The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-22
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,286 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 Finance Committee met on Monday, September 22, 2025. After roll call and a statement of conduct, the committee first discussed the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget calendar, reviewing required dates such as the general fund forecast, the mayor's proposed budget deadline, and the adopted budget deadline, along with the estimated 18-to-20-week process needed to produce a proposed budget. Discussion covered options for delivering budget information earlier, scenario-based forecasting, use of committees during budget deliberations, transparency around bureau staffing versus the central budget office, and communication between council and the mayor's office ahead of budget proposals. The committee then discussed an ordinance establishing a fee mechanism to fund the city's payment to the Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District, including proposed residential and nonresidential rate structures, revenue projections, potential over- or under-collection, and possible safeguards for fund use; a vote occurred and the outcome is recorded in the vote ledger. The committee also considered an ordinance authorizing eminent domain for temporary construction easements related to the NE 122nd Avenue crossing improvements project, and two related items concerning declaring property near NE 33rd Drive as surplus and vacating a portion of an unnamed road, including public testimony from the 40 Mile Loop Land Trust. Votes occurred on these items, with outcomes 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 Good afternoon. I'm going to call the finance committee to order. It's Monday, September 22nd at 1201 keelan. Can you call the roll, please? Novick chair Green here.
1 Avalos.
2 Present pirtle-guiney chair Zimmerman here.
3 Christopher, can you please read the statement of conduct?
4 Welcome to the meeting of the finance committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance the committee agenda at ww.gov agenda finance 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 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, state your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
5 Great colleagues. Today we're going to take a look at or have a discussion regarding the budget calendar. We'll take a look at the staff's recommendations for flood water safety benefit fee. Just consider a few properties with domain. Excuse me, eminent domain. That's part of that ordinance as well as a couple of items that were returned. We're going to bump the. Actually I'm going to take a look. Now I have a note in my note here that staff wanted to have a budget conversation first. Is that accurate or do you want to proceed with the flood benefit fee discussion?
6 I think it was a request from your office.
7 Okay. We're going to go ahead and let's have the budget calendar discussion first, and we'll come back to the flood benefit fee. So with that, if we could read item number two please and have staff come up. Thank you.
8 Item declare property located on southeast 21st avenue and southeast. Sold. Oh, it's the first one. Apologize. Item one review and discussion of the fiscal year 2025 2026 budget calendar.
9 Thank you. All right. We have ruth. Then we have jonas. You guys want to take it away?
10 Yeah. Great. Thank you. Committee chair and committee members for the record, jonas barry, the city's chief financial officer, will do just a super quick tip. And then the intent of this is just to have kind of open conversation among committee members, also acknowledging we'll have a work session to talk about budget process with full council, October 22nd, I believe. So next slide please. Just to tee up real quick where we've left off following the most recent budget cycle. We did some immediate kind of after action work and conversations with council offices, with other internal stakeholders, and just wanted to kind of start by acknowledging right up front that there's a handful of things that we heard pretty much unanimously, maybe a little different, different forms and details under the under the surface, but wanted to tee up a few things that we have heard as we think about budget process. And I would also just acknowledge these are also things that on the administrative side, it says council feedback. But these are all things that we felt and agree with on the administrative side. First is upstreaming conversations broadly both with council and community. We've heard loud and clear intent to deliver the proposed budget, the mayor's proposed budget, earlier than it was previous in previous years. So earlier than may 5th. Ruth will talk a little bit about some of the constraints around that timeline, heard clear feedback about the city administrators preliminary budget document. The document that came out in February. So we'll we'll look to guidance about how to re re-envision that document a little bit. Also improving budget one on one materials. So just making sure there's more more clear accessible content available. And again tie that a little bit to the upstreaming of the conversations. And then there's sort of a fifth one here that's a little bit more of a question mark. But recognizing we still do need to develop a plan for future budget advisory committees, we took a one year pause. Might need to extend that a little bit into this cycle, as we're doing some continued work around community advisory committees. But those are kind of the five big pieces that I think we've heard pretty much unanimously, as we've done that kind of after action conversation. So with that tee up, I'll hand to to ruth here to talk a little bit more in the details.
11 Great. Thank you. For the record, my name is ruth levine. I'm the budget director. You can go to the next slide. Haley. Thank you. So this slide is just intended to kind of review what the pieces of the timeline are that are essentially required or that they can't move in a certain direction. So and I've broken it out kind of by phases. So there are I'll just go through these really briefly. Obviously we know when the tao is coming. At this point, there's a step that we do early in December to update, to update the base budget information, essentially adding inflation factors that are based on on inflation factor blls, cpi and other inflation factors. And then we also do updating some of the internal agency rates that are set centrally. The general fund forecast comes in mid December. That's fixed due to when we get both property tax and business license tax revenue information in and then jumping all the way to may. That's obviously the the by may 5th requirement for the proposed in charter. But it can come earlier than that and we'll discuss that more. And then there's that step to kind of pass the proposed budget over to council. That kind of formally kicks off council's discussion of the approved budget. And then this year, the last date for the approved is may 20th. It can happen earlier than that, but it can happen later. And then we submit that information to the tax supervisor and conservation committee after that. And then we're looking at the week of June 8th for the tcc hearing and the first reading of the adopted. There's, you know, a little wiggle room by like a couple days on the tcc hearing and then the June 18th would be the sort of latest date to actually adopt the budget this year. I'll we can go to the next slide. So this is kind of more on the mayor's proposed date specifically. And so basically this backs up kind of what is the earliest possible date to deliver the mayor's proposed. There's a few assumptions in here, but I mean the shortcut to these assumptions is if we want to update the budget for the basic things that we generally update the budget for all those those inputs at the beginning of the process, and then we have to go through a process to actually balance that budget, and then do at least some analysis in the middle of that process. This is kind of how that breaks down, and I can get into more detail on these, but sort of at a high level, we have to have 4 to 6 weeks at the beginning to update technical, technical changes in the budget for the next fiscal year and then do the actual development of the add or cut packages that are being proposed. We need about four weeks to technically check that and then do some basic analysis on that. And then the mayor gets about needs about six weeks to deliberate and actually balance the budget. And then we need about four weeks to make the technical entries and develop the budget book materials and all of the the materials that go along with producing the proposed. And so when you add all that up, it's about 18 to 20 weeks, which when you start at the 1st of December gets you to roughly mid-april. So that's kind of how that breaks down. Happy to talk more about any of those pieces, but that I just wanted to give you a general sense of what goes into actually producing the proposed and how long it takes, and that's all we've got.
12 Okay, great. So colleagues, with that, the intention here was for the staff to kind of outline the hard dates and the important dates. And many of you, most of you have all had discussions with staff, with me, with others, this is a chance to kind of reflect on last year's process in terms of how those dates did or didn't work, where we felt pinches, where we did, you know, meet our intent as a council and where we might be able to, as a finance committee, inform future changes as proposed going going forward. Last year was unique in that the entire government did not exist on the 31st of December and did exist on the 1st of January. And you can see here that the fall of every calendar year does actually inform the following year's budget. And so we started with at least one arm tied behind our back in terms of familiarity and process. And this is an attempt to make sure that we come out fully prepared. So with that, I want to just open it up. I see councilor Novick in the queue first, so I'll go to you, sir.
13 Thank you, mr. Chairman.
14 So I'll start with an observation and then ask a question. I think that not getting any budget until April puts us in a ridiculous position, I think that reasonably we have something of a draft of the budget by early February. That is, we as a council start thinking about modifications. We have a chance to push our different proposals through committees for discussion, and we're not doing everything with the scrambling around at the last minute like we did last time or even a few weeks earlier. And what I was hoping I mean, I understand that there's complicated technical processes to go through to come up with technical balanced budget, but I was wondering is if we can envision a world where the administrator gives us in like the end of January. Here is more or less what a budget would look like if the cuts, assuming we're in a cut situation, were distributed evenly throughout the bureaus, and then a couple of weeks after that, have the mayor say, here are the places where I would probably cut more, and here are the places where I would cut less or not cut at all, just sort of a at a conceptual level, understanding there wouldn't be actually a balanced budget. Is there any reason why we couldn't do something like that?
15 No. I think there's certainly lots of room for ideas and potential processes that would involve something like what you said. I think basically there are a couple of ways to think about it, right? There's the like the basic kind of what would it cost to do what we're doing right now, next year, and then how much, how much would that cost and how much money do we have? So that's that's kind of the the baseline, I would think from there there's various options to what along the lines of what you're describing, of different types of scenarios, you know, different types of essentially assuming we're in a cut, which we will be cut scenarios, right, like, okay, you can, you know, take it proportionally. You can exempt certain places or focus on other places and the like. And, and we could certainly put out scenarios. I think the part that's harder to get to is what do you actually do to make those cuts. Right. Like what are the operational impacts. So if you say, okay, here are the numbers, here's a scenario. And these are the numbers that company that scenario for every single bureau in the city. Well what is that. The what what's tricky is developing the material to say what exactly does that mean. Right. And I think that's we can continue. I mean, I think it's a it's a great conversation to have about how do we do that. But yeah, I think certainly there's there's the ability to develop scenarios like what you described.
16 Thank you. And one thing I forgot to add is that one thing I really want to avoid is the situation we had last year where the administrator proposed a sort of a budget that had some cuts, but not enough to cover the deficit, which resulted in all of the public feedback we had was about things the administrator had said that he was going to cut, which winds up giving the impression that the most important thing in the city is the saint john's community center, which, although it is important, the focus on that and other things that were proposed to be cut was, I don't think, proportional to what I mean. I think that if we propose cutting the police budget in half, we get a lot of reaction to we didn't get a lot of reaction because nobody proposed that. So that's why I was suggesting maybe the first thing we see is something. Here's what it would look like if there were all everything was cut proportionately.
17 Can I just add a couple responses to supplement what ruth said? And yeah, councilor Appreciate the suggestion and the observation. I think a few things. One is we expect that that February, January moment, whatever it is, whatever we call it, whatever form it takes, will continue to evolve. So I just want to acknowledge that as well. This prior year was the first time we've ever, ever done that in place of what used to be called requested budgets. And so that was a that was an attempt. A lot changed. I just want to be clear for for members of the public watching, and I don't mean this in with any subtext. I just want to be clear that a lot changed in the size of the gap between December and when that budget was published in February, so that as, as the chair acknowledged, is a moment that we won't have again, at least not of our own doing. So I just want to be clear about that and expect it will continue to evolve and appreciate the conversation around different ways to communicate those realities. The other thing I would just be remiss if I didn't acknowledge is there's also a lot of human effort that goes into preparing this information, and we're a very resource constrained organization right now. And a lot of the humans who are tasked with doing that additional work to prepare that information are among the most already most constrained and are now being further constrained. And so I just want to be really clear about setting those expectations that I had conversations with the prior council in fall at this time about grand ambitions for how to improve this process. And it's gotten a lot harder. Again, not not of any fault, just the reality of the particular the economic situation that we face. So I do just want to take this moment and be clear that that, you know, we have to really think about this as an evolution and how do we continually get better and get better within the within the resources that we have available to do the work?
18 Thank you.
19 Vice chair pirtle-guiney, please.
20 Thank you. And I just want to start by saying, I think the saint john's community center is one of the most important things that we talked about, but it probably didn't need that much airtime because I don't think it was ever seriously on the chopping block. Once folks who are local to that district got their hands on it. First of all, thank you. I know that you both did a lot of work getting feedback from a lot of different places to inform the the changes that need to be made. And I think that the five big buckets that you brought to us today are spot on. For what I heard from colleagues during the budget process and what I experienced. And I just really appreciate all of the work that you put into bringing us something different. I want to reiterate what my colleague councilor Novick said. I know we won't see a city administrator proposal in the same way that we did this past year, but having something there that is as neutral as possible helps us get feedback from the community that is about what they want and not just about what they don't want changed. And the more that we can hear from portlanders about what is important and why. And maybe, though not as frequently, what they see, that is maybe not as important anymore in a neutral space. I think the better work we can do on creating an appropriate budget. I am also a little bit concerned to hear that mid-april is the earliest we can have something. I know that the mayor needs ample time to do his work, and while some of my colleagues have been talking about January or February, I've been hoping that we would see a date that was late March or early April in order to really give us that full extra month to do our work, which I think would have allowed us to have a more. I don't want to say thoughtful because we were very thoughtful, but have more time to really do the back work on the proposals that we brought forward before we were immediately trying to work in crunch time. Ideally, we get something from the mayor in time to look at it, think about it, hear about it, and then develop amendments and then go into debate. And instead, those three things were really shortened into one single period of time. So I don't want to ask staff to do impossible work. I don't want to ask the mayor to put together a budget that is not thoughtful. But if any of those steps can overlap, if the mayor can start to have those conversations as cbo is looking at the submissions right, it's likely that the mayor has a good sense of what he will and won't want to to see pretty early on. Is it possible that cbo can start making the entries as the mayor is finalizing his work? Anything that we can do to just give council an extra 2 to 4 weeks in this process, I think would be very helpful in allowing us to have the type of deliberative process that portlanders expect and deserve.
21 Yeah, I'll do one response, and maybe you can talk on the technical side, I think. Absolutely right. And they're great observations. There's a couple of other pathways to help facilitate those conversations you hit on. One is just having more early and often dialog during that development process. Although we talk about whether that's technically implementable. But certainly the dialog is implementable. The other thing that I think is really important to note is we don't have to wait till tomorrow. We can start having discussion about what's in the budget today because we have a current year, fiscal year, budget, current fiscal year budget, most of which is going to stay the same, or at least the big rocks are going to stay the same. So I just want to be explicit about the fact we didn't have that opportunity last year. We do have that opportunity right now to create forums, whether it's formal, whether it's community forums, whether it's individual briefings, we have the opportunity to do as much of that work as we choose to right now in advance of spring. And so certainly, I think, communicated to to all of you and your offices, I'm happy to help support those conversations as much as I can, and I'm sure the cbo would be willing to as well.
22 Yeah. And yeah, I totally hear you. And I mean, I think what I would generally say actually, can you go to the next slide? Sorry, is that the sort of later part of the process is the part that is harder to squeeze. So certainly those four weeks like it's it's already insane. So it's really the early part of the process I would say like the, the first whatever that 8 to 10 week period that I think there's a little bit more wiggle room. And that's where I think the conversation around what is that, February or January? What are the January and February deliverables that people are expecting, I think can sort of make more of a difference, if that makes sense, in terms of what the final date is. So I really think that the important time frame really is like December to February in terms of shifting timing. And then once we get into kind of March and April, we're just so like it's just such a sprint to get to the finish line that it's it's a little too late to pull things forward. So I think that conversation around like, really, what are people expecting? Like I think it's it's always this, there's a little bit of a chicken and egg problem every year. It doesn't matter what the fiscal situation is, where it's hard to start developing concepts before you know what the numbers are that you're balancing to, but you don't know what the numbers are that you're balancing to until a little bit later. And so, like it's important to start having the conversations early and developing concepts. But there but the risk is that you come up with a st. Johns community center example or something where it's like, well, that might not have been what came forward if we had, you know, in 2020, hindsight, like we might have done it differently. So I think that's really the the in my mind personally, the like crux of the issue is in that period where you're just starting to put pen to paper on what are the what are the actual ideas that we would bring forward and have a conversation about? And you don't want to bring something forward too early. That's like not fully informed. And you don't, but you also don't want to wait too late. So just I don't have an answer, but just okay.
23 We're gonna move on to counselor Green then.
24 Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, ruth and jonas. You know, I think I'm pretty closely aligned with counselor Novick on the question. Although respecting and understanding that rigorous work takes time and that there's only so many resources to go around. And so I guess my my question. Well, there's one there's a side of this is philosophical, but I think I'll ask a technical question first. Is it reasonable to produce a forecast using the existing expense levels from this budget that's unbalanced and just with sort of like historical like you could probably assume what you think a lower bound on revenue is based upon a five year average or based on what you already know, because I think if council is trying to get a head start, we're more interested in the the worst case scenario in terms of the revenue side of the ledger than, than the best case scenario. And then that gives us time to work through some committees, even if it's just in a conceptual sense, because we do. I mean, there is a sort of I don't know if there's an attorney in the room, but I mean, there's state budget law, which does constrain us in how we talk about this stuff. But surely there must be a way to have conversations and committees that really give the public and give the city a very clear understanding of where councilors are going to go, irrespective of what the mayor does. Because I think if we're thinking philosophically now, some councilors are going to bring forward some stuff that they've already got their minds made up on well, in advance of the mayor's budget. And that's just the fact of, of this form of government. And so some contemporaneous timelines there would make that possible, because, you know, it does take 4 to 6 weeks for the bureaus to analyze the impacts of a cut and add. Right. And so if we had a sense of what worst case would be, whether it's $16 million deficit, 20, then then it's not really the level of precision that we need. You know, that you that your staff wants to forecast is not really what's necessary. I think it's to move us closer in qualitative shifts, I guess, is what is what my question would be.
25 Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what we're trying to bring you on the 22nd is some sense of the fiscal outlook and kind of like rough numbers where we are. I think again, I will just say for the record, the downside of that is it sometimes gets communicated that we have more certainty around what the gap is than than we, in fact do. And no matter how many times we say this is an estimate, it doesn't get heard that way. And so I just flagging that we can do that and we will bring you, bring you things. But I just I can't say enough times. It is an estimate and it will change.
26 I'm going to add councilor to it's an intriguing kind of line of I'm my brain is working here, so I'll just kind of spitball with you if it's okay. I mean, I think in the context of the current year budget, right? We do have that information. And historically there's been a maybe not a desire to sort of start that conversation earlier. And so I think there could be a pathway to say, let's talk about this year's budget and some what ifs at a service area or bureau level. And that conversation can occur frankly, at any time. I mean, we're only a couple months into the fiscal year, so we don't have a lot of great data, but we could start that. Really. It's a prioritization kind of a discussion to feed into what ultimately would be, whatever the timeline technically is. So I do think there's some different ways to think creatively about how we can bring those conversations forward on an earlier timeline without feeling like we're constrained to, you know, an April deadline or may 5th or whatever it is. I flagged in other conversations in the context of amendments. I think a lot of the amendments that were on the table this last year were amendments to the base budget that we just didn't have time to talk about. And so those earlier conversations are also a pathway to start bringing bringing those up. So I know that there's still work required to bring that information out. But but I think there's a different way to think creatively about how we have those conversations. You know, much earlier kind of fall winter timeline and not feel like we're so much behind the eight ball.
27 I appreciate that. And that would move us a little closer to priority based budgeting. So thanks.
28 Thanks, counselor. I mean, ultimately I'm looking to have at least a four week period with the proposed budget before the approved budget. Right? For me, that is the absolute bare minimum I see in this presentation that the 20th of may is the deadline. So backing that up a couple of days, that four weeks for me is a key indicator whether or not we're being heard in terms of that, I'm working from a perspective of getting the council more time with the proposed budget and with an intent to reduce the number of amendments that council feels it must introduce in order to feel like the budget reflects its values. So those those two things are guiding me in a lot of the way I've reflected on last year. Ultimately, some of this conversation is actually for council president as well as staff. But, you know, I don't think that committee discussions of budgets is going to be appropriate moving forward. I think there's a need for all budget discussions to happen as as the full council or committee of the whole and whatever that looks like, as a means of getting everybody on the same page from start to finish. And I think that that actually will get to the I think it will help and contribute to the reduction of the need for so many amendments. I don't ever want to see an unbalanced budget ever come out again. Right? We tried that with the c. A's version of it, but ultimately, I think any document that comes out, considering the city as a whole, should always have to be balanced. I'm very familiar with the old requested idea, and I'm quite comfortable with the requested idea, but requested budgets rely on us also understanding what the executive's budget guidance was. So what I'm used to seeing is, as a department director, the, you know, the chair is going to propose or is going to give directions of everybody take a 5% cut, and I don't want to see cuts in this section. Right. That kind of guidance helps us understand the the mindset of the executive and where they're going. But then ultimately when when anything comes out that represents the city, it's considered balanced. So that's really important to me. I don't consider a requested budget to be balanced because it's just a single bureau or, or a service area, whatever the right term would be. I do a couple of questions. I'm wondering how many staff from the bureaus or service area, budgets, finance, etc. Types of staff have been moved into the central budget office since the new fiscal year.
29 So I believe, chair, you're referring to the realignment project identified. Yes. So those none of those I think none of those have technically moved. There will be some seat citywide that move in the fall time coming to council in November. I don't anticipate that will yet include the budget and finance functions. Which assessment is still underway. I don't know, don't hold me to this because I'm not sure these are exactly right. But I think by the end of the calendar year, we'll know what that all looks like. And then there will have to be another action that comes to council to to implement those so in progress. But but still a few months away.
30 So I want to I want to take this to highlight where this is where my greatest concern is our our process and our dates and our times are an area that this council and the mayor can work with our with with one another, with council president to put a process together. I've never been a part of any budget in my career at this is my fourth government doing it where I felt that the central budget office got beat by the bureau or smaller division budget offices, and where the council members got beat by the bureau budget offices. I'm saying it's slow because I want it to land. I think that no matter what we do, if information is inaccurate or unavailable, we will have a damning budget process again in next year. The fact that some bureaus have more budget staff than the central budget office should be a big, flashing red light for all of us. And I would emphasize this and footstomp this that this is the indicator for the city administrator to get serious about this realignment. Secondly, the inability for programs to articulate how many employees in a specific type of work perform a certain type of function in our community for a certain amount of dollars from a certain pot of money, is budget 101, and this city cannot do it. I'm being incredibly clear here. Post budget in June, there have been meetings that have occurred with oh boy, the number we told you about, that amendment you made that represented this many employees in this work section actually doesn't translate to that. And we're now having to do behind the scenes math to understand intent and what's possible. And so when counselors feel like they didn't have access to information again, I think that that it's either access to information or information technology that isn't supporting decision making or it is. And I think this is more toward it. Bureaus serving the commission form of government and being given a pass in the transparency that is expected is a cancer on this city's budget process and its transparency. And I think it's actually one of the reasons we're considerably into a deficit mindset right now, because we actually don't know often where stuff is going. So my whole position here is trying to find and pressure this city admin to give the central budget office the cadillac package and to put the bureaus in a subservient position here when it comes to delivering on budget transparency and budget process, because the bureaus don't work for a commissioner Anymore. And I think we have to break that cycle, drown it and throw it out. So I'm being really clear because of how important I think it was. And I'm not mincing words whatsoever. But if we we can talk about process all day long, but if we can't get information about fte from a program on a certain function in this government, from a certain fund, we shouldn't show up for work the next day. That's that's just how I feel from a finance chair's perspective. The and lastly, if we can highlight as we go forward the best way that the mayor wants to receive input from council prior to a proposed budget, I think also gets us to a reduced number of amendments that are felt like they have to be proposed. I reviewed all of the amendments in the reflective sense, and there was some will call them their stakeholder amendments, political amendments, others where there was something in the city budget, but it wasn't really articulated for why it was already being taken care of. And and I think there's a little bit of communication that goes on from the central, excuse me, from the administration. And then there are others that are just simply priority areas. And so within that, I feel like a lot can actually be accomplished with an early mayor's engagement and how he thinks he's meeting the needs of all the districts and council. I asked one question only. The rest was a statement, but I asked one question about how many have been transferred, and I think the answer was no. And I will highlight that, that that should be very concerning for everybody. This monologue is for the city administrator should be going upstairs. Okay with that, councilor Avalos.
31 I think a lot of my colleagues have expressed some of the feelings that I have. I'll put a finer point on a couple of them to say. One, I think that delivery and framing of any budget info, regardless of if it's the cio or the mayor or even us, we I would like us to take a more strategic comms and political lens. I think there's that's one area in general that I think we need to get right. I find myself often talking with, you know, government bureaucrats who see it very plainly and think that the information speaks for itself. But that's not how politics works. And it's our job to deliver information in a way that constituents can understand, that they can reflect on, be responsive to. So that strategy, I just want to, you know, make clear that there is a political and strategy to absolutely everything, but especially on the budget. So nothing that comes out. You know, when the budget dropped last year, right, it was kind of seen as like, oh, it's just neutral. It's and it created absolute hell that we all had to deal with politically. So I just want to be clear that that strategy needs to be discussed with the people who are the main messengers of the budget, which is us number two. I think I want us to have some earlier discussions on the ways that the community is solicited for feedback, like, I think the survey I've mentioned it a couple of times. It's not adequate. I think it added more confusion, and I think there are other ways that we, as district councilors, want to be engaged in the solicitation process with our communities. So I just want to see those discussions happen sooner rather than later. And then lastly, ultimately, for me, what I the biggest gap that I want to close between last year's process and this year's is that the councilors need to have all the same information the mayor has. There was a lot of briefings that he received. Of course, it makes sense and given, you know, the grace of the transition and everything we've discussed. But I think moving forward, I want to understand what is a way that we are also getting that information, because I often felt like, well, you know, the mayor put this in their budget because of x, y, z information that I don't have access to. And so I don't have the opportunity to be reflective and responsive to that and contribute, you know, my perspective as a district counselor into those decisions. Right. And I think that goes to what folks are saying as it relates to making sure that there's some better partnership between the councilors and the mayor ahead of the mayor's budget dropping. But ultimately, I'd like to see a process where we are working more in parallel and that any information, any briefings that the mayor is getting to make his decisions, that we're not being left out of those because it felt like then we had to scramble to get all the information that he spent months getting, and that made our jobs tougher. And at the end of the day, it is our responsibility to pass the budget. We have the final say, and so when we don't have the information we need, then that made it so that we had to defer to him because he had information that we didn't. So the lack of information is actually hindering our ability to do our jobs, in my opinion. That's all for now. Thanks.
32 To council member.
33 So one of the most problematic things that happened in the last budget session, I think, is councilors proposed amendments without knowing what the consequences of them would be, and without there being time for the bureaus to give us feedback about what the consequences would be. That was one function of the short timeline, and I would hope that since all of us are gonna have a pretty good idea of what the budget is and what it's going to look like, I would hope that we as councilors start developing concepts for cuts or ads we want to make, particularly cuts, and then having those discussed in committee to the relevant committees so that the bureaus have a chance to react to them early. I think that we have a responsibility to mean that staff have responsibility to give us good information. We have a responsibility to allow time for staff to give us feedback on things that we're suggesting.
34 So we've given two competing pieces of information there. Councilor Novick, in terms of should the committee be used, should it not be used? You know, it was an innovative and a first time approach this year for committees to be used.
35 I think they generally weren't used.
36 I don't get the sense that that I'm going to look to colleagues, like in terms of your experience as committee members and budget discussions, how did that go? Councilor Green.
37 In my committee that I co-chair, we didn't use that committee very often to consider amendments that would have been related to that specific set of portfolios. In fact, we canceled the committees to provide space for people to work on their amendments. And so but I know in finance, I know in other committees we did use the committees that way. So I think it was it was a sort of choose your own adventure.
38 Okay.
39 I don't believe that the housing committee had the space or time to do that either. We had a presentation at one point from both director of fb and Portland solutions, but it was not what I'm hearing you describe as far as how you think committees should be more engaged in that process. I wouldn't say that we had the time or the understanding of how to do that at the time.
40 Vice chair.
41 I think what councilor Avalos is pointing out is that the committee conversation can mean a few different things, and we did direct last budget cycle bureaus to come before the relevant committees to have in-depth discussions and presentations about what they were bringing forward in the way that we had at the service area level at council. But I think what committees didn't do that councilor Novick is pointing to that would be interesting, is talking about the actual proposals themselves. And one thing that one of our colleagues suggested, and I apologize, maybe this was you. Councilor Novick. I honestly don't remember who I had the conversation with, but one of our colleagues suggested with me, should there be some sort of priority for amendments that have actually been through a committee process? I didn't think this last time around we were set up to be able to do something like that, but that is something that it might be interesting to discuss at some point in this committee and see if folks would be interested in proposing something like that. Or maybe people want to share their thoughts. It not in a discussion for a proposal from committee, but just let me know what you think. But that is something that one of our colleagues suggested at one point that I decided we were not prepared to move forward with, but that could be on the table.
42 That was not me. I wish it was.
43 Councilor Green comments.
44 Yeah, I like that idea. If we're going to continue with the committee structure, I think that's the value that you get from them. That's the role that they're supposed to play. I we still need to figure out how to have enough trust to take an appointment and move it to the consent agenda that comes out of a committee. But that's, you know, there's there's mixed opinions on this council on on the role of that. But I think just to get clarification from councilor Novick is your concept, is it a a very fully baked type of amendment, or is it more like, here's an idea, here's a qualitative shift in the structure of the budget. Right. We're going to get rid of this whole book of business or whatever. Tell me what that would do and what we would lose, what we would get.
45 Yeah. I'll give you an example. Suppose somebody was to suggest that it doesn't really make any sense for us to be trying to arrest mid and high level drug dealers and seizing drugs to interrupt the supply of drugs. So they suggested maybe what we should do is get rid of the six people in the police bureau who do drug interdiction. I think that's the kind of idea that you should bring to the public safety committee, so that they can bring the police bureau in and have a discussion about what the consequences of that might be. And that's the kind of thing which I mean, frankly, I think I might indeed personally have that discussion in January or February, and I happen to be on the committee. But I think that people who aren't on committees should feel empowered to do the same thing. Say, I think I might bring forward this idea. I'd like you to discuss it in your committee and hear from the bureaus what they think the consequences would be.
46 That's interesting to me. And then you can do that work now, basically at any point. And then when the mayor's budget drops, you can move it straight to a formal thing, and we're not violating. Okay, exactly.
47 As mr. Berry said, we don't have to wait till tomorrow to do this. And as alcoa used to say in the in the 70s, alcoa can't wait. Neither can we.
48 Well, I understood 1970s that's about it in that sentence. So okay, I am looking to wrap up this. Make sure there are no other closing comments from colleagues. Staff appreciate this. As normal clear as mud. Our guidance and I look forward to yours and the council president's rolling out of a calendar and budget calendar for the coming fiscal year. Thanks. Okay, let's get back on to our regularly scheduled agenda. And I'm not even sure what number the flood service benefit fee is. That's the item I would like to go to next.
49 Sure. Establish a charge to fund city payment of the flood safety benefit fee to the urban flood safety and water quality district.
50 Oh, look, it's jonas still.
51 Didn't even didn't even have a chance to walk away. Good afternoon again, chair. Committee. For the record, jonas barry, the city's chief financial officer. Also, just flag while I'm up here at the moment. So we have subject matter experts in here in the room who can help with questions. Importantly, including representatives from Portland water bureau, dozen or so slides that I'll go through with you today, 10 to 15 minutes and then would like plenty of q&a, do a few things. We'll do a quick tee up of the urban flood safety and water quality district will provide information about the city's statutory requirement to pay a flood safety benefit fee to the district, will present a recommendation and timeline to create a revenue collection mechanism to cover that payment, and will hopefully move forward. An ordinance to authorize implementation of that payment by July 1st, as has been directed in the 2526 adopted budget. Next slide please. So start with just a couple minute brief summary of the urban flood safety water quality district. It's an unwieldy acronym. Someone referred to it as the squid, which isn't quite grammatically correct, but it's as close as I've heard. I will also note that we did have a conversation with district staff. District leadership about attending agreed it would be a more efficient use of time for me to just kind of cover this on their behalf today, and if council or committee would like to have a more robust discussion about the district, they volunteered, they're more than happy to come have that, have that visit with you. So the the district is a special district created by the state legislature in 2019, charged with managing the Portland metro levee system and the columbia corridor in north Portland. For those who have been around for a while, there used to be a kind of a patchwork of different small drainage districts. And so 2019 legislation moved them all into one large, coordinated district. The levies managed by the district can look like they're just large grassy berms. You've probably seen them without even realizing it. Long sections in districts one and two of bridgeton road and marine drive are actually right on top of the levies. You can see an example of that here in the the photo. However, the levies are highly engineered pieces of infrastructure that provide critical flood protection to lives, properties, businesses and assets. And the managed floodplain. Next slide. So some of this data was on the last slide as well. The district, in addition to having the actual 27 miles of levees, also manages 45 miles of slough pipes, ditches, 12 pump stations. And the floodplain itself protects more than 13,000 acres. You can see the boundaries there, kind of along the columbia river, just and then extending just east of the city into fairview, wood village, troutdale and Gresham. Next slide. So it protects you can see the data here. I won't read it all to you, but in addition to the residents and businesses, specifically, when the within the floodplain, the levee system also protects the columbia south shore well fields, which is the city's secondary water supply. The Portland airport and major regional transportation corridors, and as such, functioning levee system is critical to the economic stability of the city and of the region. Oregon revised statute 550 as modified in 2024 by the state legislature, provides the district with various authorities, including the ability to flood, to fund, to impose a flood safety benefit fee to the incorporated cities and counties within the district service area. And so that's the fee that's driving this conversation today. The amount of the flood safety benefit fee was established based upon population within those incorporated cities and counties, and escalates annually at the greater of 3%, or cpi. The city's allocation for 2526 is reflected in the in. The adopted budget is around $5.3 million. Next slide. So the the statute defers to local jurisdictions to identify resources and mechanisms to pay the fee. So basically says district you can charge the fee. You can impose the fee. Local jurisdictions, you're responsible for coming up with your mechanism to pay. And there's really three general ways that this has been handled by the jurisdictions that are subject to that fee. General fund is how the county pays. The only county within the district is Multnomah county pays from their general fund. And that's how the city has paid the last couple of years, as we'll discuss in a minute, a couple of cities have it just embedded within the stormwater fund operating expense on their utility bill. And then a couple of cities, Gresham and wood village, have a separate line item for the fee. That's that's collected specifically on the utility bill. Next slide. So how is the city paid for it? The first year that we were responsible for paying was 2425. And so we used one time general fund discretionary and 2526 for the current year budget. The amount was placed in the overhead cost pool and paid out technically out of the office of the cfo, but essentially distributed out out around the city. And then we'll talk in a minute about maybe the next to the next slide. Talk about the assumption of a new mechanism that's not general fund. So why are we shifting right now? It's a history dating back a couple of years, as directed in a couple of prior budget notes that are reflected here with some some highlights. In 2425, a budget note directed a work group to assess a wide range of options. That work was completed in fall 2024, but due to timing constraints related to budget and knowing incoming shift in government, the recommendation at that time was to continue paying via the general fund, but but continue to explore options in the future. Most recently, in the 2526 adopted budget, there was a note included specifically to develop a plan to implement the on bill fee, come back to council no later than October 15th. Here we are in that process for implementation in July 1st, 2026. Next slide. Yeah, great. So subsequently and quick response to that budget note because we already had the workgroup prior workgroup formed, we kind of reassembled a slimmed down version of that workgroup and began digging back in meeting regularly over the last few months to get to this point to look at essentially the recommended methodology and timeline to implement that collection, I would say the major criteria that we prioritized in developing a final recommendation were that obviously it be legal that there be equity and cost of service, meaning that the charge be basically aligned proportionally with the estimated benefit to the to the person paying that there be socioeconomic equity, socio economic equity by meaning acknowledgment of impacts to low income residential folks and that there be an ease of administration to facilitate the timeline and hopefully low cost. I'm going to move and shift to talk about the recommendation itself. Before I do that, I thought I'd pause real quick if there's any questions about kind of the history or how we got to this point. Great. All right. I'll move on to the recommendation. So the recommendation for the fee is a small line item fee on the water and sewer and water utility bill, similar to other peers. This consistent with those peers. And using the utility bill to collect a small dedicated fee is a common construct used around the state and around the nation for various different purposes. And obviously we have examples in the region here of this fee. Specifically, I want to be very clear. It's not a utility charge that this is. Utility bill is a collection tool to bring the resources in the door. Funds collected will be deposited directly into the general fund and will not be commingled with any water, sewer or stormwater utility funds. The proposed methodology is that it's kind of two twofold a residential rate, which is $1.20 per month per dwelling unit, and then for nonresidential customers using the utility bill. So a percent of the utility bill as a proxy to cover that, that allocation. And I'll have a couple examples of what that looks like here in a minute. We anticipate in year one that would generate just over 7 million in, I'll say, kind of gross revenue. We know we'll have under collection folks who who don't pay, we will apply low income discount. The same low income discount that's applied to utility customers will apply here. So that will reduce those sort of gross receipts. And then the water bureau will collect the cost of administering that. And so that results in an anticipated revenue for 2627 of 5.7 million. So just slightly above the projected amount that will be needed to cover that payment next fiscal year. Next slide. So here you can see just some examples of kind of how the actual impact, the monthly billing impact would play out among different customers. Obviously average single family home duplexes, two dwelling units or 240 small multifamily. You can do the math and then some a couple examples of small commercial, large commercial and mixed use commercial with those monthly impacts would look like. Also would just note not all customers are on monthly billing cycles, so this would be the monthly charge if someone was being billed and paying on a quarterly basis, it would obviously be three times that amount would be the amount that shows up on their bill. But reflecting the monthly monthly impact.
52 So I'm going to stop you here instead of coming back. Just so you proposed both a flat rate and a 90.9 percentage rate. So in this that you have up now the large commercial and the small commercial are the rate, excuse me, usage rate. Is that is that what we're is that how do we defining that 0.9 percent you had on the previous slide.
53 Yeah I may call on the water bureau to make sure I'm being technically correct, but but my understanding is that's the amount of the utility bill. So the water sewer, stormwater water bill, which is both, you know, potentially volumetric and has a fixed rate component. So it would be the percentage, the 0.9% of that total monthly bill.
54 Okay.
55 I'll let you keep going, but I'll flag it for a bill that's not part of a utility bill. Then using utility rates is an interesting dynamic. So let's keep going.
56 Understood. Great okay. Next slide please. Yeah. So why did we choose the utility bill. Mostly. Certainly compared to other options that have been considered it has mostly advantages. I teed up the criteria we looked at to begin with. And it hits all of those criteria. It's legal, has relative ease of implementation and is able to accommodate the right equity considerations that we wanted to address without creating a new a new program. Additionally, it provides a a mechanism that's stable. The projections that we've run indicate that just based upon kind of conservative customer growth assumptions, utility bill increase, assumptions that are already embedded in the system, that this fee at these the dollar 20 and the 0.9 percent shouldn't need to increase based upon the escalation in the fee. And so that was an advantage that it's not a fee that we think is going to need to fluctuate wildly year over year. It can just be set at a stable amount and remain there. So that's an advantage. Anytime council chooses obviously the that could that could be adjusted upward or downward as as appropriate. I do want to be transparent does have a couple drawbacks. For many it might feel it probably will feel like a utility bill increase because it's showing up on the utility bill as a mechanism. It is an increase in the cost burden. Like all revenue generation, if the city is going to receive money, somebody somewhere is going to be paying that money. And so it I just want to be transparent. It will feel like a utility bill increase. And it is in fact an increase in, in, in cost. One of the potential drawbacks, chair, as you mentioned, is kind of the methodologies are kind of a little bit tailored for different groups, residential versus versus nonresidential. That does place some responsibility on Portland water bureau staff to be ready to communicate that. And we'll talk about that in a minute, and to be ready to provide customer service. And then the last potential drawback is it is the July 1st implementation date, which we'll talk about here in another slide is fairly accelerated timeline, which doesn't leave a lot of space for the community engagement that we would normally have for a for a charge like this. Next slide. We're almost at the end here. So timeline here of just the key actions don't need to go on a lot of detail, but just so you can sort of have a little bit of understanding of why the action is sort of necessary now to get to implementation by the end of the fiscal year. There's a in addition to assuming the ordinance passes through committee today, we'll look for council approval in October, and then Portland water bureau will immediately begin implementation work. In addition to the technical billing system work to get that platform set up to to actually do the collection. Other implementation actions will be communications and outreach to customers. It's possible there could be potential administrative rule changes to accommodate the new charge. Just to update our current rules and code to to acknowledge that this charge exists. And then there will need to be a significant amount of staff training, particularly related to customer service. And believe it or not, whatever this is, nine months or so is a very accelerated timeline. This is a lot of work to get done in a very short amount of time. Very appreciative of Portland water bureau for for leading the effort to to get this completed and achieve that collection target of of July. One last slide here. Kind of similar information just in a little different format, kind of looking at next steps. If we can bump one forward to the last one. Thank you. So here we are today. Committee action assuming committee approves I believe we're queued up hopefully queued up for Wednesday October 1st at the full council. And then you can see there the implementation timeline for the next few months. So with that, happy to stop talking and entertain any thoughts or questions.
57 Okay. Councilor Green.
58 Thank you mr. Berry. So this is helpful presentation. First of all I think we need to levy the fee. We need to recover these costs. I don't think the burden is unreasonable, but I do have some questions about the statutory basis of this. So you mentioned aws 550. Did you say that this was that was the law that gave us the right to collect this fee, or is this more like we're just consistent in raising the fee because of this?
59 Yeah. So I good good question. Councilor. So aws 550 created the district and then subsequently there's a senate bill 1517 added this fee. And so if you're looking for those details it's in senate bill 1517 from I believe it's 2024 okay.
60 That is helpful. Thanks. And then I just for my colleagues on the rate setting side in the underlying 550 when it talks about the board of directors setting the rates. Now, the board of directors is not the city of Portland, but they can set rates based upon utility costing. But they can also apply differential rates based upon equity differential rates based upon like benefit of flood relief. Like there might be some entities that would have a greater benefit from not being from the city not being flooded than others. And so just keep in the back of our minds that this isn't just, well, yeah, exactly the airport, but also any commerce, you know, there's just a whole range of benefits that are not distributed evenly. So just wanted to flag that as well.
61 Thanks. Vice chair.
62 Thank you chair. On the slide where you talked about the different rates for different user types, did I see that the average percent for there we go for a single family home or a duplex is 0.7%, so less than the commercial rate. But for multi-family units you're not using the commercial rate, you're using the per unit rate. Is that correct?
63 That's correct.
64 Okay. And these are the numbers that could change depending on what the board decides to do. Or are these numbers set.
65 So these would be set these these would be the amounts that we would charge to collect the fee to pay at the current expected 5.3, whatever it is this year, escalating at 3%, or cpi, which is defined in this senate bill that I mentioned earlier. And our projections show that at these at these, the combination of the $1.20 per residential and the 0.9% for nonresidential would be adequate for at least the next many years to make sure that we're covering that fee, we could get to a spot where if the board were to change the fee that they imposed upon us, this construct could collect more or less than we need, and we'd be compelled to come back. There is a possibility that if the, for example, if the fee only escalated at the minimum 3% for many years, we might end up in a decade over collecting based upon other, you know, growth assumptions in the system. So at some point, we will want to come back and take a look at it and say, is this still the right? The right split here? But we don't anticipate that would be for a few years here. So that gives some stability to ratepayers and stability to the folks who administer the system.
66 Thank you. And I appreciate that. For many residential users, the percent on their bill is lower than that commercial percent rate. I think that's appropriate. I am a little bit concerned about how high it is for some of our folks who live in multi-family units, which are often smaller units with. You know, I guess it's not about use because it's not the water use itself. It's tacked on to the bill. But I am a little concerned about the percent there because the rate is so low at $1.20. I don't think we need to make a change right now, but I want to put that on the record, because if you come back to us and we need to adjust rates upward in the future, I think we just need to consider what the impact is on some of our residents who live in multi-family housing. I also would note that I hope if we come back and think differently about how we apply rates, that we don't start looking at residential users differently based on geography, and that whatever we do, we keep consistent across the whole city. I do have one question about what happens with the money that's collected. You said that that goes into the general fund, not into utility rates. It's going into the general fund to be used for this purpose. If we over collect, which it sounds like we will be in the first year, does that over collection sit in a side fund or get accounted for in a way where we retain that for this use, so that in the future, if we collect rather than raising rates, we can use those dollars? Or is there I don't mean intent here. I mean any possible risk that that money gets pulled into other general fund uses. And we find ourselves here five years from now saying, gosh, we over collected, but now we're under collecting and we don't have the buffer we should have.
67 Yeah, that's a great question. What we would anticipate is that this be in essentially a sub fund within the general fund. That's called something like flood safety benefit fee sub fund that would just be used to make this payment. It won't be perfect, right. So there will be an it size intentionally to be a little bit of over collection to make sure that we don't under collect. And it will be I would guess I'd just say it's, it's it's going to be an annual look to say, is there a couple hundred thousand in the fund? We just remain in fund balance. That gives us a little cushion for next year. Have we accumulated a million and a half in this fund? We need to think about doing something different. Maybe adjusting that fee or other related options. So I just think it is something we're going to have to monitor closely as we go forward, because it's moving into that sub fund. It wouldn't be the type of thing that we're just going to move around and suddenly say, we're going to now spend it on x, y, z. Other thing, at least not without council direction to do so.
68 And I hear you saying the intent is and it wouldn't be the type of thing, but I don't hear you saying it couldn't be. And so I, I just want to make sure that we are giving the right level of assurances to portlanders. It would be my intent also that we not use it. I don't think it should be, but it sounds like that is something that council will have to stick to and that we need to state clearly to portlanders that we believe this money is for a specific use, and we intend to only use it in that way. Is that correct?
69 I think I think that's right. And and I mean, it is a city attorney's can correct me, but I mean, it's not a restricted dollar in the way the utility funds are. And so there's, you know, many resources that we collect that have that flavor, that aren't restricted in that way. And yeah, it's up to us to have the transparency and diligence and self-control over using those appropriately.
70 I think the reason that I'm going down this path is we've had a lot of conversations up here about shifting who pays for things, either levying more fees or rates on portlanders for services that they receive. Or on the flip side, with things like our sidewalk repair our street trees program, moving toward paying for more things out of general fund, instead of individuals who are doing upgrades to their homes paying for them. We rarely say out loud that these are shifts in who's paying, and it is going in both directions. This is a shift from the general fund to asking portlanders to pay. I take that seriously, and I want to make sure that we are being protective of those dollars as we move forward.
71 Yeah.
72 Thanks, jonas. So before 2019, when we did have the patchwork of of levy small districts, what was the payment structure like for portlander in 2017?
73 Yeah. So my understanding is prior to the new legislation, the there were very, very poorly funded and essentially properties within the districts managed floodplain area. Each individual district were charged an assessment, and it was part of the reason the levies got into a difficult position is because of that limited funding mechanism. There's some other the city provided a little bit of sort of shared funding for shared services related to stormwater, which is closely connected to drainage. Frankly, it's a very antiquated, I'll say. My understanding anyway, is very antiquated model. They were called drainage districts because they were designed particularly to to protect agricultural land. And, you know, and hundred years ago that made a lot of sense. And that's not the nature of what they protect. Now, the levies are much different level of understanding. And what.
74 Ultimately you're either getting a property tax bill that said, the, you know, sandy river drainage district, blah. And it was $0.25 off your property taxes or something along those lines is the old model. And we had, I think, four of them just along the columbia for, for portlanders and Gresham and troutdale and all those others. Right. I'm assuming that's their name, but but we had a smattering of it.
75 Yeah.
76 This. First off, if there's any example of why we need to go after measure 50. Measure 50 in the long term will make small governments and then big governments cease to exist. And that's what occurred here. Drainage districts could cease to exist. This is an important change, because I think we all are benefiting from the safety of the Portland airport, for instance, and having a commercial industrial zone. But we're also asking portlanders now to take on a $5 million bill. In council. President's question about multifamily. She was citing the percentage being higher. I'd like to go back to that and make sure that I understood that question. I, I was under the impression that was a per door charge and not a percentage charge. Is it still is it a per door in the multifamily?
77 Yeah, it's a per door charge for multifamily, which is why I think I don't remember the math, but if five units is $6, right, I can do that math in my head. Yeah. So the 104 units, large multifamily.
78 It just works out percentage wise. That worked out to be higher than the average single family home. Correct. Because single family homes usually have maybe more than one person living in them. But but I want to be clear that the multifamily is still a per door 120 per door in those in up until the we get to the small commercial. Correct. Is that accurate?
79 Correct.
80 The ask to set a permanent, not a permanent, but a set rate instead of a cpi rate is challenging me given the. I think, bad governing that is preschool for all set income rate instead of a cpi growing rate similar to metro's sales tax and not a growing rate. So why would I accept this when I know that that to be a bad governing position, to not have a cpi growing rate, why would we want to do this instead?
81 Yeah, it's a great question. It's one we considered a few different options about the the the reason I'd say that work team and I was comfortable without having that escalator built into our fee is with some assumed residential growth and some assumed growth in utility bill, which is the proxy for the nonresidential, that that growth alone is adequate to cover in this specific circumstance, the 3% or cpi increase from the district. I think there's a scenario if we saw if we came close, if we didn't over collect too much, we were really close to only collecting what we needed. And suddenly we saw, you know, 8% annual cpi over a couple of years with very limited customer growth. We would need to come back and probably think about recalibrating that. But there was conversation about embedding our own cpi escalator. We just didn't feel like it was going to be worth it and over complicating in this particular case.
82 So if I think of the levies as the the fence line between us and the river, everything behind the fence, us, Portland, we hope we intend. If everything goes right, we're going to increase the number of doors that pay for keeping that same square footage of fence line protective.
83 Yeah, correct.
84 It. Would it be appropriate to have in the positive or in the negative if we over collect or if we under collect, you know, three years in a row or exceeding 10% something along those lines to trigger a cpi adjustment of that rate after a three year trend, you know, greater than or less than 10% of predicted three years in a row triggers a cpi something. And I use these numbers not because three years is magical or cpi is the right number, but just something. So that couple of things I'm concerned about. Portland has a Portland, the larger Portland, Multnomah county. We we are over collecting on a lot of stuff and not getting it out the door. And we are or we have now put more people into the tax collection that I don't think were intended to be tax collected at a higher rate for things that are no longer considered high income or whatever. So I'm challenged by this a little bit. I'm kind of thinking out loud here with you and the committee about what would be appropriate, and it kind of gets to the vice chairs questions about protecting this fund to be what it's for and not other pet projects later on. Given that the origins of the levy funding came from and off of folks property taxes when they were special districts, by the way, this was really good legislation when this happened. This had to happen. So I'm very happy that it did. Just trying to find a real, equitable way to make sure that we don't get awry. Given the other constraints of Portland budget right now.
85 Yeah, it's a great line of questioning and couple of thoughts. It's not this is not reflected in the ordinance as it's currently drafted. One is just being mindful. I'm not opposed to the idea of having sort of an automatic escalator under certain conditions, just thinking carefully about how do we, you know, embed that language correctly and making sure that that I think one of the reasons the flat fee was, was, or I should say the unchanging fee was preferred is it's it doesn't require changes to the billing system. And so that added some kind of comfort there. That doesn't mean that couldn't be changed. But we don't have that conversation with with water bureau. So I'm I'm open to entertaining something like that. I just want to make sure we're thinking through all the, the downstream kind of implementation impacts. The other option is that, you know, there is some requirement that every three years it comes to council or, you know, some embedded checkpoint in the system that ensures that we're doing that, you know, transparent, diligent look and, and sort of calling the question at appropriate times. So I think that just off the top of my brain chair, those are a couple of ideas.
86 And then last question. So given I mean anything that's per door is going to be right. What's a regressive strategy. But we are accepting it here. But when it comes to the large commercial uses, we are tying it to their use of water or use of sewer. One of those two, because we're saying it is 0.9% of their utility bill.
87 Their total charges.
88 Total charges. So if I have a business and my monthly water sewer bill is $1,000, 0.9% on top of that will come for this. So in the one sense, for commercial users, we're doing a, you know, progressive approach. And by door we're doing we're going if you have a door, you've got a fee. And it's not a utility bill, but it's directly related to commercial uses. Utilities. Okay.
89 Yeah. And maybe I'll. I'll interject if I may. We looked at a variety of different ways to approach this. And it's a very tricky problem. I mean, you know, another strategy is there's 50 different customer categories in each customer category pays a different amount based upon size or type of business, etc. Those are very expensive to monitor. I mean, it's a lot higher cost of administration and difficult more difficult to sort of enforce and administer. And so that was really what you just highlighted was one of the trade offs in trying to come up with something that was that balanced sort of simplicity with fairness and also recognizing the relative size of this. You know, if we're talking $50 a month, that's going to be a much different conversation. Not to say it's nothing, but but those are some of the things that the committee the workgroup struggled with is how do we kind of simplify this as much as we can, but get that same, you know, equity across different different sizes and types of customers?
90 I'm going to move on, but I'm actually hoping maybe we can hear a little bit after some questions about the the workgroup, because their decision making might be important in this councilor Green.
91 I appreciate this discussion, but before I get going, I just want to recognize that wood village was a municipality that you left out. So I didn't want to make sure we weren't engaging in wood.
92 Village villagers.
93 Wooden villagers. Erasure. No, I think it's an important discussion to have. I think a couple comments is that if it's a if it's a percentage based upon a door or percentage of someone's bill on average, then it's pretty much indexed to inflation already, because inflation is a function of utility bills. And usually utility bills go up by the rate of inflation is usually usually how they try to target things. So there is a sort of concordance there. I think the the percentage that for the nonresidential rate, I mean, I am sympathetic to this concern that it's like, well, we're saying this is not a utility bill, but it sure as hell looks like utility bill. But I think having been in the other side of this, developing rates before, in the past, you know what they did. I'm just guessing here. But I'm pretty sure this is what happened is they said to keep the keep the residential rate manageable, we have to charge the nonresidential rate, an escalating level. And that's how you get to about 20 a door is by tying nonresidential to 0.9% of the bill so that it scales with output. Basically. I'm fine with that. I think this council, this committee can entertain revisiting this structure. I would actually really like to talk to that workgroup, too. I do think what's missing from this, and I don't want to hold this up because I think we need to start collecting on this. But council can pass a resolution at any time or amend this ordinance is to just put in a a rebate clause. So if we've over collected for a number of years, I think we should just rebate back to those same bill payers. And that would probably be the simplest way to do it. I think that's the last thing I'll say is I think, you know, we've just experienced a federal government, bonneville power administration in particular, was dodged by a hostile federal government, and that is the institution, along with the corps of engineers and the bureau of reclamation, that is responsible for making sure our city doesn't get flooded. And so the levies are there as a final bulwark against that. But it's those dams upstream that really make sure we don't get flooded. And there was a point where they were getting rid of their most seasoned veteran real time operators, which could result in flood risk like flood risk management issues. And so I just think that we've got a pretty critical piece of infrastructure to fund here. I support the fee. I think the structure of the fee is there's a reason why utilities change rates every couple of years is because there's always a way to tune them up. So I don't see this as a once and for all. It's a buck 20 forever kind of thing, so I'm prepared to support it.
94 Thank you chair. Both of my colleagues to the sides of me have talked about the workgroup. And jonas. None of us were here when that workgroup was seated as at least an initial piece of information. Can you remind us who was on that workgroup? And I don't need names, but what entities were represented? It looks like it was a combination of both. Some of our folks who are experts in some of city government, but also some community representatives, and I'm interested in knowing.
95 Yeah, no, that's a good question. And she has to be clear about that. So the initial workgroup was was a little bit larger. But but mostly I believe just internal. So this is the initial budget note the refined work group was just internal city folks. So it was city budget office, bureau of environmental services, water bureau, both the the finance folks and the customer service billing platform. Folks in the water bureau, revenue bureau, city attorney, and then community engagement and comms folks were involved in that conversation.
96 Was there community engagement work that was done leading up to the decision that this would be the best way to balance all of those competing interests? Right. When you were answering the chair's question, you were talking about the different models and why this one was decided on. Did we do work with community?
97 I can't speak to the original committee, the for the first year because I was only here at the back end of that. I'm not sure if there was any community involvement. There has really not been in this subgroup in large part to get to this moment. It's sort of the tricky, you know, since the direction in the budget note was due to the on bill fee, the question is really just around the allocation and the technical pieces of collection. And so there was sort of the came up a little bit in the budget conversation earlier this afternoon of, you know, do we start that engagement before we come to council or do we come to council and sort of follow up with the engagement, you know, meaning, do we spend much time with the community and then have something come to council and it's doa? And so that was the struggle that we had. And we chose the path of, of of given the given the relative small size of the fee to just start with council as that entry point.
98 And I don't think you have anybody signed up today to testify. Correct.
99 I'm looking over.
100 No one signed up to testify.
101 So I, I guess I would just say that if there are things that we need to know about this decision that we have not heard, because there wasn't community engagement on the front end, I'll put the plea out to any portlanders who are listening that you please write to our offices before this comes to council, because right now, we're under the impression that this is the best path forward. And if it is not, we need to know that.
102 Okay, I'm not seeing others in the queue. I. When there's a motion made, I'm going to support this today and I'm going to look to you and your team, jonas, for potential language to introduce from my chair to the whole council, an amendment that will speak to the potentials for an over collection and asterisks, potentials for an under collection, and how we might deal with that. I don't want I don't want to similar to council president. I don't want to stop it at this committee here. I think that this will be important for the rest of the council to hear, and we should keep that timeline moving, but I am going to seek a conversation about either an on or off ramp.
103 Yeah.
104 And this has been a helpful conversation just in terms of rates. Et cetera. How we want to do it. I appreciate the thoroughness and the differences that are out there that were proposed. So thank you. I'm checking real quick about a note that just flashed up. Now it's gone. Okay. If there's no other discussion, then if there is a motion to move this ordinance 2520 2025 365 to be sent to the full council with a due pass recommendation, I would take it.
105 I move to move. I can never remember. So moved.
106 Thank you.
107 I set you up for the so moved. All right.
108 Thank you.
109 Would you like a second?
110 I think I need one.
111 I could give you a second there.
112 All right, so councilor Green moved and vice chair pirtle-guiney seconded to move this item to the full council with the recommendation that it be passed. If we could call the roll, please.
113 Green?
114 Hi, Avalos.
115 I pirtle-guiney. I Zimmerman.
116 I okay.
117 Motion passes.
118 The motion passes. Thank you. Thanks, jonas. Appreciate the work. Complicated and important. Okay, clerk. We're ready for item number three.
119 Authorize the bureau of transportation to acquire certain temporary rights necessary for construction of northeast 122nd avenue. Safety and access. Beach street dash, wasco street project through the exercise of the city's eminent domain authority.
120 Great.
121 Welcome. If you can introduce yourselves and take it away, please.
122 Okay. Thank you. Councilors. For the record, my name is brian poole with Portland bureau transportation.
123 And I'm charlie ruggles with PBOT. I'm a right of way, agent three.
124 And let me go ahead and share my screen. All right. Thank you for the time. We're going to be talking about the northeast 122nd avenue crossing improvements project. So this project is a capital improvement project that originated from a 2019 regional flexible fund, or application that was awarded through metro. It includes three either new or upgraded signalized crossings of 122nd avenue. The locations for these were selected based on feedback we received as we started to do early engagement as part of the hundred and 22nd avenue plan, and they they'll add new crossings on one of the high crash corridors in our city. And really, the focus of these crossings is to improve safety and access for people walking and biking and getting across 122nd avenue to access parks, shopping and other destinations. This shows the project area. The. The illustration on the left is really just a zoomed in illustration showing that where these are sort of concentrated around around in northeast Portland. So the first one at beach is near parkrose high school. We have one at russell, which is really connecting a neighborhood greenway, which I'll talk about. And then the other one is down near northeast broadway street. And the map on the right just shows how these sort of where these are clustered in relation to the entirety of 122nd avenue. Just real quickly, I wanted to give you an overview of sort of what these projects are crossings look like and the purpose for each one. So the 1/122 avenue at beach is will be a rapid flash beacon or a pedestrian hybrid beacon. Excuse me. And that's the one I shared an illustration. Just so you kind of understand what those look like, but it will be stop controlled. So when somebody pushes the button a pedestrian, it'll stop all traffic. They'll be able to cross. And this really will help connect lewis park and then parkers high school and parker middle school and and cross at that location at beach, the one at russell. I will note that this one does not have any proposed right of way needs, but just wanted to kind of provide some context to what we're doing here. This is was recently designated as a neighborhood greenway. And so it already has a rapid flash beacon. But we wanted to make that more robust for the amount of people biking and walking that we expect. And so it will also be a hybrid beacon, a stop controlled. So helping kids get across to and from school. And then the last one on 122nd north of broadway. We've been working closely with the san rafael shopping center owners, which is the schnitzer's on across a new signalized or really a new traffic signal. So it will help split the difference between halsey and san rafael and also channelize, where people are getting in and out of that, that shopping complex. And so a lot of times right now, they've there's a lot of swerving or sort of weaving of in and out from winco, from the other businesses there. And so we've been working closely with them to help, help channelize all the traffic happening at this traffic signal and then making all the other turns right in, right out. Just to to give a sort of sense of where we're at. We are now at that right of way phase. We've been doing design for about the last 18 months, and we expect to get a construction next summer. And the bottom shows the funding for the project, and I will flag that. The slides that were sent out earlier had an extra one in the fixing our streets three funding, so that it's not 1,110,000, it's just the 110,000. And those transportation system charges and the fixing our streets funds are to cover our local match for the federal funding. And then real quick, we have been doing a lot of engagement, both with this project and other work we're doing on 122nd avenue. So we've been talking closely with the school districts, neighborhood associations nearby. I mentioned property owners really doing door to door engagement, and then we had an open house earlier this year talking about this project, along with others, and have had have sort of have been able to shift design where needed to accommodate concerns. We heard. And then just lastly, for me, wanted to clarify that this is just one of many projects on 122nd avenue. So we have other signals, signalized crossings that are going to be in construction early next year, street lighting, infill, other intersection improvements, and then a bigger safe streets for all project, which is just about to start. Design, which we anticipate construction happening in 2028. And then.
125 All right, so I'll speak about the right of way, which is why we're here today. Pbot is seeking authority to initiate the negotiations and offer just compensation to property owners for necessary easements to complete this work. If the negotiations fail, the city is asking to proceed with condemnation to obtain the easements to complete the project. Temporary construction easements are needed from five property owners. These are smaller easements less than 400ft■!s. Some are far less than that. The temporary easements will facilitate construction of the sidewalk improvements that are ADA compliant. The ramps, the signals that are going in some driveway and walkway reconnections are also going to be created. Again, the communication for right of way. We we usually start engagement after the ordinance is passed, but the owners have all been notified of the project impacts and they are notified of the council hearing via certified mail and will also follow up via phone, email or whatever their preferred communication style is and ongoing communication engagement continue throughout the right of way phase.
126 Thank you.
127 Vice chair pirtle-guiney.
128 Thank you chair, and apologies to my colleague from the district. I didn't mean to jump in ahead of you, but just a quick question. I wanted to clarify. These are all temporary easements during the construction period with no impact after the construction period. Is that correct?
129 That is correct.
130 Thank you.
131 Councilor Avalos.
132 Yeah. Thank you so much for the presentation. I'm very excited to hear about this infrastructure. As you know, we are desperate for it. And crossings in particular around schools. I know I'm constantly driving up and down. I live at 122nd in division, so that's a pretty intense corridor there. And I'm constantly dodging folks that are trying to cross at inappropriate places. That but understandable because the length between crossings is so big. So it seems like you are trying to address that. And I think that's a continued need that we have in the district, so that we're encouraging people to use the the infrastructure instead of, you know, just crossing everywhere. It's a constant fear that I have of just dodging people that that cross in front of me. So thank you. Really appreciative. I think my only question is what is your you mentioned at the end there that once this passes is when you kind of start going a little bit further into community engagement. What is your desire, if anything, for council offices to participate in that? I think broadly, district one councilors, we hear often from our community that they, you know, don't feel like they're included in these processes. And we're trying to improve that. And now that you have us, I'm curious if you've thought about the ways that you want to engage our offices to support your efforts in community engagement in the next phase?
133 Are you speaking directly to right of way or the project in general?
134 I guess the project in general.
135 Okay, yeah.
136 So I did mention that we had an open house earlier this year for this, this project, and we did hear from some of the property owners that were asking about the project and, and property owners and really this the the sort of I mentioned, this started back in 2018, 2019 when we started the 170 plan. I think the next big sort of avenue for engagement will be when we start design of this broader, comprehensive project. I talked about the safe streets for all project that has $20 million of federal funding. Assuming that that funding is stays intact, to to do comprehensive safety improvements. And we will we're looking at some more major changes to the roadway for that in terms of, you know, really making the road safer, both in intersections and between intersections. And so I think that would be the right place to kind of think holistically about the corridor and how we can make broader safety changes. So happy to yeah, continue the conversation, because I'm also the project manager of that one as well.
137 Great. Yeah. I just wanted to signal to you my eagerness and working with you on that communication plan. So let's keep talking about what that looks like. But thank you again.
138 Thanks. I was just clarifying. I think you had mentioned that community engagement starts after the ordinance, just specifically for those right of way folks. The rest of the community engagement has been ongoing. And that's the bigger, larger grand project. But specifically these few properties.
139 That's correct.
140 Okay, great.
141 Any I don't see any other comments. If I could have a motion to move ordinance 2025 366 to the full council with a due pass recommendation, I take.
142 It.
143 So moved.
144 Second councilor Avalos moves and vice chair pirtle-guiney seconds with that clerk. Can we call the roll please?
145 Green.
146 Hi, Avalos.
147 Hi, pirtle-guiney. Hi, Zimmerman.
148 Hi.
149 Motion passes.
150 All right. That will move to the full council. And thank you. Appreciate your very in-depth presentation for a right of way. But it was great to hear about that project. Very needed in that area. Thank you.
151 For coming. Thank you.
152 One thing for committee members on this.
153 Yes, please.
154 Thank you. Just a flag that I heard from the bureau today that they had noticed this coming to council in mid-october. So often with things like this, we see it move immediately to council. And this won't move immediately to council. It will pause for a little bit first, just because of the noticing dates that the bureau put out.
155 Great. Thank you.
156 Okay, I think we're going to read two more items together, four and five. And then we'll hear from staff.
157 Item four declare property at unnamed road off of northeast 33rd drive as surplus and authorized the bureau of transportation to dispose of the property by sale to wpc marine, llc. Item five vacate a portion of an unnamed road near the intersection of northeast 33rd drive and northeast marine drive, subject to certain conditions and reservations.
158 Thank you. All right. Go ahead and introduce yourself and take it away.
159 Hi. Good afternoon, chair Zimmerman and committee members. For the record, my name is kevin boec. I'm the development support services supervisor and PBOT real property services group. As a reminder, these items have been before you previously and forward to you to the full council for consideration. Subsequent to that action, on June 23rd, we heard from members of the 40 mile loop land trust that there was concerns about how the trail easement that was approved by you in the package would work. We felt it best to bring the items back to you, with explanation and opportunity for the public to weigh in on these items. Let me share my screen here. Before you. Today is an action to vacate a street, which would result in the title to the land reverting to the city under PBOT control, and then declaring that PBOT own land as a surplus for sale to the adjacent property owner. Pbot has determined that the right of way is not needed for public street purposes, and request that city council approve both the city's street vacation and surplus land sale. Both processes need city council approval in order for the city to release its control over the property. First up is the street vacation. This process is needed because the parcel in question has been mapped for many years by Multnomah county as a public street. Just a little quick background again on this area. How the city ended up with the property. Prior to 1984, the area was unincorporated. Multnomah county acquired title ownership of the property, with plans to construct turn lanes between northeast marine drive and northeast 33rd drive. Plans for the project were dropped and the improvements were never constructed. Both of the adjacent roads were later transferred to the city through an annexation process. Pbot discovered that although the road jurisdiction had been transferred, the city fee title ownership remained with the county. This was resolved through a transfer of ownership that occurred in 2019. As as I've outlined here today, PBOT has determined that the property is no longer needed for street purposes. Here's an aerial image of the vacation area and trail easement for your reference. As you can see, the street vacation bifurcates the area to the north and south that are owned by wpc marine, llc. The trail easement, proposed to be dedicated to the city, runs along the southernmost 30ft of the southern wpc marine, llc owned parcel. This trail easement area along the southern portion of the owner's property, reserves a crucial bike and pedestrian corridor to safely connect with the 40 mile loop trail when constructed through the area. Here's a recent photo taken from northeast 33rd drive, looking west. The area to be vacated is located near the center of this photo. As you can see, the vacation area is not approved as a public street and is currently being used as both a private driveway and as a fence storage area. Pbot is requesting the finance committee recommend this item to be moved to the full council, with request to vacate the public right of way. Second up is to declare the property surplus and authorize the sale to wc, wpc marine llc. The 48,219 square foot surplus property is the same area as the street vacation area, shown here with a red outline. As you can see, it sits between two other parcels that are already owned by wpc marine llc. City records show that the area proposed for surplus has never been approved as a public street. The city the property is only street connection is to northeast 33rd drive to the east. The property was declared to be excess back in 2023 per the city surplus property process. It was formally submitted for citywide review. None of the other city bureaus showed interest in acquiring the property. In accordance with adm 13.0 22a for a sale is eligible for disposition under category one determination and proposed to be sold to wpc marine, llc, since they own the abutting parcels to the north and south. Conditions of a sale reflect the city and community concerns that came up during the street vacation process. Wpc marine will grant a 30 foot wide trail easement along the length of their southern parcel, in support of a future extension of the marine drive 40 mile loop multipurpose path. The city will reserve a 20 foot wide sewer easement located over an existing 36 inch wide pressurized sewer main through the vacated area. Approval. This surplus sale will provide the city with a number of direct benefits. Pbot will receive $310,000 in one time net revenue. This number is based on current market value of this property, with discounts made for the trail easement in the sewer easement. In addition, this property will return future property tax revenue to the city. And finally, this surplus action preserves valuable industrial land in north Portland that allows the owner to develop one larger, contiguous parcel in the future, creating additional jobs and tax revenue to the city. Pbot, requesting the finance committee recommend this item to be moved to the full council, with a request to declare the property as surplus and sale to wc. Wpc marine llc. I thank you for your time and I'm available to answer any questions you may have.
160 Thanks, kevin. Let's go to councilor Green.
161 First.
162 I'm going to defer to the councilor from district two first because this is in her district.
163 Vice chair.
164 Thank you chair.
165 Thank you. Councilor. When we saw this proposal the first time around, I had asked about the trail easement and the connectivity. I think that's an important piece of the proposal you're bringing forward. I have since then heard two things. I've heard that there are concerns from the bike community, which I've been trying to understand, because it seems like we do keep pretty decent connectivity here. And I have also heard that there are concerns from the property owner that something about the easements bifurcating the property makes it harder for them to develop in the future. I had been told that that was about the bike trail easement, but it looks from the maps that you're showing like that might actually be about the sewer easement, which we can't really change. The pipes are there. I'm wondering if you can share anything about either of those concerns, if those have been brought to the bureau, and what conversations you've had about how to make this vacation work for all users.
166 Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Good question. So the reason it's going to be reserved by bts. So that runs through the middle of the property. And so that's a condition of of the street vacation. So that that's pretty pretty standard if we do for any street vacation, if there's utilities that we need to preserve the trail easement itself again, I think was there was placed here because it allows the development of the full contiguous parcel as a whole. Right. And so we don't know the full layout of the alignment through this area. So this gives us the ability in the future to connect to this segment along the southern portion of the property for both safety and just flexibility and design.
167 But it sounds like you haven't heard either of those concerns raised at the bureau level.
168 I'm sorry for for the trail.
169 Burns about the junction for the trail and how that would be affected by moving the trail easement to the southern portion, or concerns about the sewer easement bifurcating the property.
170 Yeah, nothing about the sewer easement bifurcating the property. I think the trail easement, again, I think the 40 mile loop trust was concerned because they wanted to go directly to the street vacation area. But I think from a safety perspective, it's actually better to have along the southern portion to connect into the existing trail along the east side of northeast 33rd drive for safety because it crosses a driveway. So that was one of the things that we we took into consideration when we placed it along the southern portion of the property.
171 Have there been conversations with the 40 mile loop group about how to make that connection as safe as possible? I know that that driveway and road there are not heavily used, but when they are used, they are often used by large trucks, heavy equipment.
172 That's correct. And during the street vacation process, we actually had exchanges with the 40 mile loop trail folks about where the placement would be. And I think, you know, they wanted to again, be at between the street where the street vacation area was proposed. But we want to make sure we kind of balance the, the, the city and community concerns here about for industrial development, plus having a viable bike infrastructure through this area. So by placing it in the middle of the property would have been basically invaluable for the property owner because they couldn't do anything with it. So this was a kind of a compromise from the city's perspective.
173 Are there maps about how the trail will eventually look on the other side of the property, and whether there's easy connectivity from the easement to the proposed path of the trail?
174 So you'll notice, like alongside the trellis area, that that area is open. It's it's right of way still. So we have the flexibility to make those connections. And they have the full design has not been vetted out yet. So we've left that open so that when it does come through here and is constructed, we can do it in a safe manner. But yeah.
175 Thank you.
176 Councilor Green.
177 Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. I just wanted to kind of put in the record now because there's there's some urgent conversations about land banking happening up at city council right now. When I look at this, this is not this is not what I would think about as a land banking opportunity for something like social housing or whatever, any kind of housing production. This actually feels like a pretty sensible opportunity to kind of squeeze a little bit more blood from the stone when it comes to our industrial land supply, which is, you know, our economic opportunities analysis would show that we've got some constraints. So balancing some ecological preservation and riparian zone stuff. And in the north reach of the Willamette river, this this would be a really good offset for that. I think the roughly 300 and I don't know, a little over $300,000 is a pretty good price for that. I don't know what we would use that other than the bike Lane. So I'm prepared to support this.
178 We do have one public testimony. If we could go ahead and call them up.
179 Sure. Walter valenti.
180 Good afternoon. Go ahead and introduce yourself. And you got three minutes.
181 Hi, I'm walter valenti, I'm from the 40 mile loop land trust. So we've been making trails happen for 42 years in the Portland area. So we know the details really matter. So our concerns are not we're comfortable with where the easement is on the south part of this property. Our questions are how is it going to hook up to the where it abuts underneath 33rd? Some of the drawings that we've shown have pretty sharp turns. They don't meet the trail standards that the parks department has. Question on when this would be built. It seems like the easement language has the grantor building this trail. When would they build it and when would the city's portion be built and designed? I'm glad to know it hasn't been designed because we had heard that there were designs with sharp turns. The 40 mile loop is mainly civil engineers that are retired, and parks department people that are retired or metro trails, people that are retired. So they really know all the rules on this sort of stuff. Now the easement going on the 40 mile loop abuts the port property on the on the western side of it. And that's not built. So are we proposing to build this trail as a and just leave it be a dead end? Are we building it and blocking it off? Are we deferring when it's being built? What are the triggers that makes it built the little connection for where it goes through the city's property? Is that going to be something that's paid for out of the $300,000 that's coming in, or is that going to have to be a new little budget battle for 50 foot little trail segment? So all these details really matter because we could just have a little orphan piece here, that the port takes years to build on their property, and then the institutional memory goes away on all this sort of stuff. So those are what our questions are. Generally, we're supportive of the street vacation and the easement, but it's all those other questions that we have. And that's what we need your your wisdom and, and are totally willing to work with staff to, to figure out those things. Thank you.
182 Okay. Are there any other public testimony?
183 No one else signed up.
184 Okay.
185 Great. Thanks so much for coming. Looking to colleagues I don't see any other comments. Part of me actually thinks that the likelihood of a trail future trail is is more likely with it being south of the property, and that it probably didn't have a snowball's chance in wherever if it was going through the middle of that property. So I see I see incremental improvement here, and I appreciate this coming back. And thanks for that conversation. If there are no other comments, this has been referred once and we can certainly refer it again back to the full council. And. If we be sent to the full council with a due pass. Do I have such a
186 With gratitude for the folks from the trail project for being here to publicly so that we can ensure that we follow through on them. So moved.
187 Great. Second.
188 Okay, we have a motion a second from pirtle-guiney and then Green. And with that clerk, if we can call the.
189 Roll.
190 Green.
191 Hi, Avalos.
192 Hi pirtle-guiney. I Zimmerman.
193 I all right. Motion carries ordinance to declare the property of unnamed road to be surplus as well as to grant. That actually we need to do the second one as well. Thank you. So we're going to apologize, colleagues, we need to do a second one for the second action. These are two different actions. With that I would entertain a motion to move ordinance 251 to be sent to the full council with a due pass recommendation also.
194 So moved.
195 Also second.
196 All right. Pirtle-guiney moves Green seconds and with that clerk can call the roll on the second item.
197 Thank you.
198 Green Avalos.
199 I.
200 Pirtle-guiney I Zimmerman.
201 Aye.
202 Motion carries to to send the ordinance to vacate the portion of property to full council. Okay. Let's make sure we haven't missed anything. We haven't. Thanks colleagues. The meeting for finance on October 6th is canceled, and our next finance committee meeting will be Monday, October 20th. I'll just highlight that is going to be our opportunity to hear from staff as a preview to the fall technical adjustment ordinance that will go to a work session for the full council. So with that, I will adjourn.