The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-22
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,080 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 Transportation and Infrastructure Committee met on September 22, 2025. Roll call was conducted for the body, and the statement of conduct was read. The session covered a package of three PBOT items on the Street Plaza Program: a resolution to formalize the program framework, an ordinance allowing decorative lighting in designated plazas and in the Skidmore Old Town and New Chinatown/Japantown historic districts, and an ordinance amending the transportation fee schedule for plaza permitting. Presentations described the program's history, plaza typologies, costs, maintenance partnerships, and community benefits. Public testimony was heard from representatives of Depave and a District 3 resident regarding plaza expansion and green infrastructure. Panel testimony followed from representatives of business associations and community organizations describing specific plazas in Montavilla, Central Eastside, and St. Johns, as well as maintenance work by Ground Score. Committee discussion touched on accessibility, tactical urbanism, bollards versus flex posts, funding history, and geographic distribution of plazas across districts. Votes occurred on the resolution and both ordinances, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. A second agenda item featured presentations from Depave and PDX Urban Gardens on green space, food forests, and placemaking, followed by councilor questions on equity, funding diversification, and district-level project distribution. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for October 6.
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.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Thank you. Oh, there he is. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I'm calling the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee to order. It is Monday, September the 22nd at 9:30 a.m. Diego, can you please call the roll?
1 Good morning. Koyama Lane Morillo here. Green. Here. Smith. Clark here.
2 And, claire, can you please read the statement of conduct?
3 Good morning and welcome to the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at. Portland.gov/council agenda slash transportation and infrastructure committee or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you claire. Today we have four items on our agenda. It is action packed today, so we'll have probably a struggle staying within our time bounds, but we'll need to pay attention to that. The first thing we have is a package of three items from PBOT related to the bureau's street plaza programs, which is very exciting. And then councilor Morillo vice chair has invited two community organizations today that are doing some very creative and innovative work to activate and beautify the public right of way. So, diego, I'm going to ask you to please read the first three items. We'll open these all these items all together, but we'll vote on them separately at the end.
5 Item one adopt the public street plaza program framework to support the creation of a permanent public street plaza program. Item two authorize exception to title 17 underground wiring districts code to allow for the placement of decorative lighting across Portland bureau of transportation. Designated pedestrian plazas and the skidmore old town historic district and the new chinatown japantown historic district. Item three amend transportation fee schedule for fiscal year 2025 to 2026 to reflect changes in the plaza use permit program.
6 Thank you diego I'm not going to repeat those. Hopefully everybody got that. Our colleagues at PBOT are here with this package, and they've all assumed the the position here. So let's get going. Thank you so much dca would you like to begin.
7 Yes. Good morning chair Clark and councilors I'm priya dhanapala and I serve as the deputy city administrator for public works. Over the past several years, Portland has been reimagining how our streets are largest shared public spaces, can serve communities in new ways, and the street plaza program has shown us, when we transform small sections of the right of way into welcoming plazas, we don't just create car free areas, we create spaces for connection, small business, vitality, cultural expression, and neighborhood pride. These plazas started as temporary pilots, many of them born during the pandemic, but they have quickly proven themselves to be lasting community assets, from ankeny alley to pride plaza, we've seen how they support local businesses, create safer, more welcoming environments, and strengthen our economic recovery. And today, PBOT is bringing forward a package of items to make this work permanent. The resolutions and ordinances before you will establish a clear, transparent framework for how plazas are created, managed and supported. They set expectations for stewardship, clarify use and event fees, and chart a path for the next five years that builds on lessons learned and deepens partnerships with neighborhoods and business districts. At its heart, the plaza program is about partnership, and these plazas succeed when the city, community and local businesses invest together to keep them vibrant, clean and welcoming. This package helps us formalize that shared responsibility and gives the partners clarity and certainty moving forward. With that, I will turn it over to PBOT deputy director, art pierce, to walk through the details of the proposal.
8 Thank you, donna paul again. My name is art pierce, deputy director for planning projects and programs here at the Portland bureau of transportation, and really very excited to be bringing the street plaza program here for your consideration today. This package of resolution and ordinances is bringing together a formalization of the long term effort of having a plaza program, as well as making some minor changes to code to enable the program to happen more effectively. So first, a little bit of context. Why should Portland invest in a plaza program? As donna paul already mentioned, I think it's very important for us to understand that about 30 to 40% of the city's land is streets and public space, and is for all of our deliberation and consideration. And I think it's very important for us to understand that we shape the character of our neighborhoods through the investment and curation of those street spaces. It's also really important to sort of know the moment in time we're in, certainly through COVID and through changing of working from home, e-commerce and delivery. Really, everything can be brought to your door except for community. And so if it's really important for us to remember that there's always this choice as a as a city of investing in I.r.l or investing in online outcomes. And we really feel like the image on the right is the identity of what we think the future of Portland should look like. And so we really think that plaza program is really underpinned in this understanding of needing to invest in both economic recovery and in community recovery, and particularly to target the epidemic of loneliness and isolation that is resulting from both. I think COVID times, as well as just the shift in our sort of economic and cultural activities, and this is really important moment for Portland to take a stand and really drive this future forward. Plazas are a somewhat unique opportunity for community members to co-invest together. Stewarding plazas themselves is a deeply collaborative effort. Sometimes, you know, realizing that they're very hard, but it relies on the vision and passion of the public. Friends of plaza groups and adjacent business owners. And so one one quote I'll read is from lucy morrow, friends of concordia commons, saying, I see this place as an important neighborhood meeting spot. Kids come to play in the street, people meet in their their neighbors while also supporting local businesses. It's something that benefits everyone. These plazas are also a unique opportunity for co-creation. We have the palate, we have the space to offer, and the adjacent uses have the unique ideas and use cases for what they would like to see. You will hear a little bit more later about this specific case with the dream big plaza, but this really came out of a very specific adjacent set of communities and has resulted in just a vibrant and exciting location. Plazas also create an attraction that can underpin and create a organizing element around a set of local business owners. Small business owners rely on a competitive attraction for people to come to their specific communities, plazas, public spaces and the quality of those spaces is essential to recruiting visitors and patrons and inviting them to stay longer and shop longer. And of course, creates great ribbon cutting opportunities like in the image we have here. It's also important to note that plazas are a placemaking tool, really well suited as we are creating more dense, more vital urban spaces along our centers and corridors. And so as space gets more scarce, streets and plazas are a really important tool to provide space for gathering and connecting, when perhaps you don't have your own backyard and have as much space yourself. Important to note, though, plazas are just part of a suite of placemaking tools. Pbot is deploying play streets in areas where we have more space, and what's needed most is, is a lack of of play area for young children. Pbot also curates, together with business groups, community events. Pretty much every weekend throughout the summer, there's community events happening in various commercial districts. There's also the opportunity, as I'm sure you have noticed, for street paintings, both in inner Portland and also in east Portland, where communities are essentially painting, literally painting their identity out onto the street to so they can strengthen belonging and welcome and feeling of community in those spaces. As many people just experienced last week, PBOT also puts on a number of Sunday parkways each year in each of the neighborhoods, and we had a very successful one just in downtown last weekend. Also important to note that PBOT is a is a partner through the public works with Portland parks and recreation, where they're in many communities, creating vital connections and Green spaces and access to play as well. I'll pass this over now to my colleague Tiffany, who's going to explain more about the how the plaza program works.
9 Good morning. My name is Tiffany swift. I'm a senior planner on pbot's public realm and street activation team, and I'm going to give an overview of how street plaza program works today. So the vision of the street plaza program is to transform select Portland streets into clean, active and welcoming public spaces that bring communities together. Currently, we have 20 active street plazas around Portland. Three of these were new seasonal plazas that we were testing the locations for this summer, and PBOT staffing is relatively small. To support the PBOT street plaza program, we have two plaza coordinators who really focus on the day to day operations of street plazas, and they have support from a planner, one myself and sarah vigliotti. And they also have the support of contracted vendors who perform a lot of the day to day maintenance services. That we found is a little more efficient to do from outside the city. And we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go through the presentation. So the history of street plazas, as others have alluded to, has really always been about about partnership and collaboration and co-creation with community groups. So the plaza program, we really see this start back in 2014 with the emergence of a temporary plaza at what is now called ankeny alley, which was led by peter block. Following that, prosper Portland invested to make this space a permanent plaza, and following that, PBOT developed a livable street strategy, a policy framework that enabled more of these community led initiatives to take place in the right of way. And then in 2020, PBOT developed the healthy business program to develop plazas in closing streets or just parking spaces to support businesses in a really trying time. And many of the street plazas we see today still date back to that time. So since 2022, the public street plaza has been out operating as a pilot. And by coming to you all today, we're seeking to transition from a pilot program to a permanent program. So PBOT uses street plaza typology to organize our design and investment in plazas across the city, ranging from the most short term, lowest cost, most temporary materials for seasonal plaza, and then upgrading along the way. As more funds are available and locations are established as something that really works well for the community and for PBOT. So what you see today are a couple seasonal plazas and mostly exploratory plazas. So seasonal plazas are meant to help us test out a location, test out a partner, test out the community support, and if that's working for everyone, those can be upgraded into exploratory plazas and come back for the next year. Examples of these. There are two in the central eastside. This past summer, you'll hear from one of them. There's another one on seventh and sandy. You'll hear from that group as well, actually. And then there was one in Hawthorne. Next up are the exploratory plazas. These have materials and furnishings meant to last a couple years. These are places that are well known and beloved across the community. You're seeing on the screen. Montavilla plaza, ankeny alley, rainbow road is another one. Concordia commons, they're all across the city and they've been doing quite well. The next step up is a permanent plaza, higher level of materials and furnishings designed to last about up to ten years. And we're currently in design for our first permanent plazas, an upgrade of pride plaza downtown, and a new permanent plaza adjacent to the darcelle 15 parks and recreation project. And those are currently in design and are anticipated to be under construction and open for next summer. And lastly, we have transformative plazas. We don't have any of these under design at the moment, but the intention of these is to really put a highest level of materiality and design into that. And maybe this is an opportunity to explore some elements that we've heard people ask for, such as repaving to do stormwater, planting to plant larger trees directly in the ground, maybe special paving materials as well. So now I'll go over some of those elements in a plaza. So at the basic they seem pretty simple. So you have the elements at the perimeter that keeps the plaza closed off to cars. You have the large planters, you have the flex posts, you have signs at the interior, you have the street painting. You have a variety of furnishings. But behind the scenes, plazas take a lot of care to maintain them as welcoming, clean and vibrant spaces. So things break. Things are stolen, things walk away. There's things with litter and leafs, all kinds of seasonal issues, and it really requires a lot of collaboration. And that's what we've learned through the pilot program that PBOT cannot do this alone, and we rely heavily on our plaza partners and other city partners. So who takes care of the plaza partners is the street plaza team. We hire server service contractors to handle some of that daily, weekly maintenance that needs to happen in a plaza. So acxiom takes care of the weekly resets of the traffic control devices to make sure the plaza is closed to cars and remains safe. They also remove graffiti, around. Score performs micro micro trash cleaning in the plazas and symbiot does our street painting. We also hire horticulturists from Portland parks and recreation. They plant and maintain and water all those planters that you see in the plazas. And then last but certainly not least, are our plaza partners. And these are local adjacent businesses or local community groups, neighborhood associations, nonprofits. And they do all kinds of things for the plazas. So now I'll walk through just a bit of those rules between the different partners. So the city and the vendors that we hire, they provide the basic toolkit of elements in the plaza. So the furnishing that's public and the perimeter elements and that weekly maintenance that I just covered. For the plaza partner, their main role is to be those local eyes and ears on the plaza. They let us know when there are issues. They let us know what's working, what isn't, and advocate for the plaza. And they're also the ones who program the plaza with all those wonderful events that make them such a lively place. And the city and the plaza partner will collaborate on a few things. The street planting is one of those where it's often a collaboration. As far as the design and the installation of the painting, and depending on the plaza partner, they also may be involved in maintaining some of the planters watering, dealing with some of the trash or signage, and finally, plazas are an opportunity for adjacent businesses to expand their outdoor outdoor dining into the plazas. So if they choose to do this and permit that space within the plaza, they're responsible for providing their furniture and maintaining that space. So overall, we see plazas as a low cost, big win program. So seasonal plazas that cost is about 7000 per plaza per three month trial period. Exploratory plazas again, they are year round and they have services and furniture and amenity upgrades as needed. And those range from about 10 to 20,000 per plaza per year. And the permanent plazas, which have that upgraded level of materials, graphics and furnishings. Currently with pride plaza and design, that's looking at about 350,000 for capital costs. And as far as community benefit, every year we are really blown away by the amount of community events and the creativity of what is held in plazas. There are over 230 in this past summer, and in our annual summer survey of the plaza program, we consistently hear how much portlanders love the plaza program and how much they really appreciate all the benefits that they are co-creating with the plaza program. So now I'll pass it over to sarah for the city council package.
10 My name is sarah vigliotti. I lead our public realm and street activation team. I want to dive a little bit into the different elements that are in front of you today. So the package that we're presenting is one, the resolution that is asking for the adoption of the plaza framework and recognizing that we're moving a pilot program to a permanent program. And then we have two ordinances that help support the activities that we feel are important to make the plaza program success. And so the first is being able to support the fees through permitting the plaza activities and then to provide overhead decorative lighting or art. First up, in terms of the resolution, we are asking city council in the form of resolution, to formalize the public street plaza program and adopt the plaza program framework. The framework is a short term work plan for our team. It looks it has in terms of recommendations. What we're calling the key moves has seven recommendations. And these really come from our staff insights. For the past four years as we've been managing this program, from what we've heard through our community engagement, from talking to our plaza partners, best practices from other cities, the key moves really address opportunities that we see around plaza processes and clarity around expectations, not only just for the city, our bureau partners, our plaza partners, as well as those people who or groups that wish to activate within the plaza. We address opportunities around improving design esthetics, improving materiality, and ensuring that the community has that opportunity to make sure that the plaza is really reflect the neighborhood that's around it. And then we address the need for ongoing funding through stewardship agreements, opportunities to grow more friends of the plaza groups, and really increasing city bureau and our community partnerships. The first of the ordinances in front of you is to amend the exhibit b, the transportation fee schedule, and it's to add a series of new permit fee categories and fees that really just support how the community and businesses can activate plazas. The goal here is really just to clarify some of the confusion around plaza events and community events, really recognizing that outdoor dining and events that are happening within plaza don't have the same sort of need for traffic control plans and notification. So we will continue to subsidize and incentivize activations in plazas. We recognize that the staff time for event approvals and plazas is lower, given that the street is already closed. The notable changes with the proposed fees for the event fees is for to waive the application fee. Since we don't see complex permit coordination is needed when the streets are already closed. It follows the community event standard fees of approximately 50% reduction for non-profits. We want to continue that. It also reduces the fees for when there's alcohol that's proposed in an event. So for example, previously, if a community nonprofit wanted to throw an event with alcohol, they might be looking at a fee of 905. Our proposal would be down to 220. I think what I really want to reiterate here is that the majority of the events that are happening in plazas are free, and we want to be able to continue that with PBOT subsidizing it. For outdoor dining permits located in plaza. To date, the restaurants have been issued outdoor dining program permits. The challenge with that is that those permits work with parking spaces. So eight feet deep and 20ft long, and we have a lot of opportunity there to sort of rethink how businesses can can use plazas. Outdoor dining in plazas is something that we want to encourage. We it's a lovely activity in plazas. It brings people there, but we want to make it simpler for restaurants and bars that we that we partner with. We have approximately about 35 businesses that are currently adjacent, adjacent to plazas that we work with. So the proposed changes, first off, the fees are based on the existing fees that the businesses have been using. It creates one rate for all outdoor dining, both for sidewalk and in the plaza space. It's based on a square footage instead of, again, those parking spaces at the same rate is because we don't want to incentivize crowding, sidewalks, and I think the again, just recognizing restaurants for the most part, will be paying a similar fee to what they were paying before or less. The second ordinance in front of you is going to would grant the allowance of overhead decorative lighting in all the designated pedestrian plazas be an exception to title 17 underground wiring district, which which prohibits overhead utility poles and wires. So normally what happens is we would come to you with a one time exception. What we're asking today is that all designated plazas would be allowed to have those overhead decorative lighting or, or art. The ordinance also grants the exception to the skidmore old town historic district and the new chinatown japanese japantown historic district, which supports the city's efforts in partnership with the old town community association to assist those small business owners and district residents. And so these are the lantern projects that that community organization is working through. And in this slide, you can see both the sort of the glittery canopy that we are in the process of designing for. Darcelle 15 promenade, adjacent to darcelle 15 plaza that our colleagues in parks are delivering. And then you can also see some of the great work in terms of the overhead lanterns in chinatown. So the plaza package that we presented today responds to what we've been hearing from community members, and it really sets us up to continue this work in the future. Since the drafting of the framework and that we've been working on, we've already been making a lot of progress on the 37 actions that you see in in the framework, mostly related to processes, evaluations, how we're working with community partners. We're also in design, like I said, for our first permanent plazas at pride and darcelle 15 promenade. And then as we look forward to this winter and then looking and and on in the year, we're really we're focused on the launch of our first open call, looking for plaza partners. So setting up how we can support those community groups as we create the next batch of plazas, coming in summer 2026, and then really beginning to strategize engagement to areas that don't have plazas, that were not seeing community events, block parties, street paintings. We recognize district one, southwest Portland are one of those areas where we really see gaps and and then looking to see how do we go out and proactively support business districts and talking to them about really the full toolbox that the public realm and street activation team has? So I haven't really been telling you to move long. So the plaza program has learned many lessons over its pilot years. But I think we would say in Tiffany mentioned this earlier, really the number one is that we need multiple layers of invested partners to make this program work and successful. Plaza program. It really relies on this collaboration. The collaboration with the city city bureau partners with our enhanced service districts and most importantly, with the community groups. So these are the groups. You'll hear from them later who are bringing the life, the energy into these spaces. And it's really exciting to watch. And as the enhanced service districts grow to more parts of the city, we see that they can play a critical role in enhancing these spaces and really playing that that middle space. I do want to take this moment to recognize some of our city partners who have just been so critical in this work. They're often the invisible glue. The first off, we have parks, horticulture, and deborah is here today. They oversee, they plant, they maintain, they water just about 150 plaza a planters that are in the plazas alone. We constantly hear about how beautiful those planters are. They you know, the plants are refreshed constantly. They they add this element of greenery that has been really critical for the program. The police bureau as well, absolutely critical, ensuring that our spaces are safe and they're vibrant. Commander hughes is here in the back. If you have any questions, just again, incredibly important to ensure that that we are all working as one city to make these spaces work for the public. Prosper Portland, we have colleagues here as well, from a small business office and economic delivery development. Prosper was the first to invest in ankeny plaza back in 2016, creating that that seed money and they are continually supporting us and looking for ways to be able to support. And we will be working with our esd coordinator, devin reynolds, who's also here, and the city arts and culture office. As we start thinking about what is what does business district engagement look like when we all show up as one one city? So we've really seen this layered investment work in our plazas. It's not just ankeny alley, but we're going to use them as our example today. And like you said, ankeny alley was the first pedestrian plaza. It really came from the community advocacy of the businesses along the alley. And then by better block, really pushed the city to close down the street to test something, to evaluate it. This is where we started our livable streets policy, developing those policies so that we can support more places like this. And so, for example, last winter, the ankeny alley association. So a group of engaged businesses, of business owners along the alley downtown, clean and safe, our hand service district PBOT, prosper Portland and the winter lights festival all came together to ensure that we had the beautiful sculpture out there. There was lighting, there was projections. And so it's this really kind of partnership, this layers, that where we see the magic happen and we think it's this type of partnership that where we can really allow the city to scale up and bring more street plazas to more centers and corridors across the city. So while the city supports plazas, like I said before, it is really the community partners that are out there doing just the amazing work. We wouldn't have these these plazas without them. And if it is all right, we would like to invite a number of them up now so they can share their experiences with you.
11 Terrific. Thank you. It's great presentation. Let's have the next panel up. And I know we're all very anxious to ask a lot of questions about this, but let's have the next panel come up. Neil matson, alex morrell, laura streb and mark markovich.
12 Manager.
13 Who's going to kick this off?
14 I go, okay.
15 Can you introduce yourself, please?
16 Yes. My name is neil matson. I'm the president of the Montavilla east business association and one of the partners with sarah and PBOT for the Montavilla plaza. I have a short prepared statement and just let you know what I think about the plaza program. Plaza in Montavilla was established in the summer of 2021 through a collaboration between the Montavilla east haber business association and the Portland bureau of transportation. The goal was simple but urgent to create outdoor public space at a time when the pandemic had shut down, events, strained local businesses and left the community with few safe options for gathering. The chosen location is a converted t intersection at 79th in stark in Montavilla, and it proved to be a perfect fit. Almost overnight, the plaza became a welcoming place for folks to enjoy coffee, read a book, or meet a friend, and its presence signaled a shift. Montavilla was not only adapting to these difficult times, but also reimagining how public space would serve the residents and the businesses in the community. Since its creation, Montavilla plaza has become a stage for the neighborhood's creativity, and its partners have activated the space with movie nights, with the Montavilla street fair kind of taking over that space. In addition to the length of stark, the Montavilla jazz festival honk pdx, each drawing large crowds and creating opportunities for nearby businesses to shine. The plaza also hosts a community traditions such as the Montavilla tree lighting that have established since the installation of the plaza, and along with recurring markets like Montavilla farmer's market, little pop up market on thursdays, the threshold business had a makers market that happened recurring over time, and all these events brought steady streams of shoppers into the districts and reflected the plaza's adaptability from like festivals and music events to marketplaces and just a community gathering space. The economic impact has been tangible by drawing people into Montavilla for concerts, markets, casual visits, the plaza increases foot traffic, boosts sales for surrounding shops, restaurants and breweries, and a customer who comes to a Thursday market might end up exploring shops or grabbing dinner nearby. Families who attend a movie night or a tree lighting often turn the evening into a night out, supporting multiple local businesses, and the plaza functions as both a stage and a funnel, showcasing Montavilla vitality while directing patrons to its small businesses. Equally significant is the plaza's role in shaping Montavilla cultural identity. It's become, in many ways, a living room for the neighborhood, a place where people can gather, connect, and share experiences that remind us of our strength, of our community, of our diversity. Whether its neighbors are chatting at the farmers market time, oh sorry, families dancing at the festival, or kids bundled up for the annual tree lighting, the plaza fosters connections that transcend commerce and build lasting bonds. Looking ahead, Montavilla plaza represents more than just a pandemic response. It's a model for how neighborhoods can thrive by reclaiming space for people, for culture, for businesses all to intersect, sparking both economic vitality and a deepened sense of belonging.
17 Thank you neal. I love the living room idea. That's terrific. Since we have a big living room downtown, you have your living room now, alex. Welcome back. We just I think we saw you the other night.
18 Yeah, it's been great.
19 Thank you.
20 Thank you. Good morning, chair and council members. I'm alex morrell, executive director, dream big city, owner of stickers asian cafe for 27 years and a native portlander born just blocks from the plaza we opened. Portland is a city of creatives, visionaries, producers and engage government partners. That culture inspired us with PBOT and the central eastside industrial council to start Portland dream plaza. Four years ago at creston park, a friend, his wife, their teenage child and I mixed 21 bags of concrete by hand on an abandoned tennis court. That small act eventually led Portland parks and rec to approve portland's first covered skate park. Yet it still isn't built. Place marking placemaking allows us to act quickly, nimbly and shape the community entirely. That project costs $5 million, and we're so grateful to have that coming. This summer, we opened Portland dream plaza at ninth and southeast taylor for $25,000. Day one. It was fully activated with PBOT barriers, ramps, hoops, and PBOT picnic tables. We installed a professional half pipe, a free backyard ramp for every skater, and partnered with PBOT street painting to create the largest skateboard mural in the us. Today, 200 to 1000 people visit daily on a block once avoided because of drugs and guns. We even had councilor Come Koyama Lane cut the ribbon and we had coverage from media channel two, six, eight, 12 and telemundo covered the opening. Portland dream plaza proves PBOT street plazas can reclaim unsafe spaces immediately build culture and belonging through skating, music, art and basketball give community ownership. Pbot entrusted us to manage it, innovate boldly. Never been done. Now in civic life, in skateboarding, everyone wants never been done. These plazas are just a lot of them have never been done. So it's great to have Portland at the forefront of that. On tuesdays, we host fam jam with PBOT play streets opening the plaza in two blocks. This builds on five years of fam jam 150 free events, including director park pioneer square, showing the power of consistent, community led gatherings. We have a famjam this Tuesday. Please stop by anyone. Both the plaza and street closures are PBOT pilot projects that have succeeded. Local businesses have embraced the plaza with over 30 signatures of support and $50,000 in kind donations backed by financial support from cic Oregon metro, mr. Plywood, paint, traffic safety, supply and more. We hope to replicate community centers like Portland dream plaza across the city, focusing on under-resourced and bipoc areas. We would love to build and manage more of these plazas, and also participate in an advisory group to guide future projects. Please reach out if you'd like this done in your district by voting to adopt PBOT public street program. Council can help Portland remain at the cutting edge of creative, community led public spaces. Portland dream plaza, PBOT cic and dream big city prove that when the community leads, creative creativity thrives. Negativity, negative energy disappears, and public space becomes a home for everyone. Not just some day, but today. Let's dream together. Portland.
21 Thank you so much, alex. Laura, great to see you.
22 Yeah. Good morning everyone. Nice to see you again. My name is laura streib, and I'm currently coming to you as the president of the st. Johns boosters business association. And I'm honored to speak with you about our beloved plaza or square. Nils stole my words. I was going to say it was the living room. But one thing that's different about our plaza is that it has been around. It was dedicated in 1978 as a joint partnership between Portland parks and rec, PBOT and the boosters. Like pioneer courthouse square is to downtown. The st. Johns plaza is often referred to as our public living room, and during events like the st. Johns art walk that we had in August, run by my my nonprofit vibe of Portland, or our first annual st. Johns music fest. Just two weekends ago, the our living room came alive. It was full of people from our neighborhood, and outside our neighborhood was buzzing with activity and serving as a vibrant centerpiece for the community. Our local businesses have shared with me that the sales during the music event had boosted their sales between 48, and I'm not even joking 500% from prior weeks this summer, with 75% of them seeing new customers or having 75% new customers. When our plaza is activated, it is the center of our business district and it lifts the entire district. Beyond these one time events are that run, that are run by local businesses and our nonprofits. The boosters our organization has taken on responsibility of stewarding the plaza all year long. That means we're activating the square regularly through live music, additional lighting to improve safety, family friendly programing like game nights, knit nights, dance parties, or seasonal makers markets. Our goal is simple to ensure that the plaza is safe and welcoming, and an inclusive space for everyone. This coming Saturday, our boosters are hosting our annual fall fling event. It is where our member businesses can table in. The plaza will have a local music icon, peter krebs, who will be performing. They'll be baby goats. There's a photo booth, there's pumpkin decorating, all kinds of stuff. I've heard a kangaroo is going to hop through. Not 100% sure on that, but this highlights that our business community and our neighborhood really want this to be a fun and engaging space for everyone. Of course, we've faced our challenges since the COVID shutdowns, with open drug use and camping and graffiti in the plaza, but we've also seen that when the plaza is activated and welcoming, it really does thrive. That's why the boosters continue to lead efforts to bring more lighting infrastructure, attract new businesses, and continue to host events that bring a sense of belonging and connection. I believe that in making the street plaza program a permanent fixture of what our city offers, it's not just an investment in st. Johns and other neighborhood plaza spaces. It is an investment in the livability and vibrancy of our entire city. Activated plazas, boost our local economy, foster community pride, and bring people together in meaningful ways. And on that note, I invite you to come to two upcoming events where our plaza and all the neighboring streets will be shut down for traffic to be central community connection points. On October 25th, we have our halloween walk, which brings in hundreds of people and adorable children in costumes going up and down the street. And then on November 21st, we have our tree lighting, which is the first tree lighting in Portland to help kick off the holiday season. The boosters host these events and is the perfect picture of how plaza can transform a business district for the betterment of our community. Thank you for your time and supporting efforts like the plaza street program and providing activation for neighborhoods like saint john's and beyond.
23 Thank you laura. I wrote down October 25th for sure.
24 It's the cutest. Oh, there's also a pet parade beforehand.
25 A pet parade. Love it, love it. Thank you mark.
26 Hi, my name is mark markovich. I am with the ground score organization and we've been lucky enough to be partnered with PBOT for the last couple of years, helping to maintain some of these plazas plaza areas. And what ground score does we do? Cleanup. We run cleanup crews all around the city five days a week, where we have our crews out cleaning up trash in various spots all throughout the city. We employ a lot of unhoused people or people on the fringe, pay them a living wage and want to get people out and become part of the community again, but also to maybe make some of these community spaces, such as the plazas, a bit more accessible. So, you know, get rid of the idea that these places are just going to be dangerous or dirty. And what we do is we'll have our crews go out several times a week to these plazas, specifically to maintain those. And what that allows us to do is to create community relationships with local business owners, or maybe regular people who frequent those spots. And, and sort of act as a bridge to maybe some people who are a bit more marginalized, who would maybe frequent those places so they become maybe invested in wouldn't do illegal dumping there, or maybe camp out there so much while also being communication with PBOT about maintenance that might need to happen. That's a bit over our head. And also preparing for big events like you were mentioning to make things extra clean and welcoming to the community as we go forward on that. But yeah, so that is what we do there and we really enjoy how it's a great place to actually see where our work is, see what our work can do to clean up these plazas, and to see people actually coming back to these places and becoming part of those communities more, instead of those just being sort of abandoned spots where maybe there's going to be some trash or no one really wants to go there. But what we do is we want to make sure that that's sort of a year round place, and we service around ten to a dozen different plazas a couple times a week throughout the year. And that doesn't include anytime. Maybe we get a call to come pick up something that maybe got dumped illegally that's a little bit too big. Or if we need to do something special for a place that's maybe a temporary plaza location. But it's been a very good partnership for us, and we're partnered with a few different places around the city, such as the enhanced services district, where we're doing very similar things and trying to make sure the city is a livable place in our community pathways and our common areas that we can all go, regardless of who we are.
27 Thank you. Mark. I think given the conversation today, you may expect growth in the future, hopefully.
28 Thank you.
29 So thanks to all the panelists for coming here today. This has been really great for us to hear. We appreciate you taking the time to come and meet with us. Thank you. Good to see you, diego. Is anyone signed up to testify on this?
30 We do have one individual signed up for item one.
31 Can we call up that individual?
32 And so for clarity, this is for public testimony. For item one, adopt the public street plaza program framework to support the creation of a permanent public street plaza program.
33 Welcome. Would you please introduce yourself?
34 Yes. Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm zoe walker aparicio. I'm here representing depave. Simply put, depave is a nonprofit organization. We rip up asphalt and replace it with Green space. As a nonprofit organization working to develop Green infrastructure in partnership with communities across Portland, we want to offer our support for pbot's Green plaza program or street plaza program, as well as their fee change proposal. After many years of working with communities to depave and regreen school yard plazas and churches and other community hubs, we've been working to develop a public Green plaza parklet at southeast seventh and sandy, which you'll hear more about soon. We use annual summer pop up plazas to activate this plaza while we're planning and designing full construction, or what PBOT would call seasonal plaza, we value being able to partner with PBOT street plaza program to assist with permitting of our summer pop ups. We are able to troubleshoot inevitable issues and improve our programing year to year. This is our fourth year doing it. Pbot is a large agency, and the street plaza program provides a friendly point of contact for us to work with as a community group. We look forward to sharing our lessons learned along PBOT street plaza program to help the city better support other community groups and public in partnering with these pop up, vibrant spaces in our neighborhoods. It takes a village to care for what are essentially these temporary public parks and depave and our partners have learned by doing. How have learned by doing to make these successful. We're especially proud of our work to partner with underserved and bipoc businesses, organizations, artists, and they're able to maintain, construct, and beautify our plazas, some of which are here today. So depave and our partners encourage the city to support PBOT street plaza program and envision how temporary plazas and these partnerships can be integrated with Green corridor planning and construction, such as the Green loop or similar corridors planned for other neighborhoods. Popping up a plaza during the design phase of construction projects allows for critical public feedback and troubleshooting of programing elements, and bicycle or pedestrian realignments. In addition to being fun summer pop ups, temporary plazas can also help public the public imagine the shifting, problematic intersections or dormant street areas into permanent parklets that enhance ecological services and public amenities, improve traffic safety for multi-modal users, and draw commerce. This kind of shift is trending in cities around the world and is a good model to expand in Portland, where people tend to value art, strong urban design and Green infrastructure. Thank you.
35 Thank you. Sorry. We look forward to hearing from you again later.
36 And I apologize, chair. We do have one more individual signed up to testify.
37 All right.
38 We have darlene sherman. Darlene is joining us online. Just 30s.
39 While we're waiting for darlene colleagues. We'll accept a motion to pass this resolution and then have some questions. I know we have some q&a that I see a lot of. Hands up.
40 Do you want to do that now?
41 You could do it now, as long as we're waiting. Sure.
42 All right then, I would like to entertain a motion to move the resolution. Document number 2025361 to the full council with a recommendation it be adopted.
43 Second.
44 Terrific. Councilor Morillo moves the resolution document number 2025 361 to full council with a recommendation be adopted. And we have a second by councilor Green. So the motion's been moved and seconded. And now we're going to have some discussion after we hear the person online. Hi, darlene.
45 Hi. My name is darlene sherman. I managed to get in here. Welcome to all the councilors. Today. I am a resident of district three. I live close to arleta triangle which is now been renamed arleta triangle square since the expansion about three years ago was by closing the slip Lane at woodstock in 72nd avenue, and that's really allowed for small art markets to occur there, and people to use the space with street painting and picnic tables and benches and trees and planters. So it's really become a expanded community center. So that's really appreciated. The idea of with permanence of some of these sites, possibility of removing some of the pavement and putting in larger structured trees, I think could provide shade for the expanded area would be a really good benefit. We do have trees in the planters, but they are, because that's all we can have. They're really small trees, which can never become big trees that would provide significant shade. So I really support this expansion of the permanence of the plaza proposal. So thank you very much.
46 Thank you, darlene, we appreciate your testimony. Okay, colleagues, let's go with councilor Koyama Lane first.
47 Thank you. Chair. Thank you so much for being here for all of the stories and your work. I've seen a lot of you out at the plazas and they're so awesome. They build community, bring people together, make our streets safer. They connect a public health people being connected. There are just so many awesome things about them. A question that came up for me, I saw in the program framework that it was informed by focus groups, which specifically included a focus group of people living with disabilities. However, the framework doesn't specifically address accessible or inclusive design, and I'm curious how the plazas are going to do that and make sure that people living with disabilities, older adults, caregivers are part of that. If you can speak to that a bit, that'd be great.
48 Thank you for the question. So ADA review is one of our automatic reviews. But I think one of the things that we heard through that focus group was just how so much of it is lived experience in terms of how people experience the space and navigate through it. I think in terms of one area in which we're addressing it is, is really that co-design element in terms of how we're designing the spaces with community, ensuring that part. We also recognize that when we're creating these spaces, really sort of thinking through in terms of fixed, fixed items, how we're thinking about events through that area, really to ensure that we have or maintaining pedestrian clearances so forth.
49 Awesome. Thank you for sharing.
50 Councilor Morillo.
51 Thank you. Chair. I just have to say that this is my favorite presentation we've ever gotten at the transportation and infrastructure committee. I'm I'm a big plaza person, and I even got dca people to go into a bouncy house with me at the last plaza opening in the roseway neighborhood. So I'm just delighted overall, that we're having this conversation. I've really seen these public spaces and plazas transform district three. I've had the pleasure of attending multiple plaza openings, getting to really sit there and watch the community have a space to come together. I was able to visit the one on Hawthorne that opened temporarily this summer, and the the amount of people that I saw going through that space, hanging out, talking to their neighbors, the amount of business that that area got to because people were sitting there for a while, you know, having their coffee, whatever, and then going to shopping longer. It was just really lovely to see people hanging out and supporting local businesses and all of those things. And then we had the plaza opening in the roseway neighborhood, where it was really within a neighborhood. It wasn't business focused, it was more a space where kids could play and be together, and that activated that space in a transformative way. And we're going to hear later from depave, who I see sitting back there about seventh and sandy. I also toured that area in southeast, and just as a pedestrian going through there, I see how quickly the cars go by and we just had the vision zero resolution brought forward by councilor Koyama Lane. That really brought a refocus on that issue. And having that space be somewhere where people can congregate and feel safe and joyful and get to know their neighbors was something really special. So I'm just really delighted that we're talking about all my favorite things plazas, lanterns, fairy lights, etc. And I look forward to supporting this resolution. Thank you.
52 Terrific. Thank you, councilor. Councilor Green.
53 Thank you, madam chair. Thank you to all of you for this is a really well thought out set of proposals, and I really appreciate that it speaks to your leadership. Director williams and dc indo-nepal, you know, like my colleagues here, I'm extremely plaza pilled. I am and are of course, it's like, where do you stop in the hierarchy? Right. You know, and I think like our task before us right now in this council, we've got a lot of urgent work to do. But one of those is to sort of do what I think is called vibes cultivation. Like, we we need to continue to cultivate good vibes for this city. And plazas, I think, are right at the center of that for me. So I do have a couple of questions. I obviously support this. I love this, but there's a couple of questions I do have that I that emerged through the presentation. And one is I'll just hit them in order. I did read the framework. I think it's really well thought out, and it provides a sort of pathway to get community ideas into the pipeline and then be deployed. Is there space in that framework for like tactical urbanism, that kind of that sort of idea that you get groups like strong towns who've been begging to sort of say, hey, give us permission to go out and just do this. Do you see this framework providing space for those types of groups, or is it really just the kind of like very official public private partnerships?
54 Sure. I think I spoke a little bit earlier. We see the plaza program is part of a suite of offerings, and one of the other areas of collaboration has been partnerships with better block or groups like strong towns to demonstrate and test out street treatments. And so it's sort of, I guess I would say it's in parallel and it could result in a plaza if it's through street transformation is resulting in space that business and community want to collaborate on, but not necessarily always. It could be a collaboration with strong towns, could be resulting in a simply a traffic change, adding more space for pedestrians or cyclists or more Green space, but certainly could come together into an effort together.
55 And then I would just add, so for this past summer, with our partnership with depave at seventh and sandy, that was a seasonal plaza to again, we've been working on them. This is now probably the third year that we've been they've been doing these iterative designs there, but it also included a demonstration project. We permitted those testing some crossings of southeast sandy there. Those have now been removed or the process of being removed will be evaluating with them and then taking that information back to PBOT to think about how that can help inform future capital projects. So demonstration project. So yeah.
56 Good morning. Millicent williams, director of the Portland bureau transportation. Thank you for having us here today. I'm also excited about the presentation and the fact that we will likely be able to move this forward in an official way. To answer your question, councilor Green, as a bureau, we are looking at how we can best facilitate the partnership between community members, organizations who want to engage in tactical urbanism. The challenge that we have, as you can probably likely understand, is that sometimes the pace, the desire to move faster and to implement safety measures outpaces our ability to collaborate and make sure that what's being proposed is going to actually reinforce safety and create the outcomes that community are expecting. And by community, I mean those who are putting in the treatments. There have been a couple of instances when the energy has had to be tempered a little bit. We've had to go back and make some corrections to things. So the ideal scenario is, yes, let's use the energy and the resources appropriately and in partnership so that we can move forward those types of initiatives. But in spaces where things don't currently exist, sometimes there is a reason and what we want to make sure that we support is ensuring that as we are making adjustments to the right of way, as we are looking at innovations in how to incorporate partnership and get the best bang for the buck, especially in moments like ours in a financially constrained environment, we just want to be careful about it. So it's not a no, it's a it's a maybe and or yes, but and often we're really able to quite quickly come together to provide answers to folks. I think there's an assumption that we're not being that we're not open to it, that we're non-responsive. And those things I think many of you can say is not true. When we are contacted, we we try to get on it as quickly as possible, because we do value the contribution that folks are wanting to make. But we are thoughtful about making sure that if someone's marking a crossing, that there's the appropriate environmental review of what happens with that. If people aren't expecting a crossing and you're expecting their behavior to change, that doesn't necessarily always happen. If there isn't the appropriate work that needs to happen from the bureau's perspective. So we're open to it, and we just urge those partners to continue to work with us to identify the best ways. And in fact, the city traffic engineer, wendy collie, is working right now to identify a specific project. And it is around corner clearing, not just the 200 that we're working on right now, but it's around corner clearing all around the city. It does take a great deal of time, effort, resources, and as I mentioned, you know, we're constrained. And so having that partnership is important and that is really impactful work. But we do have to look at the pacing and the time and the evaluation and share that information so that folks can implement safely.
57 Thank you, director williams. We're running up against the clock here. We have a whole nother presentation and two more resolutions to go. Go for it. Okay.
58 Well, thank you for that. I think that is a really good answer for those groups and I can work with that, I appreciate that. Vending carts and plazas, I think it's going to come as no surprise that I think that that's a fantastic achievement for the city, and I'm fully going to support that. The last thing I want to offer, and I don't need a response right now, is in the presentation. I saw a lot of reliance on flex posts or a suggestion that flex posts are going to be there maybe for longer than, you know, a hardened bollard. And I would like us to think as a body as as a city that, you know, when we think about capital costs, I want to see hard bollards because hard bollards save someone's life over the weekend.
59 We do too.
60 Okay. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Smith.
61 Thank you, madam chair.
62 I want to go.
63 Back to something about the plazas. You all did a great job of presentation about what they can do to be very helpful to a neighborhoods, you know, vibrant economic place in the in the city. I was trying to look for something in district one, and I did I did not see any plazas in district one. And I know you all get tired of me talking about district one, but I have to say it when I when it's really glaring to me. Could you tell me if there are any plazas in district one?
64 There's not currently, as part of my presentation, sort of highlighting that plazas are amongst a suite of tools that we're offering. They're particularly useful when there's a scarcity of space where the street is extra useful. And so what we're seeing in district one is mostly play streets. And those types of activities are what are most commonly happening, I think, in part because economic activity can happen in converted parking lot or other types of spaces. Not to me at all that we don't think that plazas should be deployed in district one. We just haven't found quite the right group yet. I guess the team is just put out a request for proposals, request for ideas for additional plazas open right now. I think this is the moment to we could garner your help in radiating that that call for proposals right now. And we would really love to have some proposals from district one that we could collaborate.
65 On that. That sounds like a good idea. And also prosper Portland now has an office that specifically works in district one, and their job is to identify businesses that that we can be helpful with. Or, you know, in many ways, this is something that they could probably partner with you on as well to identify specific business and specific business needs. Thank thank you for those comments. Tiffany. What is the what is the operating budget for the plazas that you all have been talking about today?
66 The overall program budget?
67 Yeah.
68 Yeah, we have we have 350 budgeted, 350,000 budgeted for both maintenance as well as some of the amenity upgrades, so forth. So 350,020 plazas. Typically it costs us about 6000 on average, about $6,000 per plaza. In terms of the ensuring that the everything is in place, that we're removing graffiti that. Yeah.
69 So you're not at today in the ordinance, you're not asking for additional resources. You're just asking us to change how we do business as it relates to, you know, who we forgive, permit for and not.
70 Right. The the really important thing about today is, in my opinion, is more the resolution. This has been a a pilot that PBOT has been the driving energy behind and is really excited to continue to see this discussion here today and hopefully council validation of that is stating on the part of all of council that this is a priority for the city, for us to continue to develop. One of the things that we have very quickly learned while through the last budget cycle, we were able to stabilize the funding for staff, is that it's just the beginning of the resources it takes to really make this program successful. So additional capital investment on the part of PBOT, but also investment, for instance, in the horticultural team that deb oversees from parks. If we want to have these be Green spaces investment in the esd program that devin is working on, the office of small business. All of these are crucial partners to making this work. So we're not we didn't come today with a specific revenue request, but wanted to make sure that council was supportive of this. We certainly are hoping to continue to collaborate around understanding resource needs from across various bureaus and being able to highlight that for this next budget cycle, so council could decide whether to further invest in this.
71 And last question. So this is a pilot program that just was introduced this year.
72 Through COVID. Really was the period while it started in 2014, sarah was actually working on that sort of from its beginnings really through COVID when we allowed for additional business use in in streets. Some of them became plazas based on collaboration with multiple businesses. And so we're about four years into a pilot program.
73 So were you funded with ARPA money originally?
74 Exactly. Yes. Okay. Yeah, okay.
75 For sure.
76 Thank you.
77 Good questions. Councilor Smith, I appreciate that. Just a really quick question on my part. I definitely see a future in creating living rooms all over the city. I think you're going to have a lot of support. It's a great future. But I did want to ask a quick question. You only one slide mentioned the Portland police, and I just wondered how you evaluate the fire and police the safety impacts on the on the clauses.
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78 Yeah. So first off, in terms of working with the fire bureau, whenever we have a new plaza, particularly again testing it out as a seasonal, we're working with the fire bureau ensuring that like can we ensure that can the trucks just not enter at all? That's a win win for them. The trucks don't want to go through the plazas. We so we talked to them about how are they going to address life safety for the adjacent buildings and then police again. We work with the police bureau regularly. They enforce title 1743, the plaza pedestrian plaza rules. And typically what happens in commander hughes can perhaps answer these questions better than I is that if we do see an issue that's happening in the plaza, normally whatever plaza partners are, a business will contact plaza coordinator megan or greg, and then we'll contact the police or the plaza. The partners will contact the police directly. In terms of the issue.
79 I'm just wondering if what their involvement is up front, whether it's septet or what the partnership is like.
80 It's up front. Yeah. The relationship, especially with with the fire bureau is up front. Most of our work requires that collaboration. Before we talk about how we might transform the right of way.
81 Thank you for that.
82 All right. I see we have no further discussion. I would like to call the question on this motion.
83 Is there a second?
84 Wait, wait. Sorry.
85 Sorry, we already did that. That was minutes ago. Great. So, diego, will you call for the vote?
86 Yes. And just to clarify, that was a motion from Morillo second for Green on item one, resolution document number 2025 361 Koyama Lane.
87 Correct I. Morillo I.
88 Green.
89 I Smith.
90 Yes. I just wanted to say before I take this vote, we're in a $16 million gap and it may even be more. And what I'm going to be doing is looking at all the monies that we were putting into programs prior to ARPA money, to see where we can make some of those cuts. I really like what you're doing. I think it really involves community and and it gives a certain pride of a neighborhood when you bring these to, to the different neighborhoods. But I just want to let you all know that first. But I do support it. So I thank you, Clark.
91 I and the motion carries with five votes. The resolution document number 20 25, 36 one will move to the full council with a recommendation to be adopted.
92 Great.
93 Thank you. Now we're going to move on to thank you, panel. I don't know who's staying and who's not, but you decide we're we now want to move on to the second item today, which is an ordinance to amend the decorative lighting in pedestrian plazas. Who is going to present that. And just want to remind you that we're really running short on time.
94 We already.
95 You know, we incorporated the presentation for both of these ordinances essentially within. So we're ready for discussion. Yeah.
96 Colleagues, is anyone want to ask any questions or make any comments about the wiring code?
97 Yes.
98 Councilor Green had his hand up first.
99 Councilor Smith.
100 Yeah, I think it's really straightforward. And I think that we should just move straight to a vote on it for the interest of time.
101 Councilor Smith.
102 Question. And this is agenda four, right?
103 It's the second ordinance, a.
104 Second, second.
105 Ordinance.
106 Okay. No that was for the first one. Go ahead. We can go forward.
107 Great. Somebody would like to make a motion.
108 I would like to entertain a motion to send ordinance document number 2020 5-362 to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
109 Is that a motion?
110 Yes. Second.
111 Terrific counselor councilor Morillo has moved ordinance document number 2020 5-362 to the full council with a recommendation to pass. And councilor Koyama Lane has seconded. I don't think there's any more discussion. So will the clerk please call the roll.
112 Koyama Lane I. Morillo I. Green. I.
113 Smith I.
114 Clark I with five eyes. The motion carries and the ordinance document number 2025 362 will move to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
115 Thank you diego. Now let's move on to. What is it? Ordinance 2025 362, which amends the transportation fee schedule related to plazas. Who would like to present that.
116 That was incorporated in the presentation as well? Mostly we're adjusting from a single parking space methodology to a square foot methodology that better matches the needs of the plazas.
117 Well, I'd like to ask a question in what kind of public input did you receive on this fee schedule.
118 For the for the changes in the fee schedule? Mostly just working with our plaza partners. Most of this has just been conversations and looking, understanding some of the challenges and the confusion that restaurants have been dealing with, those that sit within the plaza and trying to navigate the current current permit fees. And just to clarify, so is there not new fees? It's just recognizing that previously groups have had to use the community event permits or the outdoor dining permits, and neither one of them worked very well within an already closed space. So this is not new revenue that we're talking about. And so it's just really trying to simplify it for community organizations and businesses that we work with.
119 Well, thank you for that clarification. Councilor Koyama Lane, do you have a question?
120 Yeah, I'm just wondering if there's been conversations with the japanese American leaders at the japanese American museum of Oregon down there, just out of curiosity, hanako, the executive director.
121 Are we talking about the wiring, overhead wiring right now.
122 Or just in these conversations as there's it sounds like there's partnering with old town china town association. Are they part of that?
123 So just a clarification. That was part of the previous ordinance that work supporting the the the community group in old town japantown. We took their request. So you wouldn't have to have two separate ordinances and put it into this one ordinance. So I know it was an our team that was supporting that work. So yeah, we don't we don't know. Yeah. We were carrying that for I think Portland solutions.
124 Any other questions. Great. I would like to entertain a motion to send ordinance document number 2020 5-363 to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
125 Second or so moved.
126 Great. What do we say?
127 Councilor Morillo moves ordinance number 2025 363 to the full council with a recommendation to pass. And councilor Green just gave us a second. So the motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. Diego, will you please call the roll.
128 Koyama Lane? I Morillo.
129 I.
130 Green. I Smith. I Clark. I the motion carries and the ordinance document number 2025 363 will move to full council with a recommendation to pass.
131 Thank you colleagues. Thank you to everyone who came today. A lot of our community friends have already left, but we appreciate all the input, all the hard work that's gone into this. And I think this program does have a future. But I also appreciate councilor Smith's comment about the budget, that we are coming into difficult times, and we will want to do that kind of scouring. I think that you are recommending. So, diego, can you please read the next item?
132 Item four innovative use of public right of way.
133 Councilor Morillo. Would you like to make some introductory remarks?
134 Yes I would, yeah. Thank you so much to folks from deephaven pdx urban gardens for joining us today. I feel very lucky to have worked with all of you in district three to learn more about how we can creatively use our right of way to create more spaces where community is able to congregate, to hang out, and to have safe spaces that are not always in a traffic heavy area. So I'm really excited to introduce shawn perez, the board president of depave, and zoe walker aparicio, who is the community projects and stewardship manager for depave. Afterwards, we're going to have a presentation from pdx urban gardens kyle leslie christie to learn more about how we can transform some of our public areas into more Green spaces. So welcome to all of you. We look forward to having a discussion with you after your presentations.
135 Thank you.
136 Welcome. Which one of you would like to begin?
137 Excellent. I think I'll go ahead and get started here for us on depave. Hi everyone. Thank you for having us here. Councilor is a really honored to speak on behalf of depave. My name is shawn perez. As stated, I'm the board president of depave. I also must disclose that I am a city of Portland employee with the bureau of environmental services. I'm here on my own time and my capacity as a private citizen and as board president. I think depave is one of the most exciting things I've been able to work and be a part of in my time in Portland. We really operate at the intersection of social and environmental justice, and we do that work by activating communities and empowering them to transform their over paved spaces into beautiful, resilient, community Green spaces. This work happens with, oh, okay. This work happens with community centered at every step of the way. Our design process is driven by community. Our projects are often selected or brought to us from community members. It's also important to note that, you know, in this face of an ever changing climate, we're experiencing hotter and hotter summers and all of the dangers that come with that. In a study in 2012 by the new york times, it was found that Portland has some of the biggest discrepancies in surface temperatures, which really reflects a history of systemic racism and redlining in our communities and how that has manifested in the built environment. So one thing that I think is furthered by this is a study we did with nasa, where we found that the most socially vulnerable communities, using available data from the federal government, experienced the highest levels of heat and the highest amounts of pavement. What's hopeful about this is our work was demonstrated through this study to have a significant impact on reducing the urban heat island effect. We are able to make reductions of up to seven degrees fahrenheit through this study, which is really exciting because in a climate crisis, we're talking about three degrees celsius of climate change to avoid really big issues. Our presentation does not seem to be working so well. So I'll be kind of going off my phone here. Yeah. Next slide. Before getting into this more specific update about the seventh and sandy Green plaza, I just wanted to show some examples of the type of work that we do. So this is powell butte elementary school, 1/74 avenue in southeast Portland in the centennial school district. This is a title one school, and I think is really indicative of the types of partners we've had in the past. Most of our work has been in community hubs so that we can serve the most people as possible. It really use our limited resources to have the most community impact. Still figuring out the technology it seems like. One second. Sorry about that.
138 We can just continue like that one.
139 Okay. And then one other project here to highlight is a recent project we completed in the cully neighborhood at morningstar baptist church, which is a predominantly african American congregation and also hosts spanish immersion preschool. The students at that preschool were able to use the park next door. Due to some issues with how I think I believe insurance or something to that effect, but what we've done is build a beautiful Green space that's accessible for very many community members. And we do this work not just with the church, not just with the schoolyards, but also we're bringing in workforce development opportunities. These beautiful planters you're seeing in the picture were built by pc students, which we have an ongoing and active relationship with. So over the years has been around since 2008. We've been able to do 4 to 5 Green space transformations a year. Typically, we're involving 500 volunteers a year and over half of our dedicated stormwater management. We're treating over eight and a half acres of stormwater, eight and a half acres of pavement removed. And this work is really only made possible by the partnerships and collaboration that we've been fortunate to build with the city of Portland. Portland clean energy fund bts percent for Green. Also, metro's neighborhood in the nature and neighborhoods programs are really important donors that help fund this work and helps community organizations fill a gap where oftentimes we're not seeing public work projects happening. We've gone from being an all volunteer organization to operating with a $1 million budget for staff. We now have full project management capacity. And I think the thing that I'm most proud of with the work that we've been able to do, is that 50% of all of our contracted services is given to bipoc or disadvantaged emerging small businesses. So, you know, in supporting our work, you're also supporting cities work of meeting these equity goals in contracting. What we've heard a little bit about today and the big topic on the agenda of street plazas as the southeast seventh and sandy future Green plaza. So this is something that we've been working on at deep for a few years here. And I think it's really exciting because it really builds connection. We heard a lot about connection today through the approach that we do our work, the type of community engagement, having volunteers come together to rip up pavement by hand. They build deep connections through our work. Also being nestled in the central eastside where it is, we're near the Green loop. We're near the completed earl blumenauer bike bridge, so we're building connection points all across the city and making much needed safety improvements for multimodal users. This is an incredibly dangerous intersection at southeast seventh avenue and Washington street. We even have had instances where our own staff have had to conduct first aid response on a pedestrian vehicle accident. We have had four annual block parties and each year it keeps getting better. I think this year was our most dialed in. And again, this is coming from continual feedback that we're getting from the community members that we're getting from adjacent businesses, coordinating with our city partners. And we're also happy to be partnering with the Portland indigenous marketplace on the adjacent property at 737 southeast sandy boulevard to make a more cohesive Green space that also supports their marketplace and business. Why is it important to build a Green space in central eastside? So by the city's own plans, this neighborhood is expected to have 7000 household growth by 2030. This neighborhood has extremely low access to tree canopy and limited access to parks. Like I mentioned earlier, the southeast seventh and stark intersection is a dangerous street. It is listed on PBOT websites as such, and we're coming in to hopefully make an intervention where maybe there hasn't been capacity to do so before. This is a little picture here of some of our feedback process. You know, I think a big part is we do a lot of youth empowerment work. When we work in schools, we engage directly with students to see what kind of spaces do they want. So as we're building future Green spaces, it's important that every kind of user gets a say. So we have these maps out and we let students or young kids put legos out to see what they would like to see in the plaza. But I think what's big today is our 2025 update. This past 19th was parking day, which ended our permit for occupying the temporary plaza space, so we had to tear it down, unfortunately. But we've made incredible gains this year. I think we've deepened our partnership with PBOT through the temporary plaza permitting, and have laid the foundation for really powerful future work together. And I think it's important to stress that the street plaza, as that single point of contact, has really made our work in the street a lot easier. Most of our work up to date, all of our work actually has been on these public private spaces that churches at schools, we've also been able to refine and troubleshoot our bikeway alignments through the space. We're using technology to monitor the way this space is used. We have forums open for people to provide direct feedback to us as they're biking through the space. We have the design in progress. We have about 25% of the total funding for the project life secured, and we're in kind of this phase of getting contracts out for a 60% design with civil engineers, transportation engineers, landscape architects. Through this process, we've been engaging with portland's bike coordinator, among other partners at PBOT and bts. And I want to try to tell this story. I think of the many benefits that paving has. Depave started off as a stormwater management nonprofit. We ripped up asphalt to help clean stormwater, but the different intersections with that type of work, and the type of benefit that removing asphalt has, is really hard to describe, actually. So one of the big things we focus on is workforce development. Be that through our contracting or also just direct involvement with community organizations like poic, they helped us build these reclaimed juniper planter boxes this past summer, which are graffiti resistant. Actually, I didn't know that about juniper wood. They're also really heavy. So they prevent they protect users in the space, and they're also modular so they can be redeployed at different spaces. That's something we've been trying to focus on this year is how can we be more nimble and proactive to kind of direct our resources to emergent opportunities? Taking care of this, as you've heard today from all of the speakers, it really does take a village. And at depave, you know, we have a daily list of volunteers who go out to the site to clean it up, chat with people. And I can say that any time I've been there, it's always been filled with people who are smiling, probably new to the space and spending time there. We have a really important partnership with ground score we've had for the past four years to provide site stewardship of the space, and what we've heard from folks in that program is really this deep sense of pride and connection, which is a through line. I think through work we get folks hands on into taking care of space and transforming it so they see themselves as part of it. They have ownership in this work and really Green infrastructure, more so than other types, requires ongoing care and maintenance, which means it will always be a need for future workforce development. We're also thankful to the central eastside together ambassador program, which offered de-escalation services on site, and I think really helped make management of the site over the summer very successful. You know, also, to do this work, we're investing in entrepreneurship. We have staff the grass, which is testing new mobile planters. These are kind of concrete benches you can sit in, but they also have grass and a tree growing out of them. We also have heard from adjacent businesses that we're having some, you know, increased foot traffic, increased growth and sales. It makes sense, right? We don't want people going through this intersection really fast. We want them to slow down, to be in their community and hopefully spend some money in the neighborhood. Right. And then I mentioned earlier, we do have this partner project with the Portland indigenous marketplace, where we'll be partnering with them to depave portions of their site so they can host outdoor market places. If you've ever been to this triangle in the central eastside, you can. You can tell by looking at it, it's been an under-loved place. And so I think over the past few years, we've really been dedicating energy to pouring love into this part of central eastside. And also, you know, this is directing local, state and national fundraising, like into the neighborhood, into neighborhood that really needs this kind of foot traffic and benefit. And a special shout out to travel Oregon for highlighting the plaza as an event to, to come out to and for sponsoring us. I'm going to transition over to zoe aparicio, over here to go over a little bit of the challenges, but I think like at a high level, what I'll say is we do run into a lot of issues with permitting. There have been improvements. We do have good relationships, but this is a challenging system to navigate. And as a nonprofit, we're not a developer. We don't have the capacity or resources to figure out which process the right way to do it. And I think we end up spending more on process when we could be spending on impact. So with that, I'll give it to zoe.
140 Thank you. Yeah. Zoe walker aparicio again. Hi. So, yeah, how can Portland support these investments in Green infrastructure with our community partners? Some of these are supporting pbot's, you know, street plaza program that we heard about today and pop ups being the phase one or the seasonal, as they're calling it. These help us move forward in activating the spaces with our community partners and seeing what's working, what's not working, while we're still in the design phase of the permanent Green corridor constructions, we also propose bringing water bureau setbacks in step with other cities so that we can plant cooling canopies into Green plazas and corridors. So getting out of our own way so that we can see the bigger picture together. We also want to again highlight what shawn said, that we're community organizations, so we don't have the same capacity that developers might have. So by easing processes, this allows us to spend more public investment on the impacts rather than the bureaucracy. So streamlining and consolidating permit fee reduction processes and making them more transparent, as well as creating a single point of contact for community benefit projects at ppd to help problem solve and advance permits. We also think that reforming portland's outdated conditional use review process, and to remove and repurpose surplus parking at schools and churches would be useful. We have faced a lot of hiccups through this, and updating the grant administration to PCEF standards. We have spent a lot of time trying to match these different requirements for bts versus PCEF, and it has become quite onerous and, you know, held us back in some other efforts of ours. That's what we have today for you.
141 Thank you for your time.
142 Thank you.
143 Thank you. Councilor maria, would you like to call up your next guest?
144 Yeah. Thank you guys so much. You're welcome to stay up there or if you'd like to sit down. And then we will bring you all back towards the end for a quick discussion with the councilors, if that's okay with you. Wonderful. And I'd like to invite kyle from pdx urban gardens.
145 Hello.
146 Get comfortable right next to y'all.
147 Welcome, kyle. Just introduce yourself.
148 Hello, my name is kyle leslie christie. I'm a landscape designer. I'm an educator, and I am a placemaking organizer here in Portland.
149 Kyle, hold on just a second. Do you have a slides you're going to show us?
150 Yes.
151 Are you? Yes I do.
152 We'll need to switch over to you.
153 Let's do it.
154 Are we seeing him? No we're not.
155 Not quite. Now we're seeing.
156 Okay, I will be honest. This is my first time presenting to city council, so I might be a little nervous.
157 I'm doing great.
158 I did.
159 A lot. And I'll try and keep this short. I want to get this thing out of the way. Oh, you can't see it. Okay. So good afternoon, chair. And members of the transportation committee. My name is kyle christie. I'll save you the intro. I'm here to discuss placemaking as a path to resilience. And I think we might be all familiar with placemaking and what it is, but I want to define it. So placemaking is a collaborative, people centered process for transforming public space, and it's a way that we activate every square foot of city land from the grassroots up. I'm here to build on work that's already happening in the city and across our neighborhoods, and invite us to think a little bit bigger if we align how we design and use our public space with our climate and equity goals, they can do far more than they do today. And I believe every space has opportunity to be essential infrastructure, cooling streets, growing food, restoring cultural plants, connecting contiguous, healthy ecosystems, making neighborhoods safer and more connected. And this is going to be a deep dive. We're going to get really into it. So first we'll talk about where we are. I'll talk about placemaking as a vehicle for change, plazas and food, forests as community infrastructure, proven models in Portland and beyond. We'll talk about some opportunities and I'll give you some calls to action. Let's get into it. So where we are, Portland still faces the effects of heat islands, as we've we were just discussing over here heat islands, food insecurity and equitable tree cover and safety concerns. And it is unfortunate that the tree canopy cover, unfortunately does not fall historically over populations of communities of color, and that also gives us opportunities where we can embed trees and also, as we see in this usda food center food desert census data. This gives us direct maps of food deserts, show inequities where we can directly address by embedding food production into public space and then empowering local communities to steward them. And I'm really excited and hopeful because there's already a lot of community momentum around transforming plazas, orchards, and basically changing our city for the better. Pardon me? So street plazas, for example, from PBOT have been a great example of placemaking. Different neighborhood hubs. The city repair project has 30 years of this is their map here. They've got 30 years of placemaking projects which started from charrette square, which was a unsanctioned street intersection painting, which was then approved by PBOT later on. But there's these and then there's this. There's this underlying cultural interest in fruit production, food sovereignty on public space. And so we've had the mapping of the Portland fruit tree index from the Portland fruit tree project. And placemaking can be a vehicle for change and improving our city. Every plaza and greenway can be multifunctional infrastructure, cooling streets, cleaning air and water, producing food, restoring cultural plants, creating safe and welcoming places to gather. And in my profession, I install a lot of nature scapes and food forests. And so I see public space similar to having the opportunity similar to having. All the different canopy layers present in a food forest. You might have the fruit trees, you might have the vine layer, the cane berries, you might have the berry bushes, you might have the lower growing perennials and biomass accumulators. And maybe if the planted area is mulched and inoculated with edible mushrooms, you might have this whole cascade of 6 to 7 layers of food and service. And and like a square foot spot, maybe not a square foot, but five square foot spot. And so I see our public spaces having that opportunity to why? Why shouldn't the shade canopy trees also be producing food? And why can't that that opportunity to harvest and care for that tree? How can we then empower youth in that community to then steward that Green space, create belonging, safety? These end up being upstream solutions. Placemaking gives us upstream solutions and research shows with more street trees, fewer crimes and traffic incidents happen. In plazas and food forests as opportunity to become essential community infrastructure. I would say community assets. There's innumerable there's innumerable benefits we unlock at once when we transform underutilized land into people centered places in terms of safety plazas, calm traffic and put more eyes on the street in terms of ecology, fruit and shade trees reduce heat and clean the air. Native plants support healthy ecosystems and local biodiversity. In terms of community plazas, parks, orchards and become gathering places for culture, art and connection, and social and ecological returns compound over time when neighbors are involved in design and stewardship of these places, this might not be unfamiliar language to you. Now let's get into some proven models in Portland dalita triangle. We've talked about it before. It's now a square. It's a form of traffic triangle converted into a public plaza with native plantings and art, and is credited with reducing adjacent gun violence in the neighborhood as part of the safer summers Portland effort. The saban community arts orchard is is city of Portland. Land is a right of way and is one of portland's first right of way food forests with more than 30 fruit trees, layered edible understory plantings and is maintained by volunteers in the community. The native gathering garden at kelly park was designed with indigenous elders to restore first foods, while creating cultural and gathering and teaching space. Nationally. I'm really excited to share the fitzgerald neighborhood revitalization project in detroit. The shaded areas there are vacant lots that were identified by the city, and you can see they were able to piece together a greenway between the neighborhood, a central park, different neighboring hubs. You can see there's also in the blue, there's a meadow typology in the pink and the salmon. There's the orchard typology, as well as different vegetative growing plots in the orange. And so this is an opportunity in which you were able to create sovereignty. You're creating culture. You're creating these neighborhood Green hubs. There's a beacon food forest in seattle, which is a seven acre food forest with fruit and nut trees, berry shrubs, open community harvest, as well as gathering places. And currently it is just under two acres in cultivation. And there's the avalon Green alley network in los angeles, where alleys have been redesigned as Green corridors and plazas for citrus trees, edible landscaping and plants significant to the latino community. And global models get even bolder. We have a whole edible neighborhood in the netherlands, 15 hectares with thousands of fruit trees, hundreds of edible plants integrating food production into the values and use of that public space. Imagine I'm going a little off script here. Imagine if we had bridges over riparian areas that then gave us access to fruit trees. How would that change our relationship with public space? Maybe to our neighbor? There's the climate park in denmark, which was just a previously long expanse of grass, traditional grass lawn, and now it's been transformed to a climate resilient public park with rain gardens, native trees and plazas for gathering in barcelona, barcelona superblocks are clusters of city blocks, typically three by three, closed to through traffic, opened as plazas with trees, gardens and community space. And these all show how reclaiming streets and public right of ways can create safer, greener and more livable neighborhoods. Now, what are some opportunities in Portland? As we've discussed today, there are numerous, I would say, ready made pilot projects. The 21 plazas already, plus a network of greenways, bikeways and existing placemaking projects. I suggest we test and expand street plazas and expand them, similar to the barcelona superblock we should have in Portland, a flagship community food forest modeled on beacon, or maybe numerous. We should convert alleys into edible corridors like the avalon alleyway project, and we should be building community ownership through self-nominated projects. My call to action to you today is to turn plazas and greenways into hubs of food security by by blending the use of food security, shade, equity and safe gathering space into the use of public space design. I suggest we adopt a public fruit and edible landscaping policy. So fruit trees and berry shrubs are embraced in city planting standards. And thus stewardship is a value that is instilled by our public space. I suggest we create a flagship community food forest. Many park spaces are school adjacent. Spaces are prime opportunities, and we should be integrating placemaking into climate and equity goals and treating public space as a central community infrastructure, not amenities, and continue the good work of engaging community in the thoughtful redesign of our shared space. Thank you.
160 Thank you so much. Great presentation. All of all three of you up there. We have lots of hands up. So first is councilor Koyama Lane.
161 I'll try to be quick. First. This is all amazing. Thank you so much. I think you have a great champion here. I think you worked with councilor Morillo to set a lot of this up. I think she is going to be a great person to keep working with. On how we can make sure the work you're doing is supported at the city, and we're figuring out how to streamline things as needed. So stay close to her and her office. Love that. Been a huge fan of depave for a long time and now I'm a new fan of pdx urban gardens. Kyle, you did great! Your first time in front of council. You nailed it. I've seen a lot of the important work you're doing. Depave at sunnyside school. I've been to the powell butte and gotten to have a tour of that. Thank you for all the work you're doing at the plaza on seventh. And I also, I appreciate these maps because I've seen them, the heat maps, and I've done the shade equity bike ride. And so I really think a lot about d1 and thinking about those inequities. And even though I've seen these maps so many times, it just really hit me to also like, remember d2 here, and I appreciate that you brought up redlining, because that is why there's been historic underinvestment in these areas. And also, this map made me think about the potential of rocky butte, which I think d1, d2, and d3 can all really work together there because we all kind of meet right at that spot. My wondering is how you apply this equity lens to prioritizing the projects that you're doing. I know oftentimes the folks, the community groups that have more access to resources and time to advocate are going to apply probably in certain areas. How do you make sure that d1 and d2 are lifted up and prioritized when you're getting applications, or is there outreach that you're doing to make sure that projects are are trying to push back against the inequities that redlining have resulted in?
162 Do you want me to start?
163 Sure.
164 Yeah, that's a great question, actually. And I think with something we had to be thoughtful of is really soon in our work. So oftentimes we have community members coming to us with projects. Very recently we conducted a community needs assessment by doing very targeted outreach to congregations that primarily serve communities of color. Looking at the school maps, understanding where is the distribution of these title one schools, and really prioritizing our work there. I think during the pandemic that we made a really intentional shift to move away from volume of projects to highest impact project. So we do turn down lots of folks actually, and say, no, we can't do a project here. As great as it would be, we want to reserve our capacity to support other folks. And I think to that end, we also support resources online for other folks to really take this action into their own hands.
165 Any other questions?
166 No. That's it.
167 Thank you. Great.
168 Councilor Smith.
169 Thank you. Thank you all for coming before us today, because these are all two new programs that I did not know anything about. But I want to go to the Portland urban gardens. If a constituent or a community group in d1 wanted to nominate a community organization or a particular site for one of your projects, what should they do?
170 That's a great question. Let's let's chat. I would say send me an email. And I'd love to partner. I've partnered with various non-profits in the past Portland placemaking coalition, the city repair. There's various coalitions that hold the nonprofit status if that's an issue.
171 Yeah.
172 So to date, how many projects have you done in district one?
173 That's a great question. I don't think I know. Yeah.
174 And the reason why I ask you is because in meeting with the pcf folks and they talked about all the the projects they were working on, and a good considerable amount of their money goes to district two and district three. Very little projects went to to district one. And that may be that that's where the bulk of the organizations are. Who who do what deal with climate change and, and those kinds of things. But I'd like to see people work their way out from the city of Portland when doing these kind of projects, because it makes a difference. And I'm just looking at all all the good stuff that you all have been doing that would be great to have in in district one, in addition to the to the street plazas that PBOT is putting up, we oftentimes feel like we're kind of left behind. But I would like to work with you and have my staff connect us and exchange contact information. And the second question for depave very interesting what you do. I was wondering, do you mainly do projects with the public sector? Do you do any private sector project partnering?
175 Yeah, so most of our projects are again they're going to be in public spaces. So okay, I think the closest we've done has been work with like the boys and girls club. But again, that's a nonprofit. We do try to again make these projects as most publicly accessible as possible. So by having them in public land already, it makes it more accessible for community members.
176 Exactly. So I was looking at your strategic plan because I always try to go under the hood a little bit.
177 Yeah. That's good.
178 And so goal five you have expand and diversify sources of funding to deliver on your mission. And the first one was a diversify income streams away from current overreliance on government grants.
179 Totally.
180 So how do you plan. So if you're not going to get government grants, what is your plan to reach out? Are there specific private sector organizations that you're going to be looking to partner with? Yeah. What does that look like?
181 This is a great question. So I just want to clarify. It's not like we don't want the government grants. It's very much this recognition that we're in a very uncertain and unstable funding time, both locally and at a federal level. And I think councilor Lane mentioned we did a recent project with the sunnyside school, and this was actually one of our first pilots for a fee for service model. So recognizing that there is like so much need for this type of work in the city that if we can find capacity in our own staff to do additional projects in a year, could we work a model where we're charging a fee for the service provided? So essentially having more affluent sites subsidizing work that can happen in communities where there is more need.
182 Exactly. And and your second point was to secure strategic, multi-year partnerships with national networks and regional institutions. And I was trying to think, who could they partner with that would fit that description. So I'm going to ask you the question, who could you partner with that would fit that description?
183 That's why it's in the strategic plan, I think. I couldn't tell you an answer off the top of my head, but I think we have been trying to do work with the the meyer memorial trust and a few more private foundations.
184 So that's what you're thinking about private philanthropy.
185 Exactly.
186 Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much for the work that you do. Both of you. It's it's great and it's amazing and outstanding work.
187 Thank you.
188 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Morillo.
189 Thank you all so much for being here today. It's been such a pleasure to learn from you individually and to now get to introduce you to all of my colleagues. And kyle, I actually just sent an introduction email for you and councilor Smith with your chief of staff attached so you guys can convene on what we can do in district one. Because councilor Smith is absolutely correct, district one deserves some love, and especially with regards to creating more Green spaces in that area of our city. So thanks for that. I'm, you know, as we're talking about federal funding cuts, state cuts, everything, we are at the very end of that horrific assembly line of not getting any funding. And our partnering groups are also facing that. And as someone who was a snap policy expert before coming into city hall, I really think about our low income constituents who are now not going to have as much access to food, as much access to public space or places where they can be in community without having to purchase something. And so your work is really critical at this time. And I've really been thinking about food sovereignty and what it's going to take to make sure that people are going to be able to access food for free, because people really are going hungry in our city, and that's something that we don't talk a lot about. So I had a question for you, kyle. You know, knowing that part of the there are barriers to us planting fruit trees and food in the city because it's my understanding, you know, it creates a lot of maintenance costs and a lot of issues. But you and I have talked one on one about how people can become stewards of our land and how community can come and actually take care of it, too. And I'm curious about how you have worked with community in the past to sort of activate them and get them to be stewards of these spaces, so that we all have shared ownership over this.
190 Yeah, that's a great point. Maintenance of a food forest is different than just mowing a lawn. But there's so much more that you get from a food forest than going and mowing a lawn. So there's a huge opportunity to retool a workforce that's already caring for our street trees, watering the annual planters that maybe, maybe are supporting wildlife biodiversity as keystone species. Or maybe you're just looking pretty. You know, I think there's opportunity for there to be beautification and food security to be in one. And there's this idea. I think, to answer your question, there's and I think an earlier presentation brought this up that the most successful plazas had, you know, numerous partners, whether it and that makes sense when you have more groups in, in a space occupying it and you know, there's going to be less delinquent behavior, there's going to be more positive things, right? So same, same with a and then I also want to bring in this context of, you know, every place that I rented in Portland, I signed up for the community garden program, signed up for a box or a plot. And, you know, every two years I was moving. And so I would be moving out of the city or moving moving out of the range that it was now good for me to go and use that space. So there's, there's this, you know, culture of of five year waitlist on the community garden plot. Right. And I think the community garden plots, while they do provide access, they provide access for people that have, you know, time in their day aren't lower income and having to pick up an extra job aren't maybe renters that might be moving out of the neighborhood. So there's still this desire to get out and steward the land if there's this massive waitlist. Right? But maybe we should be thinking about these spaces or a similar community garden model. Less than or less like a individual. I'm going to have a plot and you can't harvest from it, even if I'm like, gone for three months, and then you see that there's a bunch of watermelons. You know, we should have a community space where people maybe there are some anchor partners, there's an urban gleaners, there's a Portland fruit tree project. There's, you know, maybe there's a school that then has, like at the woodlawn elementary garden. It's a community garden that has fruit trees, but so it's one of the anchor groups is the students that use it as an outdoor classroom. But also there are community gardens, gardeners there. And then also there are the people that live in the neighborhood that go and enjoy the the harvest from the fruit trees. I think if we're able to integrate culturally specific plants and then give people agency and stewarding their environment beyond an individual model, you're going to have like a completely different engagement in a space. And we might see it's going to be different engagement than community gardens, where it's my plot, your plot, we're separate versus, oh, this is a shared asset.
191 Thank you so much. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your reminder too, about the long waitlist. I know folks in my district have waited five, eight years to get a plot that they would love to grow food, plants, whatever in, and then they as renters, they move every 1 to 2 years. So really appreciate you highlighting that. Thank you.
192 Thank you, councilor Green.
193 Just briefly because we're running up on time. But I just want to thank you all for coming today and helping us reimagine and re-envision our city. Thank you for mentioning superblocks. I, I really want those in our city. I think they're a big piece of the future, but it's also a land use decision. And so to get superblocks, we need we need to move forward on the inner east side for all package of code code amendments. And we need to really take seriously upzoning as a very urgent thing, because that's how we're going to get the redevelopment to then allow for superblocks. Thanks.
194 Great.
195 Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting these folks here today. I really feel like you are trailblazers, that you are visionary, that you're really cutting edge and there will be a greater and greater need for what you're talking about. You're just you're the v and the v formation. I like to say I there are others in town that are working on changes to streets and charrettes, and I wish you guys were involved in those things. It wasn't really that long ago that many of our families were subsistence farmers. My grandfather, in fact, was a my mother was born on a subsistence farm. We had we had much more of that. But then we've urbanized and sort of lost touch. I've had long term concern with food insecurity, and I'm glad you're working on that. I could never understand why. We're shipping in apples and blueberries from chile when, you know, we we have all those things here. I do think there is a certain amount of cultural resistance, particularly in district four, to use some open space to do something more creative. In fact, I would just mention my hoa is very resistant when I talk to them about doing a paving in our parking lot, or taking some of the grassy area and doing something creative with it, there's still this mindset that, you know, that sort of british lawn kind of thing that's just stuck, stuck with us for some reason. But there's lots of land available. I think we there are more partnerships in the future, but thank you so much. You're really trailblazers. Thank you for coming here today. I really appreciate it.
196 Thank you.
197 Thank you for having us colleagues.
198 Thank you. It's been a great meeting. Our next meeting is October the 6th. October just around the corner. We're going to have a report on the bull run filtration plant. We've asked our colleagues in public works and the water bureau to ground us in our current water management and conservation efforts as a part of this conversation as well. So thank you all. And with that, I will adjourn the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee.