The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-22
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (13,872 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Governance Committee met on September 22, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance before the statement of conduct was read. The session opened with an update from the Council Operations Manager describing coordination among the Council Clerk's office, district administrator offices, and policy analysts, including work to align motion records, agenda scheduling, and confidentiality practices for sponsor information. Discussion followed on committee staffing capacity, workload across eight committees, and possible budgeted policy analyst positions. Councilors discussed prioritization exercises, a possible questionnaire process, and outside facilitation for interpersonal team-building, referencing an upcoming budget cycle and a published opinion piece about council organization. The committee then reviewed a presentation on the Council Governance Handbook, focusing on offsite meetings and field trips, Oregon's Public Meetings Law exemptions for site visits, and recommendations regarding quorum notice, deliberation limits, and possible formal policy development, with input from the City Attorney's office. No members of the public signed up for testimony during the governance community feedback item. The meeting closed with broader discussion of asset management, jurisdictional roles, and potential city-county consolidation. Votes, where they occurred, are recorded in the vote ledger.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Okay. Let's.
1 All right. Good afternoon, everyone. I call the governance committee to order. It is Monday, September 22nd. It is 2:33 p.m. Keelan. Will you please call the roll?
2 Good afternoon. Clerk. Here.
3 Here.
4 Pirtle-guiney here. Ryan. Here. Koyama Lane here.
5 Craig, will you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Welcome to this meeting of the governance committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at. Agenda governance committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. 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 to 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, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Thank you. All right. In today's governance meeting, we will hear from our counsel, operations manager, on how council operations is collaborating across the city to support the work of our council. We will receive a presentation with an update on the council governance handbook, with a focus on offsite meetings and field trips, and we will welcome testimony from members of the public on governance related topics. And before we head into that, I've been setting aside a little time for chair and vice chair announcements. I don't have much that's top of mind, but something that I'm just feeling right now is wanting to share some appreciation for everyone on this committee. I always like coming to this committee. I do believe that every one of you come here ready to dig in and care about governance, and I appreciate the this committee that you make up that you put together. Council president, I think we're a good group. All right. And with that, oh, vice chair Ryan, did you have any remarks or did you want to save yours for when items come up. Yeah okay. Great. All right. Keelan, can you please read the first item.
8 Council operations update.
9 Wonderful. We're welcoming up dana richardson, our council operations manager, to speak about the work council operations is doing to connect and collaborate across the various offices that support the work of council. Thank you. I know we have a lot of offices and your new on the job and you've just jumped right in. So glad to have you.
10 Good afternoon, and I appreciate the time here today with the committee. For the record, my name is dana richardson and I am your council operations manager. So the council operations really serves as the backbone of the council. We provide strategic services, nonpartisan policy development and practical solutions to support your work. I'm here today to share some of the kind of the behind the scenes work that we're doing to try and make the work here flow properly. This includes collaboration and coordination with the clerk's office, as well as administrators from each of the deputy city administrator offices. So turning to the work we've been doing with the clerk's office, actually, a couple of weeks before I joined the team, they had started meeting regularly. Our policy analysts and coordinator with the city clerk staff to try and identify gaps in the workflow and the opportunities as well. So we're doing really exciting stuff, like making sure that the motion and action that you, that the chair makes during a meeting is the same as what the clerk would make, because sometimes the clerk helps, and then making sure that that matches the disposition of the item that gets listed. So you may not have noticed, but my folks were keenly aware that there were different types of motions. So we've been working with the clerk's team to get that all cleaned up. Make sure that your decisions are clear and consistent. We continue to work on the roles and responsibilities between our staff, particularly before, during, and after committee hearings. We are working to make sure we are sharing the order of agenda items. Sometimes those will get finished late, but it's really helpful for the the, my team and the clerk's team to understand what the chair needs to happen and when. So we're working to smooth that out. We're also coordinating different versions of calendars that you may see between the the committees and the council itself. So I will jump to a question that I've already heard come up a couple times during my tenure, which is what's the difference between the council clerk from the council operations and the council itself? So just as a recap, you all know that the council clerk produces the council meeting agendas. They record the council actions, they prepare council documents to be archived to the permanent record. They also track council absences from meetings as well as virtual participation. And they are really the keepers of the city charter. The code and policy documents and have stated that the separation of that office from the council itself supports impartial administration of the city business. The structural separation provides independent management of city documents and policies, and supports accessibility to the legislative process. And now I'll just provide a few remarks on our work with each of the district. City administrators has a key coordinating staff person. We've recently started meeting between the analysts, myself and our coordinator with those folks to work on coordination, communication and processes that are clear. So the types of things we're working on with them is visibility into agendas. What does the chair need? What questions might be needed? How can they be prepared to answer questions? We are finding that sometimes administrative staff will be aware of a topic that ops staff don't know might come up, and vice versa. So trying to see how we can share that information. We're looking at the materials that we use to prepare for meetings. There are different types of briefing forms that are being used. We're trying to kind of align those trying to use things like we've got a tracker of the flow of information, of topics, making sure we're using that effectively, and then also clarifying when questions come up at a committee or council hearing, who follows up, who makes sure that you get the information that you've asked for. So we're just trying to regularize some of those activities. I do want to be really clear here that when we are working, particularly my policy analyst with internal or external partners, the information that we have that we get from a sponsor or committee chair is confidential. So unless you are ready and you want that to be shared and you've informed the analyst of that, the default is to keep that information confidential so that the sponsor has the control over the sharing of the information. I want to make sure you all knew that. So in short, we're pursuing these collaborations to provide strategic, nonpartisan support and strengthen the council's work. We're hopeful that by building in some consistency, visibility and trust into the processes, we can be the backbone. You all can be working with portlanders every day, so I appreciate the time here and I'm happy to answer any questions.
11 Thank you so much, councilor Clark.
12 Thank you, madam chair. I have a variety of questions or comments. First of all, thank you so much for the work that you're doing, clarifying roles and so forth. The first thing I want to ask you is, can you talk a little bit more about the district coordinators or the district just it seems like all four districts are using them differently. I'm not sure what the original vision was for them. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
13 Sure. I should describe my entire team. So just to be clear, there are three policy analysts in my team that work primarily with committees. I've got a coordinator shulie as the comms person is in my team. And then I hope I didn't forget anyone. And then the four district admins all report to me as well. So it's interesting. This is a question maybe as day two, maybe not day one. But it was really clear to me and I'd heard, I think even my interview process, I heard these are all different. So it's interesting. I've met with them as a group, I've met with them individually. I have reviewed their initial job description and then you all may not remember, but we in our office are keenly aware that in about January of this year, the council president and former council operations manager put out a memo saying, here's what we really see these folks doing. It is a little bit different than what they applied for. What I've learned in talking with each of them, it's clear to me that they are all spending a significant amount of time scheduling as needed in the different offices and supporting constituent responses. So I can't say they're all at 90, but I feel confident they're all above 75 somewhere 80. So, so and then I do think there's a variety of other ways in which they're used. Sometimes they get to dig into a policy issue. I've heard about them supporting a town hall, different research issues, pcard travel. So I do think there's some variation kind of in that last top part of the work, but I think there's a lot of consistency below that.
14 Okay. That's really helpful. Can I ask another question? So recognizing that we're still in a transition right between one form of government and another, and we're still revealing policies from the past council that may no longer be working for us, that we may want to change. And I'm wondering if your office has the bandwidth or the capacity to start looking at, really, what are those administrative versus legislative actions? Maybe that's more of a legal question, but I think these are going to start coming up. It started already most recently. I think it was the extension of the parking hours of 7 to 10, which was an administrative action. But a past council enabled the administration to do that. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but that's something that we may want to take up again, to take back some responsibilities, but or give others away. I just that clarifying the difference between administrative and legislative may increasingly become something that we want you to think about. Just to note that that that may be beginning, and maybe that's something that you do with the legal department. But I think this is just the beginning of it. And the more we get into the next budget and as things evolve here and we really get our sea legs, that more of those issues may come up. Thank you.
15 Thank you, councilor, councilor Dunphy.
16 Thank you. You know, I'm I was one of the folks who forced a conversation on this body about our composition of our our committees. We have too many committees. And we are asking too much of your staff. And the result of that was we actually added a meeting to everybody's schedule, actually two meetings a month to everybody's schedule. How are your staff doing? And is the workload so unbearable at this point that it's becoming a staffing issue for you? Is there a action that this body needs to do in order to try and accommodate your limited policy team?
17 Thank you for the question. It is not easy to maintain support for eight committees as well as additional council meetings. I would say we would not want to go beyond the number of committees we currently have. I will say you all were generous in the budget. In the budgeting process. There is another policy analyst budgeted for at this time. I'm not pursuing it. I want to wait and see how things go with your discussions on committees before, you know, committing to an fte. And I know I've got two of my analysts in the room. They're probably just like, tell them we're dying. I'm not sure we're dying, but it's a lot.
18 It is a lot. Yeah, I still bullish on getting this body to refine our work and narrow their scope of our committees, though it does not sound like there is a common agreement at this moment. So hopefully by the turn of the new year we'll have something new. Additionally, you come to this job with a great experience and great institutional understanding of how organizations work. And so you've got some fresh eyes right now to understand some of the structural misalignments that we have, some of the things that were good intentions but maybe aren't working the way they should. I appreciate that you and I have a regular check in. I would like to just offer that either our regular check in, or this body would be a phenomenal place for you to be able to give any recommendations you see about some of those structural issues. I'm really I'm heartened to hear about your collaboration with the council clerk's office to figure out who's on first and how your two bodies work together, and there are other situations where I can already see that you are helping pull the team into a, you know, a defensible structure. If there are structures that are indefensible, if there are structures within this that are simply roadblocks to being able to effectively govern, I sure would welcome your feedback again, either publicly or privately, to be able to just just know that that is your outside perspective would be welcome.
19 I appreciate that.
20 Thank you.
21 Councilor pirtle-guiney. Thank you, vice president.
22 Dana, I want to start by just saying thank you to you and to your whole team. In many ways, when people ask what council operations does and I try to describe it all, it doesn't fit. People don't understand all of the different services that you provide to us. And when I describe it as the glue that helps council actually do our work and provides the nonpartisan support or non-ideological support, I'm not sure how we describe it in a nonpartisan body, but provides that neutral support to ensure that we are all playing the same game here. That makes sense to people. So I just want to say first and foremost that I really appreciate everything you do and everything that your staff do every day, often behind the scenes, often not noticed much more than the time folks spend sitting here, though we appreciate that also immensely to make sure that we can actually do the business of the city effectively. Thank you.
23 Thank you.
24 I also want to offer I made a note of a similar offer to what councilor Dunphy just said. If there are systems that we should be refining, that we should have conversations about in this space, please let us know. Not only do you bring a wealth of experience personally, but your team sees under the hood what's working, what's not, what's working in one committee and maybe being done differently in another committee. I think in many ways you have the best sight line into all of the work that council does. And please, as you are flagging things, whether that's bringing them to councilor Dunphy, to myself as council president, to councilor Koyama Lane and councilor Ryan as the chair and vice chair of the governance committee. We need to we need to know what that line of sight is showing that we might be missing individually.
25 Thank you. And I will just mention that the work that the chair has been doing through the handbook is, to me, the place where I'm pushing folks to align around that work rather than starting any additional conversations or discussions. I don't see the sense in having, you know, multiple process conversations, you know, spread out in separate areas. I really I'm pushing toward the work that the chair has been doing and her staff as well, and my staff.
26 And I know that your team has been a part of that work, which we're discussing later in this meeting as well. So thank you very much.
27 Vice chair Ryan.
28 Thank you. Hi, dana. First of all, thank you for being here. And also, just thank you for how you've been showing up in your early days. It's really been quite inclusive, and I like that you constantly check in with each office on how things are going, and I can already see the difference. So I have a lot of faith in your leadership moving forward. I think now is a good time to just bring this up again. And that's I know we have a lot on our plate, but I think the yesterday's editorial from the Oregonian reminds us that we have to get it together when it comes to how we're organized and people are watching, and I think there's some urgency around this. I also think there's a lot of capacity challenges when we meet as a whole to do this conversation. And so I wanted to daylight it in this meeting that perhaps we could have this committee under the leadership of you, chair, to take this on and go a little deeper about how we could align the line, the conversation, at least, about what is the priorities that this council can collectively come up with and what we can agree upon. And then the the great debate of critical thinking that's desperately needed locally and nationally on this topic. And so we can really have that dialog and move forward so we get more clarity on what those priorities are. And then I think we can then take the breath to figure out what our committees are from that. I think that this is an annual exercise, and most well, performing organizations, and I hope that I know that we want to be a well-performing organization. So I'm just going to put it out again, that maybe we could allow the two of us to maybe work on this a little bit on the side. You have a lot on your plate right now. Council president. There's a few urgencies that landed in your lap just of late, but I really think I I'm kind of taking a media break for the most part. But someone sent me like that article three different ways yesterday, and it was a reminder that people are watching and they care because they love Portland, and they really just want to know where this council of 12 with the mayor is prioritizing our work at this time. So that's a dialog that I want to do now. And I didn't know when I would bring this up, but it seems like this is the appropriate time.
29 Thank you councilor. I also read that opinion piece and. A few people asked what I thought of it. And you know, it's always hard to see criticism of the work that we are doing, but I do think that it points in the direction of the work that we need to be doing as well, even if I think there is good work we're doing that it didn't take into account, and I would be happy to talk more with you about how we can get our systems better in alignment. There's some work that I know I need to bring forward because of language that we put in our governing documents early on, requiring the council president to bring forward any suggestions for changes in October. And that's certainly a place where we might be able to think about some of those pieces.
30 And again, my team is happy to support that work in whatever way we can.
31 I think it's important to note, I think when I would bring this up on the dais with everybody here, there was a threat that it meant your leadership on your specific committee would be dethroned instantly. And I apologize for that confusing confusion. I think what I really want to back up and remind is that it's not about dethroning and stopping the momentum of work, but there are priorities from each committee that could be focused on. There is an opportunity to rethink this. A great week to point out this example where every day we're in here for many, many meetings, we're not able to go out and get the insight that's necessary from being out in the community that really propels our our work and our legislation. And so I do think it's more urgent than we'd like to recognize sometimes, because we're just being hit with so much. But the fact is, portlanders really, really, really want to know how we're focusing on the urgent issues that are exactly focused on Portland and portland's challenges that were here two years ago, that are still here today, and they want to know how we're organizing around that. And so I really do hope that October is basically tomorrow so that we can start working on that. And I know that we just had a very brief moment on this, so I might have caught you off guard. Okay. But I hope that this seems like the right time to daylight that conversation and not have it behind the scenes. Thanks.
32 It's okay if I respond.
33 Oh, please.
34 Yeah, I, I'm really grateful that you're bringing this up. I know it's something that we just kind of started talking about an hour and a half ago. And I will admit, after going through the months of how do we work with a how do we get a retreat? And my office spending a lot of time on that? I felt a little like little a little discouraged and kind of like giving up. And it actually all four of you have kind of been like, don't give up. We can still maybe do some of this work and it might look differently than I had imagined. But I do like this idea of coming back to the table. And I think this is a group that feels really collaborative and focused on this governance piece. And I think this is a place that we can maybe work together and figure out a way that we can move forward on, on some of these pieces.
35 And council chair, do you think that we could I think we could do it in this meeting. Today's agenda is a little bit lighter. It could be a part of the agenda of this meeting, because it seems like there's nothing more important in terms of governance.
36 This one.
37 This meeting here.
38 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought even you were suggesting that we we at one time turned governance into a work session, like inviting other councilors also here. Yeah. Yeah, I think both.
39 I think both things are true. We could have our formal agenda and then and then workshop it in a, in a work session that would bring in the elements that we're missing. And that would be the administration, which the mayor has oversight of. So I think sometimes we're missing the connectivity between the upstairs, the third floor and the executives with the council. And I can't think of a more important time with our budget challenges than now to really work smarter and more efficiently and get on the same page.
40 Thank you so much.
41 Councilor Clark.
42 Thank you, madam vice president, I would like to talk a little bit more about this topic too. But first, let me just say I was remiss in not saying earlier to dana that we really appreciate claire on our committees. Just just a shout out. What a great job she does and how much we appreciate her. She's always on top of things, and we just really appreciate that support. But back to your question about priorities. I absolutely agree. In fact, I don't think it's okay if I mention this councilor Koyama Lane. But we had a little conversation the other day about the possibility of finding somebody else on the outside to help us, particularly the person who worked with us before we were sworn in at PSU, is somebody, and that I'd be willing to help support that in some way if that was a possibility. And I'm glad to hear our council president is already on top of this and thinking about it. And as we were talking, I just thought, is there a role for council ops to play in maybe putting together a questionnaire or just something to kind of get us going and just a, you know, name your top three priorities or just something very simple to get the ball rolling, because I think it's absolutely imperative that as we approach what's going to be a very, very difficult budget, that we identify those priorities as soon as possible. I've also asked the council president to consider either during the fall bump, whatever we're calling it now, to maybe have a special work session on council to understand what's happening to our tax base. And in the downtown in particular, with 30 to 40% decreases in commercial value. And what that means for our property tax receipts, which fund every. You know, much of what we want to do that again, it's imperative that we have these conversations because we're coming up on a very difficult a difficult time. So maybe there's different ways to do it. In the short run, a questionnaire amongst our colleagues looking for outside assistance. But I'm very encouraged and interested to hear what council president is working on.
43 Great. Councilor Dunphy.
44 Thank you. I just yeah, my team flagged that. I forgot to mention one thing. In addition to there was a big code cleanup package that happened at the end of the last year in which the administrators functions were largely defined, but council's functions weren't clearly defined. And we're now running into the situations like you were talking about with the whether, you know, council has the authority to determine rates, but not ours, and the administration chooses ours, but also they don't have the authority to unilaterally say who goes out and puts the no parking sign up. I think we still have a lot of code work to do, and we also have found a couple of situations so far, this council has taken action on one in order to put something back that was removed incorrectly. And my team is doing a really deep dive into the 600 pages of redlined code that were removed to try and understand what what exactly moved, where, why and when and how we're going to be bringing some other things forward, including some conversations about the administration of the code and the funds that are supposed to be going toward from construction, towards certain minority owned contractors. That is not flowing that direction because I don't remember what it stands for. But it's a it's a project that is currently being administered through prosper, and it's largely in the the realm of talking about the bull run and the dollars that we're spending and things like that. You're welcome to. But I was just saying more broadly, I'm just saying that there are some more work that this body has to to define its own role still. And I am happy to work with anybody on this with that. But my team has already got a ton of weird excel spreadsheets going with different color coding that I don't understand, but more work will be coming and please take it.
45 I don't actually remember councilor What cobid stands for. There we go community opportunities and enhancements program, but essentially there is a portion of a percent of dollars on every construction contracting project with the city that is set aside for technical assistance for new. Newish, newer subcontractors so that businesses that have not previously done public sector work can understand how to navigate our process and get into that area of contracting work where there is a lot of opportunity. There's a bit of a disagreement right now over whether that should be used for supporting businesses that are not yet even big enough to bid on public sector work, or whether that should be used specifically for subcontractors on a project to help them with the compliance requirements of that project. And there's a bit of a rub between different parts of the community and different parts of our own city government on how those funds should be, are supposed to be and are being spent.
46 Can I just add that I think TriMet was a trendsetter in that, in breaking down large public sector projects into small, bite sized pieces so that local contractors could actually have that business. And we actually provided small business with that kind of help. So there is a model for that already in this community. At TriMet, the yellow line was where that first happened.
47 Remember that? I just want to say two other quick things. First, to clarify, councilor Ryan and councilor Clark. I'm not working on something specifically around how we prioritize, but rather there's direction that we passed at the beginning of the year for me to come back and talk about how we do our work and what our, our codes say, which could, depending on what we do, lead to how we have those conversations. I also want to flag that while I hope if you do the prioritization conversations and how we all work together conversations today, that is wonderful. I hope it is a good conversation. Personally, I need to step out at a little after 330 so that I can go home and make a holiday dinner before rosh hashanah starts tonight, but I'll look forward to hearing what you all talk about.
48 How can we? Thank you.
49 I'm wondering if we do. Oh, did you want to say something else?
50 I just wondered if we can continue this conversation. I, I kind of like my idea of a questionnaire or just starting something very simple that maybe council ops could help us with, just to begin to get people thinking about priorities. You know, knowing that we're coming into a tough budget. It doesn't have to be anything big, you know, just a small step. And I know. Council president, are you open to still looking for outside help to help us? Improve relationships or working relationships? Are you open to that?
51 I think we've talked about two different things, and I just want to flag this to make sure we're talking about the same thing we've talked about outside help to help with the interpersonal pieces and to do some work with us. You know, normally when new people are elected, you come into an established body with established relationships. And we didn't have that luxury. So to help us jump start establishing those relationships that otherwise sometimes take a few years where you're developing your norms and how you work together. And then we've talked about bringing somebody in to run some sort of strategic planning light process around prioritization. I think the first is more straightforward. I would say categorically, yes, absolutely. If there's an opportunity to work with somebody that we have budget for, to just jump start those relationships and the norm setting, we should absolutely do that. On the second, I think that that is a great thing for us to do. I am a little bit more hesitant only because I think we run into some challenges around what that looks like, around how much what we talk about there actually moves into what folks are willing to do when we leave that room, things like that. But I'm certainly not opposed to it. If if folks are interested in taking that on, I would not. You know, I'll just say from a leadership perspective, I think it's great to do. I just am a little bit more skeptical of the results, which gives me some hesitancy in how we're spending our resources.
52 Well, even if if we did a small questionnaire just to start, people thinking like that might be helpful to think along the lines of what? What are your top priorities as we come into a very difficult budget session?
53 But I.
54 Certainly think tying something to the budget work is a really good idea. Okay.
55 Thank you.
56 On this topic, I think what we could do is the chair and I could focus on that. We could see you as a thought partner around the questionnaire and start to move this along and, and then bring it to this committee and then talk about the work session. So we do need to move that because it's just necessary. And I personally don't think there's hesitation about leaning into this leadership moment to allow us to have that dialog and get on the same page about our priorities. Will there be wonderful debate? Will there be hopefully some critical thinking? Or again, I think our country and our city is starving for that about how we'll get there. Absolutely. But we have to get it started. And I think doing it in the full council without having something that we could move through is difficult. So I think this is a topic that governance can take on, and it gives you a little bit of a that you don't have to be in every meeting, council president, and allow the two of us maybe to, to work to move this along a little bit and then we'll get back to you. I love your suggestion about including others in the city in a questionnaire, because that is where I feel like there's a disconnect. Yeah.
57 Thank you. I think there are a lot of great ideas floating around, and we'll kind of come together and talk about the different ones. I love the idea of questionnaire and want to talk to you more about that. I see it as a possibility. Maybe if we can get clear about what outcomes we might want to come out of some of this work, then we can work with council ops to help us think about what could be some pre work that we do before that. That's a questionnaire where we can put some of our thoughts down and just throwing out there it's a different form of government, not exactly the same but the city of long beach. Their city manager leads their yearly retreat. I don't think mike jordan wants to do that, but we can also think creatively about how we can think outside the box a little bit and think about how we can still maybe talk about, you know, what's answer some questions. Like what? What does it mean if your neighborhoods thriving or if your district or your district is thriving? We can brainstorm what's true today about Portland that you hope will still be in ten years. And that can help lead up some visioning work. And we'll make sure that, of course, that's led also by and connected with council president's leadership. And everyone on this up here on the dais right now, I know cares a lot. And I also I think we can brainstorm some different ideas about what outcomes could be. I don't want us to dive into a full mini retreat, especially because it is rosh hashanah. And but we can maybe throw some ideas that council president can can add on to councilor Clark. Did you want to say anything else? Okay.
58 Wonderful.
59 Thank you so much for joining us. We're clearly very excited to to work with you all and continue to work with you. Thank you so much. I what I wanted to add is, as dana was describing the team, it just felt like that is what the team feels like to me. Professional, a backbone, steady, supporting all the offices, nonpartisan and just greatly appreciate all the work you all are doing. All right. Keelan can you please read the next item.
60 Item two council governance handbook update presentation on off site meetings.
61 All right, colleagues, at our last meeting, we heard about the work that my office and council operations are collaborating on to produce a council governance handbook that will live forever and ever with council ops, but will be a living document that can be changed. And it is meant to inform councilor Staff and the public about how council operates and provide resources and information to help us do our work. So today we'll hear again from aubry and craig to share an example of how this handbook can provide recommendations and some best practices where official council policies don't exist quite yet. They'll discuss an area of interest to many councilors, how we can conduct off site trips to inspect city infrastructure, or learn about city programs while remaining in compliance with oregon's public meetings law. This is so important. I know hands on learning is the the best is amazing. Maybe not always the best, but is always a great way to learn. So before they begin, I want to remind all my colleagues that today is the last day where we asked for folks to submit feedback on the different lists of topics for the handbook that was circulated several weeks ago. Not exactly what will be in each area, but like what those topic headers are. So please send feedback directly to craig and aubry. Or you can also just send it to council operations at Portland Oregon.gov and I will hand things over to craig and aubry.
62 Thank you so much, madam chair, and thank you, councilors. For the record. Craig couch, council policy analyst and staff to the governance committee.
63 And for the record, aubry chen, chair, pronouns policy analyst with councilor Koyama Lane office.
64 So, as councilor Koyama Lane said, we'll give some options today on what can be done for off site meetings. I know this has been a topic that's been an area of interest for many councilors. There have been a few examples of how we've done this here with this new council, and we went ahead and gathered some examples as well from other jurisdictions throughout Oregon. So we'll share those today and then talk about some next steps. I do want to give a second reminder for folks on how to provide input. As councilor Koyama Lane just said, today is the last day that we're gathering input on the table of contents for the council operations council governance handbook. Please do send that to aubry and I or directly to the council operations address. And again, all of these communications will be treated with discretion not attributed to any one particular council office. And so to give us our conversation today, a little bit of grounding, I'll talk a little bit about oregon's public meetings law and what it says about site visits and on site inspections. We've gotten some guidance from the city attorney's office on this. And they you know, if we were to create a policy on this, we would work closely with them to ensure that we were complying with the public meetings law. But for some basics, the law does specifically exempt site visits and on site inspections from the definition of a public meeting. It also exempts communications that are purely factual or educational in nature, and convey no deliberation or decision on any matter. So to take those two together, some of the guidance that's been provided by the Oregon government ethics commission is counselors can participate in the site visits and offsite inspections. They can discuss informational topics when it becomes deliberation over items that may become before a committee or come before council, it may cross that line into becoming a public meeting. So site visits that do have a quorum of either the full council or council committee might end up being subject to some of the public meetings requirements, like posting a public notice unless participants agree to avoid those substantive conversations and deliberation until they're back in a formal meeting setting. So we went ahead and council operations and did a survey of a variety of Oregon jurisdictions. You know, a number of cities, medium and large sized cities like eugene, Salem. We reached out to Multnomah county and metro for some examples of other jurisdictions that are subject to this law, but might function a little differently than the cities. And we went ahead and circulated a memo to all of you, and that's also posted online for the public with our results. But to summarize briefly, it really goes into four topic areas that may be required when it comes to these off site visits. First one is public notice. Most of the jurisdictions that we surveyed actually do provide public notice. If a quorum of their council is expected to participate in these off site meetings or site visits. One of our jurisdictions that we surveyed avoids having a quorum of their council, and that would also be, in our case, potentially avoiding having a quorum of our committees participate in the site visits to avoid triggering the public meetings. Law. One of our jurisdictions that we surveyed does allow public participation in some trips, but the vast majority do not facilitate the public's participation in these trips. And then none of the jurisdictions stream or provide virtual access to their meetings. That's something that is often an area of concern, because, as you can imagine, that would likely be very cost prohibitive to do. So for the handbook, what we'll do in areas where we don't have defined council policies like this one, we'll be providing recommendations and best practices, just like some of the ones that I shared. So an example recommendation for field trips would be for quorum. When councilors participate in off site meetings that may have a quorum of either the full council or any individual committee, it would be recommended that council operations and the council clerk are notified of these trips in advance, so that we can issue a notice of that trip to the public. Another recommendation might be deliberation. So while participating in these off site visits, it's recommended that councilors avoid discussing issues that may come before committees or the full council. If council does want to take this further and create a field trip policy for yourselves, council operations is happy to work with the city attorney to draft a formal policy. I've named some of the considerations that we would need to think about public notice. Quorum participation from the public. Virtual participation, how staff support would work. So whether that would be council operations, would there need to be support from other entities such as the council clerk, city attorney, etc. How would minutes be produced? That's something that's currently done by the council clerk's office. So that would be something we need to consider in a potential policy. However, you're not required to do a policy here. We certainly can leave it at the level of recommendations, and that's what the handbook is for. But we're happy to help. If a policy is something that you desire and happy to take any questions.
65 Councilor dunfee.
66 Thank you.
67 So I just happened to turn.
68 It off too. There we go. So I just happen to do my own public field trip training as well. So that's sort of established as that. That's sort of our floor. Right. Like the the bare minimum we must comply with is state law as defined. Did you in your search, you know, the scenario I'm imagining is, say, councilor Ryan and councilor Avalos and I go to a ribbon cutting at an affordable housing project, and I go up on stage and say, this was a good use of public money, and I want us to do that again. Have we now violated public meeting out of this under some of how some of these folks have defined substantive definitions or deliberation?
69 I would defer eventually to the city attorney's office for a legal response to that question. I would say in terms of examples from other jurisdictions, we actually saw a very similar example. I think it was from Salem in our research, and they actually did go ahead and post a public notice when they thought there might be a quorum of councilors that were attending a non council affiliated event, but that they might be speaking about council topics.
70 I'll tell you in general, I certainly I think I'm very comfortable with us as a body defining the floor as being ogc and that that is the bare minimum. I also really like the idea of it being at best practices. I think it's going to be really hard for this body to agree to anything more than that, and it's pretty hard to dispute best practices. And end of the day, each of us are individually responsible for our our our responsiveness to these ethics laws and the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish. I think you all are have done a lot of great work in this, and I think this is. Obviously something that I will take very seriously, but I don't imagine how we're going to get forward on on council policy. Additionally, whether or not there is benefit to council policy that doesn't come off unanimously, whereas we can all agree right now that ogc, at the very least is the the floor by which we are held accountable to. I also don't know that I am also of the opinion that the public meetings laws from the Oregon government ethics commission are pretty strict, are pretty defined, and I wouldn't want to see us codify anything that is stricter than that. So thank you for the work that you guys have done so far.
71 Thank you.
72 Councilor Clark.
73 Just thank you for the work and looking at other cities and best practices, I would just echo councilor Dunphy og, which really needs to be changed by the legislature to loosen it up a little bit. We're pretty constrained, but that has to be the floor. But as far as our handbook goes, I would want us to be as flexible as possible with more degrees of freedom, the better. We just had an ibr tour. I think we had three councilors on it and lots of staff just to learn. We weren't discussing anything, just asking lots of questions and learning. And really it's not a very threatening situation. We weren't doing anything in secret, but I think just letting the public know that we're doing it is a good idea. But I would like to see these be as minimal, as skinny as possible. Thank you.
74 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
75 Thank you chair. I agree with my colleagues on much of what they just said, but I do think that pulling those flaws into a handbook so that we have a clear place not only for us to look to and for new staff to look to, to understand how we operate, but also so that if there are ever any questions from members of the public, from those new staff, from new councilors, as they on board in the future, there's consistency in what the response is. I imagine that a good handbook would have a combination of best practices, norms that have never been formally adopted, but that we have moved toward adopted resolutions where we have said, this is how we want to operate, and at times probably pieces of the code brought in. And I just hope that we can move forward with this handbook, work broadly in a way that allows us to put all of those things into the handbook so that it's a handbook that, in and of itself is maybe not voted on and adopted, but that compiles those things that we do, those things that we have adopted. And again, where there aren't things that we do or have adopted that list of best practices from elsewhere, it feels like a handbook can be a balance of all of those things. And I do think on some of these pieces very clearly stating, here is the floor, right? Ogc says x, that is the floor. You must do at least that. And here are three things done in other cities. And hopefully a few years from now, as we've done more and more of these, what we actually have is a norm that we've established, and we can update the handbook instead of having three examples of best practices to say, here's the floor from ogc and this is how we normally do things at the city of Portland. Right? I imagine that this is something that can shift and evolve over time.
76 Thank you.
77 Go ahead, vice chair.
78 Well thank you, chair. Koyama Lane I want to really appreciate you and your team, craig and aubrey, for being here. You've been some great work on this and we just have to keep building on it. I'll get to the big picture of the handbook in a minute, but I think you're touching on something really important. This whole field trip insight protocols. And I like that you really dug in and looked at comparables around the country and some good practices. We definitely need to just have a consistent pattern with what that rule is, but we just have to make sure that we're passing the eye test with the public. So I think you're on to it by letting folks know when there's a quorum of either a committee or the council to hold on a trip, I think that I think that that, that that's really the most important thing that we do. I think that it's important that we have a chance to do that insight work. I don't think it should be a public meeting with the folks that are suddenly invited. Then it turns on my opinion to partizan political, if you will. We just need a chance to now and then go on trips. We're all getting the same information at the same time. And ideally that would have been our first three months, if you will, in office was to do more of those kind of insight trips. And I think that it's important that we establish what that looks like. And I get that the practices, I think it's both in Salem and Multnomah county, where they inform the public when it's a quorum, but they don't turn it into an official meeting. Is that correct?
79 That's correct.
80 Okay. There just seems to be a lot of common sense momentum on that rational thinking. So I hope that we just keep embracing that idea. Is there anything else I want to say on that? And it's good that we actually would let the public know, because I think it does allow the public to understand what we're focusing on. And when they get that, we're out there doing those insight trips together. I think it gives more confidence to the public, and that we're looking at the key issues that are facing the city. So when we do infrastructure field trips, if you will, everyone in the city knows we have a large deferred maintenance challenge, so they want us to be gaining that kind of knowledge. I think that's true with all of our big picture issues. So thank you. The council handbook. I also really appreciate that you've taken the lead on this. It's not glamorous, but it's definitely necessary. We need functional norms and expectations and protocol. And I think that gets a little bit at the editorial and some of the chatter out there that we could dismiss if we just had that type of organization, skills that were clearly laid out. I also think it's fine that we're working on it now. And so I think this process we're on is great, but we can't take our eyes off the ball. We have to keep moving. This kind of work in governance, with the help of the capable staff. So anytime you need more feedback on I know we we just looked at the table of contents last time. Is that correct?
81 That's correct.
82 Yeah. And when will there be a chance where you'd want us to weigh in as readers, if you will, of this document?
83 There will be. I think what we're doing now is going to take the feedback that you all have given us on the table of contents, gather that we'll share that out, hopefully with everyone on the committee, if not full council, and then we will be welcoming feedback as we are drafting the document. We'll be working with councilors and staff to make sure that it's reflective of your needs as councilors.
84 Okay, I look forward to being a part of that, and I just want to recommit that this is the right committee to make sure that this keeps moving along. So I'm so glad we have staff that are driving that for us. Appreciate it. Thanks.
85 Thank you councilor.
86 It's really exciting to see this coming to fruition. What I'm hearing is that as a temperature check there support that we do start that public noticing piece. Providing public notice of a quorum is expected to attend and that a lot of these recommendations, you know having the floor be the organ public meetings, law information is a great place to start. And I also heard from up here interrupt me if you if this is getting this wrong, but that there is a desire to keep the practices informal and the recommendations be in the handbook so we can be flexible, but that it is a place that we can point to for hopes and best practices. Does that seem to capture? And I also just want to acknowledge that I know, as we've had an interim person leading council operations, and there's been a lot of changes that council president's team has really stepped up and held a lot of work. And I know a lot of the different details have been in the many emails that her staff spends time putting out there, and some of it is even like pulling from those and making sure that we are we just have a place that we can, we can look and point to. Because when there's a lot of a lot of councilors, we just want to make sure you can you can go to that, that one place and not have to always go back to all the different emails. So thank you to your team for starting a bunch of this work. Any other comments about or is there anything else that would be helpful from us? Oh, actually there are council. Our hands up.
87 I just wanted to follow up on a comment that councilor Clark made in the last section, in which she praised claire adams, who is amazing, but also craig. I just need to give equal amounts of of kudos for the hard work that you do to keep us honest. And aubrey, your your council staff, you get separate kind of praise and admiration, but also doing amazing work. But craig, you're killing it. Good job.
88 Thank you.
89 Vice chair. Yeah.
90 We're looking at the protocols. When we do these insight trips, we need to do. We need to be pretty crisp. So I'm sure legal will weigh in on that. It's awkward. Like you'll be out at an event and I'll be talking to, say, councilor Clark, and then one other person's at the event, and then the three of us are talking. Then I start obsessing over, wait, are we on the same committee? Are we gonna get in trouble? And so we just we need it for just our own sanity. And when we're trying to navigate constituent work or celebratory work out in the community. So I do think just daylighting, when we know we have a majority of council as a body or in a committee, that's like the main thing that we are transparent about it. And then it's our jobs to know that when a constituent comes up and says something, because this happens, oh, I have three of you from that committee. This is what I want to talk about, that we know not to do that in that setting because we have a majority. Correct?
91 Sure. Again, I don't want to give the legal advice because that's the role of the city attorney. But I will say, as we are putting these items into the handbook, we will have all of those pieces reviewed, of course, by the city attorney's office. The memo that was shared out with you has been.
92 Reviewed to call up. But you. Hi, robert taylor, and I wasn't as necessarily needing that address right now, but since you're here, why not? I just wanted to make sure that we got to that level of detail so we can enjoy ourselves at these gatherings and not be tongue tied on what's right and what's wrong. And we all have the same information.
93 Thank you. Robert taylor city attorney. And I just ditto to that. And and thank you for the work. I do think it's helpful to have that all in a handbook. And both for educating the current council and future councils and their staff. And councilor Ryan, to your point. The public meetings law does not apply if it's a purely social or ceremonial event, but if it it can morph into deliberations if folks aren't careful. So I think your example is really good just for the awareness of council to know that that could be a problem. It's okay for us to be here. It's purely social, purely purely ceremonial, but it can change if we start talking in ways that are not appropriate. So just that that mindset and caution by councilors is important.
94 Thank you. And councilor, I think what I'm hearing might also be helpful is providing some of those scenarios in the handbook. You know, what do I do if I'm in this situation? You know, and I think that's something we certainly can do here. I think we can do throughout the handbook in various sections as it would be helpful.
95 Councilor Ryan, sometimes I find it helpful when we have many people at an event, because then I say now we can't talk about any city business. We can only talk about fun stuff like yesterday. Like we can only talk about me trying to get damian lillard's signature. Which we got.
96 I just.
97 Want to make this shout out that you were very good at that.
98 Yeah.
99 I can I'm the one you can send in for stuff like that.
100 You're good.
101 I'm wondering if you have any more questions of us, or if you need anything else from us in order to move forward in this section of the handbook, or do you do you feel like you have what you need?
102 I'm going to repeat this ad nauseam, but please provide your feedback to us throughout this entire process, especially in regarding the table of contents. We are currently collecting materials, reviewing materials, drafting materials. So any feedback that you could provide us now will help inform this work and inform that first draft. So I'm going to repeat over and over and over again let us know.
103 Anything in this interim period while we're working on this handbook. Feedback certainly. But also as you have questions as things come up, you know, if your staff needs guidance on any piece of it, please do feel free to reach out to council operations. We're here to help. And I think you heard from dana earlier. You know, even if we don't necessarily have the answer, we're doing a lot of that connective work to make sure that counselors get the resources that they need. So please don't hesitate to reach out to us at any time.
104 Yes.
105 Councilor Dunphy?
106 Yeah, just a quick flag that actually my team just flagged for me as you were working on this. It occurs to me that right now, our quorum rules may be different. A committee quorum rules may actually be different based on the size and composition of them. So, for example, if we suddenly had six people on a committee instead of five, quorum would be four people. As you are drafting these things and thinking about that, make sure we don't have to like, go and rewrite it. As you know, in January, if we change our committee structure or things like that, just to make sure that that is explicit that we're doing now may not be hopefully won't be what we do long term.
107 Thank you.
108 Okay.
109 Thank you so much. Keelan. Can you please read the final item?
110 Item three governance community feedback. Okay, I'm.
111 Going to read this even though I think we don't have anyone signed up. One of our priorities and the governance committee is to ensure the work we do is grounded in the priorities of portlanders. To that end, whenever possible, we're going to set aside time in this committee to welcome feedback from residents on any topic related to governance. Keelan do we have anyone signed up today for public testimony?
112 No one signed up.
113 Okay, so this is a call that we're here and we're listening and wondering where terry harris is at. Just kidding. But really, we'll we'll also boost this and make sure that folks know that we want to hear from you. And part of governance, too, is thinking about how we're making sure that all of this is accessible to the public. Is it appropriate to still have time for some committee q&a around this or discussion if? Councilors want to discuss community feedback with governance governance in general? This is also a time with one of our colleagues stepping out. I don't think we should do anything substantive, but if we also want to brainstorm any outcomes we would like to see come out of a priorities initiatives discussion, we could we could popcorn a little bit of that out. Councilor Clark.
114 Thank you, madam vice president. I think the priorities conversation I would just taking all kinds of notes thoughts about it. It's almost like a swot analysis what's coming. I think it's an opportunity to foreshadow the budget and what we may be confronting. And it's really time for us to figure out what is most important if we are going to be looking at big cuts. And also, like I said the other day when we were talking about our legislative, our state legislative agenda, what can we do here that doesn't cost money? You know, what? Are there things that we can do in the bureau's. To use the resources that we have? But if we're going to if we're confronted with losing resources our priort it's a chance to really foreshadow what's coming. I think that's what's important to me is both educational as well as feedback on priorities.
115 I'm also okay as we're doing this work of us just not raising hands and it being conversational too. So I heard kind of a swot analysis, maybe foreshadowing the budget. So kind of a year out look and I love that. And we'll just add on even like ten years out to doing the one year ten year.
116 Yeah. Well, you know, councilor Clark and I have sort of been talking back and forth about I mean, we've both been very impressed with the Sellwood community house and the model that there are there are members in our community and organizations who have the goodwill and even in some circumstances, the willingness to fund themselves. If we just get out of their way and let them serve the community, I think we need to lean into that this year. I think we need to start leaning into that kind of thing now and looking for opportunities where we have the high level values of what we're trying to accomplish. We have some of the infrastructure, but we're simply not showing up in the community the way that we know we should be. And where can we find those opportunities to empower and offload some of the work to, to to activate parks, to activate public plaza spaces, to create agreements with business districts, to activate certain public assets in ways that we would love to, but we're not. I'm specifically thinking of on foster boulevard and roughly 52nd. There's that weird wedge shaped park that is continuously a problem. But how could we work with the foster area business association to have an ongoing year round activation there of some sort, or with the foster powell foster neighborhood association? What what are those opportunities in our community right now that if the city just got out of the way and empowered community to do things, I'm not necessarily advocating for, like communities filling their own potholes, though maybe in certain circumstances. But I'm I'm interested to know what what what can we what could we do if we intentionally empowered the community and said, government isn't going to be the tool that solves everything for us? Community is, and it's our job to empower community.
117 Can I can I just say, can I just riff off that? Do you mind that? Absolutely. Right. And it was shocking the other day that we don't even know what we own around here. And and just this weekend, I was at a neighborhood cleanup in the lair hill area and met the director of the cedarwood school, which is a private school and was had been meeting with the cobid ladies to talk about, you know, this park right here. There are facilities here that parks owns that have been boarded up for 50 years. We can raise the money privately to deal with it. I think there's examples like that councilor Dunphy all over the city, but we don't. We don't even know where they are, what they are yet. That's something that we should add on to our asset management work that's coming to us in a year. I also want to say, this is this is why I introduced and thanks to councilor, Koyama Lane put in one of her budget notes that we need to have a kind of a volunteer structure across the board, not just in parks, but really across the board PBOT to have some sort of guidance to how this is going to work. We heard a lot about this, the plaza program and all kinds of potential today in tni, but this is absolutely the future because we will never be able to take care of all these things that we own. There isn't enough money, and it really is community engagement agency. People want to do this for so many reasons, but I'm glad we're on the same wavelength. We just need to figure out what we own and who's out there that wants to help out. Because there's a lot to do.
118 You know, in silly aside. But in 2017, when the city, under nick fisher's guidance, converted our single stall restrooms from gender specific to all user, all we did was change the sign on the door. But the biggest obstacle we had that took an additional four months was we didn't know how many bathrooms we had, and we had to do a full inventory of our property to find out. Oh yeah, we have over 600 single stall restrooms, but nobody had a single list. Nobody had ever thought maybe we should know how many, even though we're paying to clean every single one of them, we never had a single list. And the fact that we still don't know that that property at 21st and powell was ours, that some of the areas around the springwater corridor are ours. Those are always shocking to me to find out that we don't know that and somebody knows it, but we the collective, we don't.
119 This is a vestige of the old form of government, absolutely siloed, the 26 siloed bureaus. Now we're coming together. We can we've got to document all of this.
120 One city, and we can move forward with one voice.
121 Right on. Love it.
122 That was lovely sentiment I appreciate it. I think all of what you said is true, and I have a reputation of leaning into that and usually running up against some, some people, even on the council, about trying to do more public private partnerships, because that's really what we have an opportunity to do. I just want to make sure that we make that. We look at the balance sheet and we do this. So if we allow community to to do things that allow our deferred maintenance, then to still be on the record, if in fact we still have the asset on our balance sheet, it's it's just a caution that we have to go through that necessary step of ripping off the band-aid, if you will, and actually giving ownership as as you say, getting in our own way takes great lengths. And so it's not loose. That's all, because I think there's been some examples where that's occurred and then it's still on our balance sheet. So then that becomes part of the deferred maintenance. A little wonky, but I hope you followed that. Also, I think we have to look at mission drift. Over the last 30 years, I've witnessed this city taking on sometimes very urgent items, but oftentimes political items from electeds that then become a part of the city's budget. But if you really look at what our roles and responsibilities are in local government, there's been some drift. So I do hope that as we prepare for this year's budget, we have some difficult conversations about what's ours, what's the county's, you know, what I'm getting at. And so we need more clear roles and responsibilities between the city and the county. And just because and the county has been failing on mental health and behavioral health for a long time, and that's what's been causing so many of our problems and challenges on our streets. And so we've had to jump in because it's just so untenable. That said, we could have a smarter conversation about the roles and responsibilities of what where that expense lies. And I think we got away from that over the last, not just the last five years, like the last 20 to 30 years.
123 I say something. So I know I've been harping on back to basics, back to basics all the time, asset management, that kind of stuff. But our questionnaire might even help in this regard is like, you know, here are the basic to your point, councilor Ryan. Here are the basic functions of our city. You know, clean water, appropriate sewage disposal, good functioning streets that aren't dangerous, public safety. So people feel safe. What are the really basics? Because we have drifted pretty far from those things.
124 Yeah, yeah.
125 Pipes, permits, public safety, potholes. I mean, you know, I'm just just starting with the, the p. Yeah.
126 And I mean, some of that is responding to a political crisis. Like, I mean, I don't blame past city councils for hearing hundreds and hundreds of residents saying, why aren't you doing more about homelessness? Why aren't you doing more about the people sleeping in our parks? Why aren't you doing something? People want to yell. They want to have somebody to yell at. And it's really hard to just go, oh, well, that's not our job. That's technically over there. And like, I get that for sure. But there's also examples where we've had the best of intentions and the best of partnerships that have drifted away over time. For example, p5 right. Like all the best intention for us to collaborate with our partners at metro, because these are attractive things to great, great intentions. And 30 years later, we have these buildings about to fall down and none of them are able to be fully utilized in the way that the the tenants, the folks who are using it know that they can. And we don't have a clear person in position one to say, this is the plan going forward. You know, I've been working with councilor Ryan on on trying to clarify that specifically, but there's things like that in every part of our city, and every part of the water bureau has, you know, an enormous organization, an enormous amount of infrastructure. But then we also have these bizarre, tiny water districts in east Portland that serve 20 to 100 people at times. And they're based around individual wells that are 100 years old, and their water rates are far higher in certain in some circumstances. And it yeah, it's really complicated and really unnecessarily complicated. I think there's just so many things where we they start for good reason. And then just time continues and the city continues to grow around. And we haven't ever gone back and called the question. And I think that we're going to need to do that simply because we don't have the money to to continue to operate as.
127 As this almost sounds like a preface to our questionnaire.
128 Yeah, it does.
129 And also starting to feel like the finance committee meeting where I want to go. So I'm trying to rein myself in, but I just want to remind us that we have a bigger brand than the county. We have a much bigger brand than metro. So just because people come here, leadership could also not blame, but then seek to convene a summit with the appropriate partners and then communicate where the responsibility lies in terms of leading it. So I think there's been some political reactions that haven't thought about looking at our government system. And we are a complicated local government. Most governments, local governments don't have metro, and most portlanders don't know what metro is. But it gets tricky when we're in a partnership with anybody, because they always come here because our brands hire. That's what I've noticed. This is fun. I hope that the finance committee is starting to have these early conversations about efficiency moving forward, because now's the time.
130 I don't know that any of us are.
131 Is anyone.
132 On it?
133 Council president.
134 Is okay.
135 This is all great. So some of the things I heard zooming out, if we were to think about how to frame doing some of this work together, doing a swot, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, analysis, looking at a year ahead, looking at foreshadowing the budget, looking at even what do we hope for ten years from now? One thing I'll add on is if we end up doing something every year, we could have a set time to also look back at the last year. What goals did we set that were year long goals? How did we do on those? How did we reflect? I heard digging into priorities such as how we're empowering and engaging community partners. Assets getting on the same page with that roles and responsibilities between different jurisdictions. And I'll add on because it's come up many times, roles and responsibilities, even clarifying executive and legislative branch there too. I think I captured oh, and then also councilor Dunphy just had me write down just kind of like current urgent issues that are coming up to taking stock of those. I think this is a good starting place and anything else.
136 I just want to throw out one wacky idea. Actually, it's not that wacky. It's been discussed before is the consolidation of governments. You know, we're right now we're going through the consolidation of bureaus in a in a manner of speaking. But I know there have been past efforts to try to consolidate the city and the county. San francisco did it. Other places have done it. It just seems like especially as resources get thinner and thinner, that it's something we ought to think about or talk about. Maybe talk to san francisco about. I don't know what other areas around the country have done the same thing isn't indianapolis maybe, I don't know.
137 My team has been talking about this a lot and and not in any sort of directed diss to our friends at Multnomah county. They're fine. But like the functions of it I have maintained since I got into office that it's not a feature or it's not a bug, it's a feature that we have all these layers of government and nothing works that I think we have a little bit of the cowboy west in us still. And you put all these layers of government, it means that nobody has enough power to actually do anything. And that's why we're in a spot where we are that all we do is lead towards lethargy and process and and systems that don't serve our needs well, because it's designed that way. It's intentionally decentralized in major ways. And I think that our change of government is the first step in modernizing this. I think we need to have the conversation about, I mean, you know, if Multnomah county, if Portland were to become the city and county of Multnomah or of Portland and Multnomah county would still be the fourth largest county in the state, I mean, just in having Gresham, troutdale, wood village and Multnomah falls, basically, they would still be one of the largest jurisdictions of this in the state. But you're seeing what happens in san francisco, seeing what happens in other countries. They really do start this process towards consolidation of government. And I think that's not a bad conversation for us to have. I don't know that it's one we get to lead, but it is a conversation I think our community should be thinking about.
138 Trivia for 100, who was the who were the last leaders in the city? In the county that explored this?
139 I don't know.
140 Wasn't that.
141 Long ago.
142 Mayor katz and chair stein.
143 Oh, I think.
144 I think they were around.
145 Well.
146 Question for 200. Who before them tried it at the legislature.
147 Yeah, you got me.
148 It was the mayor of Gresham, gussie mcroberts, who brought a bill forward in Salem to consolidate city and county. Remember her.
149 Know.
150 Talk to some of those folks.
151 Back east.
152 Then we should talk to some of them and see what they learned, what they bumped up against. I'm definitely interested in this, and I know that Multnomah county serves a lot of cities, not just Portland, troutdale, wood village, maywood park, Gresham, fairview. So I know that their services are pretty expansive, but I'm definitely interested in this.
153 I could wax on on this too much and I'm already gotten in trouble. Probably. So I do think that this is I really appreciate that. We just highlighted that because a lot of people would appreciate that action.
154 I mean, just even thinking about our school districts, like I have six school districts in my district, like.
155 You had six. Yeah, you have six.
156 We have.
157 Parkrose centennial, david douglas reynolds I guess it is. It is.
158 Parkrose did you say? Wow.
159 I feel like I'm forgetting one.
160 Well.
161 Riverdale is not in your district.
162 No.
163 That's a west.
164 Side, because.
165 There's seven districts.
166 In barlow.
167 It's a little bit.
168 You know, now you have centennial. That's 50% Portland. Reynolds is 30% Portland. And it's in your district.
169 Yeah.
170 I, I just had.
171 I have.
172 Someone from council share a bunch of consolidated city counties anchorage, denver, honolulu, indianapolis, jacksonville, florida, kansas city, kansas, nashville, new orleans, philadelphia, san francisco. So yeah, there are places for us to look.
173 And they do sometimes they do like the east. Like, say, Gresham would be the city partner for all the municipalities that that you mentioned. Or we stay focused. In Portland with Multnomah county. So yeah, there's ways to do this conversation. I bet that would. I wonder if anyone on the other side of the river wants to have this conversation.
174 Well.
175 Maybe this is something for gtac to take up, you know.
176 Revive them.
177 Yeah.
178 Yeah, bring them back.
179 Bring them back.
180 All right. I'll email terry.
181 You got us. You got us. Like to just unwind here.
182 And.
183 City club of Portland, if you're interested in having this right.
184 And sign up for testimony, you want to hear from you.
185 Yeah.
186 All right. During the next governance committee.
187 You're unplugged.
188 During the next governance committee meeting on Monday, October 6th, will be using the majority of the session as a listening session to provide public comment for the next stages in the advisory bodies enhancement project. So please, please sign up or else it's going to be really boring because we're setting up aside a lot of time to listen. Shana tova, to all those who are celebrating a new year, and I will now adjourn this meeting of the governance committee.