehicles, and we are always working with our two senators in tandem on these projects as well. So, yes.
120 Maybe they didn't give a complete list of all the things that they supported. I was just wondering, did you all get any of those dollars?
121 I'm not sure exactly the status of that right now. I'm happy to follow up with you offline with that and talk about what exactly we applied for and what we're getting.
122 That would be great. That is the only other outside entity of a funding that's that's new, that many of us in government will have the opportunity to, to get in addition to our, our general fund money that can be used just about anywhere. You mentioned lincoln, ida b wells, they are going to keep their bus service, and the bus service is going to be cut down later in the day. What does that mean later in the day? What time does later in the day mean?
123 So I believe the the bell times for Portland public schools is 830.
124 Okay.
125 So those trips, those lines would be cut down to just providing the school service. So the last arrival would be at a little bit before 830. And then we would not run those trips until the school let out, which I believe is.
126 You'll come back because those kids have to come home.
127 Yes. It's okay.
128 So we would do we would time our our lines and we already do this with some lines where they only really serve school trips. And so their time to the bell times in the morning and then the bell time in the afternoon.
129 Okay, okay. I was I was just trying to figure that out. So what assumptions are you using for ridership recovery and fare revenue through July 20th through July 1st, 2028? And how sensitive is this plan to those assumptions? If ridership is x lower or higher, how much service can be restored, or how much deeper cuts will you be able to make? Not in this first year, but in the second year to meet the 2028 goal. I mean, have you come up with some scenarios?
130 I'll first start off and then hand to tom. I think that what we what we have seen with our ridership is that it started to plateau and or even dip. So I think that we are at kind of that new constant when it comes to ridership. So we are only banking on that amount of fare revenue and forecasting it for the months and years ahead. Hopefully it will grow. Fingers crossed when you are that in relationship to our budget deficit. Without new revenue, we have to cut. And so ridership could go through the roof, but we still need that that sustainable revenue source because of our costs of just continued to increase. And so we want to encourage ridership. We want to build it. We continue to do programs. What have you to build ridership and encourage ridership. However, it is definitely our future and us bringing back the service that were cut or even contemplating new service is going to be reliant on a new revenue source.
131 And I don't want to confuse folks because ridership does not really pay the bills. It's the payroll tax.
132 Correct.
133 And so if I were you all, I would be thinking about ways in which to increase the amount of entrepreneurs that we have in the city and maybe partnering with the Oregon entrepreneurs association or some of the chambers of congress. And where are you going to get the most increase in in additional entrepreneurs are through the latino chamber, through the filipino chamber of commerce, through the african American chamber of commerce. Those numbers are saying that those those entrepreneurs are going to increase over the next 5 or 10 years. So any way that you can figure out how to how to partner with those folks and increase their numbers, that increases your numbers. One of the things as a business owner, when you're looking at your bottom line, I used to own a consulting firm and I look at it, but I don't know that you really smile at taxes, but the one tax that I really did not mind paying at payroll was that I didn't have a choice. They automatically take it out anyway. Is is the TriMet tax, because I knew that that is important for our young people to get back and forth to school and for folks who who don't have any transportation at all. And that is their way to to make a living for their families, especially out in east Portland. So maybe you might want to figure out some ways in which I'm not saying that you don't already do that, but I tried to figure out ways that I could triple the number of entrepreneurs in addition to ridership, because that's not going to move. The ridership is not going to move the dial as much as the payroll taxes.
134 So absolutely brilliant.
135 Thank you.
136 Councilor Smith will take that idea.
137 Okay. Thank you.
138 And when I'm finished, you can hire me as a consultant.
139 So folks, we colleagues, we only have about ten minutes left. So, councilor Morillo.
140 Thank you, chair Clark, thank you all so much for being here. As you know, I am TriMet dependent. And so this is a matter that is very close to home for me. And many of my constituents are as well. And I appreciate what's been laid out as far as the different options, I think this was very informative and helpful. I have two questions. One, how much does TriMet spend on security, and was that one of the options as far as things to cut?
141 So that wasn't an option that we brought to the public? The only options that we brought to the public were what jennifer laid out as far as the service proposal, however, I will tell you that we are reevaluating our safety and security levels on board because we've nearly tripled our budget over the past, what, five years. And so really looking at figuring out what we need when it comes to safety and security on board, what that looks like, we have gone through many iterations of safety and security on board. We've taken, as you at the city, have experienced a loss in police officers over the years. We too have seen that we've filled the gaps with our safety response teams, much like the Portland response team to do homeless outreach on board as other eyes and ears, we've increased our customer service. We know, though, that with our budget, we have to figure out the right level and what that is. So we're trying to find that goldilocks approach when it comes to putting safety and security on board. So yes, will there be cuts to our safety and security? Yes. But hopefully we do it in a smart way and informed in a meaningful way.
142 I appreciate that. I would like to see more specific numbers on how much is spent on security, and I think in the surveys that folks have given out, you know, they say that people really emphasize the need for safety and security. I'm a five foot two woman that rides the bus. I've ridden the bus for ten years. Of course, I have seen safety incidents down everywhere I go because I am a young woman, but I also saw in new york city in 2024 when there was incidents of violence on their subways. They sent in the national guard, they sent in a bunch of police. And then the next day, a woman was pushed off the subway into the tracks by her boyfriend. Another shooting happened. And so it doesn't necessarily increase safety to have more and more security available. Those are societal ills that need to be addressed with resources, and that's our responsibility as a city council and as a governing body. But I'm curious what people would say if if you had to cut a core line or you had to cut some security, what people would say, I would like to see the answers to that, because I also think that safety happens when the busses and the max is full and you're surrounded by a lot of people. I think people are less willing to act out. And frankly, I think that there is a broader discussion with portlanders as far as there is a difference between feeling unsafe and being unsafe, and unhoused people are not inherently more unsafe than a man in a suit. In fact, I have faced more violence from men in suits on the bus than anyone else. So that's just something that I would like more data on if possible. And my and I think my constituents would be interested in that discussion too.
143 May I address that? Councilor? We hear you, and we have a lot of data that proves exactly what you say is far as people want that perception of safety on board. And we're still, you know, even over the years it's changed. It's and we're still continuing to understand that and listen more to our riders, which we do on board surveys both spring and fall. So yes, and we're trying to do it, you know, with through data. But even anecdotally we hear the same thing. One of the things that we do see on board, it's not necessarily crimes, it's just uncivil behavior. And so again, going back to your conversation with portlanders and people around the community, how do we how do we influence that? So your point is very well taken.
144 Yeah. Thank you. And I, I look forward to getting the feedback from all the community town halls that you guys are doing on that too. Because I just with the choices that we have, I think if the bus is more full, people might feel safer even with less security. And so I would like to see that laid out. I had other questions about the school, the bus lines that are only going to go to school to get people there, and then to get people home. Does that account for like free lunch and breakfast or free breakfast programs that happen before school? And then, like, what if a student is in a sports program after school? Does that mean that that bus line is not going to be there like two hours after school closes? Because that would definitely deprive students who ride the bus of being able to do after school activities unless they were able to carpool somehow.
145 So to answer your first question about school breakfast programs, and I'm not familiar with when they occur, but typically we operate a couple trips in the morning because there's so many students riding that we can't accommodate them all on one bus. And so so there is typically at least one early trip and then one trip that's, you know, right before the bell time, as we probably all remember as teenagers ourselves, nobody really likes to get to school early. They want to pack into that last bus right before the bell time. But we do offer a trip earlier. Similarly, at the end of the day, we have more than one trip leaving the school. However, we do not. We would not be offering a trip later in the evening for students who have a sports practice or band practice or some other activity. Unfortunately, we would not be offering that.
146 Gotcha. Okay, that's really helpful. Yeah. I think that if there's an earlier bus, that means that kids that use the free school lunch program for breakfast right before class starts would get the assistance they needed. So really appreciate that. And I understand making difficult choices. It sounds like kids are going to have to figure out carpools and stuff like that, which that those are the times that we live in. Thank you.
147 Thank you, counselor. Counselor Green.
148 Thank you, madam chair. And I'll I'm mindful of the time here. Thanks for bringing this unpleasant discussion forward. But it is it is. We have to face it. I'm curious to know a little bit more about this. $48 million in revenue. That's that's new revenue, right? Correct. Do you guys are you prepared to share what what the proposal might look like at this time?
149 Well, it's largely based on staff increases. That's the minimum of the staff increase that we actually asked for. And that was actually approved. But that the next round, as you all are going back for the gas tax in 2027, we also will be doing the same. One of the key pieces of legislation that we are working with Salem around is a funding transit task, transit funding task force that we hope will be approved in the 2026 short session to help set us up for a greater, greater success in the longer session in 2027. So hopefully by bringing more people to the table, more voices business, and likewise that we'll have a greater chance of success at passing a transportation package that has some revenue for TriMet 48 million, 48 million a year is the minimum that we are needing and seeking. Obviously, we'd like to do more because we want to respond to the community's requests of more service. So that helps the $48 million plus our increase in in any fares helps stabilize the organization. And that's what you're really seeing us do right now.
150 Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. And then finally, in the last couple of minutes here, you said that 80% of the ridership is really on the frequent service lines. Is that and the max is that right?
151 That's correct.
152 Okay. So that's about 4 million rides per year. Right. So 5 million is about the annual rides.
153 60 annual is is 6560.
154 Yeah, 68 million a year.
155 Okay. I must have got the scales wrong on the I'm looking at monthly figures okay. On average 5 million a month. So I think the thing I'm worried about right now is if we lose headways, if our headways increase, I think ridership is a function of frequency. And so as because I'm looking at the data here over time and it looks like, you know, there's some seasonal drop offs as you get into the colder months. But also we've got fewer covered shelters and we've got longer periods where people are out there waiting. And so this plateau effect I think is also a function of us cutting service. And so I know that you guys are trying to manage a very impossible task, but I am worried that we're entering the death spiral of a transit system. And so to the extent that we have the capability at city council to create the conditions to enable us a success by TriMet, we must take urgent action on that. And the thing that comes to my mind right now is, you know, in 2023, the planning commission forwarded a proposal to city council to to conduct zoning and code changes for the inner east side. We haven't acted on that yet, and I'm going to continue saying that the same way. My colleague continues talking about cip, because it's important to remind folks that there is something in play that we can do. And if we don't take action on that this year, then we're going to put TriMet at we're going to continue to put TriMet in an impossible situation because you guys can't print money. And, you know, the law of economics prevails. So we need to do what we can to do land use changes to allow for that increased ridership. So that way we can pay for the increased in frequency, which then generates more ridership and so on and so forth. So I, I understand the problem that you're facing and we want to or I want to work with you guys to help see see how we can get there. So I think we're out of time.
156 Councilor Green, I think if I didn't know better, I'd. I'd consider you a transmission.
157 Well, maybe if I get run out of office, there might be a job there for me.
158 Exactly right.
159 Just really quickly. Thank you so much for that. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I just want to ask, I didn't see anything in your slideshow about the commuter rail and cost per ride. Are you all talking about commuter rail?
160 Yes. Thank you for asking about that. So just to remind ourselves, when you say commuter rail, I believe you're talking about the westside express service, which operates between Beaverton, Washington square, downtown tigard, tualatin and wilsonville. The cost per ride is quite high on that. It's 80 about $84 per ride. It is on the table, although it is not part of this proposal. There are a lot of a number of contracts that we are involved with for operating that that's operated by Portland and western. They own the tracks, and so we have an agreement with them. We are looking at that agreement. Additionally, we have an agreement with the fta on that. We are going to be engaging fta about that as well. So more to come on that. But yeah, it is on the table as a possible change.
161 I'm glad to hear that. And I know what some of those restrictions are. And just lastly, it looks like we're cutting some suburban lines. Is there any threat from suburban communities to try to get out of the TriMet district?
162 Yes there is. It is it is an ongoing conversation that we are having with our suburban friends. Trimet funds a lot of community shuttles through our stiff funding to the tune of around 12 million.
163 7.5 million.
164 Per year, 7.5 million a year. So we have been working with them over the years to provide transit service in those areas that may be less dense, may be have farm to market roads. And so it has been difficult. We are in ongoing conversations with them. We need their support in talking to folks in Salem to get more revenue to help, because we we want to provide that level of service out there. It's just not cost effective and the ridership isn't there. But we know those areas need to be served.
165 Thank you for that. My vice chair here, councilor Morillo, is on jpac, and I'm sure that she can work with some of those suburban communities to keep them on board, to keep them inside the TriMet region.
166 Thank you.
167 All right.
168 Well, I'm the mayor's alternate on jpac, but we can we can have a conversation with him about it, for sure.
169 Great.
170 Thank you so much for being here. Excellent presentation. Good questions, good feedback I think. Really appreciate you taking the time to be here. And it's great to see you all. Good luck. If there's anything else we can do. I think along the lines of what councilor Green was saying, we definitely want to be a partner.
171 So thank you.
172 All very much.
173 Thank you, thank you.
174 Our next meeting is February the 9th, and at that meeting we will have a bridge naming resolution from councilor Morillo, our very own brooklyn bridge. And we're also going to have a presentation from the water bureau. They'll give us an update on the filtration plant. So with that, I will adjourn the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee.