The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-02-25

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (33,492 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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Good morning. I am now convening the Wednesday, February 25th morning meeting of the Portland city council. Please take the roll.

Good morning. Avalos.

Present.

Smith. I know pirtle-guiney here. Ryan. Koyama Lane here. Morillo here.

Novick here.

Clerk.

Here. Here.

Green.

Here.

Zimmerman. Dunphy.

Here.

And I see councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: And councilor Kanal has also joined us. Yes. And can we please read the rules of decorum for the chamber?

Good morning. Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at wwe council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Colleagues, the first thing on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Are there any requests to amend the agenda to reorder items or reschedule items for the future? I do, I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda.

Council president. Yeah, I had heard, and perhaps I'm incorrect, that we might be holding an item over because some of our colleagues were absent today.

I had also heard that I heard councilor Zimmerman was going to be introducing a motion to postpone. And he is not here.

Okay.

Would you like to introduce it?

I think out of respect for my colleague, councilor Ryan, who's not here and is one of the co-sponsors of agenda items 11 and 12, I'd like to ask that we take those up at the next council meeting when he is present. I don't want to delay this significantly. If we're not able to do it at the next meeting, I'd ask that you let us know that. I think this is important to move as quickly as possible, but I do know that he was hoping to be able to weigh in.

Absolutely. I have no objections to scheduling this for our next council. Is that a formal motion to postpone, or how do we do that?

Can I have a point of information, though, is it's at the end of this agenda, right? Or towards the end of, towards the. End of the agenda. So which could mean it could be already moving to tomorrow. Like can we make a decision later if it's going to be like, can it already be pushed to tomorrow? Does that make sense?

I would like to I'm hoping to move it now a full week. Yeah, I'd like to move it to next Wednesday.

I don't consent to that.

Okay. We will.

So I think since we are. A changing the agenda, we will need to make a motion a second and vote to a change. Update the agenda. Okay.

I would. Move to. It's a little awkward because it sounds like we have co-sponsors on different sides of this. I had heard the request from co-sponsor councilor Ryan to move it, and I'm hearing the request from co-sponsor Koyama Lane not to, but I think I'll put the motion out there that we postpone items 11 and 12 to next week. Council president second.

All right. Motion by councilor Pirtle-guiney, seconded by councilor Clerk Avalos.

Candace Avalos: No.

Smith.

Yes.

Kanal.

Point of information. Is this not debatable?

I don't know, is this a debatable? Is a motion to postpone a debatable motion?

I need to look really quickly.

I just have I just have a point of information which is are are they absent for the whole day or is it a is there a chance they'll be here later?

Councilor Ryan is traveling, and I think out of not able to call in to the next couple of meetings today and tomorrow.

Okay. We'll see.

I didn't see a virtual participation or anything, so. Or even an absence, but.

I think I did.

See an absence.

But I don't know.

Because I'm hearing.

Council president. It is debatable.

Okay. This is a debatable motion. Councilor.

And we are in the middle of a vote.

So I think we move to the vote a little early.

Okay.

Okay. Because councilor Kanal had a.

Sameer Kanal: I mean, I think I got my my question answered, but I'm seeing that the absence includes next week or at least next Wednesday. So I'm going to vote no.

All right. Would you like to continue with the vote council president? Thank you.

Pirtle-guiney I. Koyama Lane no.

Morillo. No.

Novick aye, Morillo. Clerk. Aye, Morillo.

Green.

No.

Zimmerman.

Aye, Morillo.

Dunphy I.

The motion to postpone those items fails with six yes votes, five no votes and one absent.

Okay.

Colleagues, do I have consent to approve the remainder of the agenda? No. Okay. Can we take a vote on approval of the agenda then? Do we need a motion for that? Okay.

No.

Avalos.

I'm sorry. Point of information. If we don't approve the agenda, what happens?

I don't think we can meet.

Okay.

I'll continue with the vote. Avalos.

I'm sorry.

Is this a.

Debatable motion?

Agenda approval?

Yes.

Because I have some things to say.

Councilor. Morillo. Go ahead.

Okay. We. I understand that maybe there are some differences in a single amendment in this policy. We have city business to get done that needs to move forward. We do not always get what we want. And negotiations are very difficult in this building. And I'm not entirely happy with how everything went down on many sides. But we have an agenda with a lot of important items to fulfill. Yesterday, the housing committee already got stalled because someone didn't file an absence and let us know they weren't going to be there and we lost quorum. We cannot have a republican light legislature here that has walkouts or doesn't vote to approve the agenda for us to meet and get our work done because people are unhappy with individual items. I would really like for us to just get our work done. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I want to be clear that my motion to remove something to the agenda was not to stall for any purposes having to do with the amendments on the table, not to delay the important work that we have on today's agenda. There are many other very important things, but simply to honor the request of a colleague who wanted to be here for that agenda item, who will be back next week, but who is not here because he is out of town doing business of the city through next Tuesday.

Where his absence.

He has an absence filed online.

Okay. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. And I agree that we have to get business done, but we also can't have councilors who engage with unpeaceful protesters stopping our meetings either, which happened last week.

Thank you, councilor Smith councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Last week, multiple councilors up here said they wish this could move forward quickly. To clarify, this package has been ready since August and the previous council president stalled that. So would love to keep this moving. Councilor Zimmerman doesn't want this to come to an evening meeting. It seems like there are a lot of different tactics to stall things. Community has spoken really clearly. That's who I'm here for. I'd like to get back to business, please.

Thank you. Councilor. Seeing no one else in the queue, can we please move to the vote on approval of the agenda?

I Smith?

No,

Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I no, sorry.

Koyama Lane I. Morillo I. Novick I.

Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman.

No.

Dunphy I.

The agenda is approved with nine yes votes, two no and one absent.

Thank you. Can we please move to public communications?

First up we have guy frankenstein.

Good morning.

Identify yourself. For the record.

My name is guy frankenstein. That is my real name. That's not a joke. My pronouns are he him. Good. Thank you. In 1932, prussia, the largest state in germany, saw sa and ss forces forces marched through neighborhoods, provoked confrontation and destabilize life. Initially, prussia fought back. They supported and enforced bans, they restricted permits, and they used police authority to stop mobilization. Then the bans were lifted. It was argued that accommodating these forces would mitigate harm and prevent escalation, which would provide a better long term outcome than resistance. So state governments stepped back. If you need me to explain what happened to prussian government officials a few months later, then you shouldn't be sitting in those seats. Here is the truth about the situation with ice. It will escalate. This council and everyone in this state are not outliers. Repeating the mistakes of the past will lead to the same outcome. You can resist and have a chance at success, or you can do what you're currently doing with confidence that you will fail. You are a government of a city that is in the crosshairs of this administration, and acquiescence isn't going to buy you time. It's only going to ensure your demise. In the past two months, I have personally witnessed ice, tear gas, children and union members. And on the day that ice murdered alex, pretty watched Portland police throw protesters to the ground and laugh in their face, with one officer daring me to do something about it. And the response to all of this is hollow words from keith wilson and opportunistic moralism from this council. I don't know if the mayor and this council are scared or incompetent, but you were elected to exercise power, not narrate its limits. If you are waiting for the perfect opportunity to take action, you're waiting for something that is not going to arrive. Portland has autonomy and legal authority to govern ourselves and reign in the actions of gestapo agents within our walls, and you have abandoned that responsibility. Portland is one of the most populated cities in the most powerful country in the world, and the inaction by its government belies the importance of what is taking place here. The president is threatening to illegally federalize our elections within months and have ice agents at polls. Yet you sit here and shuffle responsibility between departments when ice goose steps through those doors on order from kristi noem, it will be the thousands of people you are failing that will stand between you and them, not PPB, not keith wilson, not tina kotek, us because we do our part. Even when you don't do yours. This November, I, along with many others, will be running for city council to replace you with the express purpose of ending illegal federal actions within our city and pushing hard accountability for anyone that enabled ice. You are not built for the actions that this moment demands and cannot see the end of the path you're on. We are fighting back because there will be no second chance. This council keith wilson.

And ice.

Yeah, colleagues we cannot or the public, we cannot tolerate profanity. We have an fcc license. We are broadcasting live. Please try to maintain rules of decorum in the chamber.

Next up we have holly brown online.

Hi. Yeah. Can you all hear me?

Yeah.

We can hear you. Go ahead.

Yeah. My name is holly brown. I'm a resident of district two. I'm also a member of Portland contra. That's interesting. Councilor Jamie Dunphy, you say that we cannot tolerate profanity. What about councilors threatening to shoot peaceful protesters like Loretta Smith? Do we tolerate that? Why is she allowed in the building today? I'm here to speak about the violent suppression of first amendment rights that occurred last Wednesday, during the evening meeting of council. Protesters are rightfully upset at the council's profound lack of action on ice. You are the legislators of Portland, and yet even the most progressive of you pretend that you have no power and capitulate in advance to ice and trump. So it should come as no surprise to you when people disrupt your meetings, when you do not listen to the demands of the people or work on the things we are begging you to work on, there's nothing left for us to do than to make sure that you can hear our message, and that you hear how serious the situation is with ice. Here in Portland, in response to people simply chanting and holding up a petition with 19,000 signatures demanding that you put forth legislation to shut down the Portland ice facility, council president Jamie Dunphy called the police on protesters. And all of you hid away in your offices. You are cowards. Just four people were arrested that night, and you all stood by in silence as the mayor and police chief, bob day, put out statements saying our protest was violent and that we vandalized city hall. This is simply a lie. Two of the charges are two of the protesters have already had their charges dropped, showing that these are sham charges meant to perpetuate a narrative that you are under threat, when actually it is us who are under threat. In response to a petition, councilor Loretta Smith said that she wants to open carry a gun to meetings with the public. There is no other way to interpret this than a threat to shoot protesters who get out of line and to try to silence us with violence. Shame on you, Loretta Smith. You should resign. Where were the denunciations from the rest of the council to this threat to shoot peaceful protesters? Councilor Kanal simply saying that you would vote it down and would not bring a gun is not enough. Councilor Morillo saying that these protesters are annoying, but that Loretta smith's position is nuanced is a shame. Why could none of you say that we denounce this threat of violence, and those are just the councilors who said something. Most of you were completely quiet. While councilor Loretta Smith threatened to shoot protesters and continues to now smear us by saying that we are violent. What a lie. It is very clear what side you are on. We demand that council president Jamie Dunphy commits to no longer calling the police on protesters, and that he changes security protocol to ensure the safety of the public in meetings, from the police, from security, and now from the councilors. Because I guess we have to worry about that. We also demand that all councilors denounce Loretta smith's threat of violence. We want you to say this very clearly, that you denounce her threat to shoot protesters. We also demand an end to the practice of banning immigrant rights protesters from entering city hall, because that is what is happening. It is illegal. We also demand that the charges are dropped against susan bartley and henry roloff. Walking up to you with a petition does not deserve charges or to be placed in jail. We also demand that the Portland ice facility is shut down immediately and that the permit is revoked. Stand up. Do your job. Stand against ice. It's pathetic. Honestly.

Thank you for being here.

Next up, we have cole donahue.

All right.

Good morning.

Last Wednesday, at the last full council meeting, I asked.

For.

The record. Oh, sorry. Cole donahue is my name. Last Wednesday, at the last full council meeting, I and more than 50 other people showed up to protest and exercise our first amendment rights by calling for the facility to for the city to act and shut down the south waterfront ice facility. What followed was a disgusting response from the city. It's private security goons and pbh in which four people, including me, were arrested. Today, I'm going to focus on my particular experience of that night. When we were gathering outside of city hall, one of the private security guards came up to me specifically and said that I had been trespassed from city hall and that I would not be allowed entry. I had been there for a total of about five minutes by that point, and hadn't even attempted to enter the building yet. A few minutes later, I was able to get the attention of that same security guard and asked what the legal justification for that order was. He initially didn't even give me a response, but after a few moments said that he would bring me documentation. He never came back outside without any documentation. I couldn't reasonably believe his words had any actual legal authority. So when the doors to city hall opened, I attempted to enter the building to attend the publicly accessible meeting. I was once again told that I had been trespassing, that I wasn't going to be allowed entry. This time. They did give me a sheet of paper, but it was not documentation. It had no charges listed on it, no cease and desist, nothing. I was essentially being told I wasn't allowed in this public building because they didn't feel like letting me in. I'd also like to take this opportunity to call out how slowly everyone was let in that night. The doors opened several minutes later than usual, and by the time they did open well, more than 50 people had ten minutes to make it through security. Before the start of that city council meeting. The security process, seemingly intentionally, was extra slow for a large evening meeting. Usually, they let in about two people at once and check them all of that. This time they were just letting people in. One by one. More than a dozen people were still waiting to be let in at 630. Half an hour after the meeting was scheduled to start. That is shameful. And while I was never led into city hall that night, thomas allen, a known right wing agitator who was assaulted dozens of people with pepper spray both at city hall and down at the ice facility, including five people earlier that same evening, including my own sibling, was allowed entry into city hall like it was absolutely no problem after being after I was shown no documentation stating why I wasn't allowed entry into the building, I was told that the police were on their way and that they'd have the documentation I was looking for. I stayed in the doorway waiting for the arrival to see it, and when the police did arrive, I left the building and was immediately arrested by police. It is appalling that the city of Portland treats protesters the way it does by ignoring demands, suppressing peaceful. Look at me, Loretta Smith, peaceful protesters and then demonizing those same protesters in public statements afterwards. Pbb should not be mobilized to this end. They are the ones who escalate things. They are the ones who put people in danger. They're the ones who hurt people. City hall city council would not be disrupted as often if people felt like they were actually being listened to. The way you fix that is by taking real action to impede ice's reign of terror. And the way you do that is by shutting down ice's facility on the south waterfront. Revoke the permit immediately.

Thank you very much.

Next up, we have tyler fellini.

Just a second councilor.

Members of the council. Council president. My name is brian. I'm the project manager for allied universal. The testimony today will have some evidence that he wants to bring and show you guys. Being that they are spent incendiary rounds, they are going to remain in security control during this presentation. You guys have any questions? Captain tillman will be able to show you guys okay. So she's grabbing that right now and I turn it back over to you. I'm just going to wait.

I'm just setting the bags out so they can see. Okay. No bombs. Councilors. For the record, my name is tyler fellini. I'm a registered lobbyist and the executive director of Portland jobs with justice. These are spent munitions that were collected on the 31st of January and the 1st of February. This is just two of the four bags that are in there. On the 31st. I reached out to the mayor's office to speak about what had happened. Our organization was one of the organizations that planned the massive, peaceful rally in March that marched down and past the ice macadam, the macadam ice facility, and was tear gassed. I have not heard back. It's been almost a month. That same day, I checked in with councilor Green's team because I knew he'd been impacted by the gas, and I expressed our desire to speak on the actions of federal agents that day, and they recommended that I request public comment time. Now, since the mayor has authority to enforce the fine that city councilors passed last month, I believe it's most important to get before him with my concerns, and I've been trying to get on the regular council agenda in the hopes that you would invite him here so that I could speak about that as a member of an organization that planned that rally, I've been told that the proper way to get on the agenda is to go through a committee. I reached out to councilor Novick and councilor Kanal staffs to try to get before the public safety committee. Still waiting to hear back at this point. I've spoken to many of you about our concerns and I've expressed a desire to speak. I've still not heard back from the mayor's office, so I'm now here before you all, since this council has public and accessible meetings, I'm concerned about the mayor's comments at a 5051 event in which he alleged that federal agents used tear gas in response to a handful of agitators seeming to justify their actions. And I'm concerned about his office's lack of response to our request. Again, I reached out on the 31st to his office. As a registered lobbyist. I have the privilege to be here during the day that many other working portlanders do not have. I'd also like to think that I have a good grasp of how local government works, especially because of how often our organization engages with the city. And if it's been this challenging for us to get before the mayor, especially as an organization that directly played a role in organizing the event on the 31st that the mayor has spoken about multiple times since, as well as the governor and the attorney general, I can only imagine how many other constituents must feel. This is not a sign of an effective and responsive government, and despite the best efforts of you all to be accountable to your constituents, to have district talks, etc. The actions of the mayor's office have unfortunately put you all in the crosshairs. Now, while some may disagree about the tactics that were used last week by constituents, I can certainly recognize the frustration that they must feel. I feel that frustration. I want to close by saying this in a speech. Doctor king once said that a riot is the voice of the unheard. That was not an endorsement for riots. That was him saying that when change becomes impossible through ordinary measures, the people will turn to extraordinary measures. I understand that you all are not the mayor. I cannot get ahold of the mayor. I am before you all. I would urge you all to impress upon the mayor that we are trying to speak with him. We have trying to speak with him. And also, councilor Green, I would urge you to correct the mayor's record that a few agitators led to ice tear gassing thousands of innocent people. Because you and I both know that's not what happened that day. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up, we have seth todd. Seth. Todd. Okay, we're going to call the alternate. Seth isn't a present. Tobias goldstone. Is joining us online. Yeah.

Thank you. Tobias goldstone, resident of old town. I just want to thank the city council for allowing me to speak in this forum today. And thank you for working together to help solve some of the fundamental problems that our wonderful city is experiencing. I'm here to provide some awareness around a small infrastructure project that impacts over 1000 residents in the old town neighborhood. This is the nato flanders crossing project. It's to upgrade the train signals and alter the intersection to allow for safer pedestrian crossing under the steel bridge. One outcome of the safety upgrades is to submit for a train horn exemption and allow for a quiet zone in the old town neighborhood. This effort has been ongoing since 2010, with an administrative order that was issued requesting that this project be started in 2021. This effort gained traction and city council voted to approve to move forward in 2023. Subsequently engaged with ODOT and PBOT to get a project moving forward and reached 95% complete plans. Completion. Unfortunately, due to the length of time it took to get to to get the plans completed, prices went up and we're have a shortfall of about $750,000 to complete this project. We are looking for a win in the old town neighborhood, especially on a project that has gone on for this long. And I'm hoping that city council will be able to provide some options to be able to fill that funding gap and ultimately get this, get this safety crossing built. And it will also support safety safer crossing for the for the skate park that is planned in that area as well. So there's a lot of there's a lot of unlocks by by doing this. So I urge the council to reach out to PBOT and please request to find alternate some additional funding sources to be able to move this project along. It certainly will help over 1000 residents that live in that area that have experienced this problem for a long period of time. So a very small thing that would be a big win for the city of Portland. And I urge the council to to push this forward. Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here this morning.

That completes communications.

Council president, can I take a moment for a point of personal privilege?

Sure.

I just want to thank you for working with our security team to allow the former speaker to bring the spent canisters here. I've attended dozens, maybe hundreds of labor rallies over the years. And even if the situation were, as the mayor described, a few agitators, which I don't believe is what that rally was. And even if one believes that chemical munitions are an appropriate response in our neighborhoods, which I don't believe it is, that amount of chemical munitions is far beyond what I would have expected to see. I think it was impactful to have it here. I think it was important for us to see that, and for our fellow portlanders to be able to see the extent of what was deployed that day. And I appreciate you working with our security team to find a safe and reasonable way for the former speaker to bring those into the building.

Thank you, thank you.

Okay, our next item is the committee referral report. And as normal colleagues, I'm not going to read it, but I will encourage you to look at it online. A number of items have been referred to committee. Some have already been heard. Those items are listed in the committee referral report, which is available online@Portland.gov auditor rede council clerk slash referral dash list keelan. Can you please call our time certain item number four.

Item 2020 6-037 adopt the affordable housing opportunities project, amendments to the comprehensive plan map and the official zoning map.

Colleagues. This is a land use item and I am required to close testimony on the record before we vote. So I am officially closing the oral and written testimony on this item before we move to a vote. Is there any discussion on this? Is that a legacy hand? Can we please call the vote?

Avalos I.

Smith I.

Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I.

Ryan oh sorry.

Koyama Lane I. Morillo I. Novick hi. Clerk hi.

Green.

Hi, Zimmerman.

Hi, Dunphy.

Hi.

The ordinance passes with 11 yes votes and one absent.

Thank you. Can we please call item number five?

Item five, document number 2026, dash 063, adopt the public infrastructure environmental code project to streamline environmental zoning regulations to accommodate needed infrastructure projects and support ongoing natural resource management. Amend code title 33.

Thank you.

Claire adamzik from counsel ops is available online to give us our committee staff summary report.

Thank you, council president and councilors for the record. Claire adamzik, council policy analyst and staff to the climate resilience and land use committee. The ordinance before you document number 2026, dash 063 was heard in the climate committee on February 12th, where it was referred to council with the recommendation to pass the ordinance amending title 33 planning and zoning as specified in the public infrastructure environmental code project recommended draft, which is exhibit b. The ordinance also directs adoption of the findings of fact, report and commentary found in exhibits a and b as legislative intent and further findings. The code changes amend the standards and procedures for development and environmental overlay zones to clarify requirements related to the maintenance, upgrade and replacement of public infrastructure. The amendments also modify the approval process for natural resource management on public property. As part of its recommendation to council, the climate committee approved a staff proposed technical amendment that's posted online, and the amendment is also summarized in the committee staff summary. The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts, economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts and community involvement, and the city's 100% renewable energy goal. One person testified during the committee meeting on February 12th, and two people submitted written testimony via the map app prior to committee action. The general themes of the testimony included the urgency and modernizing aging, climate resilient flood safety infrastructure, ensuring environmental codes align with the physical constraints of public infrastructure and do not impede development. Inclusion of the port of Portland in proposed code changes. As an owner and manager of flood safety infrastructure, which include the vanport wetlands and vanport pump station, and finally a request from the urban flood safety and water quality district for the removal of a code provision related to the use of code standards in wetland areas. And that concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.

Thank you, claire. Councilors Novick and Morillo. I'm not sure who was chairing that day, but I want to turn it over to you to to give some remarks first.

I think I was do you remember councilor Morillo?

Angelita Morillo: I feel like we always have this problem. Councilor Novick. But the staff summary was great. I don't have anything additional to add.

Thank you.

Yeah. I would add that basically the point is when as I that when the water bureau is like doing routine work they have to do around pump stations, there's standards that they should have to meet as opposed to going through a whole new review every time they do it. That's that's the I think, the gist of it that have set standards rather than they have to meet cut down on the amount of individual review they might have to do every time they have to do work in a pump station.

Excellent. Thank you. Councilor Novick colleagues. Are there any technical or clarifying questions about this item before we move to public testimony? Yeah. Councilor. Clerk. Vice president. Clerk.

Thank you. Council president I would just a question for the co-sponsors. Is this a streamlining measure, would you say?

Yes, I would.

Removing roadblocks.

Yes. Acknowledging there's some work that has to be done routinely. And rather than sort of revisit how it's done every time, establish standards that have to be met every time.

Excellent.

Thank you. Councilor. Vice president Clark keelan, is there anyone signed up for public testimony?

No one signed up.

Okay, colleagues, is there any debate on this item? Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Yeah, I just wanted to say, since I sit on that committee and I asked a lot of questions of the presenters at the time, just around making sure that this is not going to be used as more loopholes to bypass protections for climate. I understood that their intent is to make it easier to make things more climate resilient. So I felt satisfied by their answers. I can't remember exactly what I asked, but I remember feeling like, okay, that was what my concern was and why I ended up supporting it. So just wanted to let my other colleagues know. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. I put myself in the queue. I have just a couple of brief remarks. First, I do want to just start by thanking bts for their hard work on this. I'm largely very supportive of all the efforts towards pragmatic reform and streamlining of our zoning code. I do want to flag a couple of concerns. The ordinance itself acknowledges that due to real world physical constraints on public infrastructure, many of the intended benefits of environmental review are not achievable in practice. Discretionary review can add significant cost and delay without delivering corresponding environmental or public benefit. This reality points to a code problem, and it's not an applicant issue. We shouldn't rely on individual operators like the port to seek project specific exemptions. Instead, our code should be written in a way that provides clear, uniform standards with appropriate flexibility so that the review effort is focused on outcomes, not process. I'm also, I have some concerns with some of the provisions specifying some of the administrative details, like which bureau administers the revenge fee fund. It feels a little outside of the scope of a zoning code update, and might have some future unnecessary complications. But, you know, my intent is to continue pursuing zoning process reforms that align with policy aligned policy with reality. We need to build housing. We have to update our aging infrastructure, and we have to allow for adaptive reuse of commercial spaces without unnecessary delay and conflicting requirements. I think this is a step in the right direction. Absolutely. And the way our city should be moving and I will be supportive today. But just wanted to flag a couple of additional things on the record. Seeing no one else in the queue to discuss this. This now moves to second reading. Can we? That right? Yes. And yeah. There we go. I have a script to read. The oral and written testimony is now closed on this item. The public infrastructure environmental code project zoning code amendments, as amended in the climate resilience and land use committee, will be continued to March 11th at 9:45 a.m. Time certain for a final vote. Keelan can we please move to the next item?

Next up, we have the consent agenda. No items have been pulled.

Colleagues, I move to adopt the consent agenda. Are there any objections?

Oh.

You know what? I'm so sorry. Consent agenda does require a roll call vote.

Okay.

I would move to adopt the consent agenda.

And I would.

Yeah. And we don't actually need a motion. We'll just call the roll.

Let's do it. Let's go.

Thanks. All right.

Avalos I.

Smith I.

Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I. Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.

Novick I.

Clark I. Green I. Zimmerman I.

Yeah Dunphy. I the consent agenda is approved with a unanimous vote of 11 yeses and one absent.

Thank you. Can we please move to item number eight?

Document number 2026, dash 040. Accept the 2024 2025 parks levy and parks levy oversight committee annual report.

And I believe is claire also here? There we go. Claire adams. I'm here from council operations is here to give us a committee staff summary.

Thank you again. Council president and councilors again for the record, claire adams, council policy analyst and staff to the climate resilience and land use committee. The report before you document number 2026 063, was heard in the climate committee on January 29th, where it was referred to council with a recommendation to be accepted. The report requests the acceptance of the 2024 to 2025 parks levy annual report and the 2024 to 2025 parks levy oversight committee annual report. The parks levy annual report provides information on the allocation and implementation of funds in the fiscal year 2024 2025, in alignment with 15 parks levy commitments passed by voters in the 2020 parks levy ballot measure, the parks levy oversight committee annual report offers a review of parks levy actions in 2024 and 2025, including adherence to the original ballot measure, language, fiscal accountability and transparency. The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts and community impacts and community involvement. No one provided written or verbal testimony prior to committee action. And that concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.

Thank you claire. Councilors Novick and Morillo. I will again look to you as the chairs of the committee. If any further comments.

Nothing to add.

Yeah, I don't have anything to add on the parks annual report.

Excellent, colleagues. We have a number of our folks from the parks bureau here. If there are any technical or clarifying questions and at this moment, or. Oh, councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Yeah, in a moment I'm going to move to approve the report because I think we need that motion. But first, I just wanted to point out one particular part in there. The report was great, and thank you to both claire adams and claire flynn, who does the levy coordination at at parks. But there was one piece in here that I wanted to highlight, which is that the report cautions about reliance on the parks levy as the primary funding source, or as a larger funding source than it already is to fund Portland parks and recreation and specifically notes the general fund cuts would erode the levy's impact. And I just wanted to take the chance to to remind everyone that in the context of the levy passing, that we made a commitment to voters not to use levy funds as an excuse to cut general fund services, and that the purpose of the levy was to ensure maintenance of services at Portland parks and recreation and any cuts to to parks and recreation that reduces service levels would be a breach of violation of that commitment, and I intend to uphold that commitment. So I think it's worth noting that that was a commitment we made in the levy, and we're continuing it to this day and looking forward to having that conversation more detail when we get to the budget. But in the meantime, I'll move to adopt the report first.

We have public testimony.

Oh my apologies.

So, colleagues, are there any technical or clarifying questions, or is there an interest in having any of our parks team come and give us additional information? Okay. Can we please move to public testimony?

We have tim williams.

Welcome. Please introduce yourself. For the record, if you prefer to share your pronouns and you have three minutes.

Thank you. Good morning. Councilors. My name is tim williams. I'm a resident of southeast Portland and a member of the parks levy oversight committee. We are a committee of five community members, and in conjunction with park staff, we meet quarterly, and our role is to review information to verify compliance with the 2020 parks levy. Our meetings are open to the public, and we accept public comment. In year four of the 2020 parks levy, we found Portland parks and rec, adhered to the ballot language and made continued progress on all 15 commitments. The department was fiscally accountable in tracking dollars in a transparent, audible and effective way and was clear in their communication of the parks levy impact, particularly with the use of visual communication methods. We commend parks for a clean third party audit of the parks levy, which had no findings or recommendations, and we saw this as a validation of Portland parks and recs framework and implementation. We encourage Portland parks and rec to continue to share how parks levy funds are essential to a healthy Portland. Without the parks levy, basic services levels such as park, restroom cleaning, trash pickup or open community centers would not be possible. The 2020 parks levy was approved by Portland voters to be additive funds for parks and recreation services, and as mentioned before, any cuts to general funds means that the parks levy is relied on more heavily to support Portland parks and rec operations. That would undermine the ability of Portland parks and rec to fulfill commitments made to voters. So we caution the council about a potential reliance on the levy, which would erode the impact of the parks levy. But overall, we were very pleased with year four of the 2020 parks levy and emphasized the critical nature of this funding for parks and recreation system. We would also like to take this opportunity to remind the council that 2020 parks levy is only for operational funding in the 2025. Levy includes a small portion for capital projects. The combination of the two levies do not address the sorely needed funding of capital projects within the Portland parks system. I want to thank city council for continued support of the parks levy, and we look forward to future years of success. I would also like to thank claire flynn and sarah huggins for all their work with the committee in making sure that it functions. Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here this morning.

That completes testimony.

Thank you very much, colleagues. We now move into discussion of this councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you. Council president. I want to thank the oversight committee for the continued work and for bringing forward this year's report. It is great trust that the public puts in us when they vote for a levy, and the oversight that this committee has provided is critical. I appreciate the role that they've played in keeping us on track with delivering on all 15 commitments that were in the 2020 parks levy. I'll also note that there were stronger commitments made in the levy that voters just passed. And my colleague in district two, councilor Kanal, beat me to the punch on noting some of those commitments, including ensuring that we continue to fully fund our parks system. I think it's important to say that over and over again as we near the the budget season and as we look to build the next oversight committee, I hope that they continue on the strong work of this oversight committee and ensure that we continue to meet our obligations to Portland voters with room to spare. It'll be a difficult budget year, and the services provided by our parks, our critical services that we will need to maintain. I just really am grateful to the oversight committee for all the work that they have done in helping us to continue to have the trust of Portland voters to deliver, to deliver on the commitments that we make and that Portland voters ask for as they approve these levies.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney. Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, I would accept a motion to accept the report.

So moved.

Second councilor Kanal moves councilor Pirtle-guiney seconds. Can we please move to a roll call? Vote?

Oh, sorry. Avalos I. Smith I. Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I. Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.

Novick I.

Clark I. Green. I Zimmerman.

Absent. Dunphy.

Good work all thank you more to come I.

The report is accepted with ten yes votes and two absent.

Thank you very much. Can we please move to item number nine?

Document number 2020 6-071. Amend council committee code to allow for the creation of a council committee of the whole. Amend code section 3.02.050.

Colleagues. This is the second reading of an ordinance that we heard last week. This code enables our ability to do the work that we already approved for our new committee structure. Is there any council discussion of this item before we move to a vote? Saying no one? Can we please call the roll?

Avalos I oops, I.

Know Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark. I Green.

Zimmerman absent Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with nine yes votes, one no vote and two absent.

Can we please move to item number ten are you.

May have a brief point of personal privilege.

Absolutely.

I just wanted to know two things. Thank you. Colleagues, I didn't say this last week because we hadn't created the committee yet, but now that that is created, I appreciate it. And to everyone who testified about much of the issues with protests, we will be looking forward to discussing that in the committee. The whole thank you.

Item ten, document number 2020 6-052 authorize bureau of transportation to acquire certain permanent and temporary property rights necessary for construction of the northeast mlk boulevard safety and access to transit project through the exercise of the city's eminent domain authority.

Thank you very much. We have christhopher herr with council operations here for a council committee summary.

Thank you. Good morning. Council president and councilors for the record christhopher herr council operations policy analyst and I serve as staff to the finance committee. The ordinance before you document 2020 6-052 was considered in the finance committee. On February 9th, it was referred to council with a recommendation that it be passed. The ordinance declares it necessary to acquire property interest across 12 property owners, including five permanent easements and 12 temporary construction easements, as described in exhibits one through 37 for the martin luther king jr boulevard safety and access to transit project. The ordinance further authorizes the director of the bureau of transportation, PBOT, or designee, and or the city attorney to acquire necessary permanent and temporary rights for the project under eminent domain. The ordinance grants PBOT and the city attorney's office the authority to negotiate and offer just compensation for the required property interests. If negotiations are unsuccessful, the ordinance authorizes the initiation and condemnation proceedings to determine just compensation through the judicial process. This authority does not extend or alter the jurisdiction of the courts beyond what is appropriate or reserved for the city council determination. Pbot is authorized to determine the continuing necessity, propriety, quantity, quality, and locality of the acquisitions and may reduce or abandon any authorized acquisition. The ordinance further authorizes the creation of a sub fund in the amount estimated to be the just compensation for each interest property, which, if necessary, shall be deposited with the clerk of the court where an action is commenced. The full impact statements on this includes financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, community impacts and community involvement. One individual provided verbal testimony in committee acknowledging the need for additional safety improvements at intersections along the boulevard, and expressed concern regarding a perceived discrepancy between intersection, improved with enhanced safety features and those predominantly used by communities of color. No written testimony was submitted prior to committee action, and this concludes the committee staff summary.

Thank you very much, christopher. This came out of the finance committee, and I was looking to councilor Zimmerman, who is stepped away from the desk. So, colleagues, I will open it up now to technical or clarifying questions before we move to see if there's public testimony. Is there anyone signed up for public testimony?

No one signed up.

Okay, colleagues, is there any discussion on this item? Counselor Green?

Yeah. Thank you. Council president, one of the areas of discussion during that committee meeting was whether or not it's appropriate to focus on enhancing and building out the ADA compliant intersections. When you do a job like this. And I just I had noted in that committee, and I want to raise for the full council that when we are dealing with scarce resources and also a legally binding settlement to get so many ADA compliant curb cuts done on a timeline, I think it's like 1500 per year that we're supposed to do. Then you have to make hay while the sun shines. So you have to do these projects while you're doing other projects and kind of blend together that funding. And so I just needed to make sure that the public understood that and that this body as a whole understands that as well.

Thanks.

Thank you very much. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you. Council president. One of the first things I heard about when I was seated as a councilor Representing district two in this part of mlk, were concerns about the dangers of some of these crossings. And I am so excited that we have this before us today. I want to thank my constituent, keith edwards, for continuing to push for further improvements along this corridor. My understanding from staff is that this is phase one and we will see even more safety improvements for pedestrians coming forward in the future. This is a difficult stretch of road. It is a main thoroughfare and also heavily used by pedestrians. One of the crossings that will get an upgrade is crossing. I know well because one of my kids, close friends, crosses it every day to get home from the school bus, and it's an intersection where cars frequently run red lights and we need some improvements there. So I am excited to support this. I am optimistic for my community that this is step one and continue to appreciate the work of pedestrian safety improvements on corridors like this. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you. Council president d2 meeting today. In many ways, going back and forth after parks on here, I'm going to vote yes as well. Safety is critically important in district two broadly. And in this stretch of mlk. I also wanted to acknowledge and thank keith edwards for for bringing this up in committee and to praise the staff for going through a difficult meeting on that at PBOT. We are in the top five streets for high crashes in d2. There are programs that have been targeted to other districts that have not mentioned us, and no one from district two has so far been in the conversation. I am so grateful to my colleagues for putting a member of d2. It happens to be me on the new public works committee, and looking forward to working with chair clarke and the members of the committee on on issues related to d2, starting in a few weeks. I also wanted to name that there have been a lot of conversations related to this area. The boise neighborhood has been bringing up some of the other neighborhood associations as well. Improvement to crosswalks on northeast seventh on irving skidmore. And I think that there's a lot of work that's been done on planning, but not necessarily on implementation. I'm looking forward to collaborating with folks in the administration who I know, share the desire to implement all of those types of improvements as well. So I'm looking forward to to that conversation. I did want to note that I would love it if in the future, the administration could be consulting more with the district councilors when talking about specific projects in our districts, I think in particular around PBOT, but I think this applies just around everywhere. So looking forward to to continuing that conversation when I'm on the committee in a few weeks. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, this item will now move to second reading keelan. Can we please call items 11 and 12 together?

Item 11, document number 2020 6-073. Amend civil rights code related to sexual orientation and family status definitions and amend nondiscrimination clauses. Amend code section 14.50 .110 and code chapter 23.01, item 12, document number 2026 074 declare the city of Portland will defend the rights of transgender people and all of the LGBTQ plus community.

Thank you keelan. We are currently in debate on an open amendment to the resolution. Before I move to colleagues in the queue, can I can the clerk please recap what the amendment was that we are debating? Do you have that?

Let me open it really quickly. This is a proposed amendment from councilor Koyama Lane amending exhibit b, section d. To add the following. At the end, I'll, I'll read the whole thing with the addition, the proposed addition family or relationship structure means the actual or perceived involvement or lack thereof, of consenting individuals in intimate personal relationships. The proposed addition is intimate. Personal relationships include, but are not limited to, multi-partner or multi parent families and relationships. Stepfamilies multi-generational households, diverse family structures, consensually non-monogamous relationships, and consensual sexual and or intimate relationships, including asexual and a romantic relationships.

Thank you. Keelan councilor Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I would make a motion that we lay these items on the table to pick back up next week. May I speak to that motion?

Yes.

Colleagues, I am the counselor who asked us last week to move these items quickly. That was referred to previously today. But I am also the counselor whose team spent hours, literally hours, trying to find a path on these measures that would allow us to bring you a proposal with co-sponsorship from all of the members of this council who are out, members of the LGBTQ plus community. And I think that matters. One of our colleagues, who is a co-sponsor of this measure and whose family is directly affected by some of its provisions, is on a plane flying to meetings he is attending on behalf of the city. Yes. He, like me, was not notified of the last minute amendment last week at the last meeting and I'll have things to say about that amendment when we take it back up. I was prepared to talk about it today, until I was notified that councilor Ryan could not be here, and had requested that he be part of the continued conversation and vote. My motion here today is not about that amendment, nor any of the content before us. It is simply about respect for our colleague who has, in fact asked to be present. He informed me that he will be back for next week's meeting. His chief of staff has confirmed that I would ask us to allow our colleague the courtesy of postponing the next two items until next week, so he can be part of the conversation and vote. If it were any of the other queer councilors asking for this, if it was our other co-sponsor, councilor Koyama Lane, I would be asking for this same courtesy. It is simply not acceptable to me to deny him the right to be a part of this discussion. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Koyama Lane. I'm sorry, was that a motion? Did you make a motion?

That was a motion. I would ask for.

A second.

Councilor pirtle-guiney has moved to table. The conversation. Is that the formal motion? Sorry.

The formal motion is to table the conversation. I believe I am allowed to request that it be until next week, though that would be at your discretion.

Thank you. Absolutely. And councilor Zimmerman has seconded the motion.

Council president, if it is laid on the table, it will be taken up at the next scheduled meeting, which I believe is tomorrow. So it would be possible to then table it again. Or you can have a motion to to move to a time certain.

A point of information. If tomorrow's meeting is a continuation of this meeting, wouldn't the next meeting be next Wednesday? Let's be our attorneys debating.

It appears if you lay it on the table, it will stay on the table until you take it back up.

Okay.

Is that acceptable? All right. Councilor Koyama Lane. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Is this a debatable motion? Is tabling a debatable motion? Where do we move to a roll call?

Is this a debatable motion?

We really need a professional parliamentarian.

Aye, Morillo robert taylor, city attorney. A motion to lay on the table is not debatable. You might. You may allow debate if there's no objection or you suspend the rules.

Okay.

Colleagues in the queue, if anybody wants to get to the to the motion I you the motion. Okay, counselor.

I just have a point of information just to clarify on the tabling thing. So are we going to if this is approved, do we have to then make another motion at some other point to untable it? Or are we saying that the council president can just put it on the next. No, it has to be another action. Is that what we're saying?

That is correct. If you if the motion to lay it on the table carries today, the item will be on the table and it can be taken off the table at any time in the future. But a motion to take from the table is necessary.

And that could just happen. Like what we would go to the next like say next week, and then somebody would at the top of the agenda, just make a motion to untable it. Is that the procedure of how that would happen?

Correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Council president. I'm happy to amend my motion. My colleague councilor Kanal keeps a handy copy of robert's rules at the dais, and I would amend my motion to a motion to postpone this item to a time certain or to a certain time, rather, which is an official motion in robert's rules, and to postpone it to next wednesday's meeting.

Okay.

I don't know if that creates more comfort for you, councilor Avalos, but hopefully that simplifies it.

Councilor pirtle-guiney has amended her her motion and check with councilor Zimmerman to make sure that it's acceptable. Councilor Zimmerman seconds that new amended motion.

For the record, sorry, everybody loves a pet aren't. So let me do let me do my part here. The motion to lay on the table is distinct from a motion to postpone to a date certain there are different motions, so pirtle-guiney withdraws the motion to table makes a motion to postpone to a date certain that has been made by pirtle-guiney, seconded by Zimmerman.

That's what I heard for sure.

Exactly. Speak to that.

Councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Yeah. Thank you, council president. And I do appreciate wanting to do what we can to make sure that as many councilors who are invested in this are here, I do just want to point out that we do have members of the public here and many people watching, people who have taken time off work, who have gotten childcare for their kids to be here and are ready for this. And I am prepared to continue this discussion. I strongly believe all families deserve civil rights nondiscrimination protections and that can't wait.

Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane councilor Avalos. Are you in the queue to the motion or to the underlying? Okay.

I guess I just have a follow up question. Maybe. So am I understanding that the reason for this action is because councilor Ryan just wants to be here to vote for it? Is there any other like is it to be here to vote for, for x reason? Or like I just want to understand the intent because, you know, people miss meetings all the time. And, you know, I think it sounded to me like people were pretty supportive of this legislation. So I'm just trying to understand why. I don't know if that's for the maybe the sponsor of the motion.

Would you like me to speak to that councilor? Councilor Ryan made a request to me and potentially some of the other co-sponsors. I'm not sure that he be able to be here for this vote and debate. He was disappointed that we were not able to move forward with the vote on the resolution last week and continue the progress here, and wanted to be a part of that. I don't know what his motivation was. I just would offer that courtesy. Like I said to to any of our colleagues, if I were co-sponsoring a motion with them and they made that request to me.

And I will affirm, I did similarly receive that request from councilor Ryan's office, that there was an interest, not a procedural change, but rather just the interest in having the councilor Be here. Councilor aye, Morillo, are you here to the underlying motion or to the motion or to the motion or to the underlying resolution or amendment?

No, I appreciate the motion. I understand that he would want to be here for a vote. I will say, when I have been out for matters that are profoundly important to me on a personal level, I log into the zoom because the city business doesn't halt because we are unable to attend. Unfortunately, the public has been waiting for this for quite a few sessions. They have testified, and I think just to like name the elephant in the room. I think that what's really happening is there are different opinions on the underlying amendment, and most of our communities are not a monolith, including the LGBTQ community that is voted and elected on this dais. Right. So sometimes there are differences in opinion that are policy related, that are not about whether or not we want to protect a community. I think people here all have that same intent. I have zero questions about the motivations of my colleagues with that regard. And I think that this is a really important discussion to have, because I the amendment that we were discussing before that enumerates certain additional families that this would apply to, I think one, it applies a lot to the queer community because of the way that we, you know, our community ends up having different types of relationships, and it protects for housing and zoning. So I would love for us to have that discussion. I think it matters a lot, and I think that there are philosophical policy reasons for why there's discussion on the amendment. So I value councilor Ryan. He's done work for decades for the LGBTQ community. I mean, it's we can't really compare that type of work before, but I'm also disappointed for our queer community that came and testified and told us what they need, and that this is being halted over one amendment when let's just have the discussion, vote the amendment up or down, call it a day, move the policy forward. You know, that's the process of legislating. So I would like to move forward with it if possible. But I understand the feelings around it. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Kanal.

Angelita Morillo: My understanding is that in the event that we postpone this item without voting on the amendment, that should we come back to it in a week and then vote on the amendment, it would require a subsequent reading after that, so we would actually be delaying it for two weeks in that scenario. Is that can I get a clarification on that? I'm seeing a thumbs up from attorneys in the back. Thank you. So I'm uncomfortable with that because that would mean for meetings going to this item, which we all thought was a pretty straightforward item. I think coming into this, I understand that the amendment has has complicated it. I would be open to having the conversation around doing a courtesy for a colleague, for sure. I definitely want to take a vote on the amendment today, though, and I think that to me is a tension point that I think we should resolve and then know what we're getting into next week. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal counselor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. I think the delay is, for me, less than about the amendment that was proposed. It is, I think, that at times, symbolism and representation matters. And Dan Ryan is one of those symbols. I'm not going to share anything that he has not shared very publicly with everybody. But Dan Ryan represents a generation of gay men who generally are not here. And that matters to me as a 41 year old gay man who is largely here because of what dan's generation went through. And I will be here for a whole and healthy life because of what dan's generation went through. I would ask you, all of you, to, if you don't understand our reason to ask for the delay, then be deferential to the delay. Because when I don't understand a thing about another minority in our community, I try to be deferential to that, even if I. I don't understand. And so I am just simply asking for the delay for those reasons that Elana pirtle-guiney and I, an out lesbian and an out gay man who serve on this council. Are asking for that. Dan Ryan, an out gay man, is asking for that. I hope that if it doesn't quite make sense to you, or if it causes you some pause, that you will at least lean on the side of deferential to those who are making the ask. Symbolism matters represent representation matters.

All forms of families matter.

Please. This is not an opportunity for disruptions. Thank you.

And so, as one of the authors of this resolution, it has been a privilege to write it with my other colleagues. And I would like to think about how we would respond if this was about another group in our community. And if a member of our of our dais was a part of that community, if we would want to take action without them there when they specifically asked to be a part of it. So that's just a request for me. I'll just note that the debate on the amendment, just in our form of government, let's remember that an absence is the same as a no, right? It doesn't it doesn't change anything in terms of we don't know where he'll be on on any of that. But this is about having Dan here at this dais to represent a part of this population who is generally not here.

Point of information. Again, sorry. If we pass the amendment today, then it has to go for another reading. If we don't pass the amendment, then do we just go right into voting for the ordinance today?

Yes.

Okay. Thanks.

Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you. Council president. I just want to remind folks that council president moved to postpone the slow the flow to homelessness last week. In my opinion, for no good reason. And if I'm comparing the two, I think this is a great reason to postpone. You all can't have it both ways. When you don't want something to pass, you want to postpone it. When you when you want to steamroll over someone, you don't give them a postponement. I mean, it's just ridiculous. You all know that councilor Ryan was very instrumental in putting this together. I wish that we could have had the same consideration. Councilor Koyama Lane for the constituents who came here last week, which there were 25 and more than half of them will probably not ever come back to this body again because of the violence that took place in the disruption that took place in this council chambers. So I would ask you all to use the same kind of compassion that you use last week, will. The reason was because you all didn't understand the memo that city administrator had put out on February 6th, but this is an easy one. This is something that we can do for our colleague. And he asked you to do that? No one asked us to postpone last week. We did that just because. So for me, I would urge my colleagues to either vote for this or if we if there's some way that we can hear the testimony that we have in the room and not vote on it, if there's a way to do that. Because I do believe that if people came here today and they made it their business to come here to testify, we should at least hear those voices, but not take a vote. Is there a way to do that? Council president.

No, there is not at this time. Testimony is currently closed on the item.

Okay. So there was some there was some concern. I heard that people are here to testify. So who's here to testify? Okay, okay. Again, I urge all of my colleagues to vote to postpone this until next week.

Thank you. And thank you. Councilor Smith. I would like to clarify, councilor Avalos, I gave you incorrect information. We are technically in a continuation of the first reading. We are not at a second reading. And so. And the amendment is to the resolution. And so the ordinance will still.

Said the ordinance.

Oh I'm backwards on that. But regardless, we are still in the first reading of the ordinance.

In other words, no matter what, we're not voting on it today.

The resolution could be voted on today, but the ordinance will be voted on in a future council session.

So either way, councilor Ryan would be able to vote on it because we can't take any action today. That's what I'm trying.

To get on the ordinance. Yes.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Counsel.

Yes.

Councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Oh.

I was just sharing. I had shared with council president that as a courtesy, I am my team is open to. Postponing the resolution to allow councilor Ryan to vote.

Dan Ryan: Thank you.

Councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: Yeah, I really appreciate this discussion. And if we all want to give out our credentials for the public, I'm bisexual, so that's my standing and getting to talk about this. I guess I think that when we are legislating for our community, though, representation absent of action is very frustrating to the public. And so I, knowing that councilor Ryan will be able to vote for the the final product here, I would like for us to just have the discussion about the amendment, because it will now be going to around 3 to 4 sessions listening to this. And I don't think that. One amendment is not comparable to an entire policy change, that this this is one amendment. We can vote, maybe it will fail, maybe it will succeed, maybe the policy will stay intact. But I think that we just have to have the discussion and I don't I don't understand are we just going to continue having more discussions behind the scenes? We're going to have to air out the the differences about the amendment eventually. And it sounds like councilor Ryan will be able to vote on this, and maybe he won't support it. Maybe he will. That's up to him. I'm not going to make that decision for him, but this continuous, this should be not that hard, honestly. And the amendment in in my eyes, it does not create additional harm. It does enumerate more specifics. So it's not like we're talking about something that is going to create massive harm for this community. The controversy is not that high compared to all of the other stuff that we're actually dealing with as a city, so I hope that we can just move forward with this discussion today. And I will remind my colleagues that as the only immigrant on this council, there were plenty of media news things that I was left out of, decision making, discussions that I was left out of. So when it comes to identity, representation and the things that we do, sometimes you don't get a seat at the table and you do have to fight for that, but also to say that that is like a top priority for everybody up here, I think is a bit disingenuous because sometimes we just have to act. So this has been worked on for a long time. The discussion is really about one amendment. That's really what this is about. I would like for us to just continue moving forward. Thanks.

Thank you. Council president.

Point of order. I'd just like to reiterate that we are in debate right now over whether or not to postpone, not over the amendments. And the reason for the request for postponement has nothing to do with the amendments or any content thereof.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, council president. And this is to the matter of postponement. I think I just like to follow up a little bit on what councilor Morillo has teased out, which is when we talk about making sure that those who are most impacted on an issue are in the room. We have not applied that standard consistently at this city. There were notably at least two press conferences in response to the federal action, where the decision was deliberately made to not have certain councilors at the front of the mic, because that might feel unsafe for white people, frankly. And that's the decision that this body has made behind the scenes, not in the public. And so that's not a consistent application. I'll also note that when we talk about postponing slow the inflow, my decision to postpone that was based upon the it's not because I didn't understand the city administrator's memo. I understand that very clearly. I think we had gotten ourselves into a situation of very sloppy policymaking, where we were just handing out sort of earmarks to whoever, and those may be good allocations to good entities, but that's not good policymaking. You budget to programs, not to people, not to entities. And so that that sort of analogy is just not consistent, frankly. So I think in this, you know, I think there's a reasonable argument to be made about whether it's appropriate to postpone this, but not sort of a what aboutism on the slow the inflow, frankly. Check.

Candace Avalos: Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith I'm sorry. Councilor Avalos are you in the.

Candace Avalos: No. I guess I'm like, I'm still in the queue to for the next one. Should I stay in the queue? Should I get out of it? I'm confused.

Yeah. For now, folks have helped me with the management of. That would be great. Thank you, councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Yes. Considering that councilor Ryan is traveling internationally, he can't get on a zoom call right now and be able to have this conversation in a meaningful way. And I think that it is so important in critical to have his voice. I don't want to marginalize the impact of councilor Ryan on this committee, but I do also, I look at things that we do, and when we didn't do the slow the inflow last week, we prevented folks who are currently being evicted from housing right now. If we could have voted for that last week, we would have been able to help hundreds of people, and we can legislate in any way that we want to, councilor Green, we can legislate to programs. We can legislate to to individual programs. That's not the point. The point is we he has he has very. He was very honest in his request and sincere. And you all don't take sincerity very well. And I think you need to use it in every situation. While you may have understood the city administrator's memo, but the complaint was, some didn't and that's why they voted to postpone. And so I'm just asking you, councilor Green, could you consider someone else other than yourself? Consider that councilor Ryan needs to sit here. He needs to have that conversation. You are not a part of that. I don't know, I shouldn't even say that. I don't know if you're not a part of that community or not, but we know that he is out and he he does want to participate, so you should give him that opportunity. You always want people to you call me all the time and ask me to support your stuff and do your stuff, but you never want to do nothing for nobody else.

Point of order.

So thank you.

City code 3.02.040. Section b president. Vice president. Duties. Section one. The president is the presiding officer and will ensure councilors confine themselves to the question under debate and refrain from personal criticism.

Thank you. Thank you councilor. I appreciate you jumping in.

Thank you. Councilor. Colleagues, I will remind us that we are currently debating the merits of a motion to postpone. Please, let's keep it away from personal attacks or implications of our colleagues contacts. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: So we we did this thing earlier today and last week where we adopted a resolution about committees, and then we did the committee of the whole authorizing ordinance this week, because an ordinance takes two votes or two meetings and a resolution takes one. So for that reason, I'm very comfortable postponing the resolution, not only as a courtesy, but actually for many of the reasons that both councilor Pirtle-guiney and councilor Zimmerman have said and others about councilor Ryan as well, with relation to the ordinance, as has been pointed out, it would need to get a second reading anyway. So this is really about do we vote on the amendment or not? And I think it's appropriate to say we should. So that's where I'm at on this particular subject. I will point out that when two councilors of color have attempted to walk in after their name has been called, but while the vote has still been going on and asked to have their vote counted, that requires unanimous consent and that that consent was denied by one councilor. In both cases, the point.

Of order. Point of order is that does that have anything.

When I don't understand a thing about.

Another.

Minority community, try to be deferential to that. Even if I don't.

I'm not talking about that right now. Thank you.

Colleagues.

I defend him because he was my colleague.

Okay? I don't know what is happening. Councilor Koyama Lane, are you new to the debate?

I was councilor Kanal said what I was saying, which is basically in deference to councilor Ryan and respecting his advocacy over the years. I would love to ask councilor Pirtle-guiney and councilor Ryan if they would be willing to withdraw the motion and present a motion to postpone the resolution to next week so he can vote. And I'd like to move forward with discussion of the ordinance if we're able to discuss and vote on the amendment today, complete the first reading. Councilor Ryan will also be able to vote on the ordinance at the same time.

Okay.

I think if my colleagues want to move in that direction, they could motion to divide the question. I'm going to keep it on the table as it stands, but I would expect that we might hear that.

I move to divide the question.

Okay. Councilor Morillo has moved to divide the question. That is, the question is divided. Councilor pirtle-guiney, how would you like to take up the now divided question?

Let's take up the resolution first.

Okay.

We're going to look. I'm going to pause to just make sure that robert isn't freaking out. You guys are. We're having a lot of fun with robert's rules today.

Good practice.

Yeah that's a that's a yeah okay. The question has been divided. And now the roll call vote on the motion to postpone the resolution. First please call the roll.

Avalos I Smith.

No Kanal.

On the resolution.

I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. Oh sorry. Gosh. Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark. Absent. Green.

Okay I know it's worth Zimmerman.

Yes. Yes yes. Dunphy I okay.

The motion to divide and take up the resolution. No, no sorry. The motion to take up the resolution and postpone it is approved with nine yes votes, one no and two absent.

And we will bring that back next week. Can we please call the roll on the motion to postpone the ordinance?

Sorry, just a moment.

Again, colleagues, this is a motion to postpone the ordinance to next week. Yes. Vote means you want to postpone.

Unless.

No.

Smith.

Yes.

Kanal.

No. Pirtle-guiney I.

Koyama Lane.

No.

Morillo.

No.

Novick I.

Clark is absent. Green.

No.

Zimmerman.

Yes.

Dunphy.

Yes.

Okay. The motion to postpone the ordinance fails with five yes votes, five no votes and two absent.

Okay.

The resolution will be heard next week. Colleagues, we are now to the underlying amendment that is on the table to the ordinance, which we read out loud. Councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president, as a long term, long time public school teacher, as a parent, my intention is to support our lgbtqia to plus community, protect our trans community, and extend civil rights nondiscrimination protections to all families. Those are the reasons that brought me and my colleagues together to sponsor this this package. And I want to make it clear I don't identify as a member of the lgbtqia to plus community. I don't share the same lived experiences as some of my co-sponsors on this dais, and I don't know the personal story they're bringing to the table. However, I also understand that no community is a monolith. I believe in listening to subject matter experts. I believe in listening to the legal advice of our own city attorneys. I believe in listening to the voices that have historically not been heard by the city of portland's elected officials colleagues. Last week, we heard directly from families that would be protected by our policies. Families like david mark and amy nash, who came to Portland looking for a safe place to raise their family. Families like david, mark and amy's deserve the same, same protections that we have to share. A quote from mark's testimony. Nobody should fear who they care for. Nobody should fear that who they care for could jeopardize their job, their housing, or their ability to live in public as their authentic selves. And I really wish vice president Clark was still here, because after those first few testimonies, she was really moved and leaned over to me and said, wow, this is so powerful. I'm so glad these people are here. Last week we also heard from a diverse coalition of lgbtqia to plus organizations and advocates and virtually everyone who gave verbal testimony or submitted written testimony was supportive of this code revision to expand our family and relationship status protections. We also heard from attorneys across the country, including a staff attorney at harvard, harvard law school's LGBTQ plus advocacy clinic, which called for the need to be specific with our language. Since our last meeting, I've followed back up with the city attorney's office, who has confirmed that it's best to be as clear as possible to make sure the courts interpret our laws in alignment with our intentions. My intention with this amendment is to respond to the advice of the city attorney and to respect the requests of families like the nash and many others, and to make it clear that the city of Portland protects them, too. As a reminder, somerville, massachusetts was the first city to pass their expanded family status definition in 2023, the city of berkeley expanded family. This same family status definition in 2024, and oakland passed theirs in 2025. I look forward to our discussion and deliberation. Our community deserves that to be out in the open. I'd like to thank senior deputy attorney ann milligan from the city attorney's office for joining us, too. She met with councilor Pirtle-guiney office in October of last year to answer the same questions that were brought up last week on the dais, and attorney milligan is here ready to answer our questions. I would like to start with asking for attorney milligan to tell us if this is the right place in code to have family protections, or robert taylor.

Welcome, city attorney robert taylor. We should just get you a chair.

Thank you. Robert taylor, city attorney, for the record. This proposed amendment, in my view, and I appreciate the work of everybody in our office to date. I just want to speak for, for for the office here today. I think the definition in d as it exists in the exhibit as filed, is very broad. And I think that broad definition in itself would cover all of the various family and intimate relationships that we have heard about. The question is, should we further provide detail to that definition? That is what is in the proposed amendment. I think we heard testimony from many people requesting that type of specificity to give them comfort that they were, in fact, covered. My view is that they would be covered already under the existing language, but you certainly could add the more specific language to address the concerns that we've heard from constituents. And certainly if there is that specific list and there was ever litigation about whether a particular relationship status was covered by the definition, having that identified specifically in a list would be more defensible. There is always a risk. You know, this is a situation, honestly, in my mind, where there's some legal risk with just having a very broad definition. There's also some legal risk with having a very specific list. The risk of having just a broad definition is it can lead to questions and debate about, does this particular situation really fall within that broad definition or not? The legal risk of having a specific list like is proposed in the amendment is sometimes there can be litigation over if you have a particular situation that isn't specifically called out. Sometimes an argument can be made. If you were excluded from the list, you're not supposed to be in the list, and then you have an argument over that. In my view, both of those risks are minimal. I don't think one risk outweighs the other. From a legal perspective. I think really to me it is a question of preference to this council as a policy matter of whether they would like to rely on the broad definition or would like to include a more specific definition.

Thank you sir.

Councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Anything else?

That's it for now.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: All right. Thank you, colleagues. I think at the end of the day, the question before us is pretty simple. Do we believe that portlanders have the right to live lives free of discrimination? And if the answer is yes, then it should be easy to support this amendment in front of us. Today, at our last council meeting, we heard from portlanders after portlanders who told us that the current ambiguity of our anti-discrimination laws puts them at risk and their families at risk, who have experienced real harm because of the lack of clear protections. So adding this language to explicitly recognize diverse family and intimate structures sends a clear signal that this code applies regardless of whether someone's household includes stepparents, multiple caregivers, multi-partner relationships, or chosen family. And to me, that matters, especially in this moment when we have a fascist administration twisting civil rights laws to target the very communities they were originally written to protect. And it's not good enough to rely on the assumption that others will act in good faith. Our own city attorney working at the city's legal team said, quote, that it is best to be as clear as possible whenever possible. End quote. And that quote. While existing language of the original ordinance could definitely get the job done, in a perfect world, the language would be more specific. End quote. The amendment before us today is the exact approach recommended by our lawyers. It's the exact approach taken by cambridge, somerville, berkeley and oakland, and it's the exact approach requested by leading experts at the harvard law school LGBTQ advocacy clinic, among others. And most importantly, this is exactly what our constituents are asking us to do. This amendment confirms the fundamental right of every portlander to live freely, without the fear that they or their family will experience discrimination because of who they are or who they love. I will be voting yes, and I really hope that my colleagues have the moral clarity to do so as well. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor Green to the amendment.

Mitch Green: Yeah. Thank you, mr. President. Mr. Taylor, can you please come back up? Sorry. More legal questions. Thank you. So I'm looking at a a letter from the harvard law school LGBTQ advocacy clinic. And they make the argument that our our court system, the dominant interpretive methodology in contemporary jurisprudence, is just sort of giving effect to the plain meaning of the statutory text. And they sort of raised the issue that, you know, while it is true that a broad, expansive definition leaves more opportunity to to put more types of situations into the category. That, at the end of the day, what protects the interpretation of the statute is the clearest, plainest meaning the law. Would you agree that that's the dominant jurisprudence? Jurisprudence? Jurist. You know what I'm trying to say?

Yeah. Thank you, robert taylor, city attorney I do agree with that. And and that's what I'm expressing where if you if you have specific language in a list and you are clearly one of those specified situations, that's that is crystal clear, there's not going to be any debate about that. I have litigated cases in private practice where a statute has a specific list like that, and the argument is over. Well, I'm not. My situation isn't included in the list. But it's it's like that. It's close enough like that. I should get the benefit of that. And that's the argument you get into. And so that's the risk of having a list, is you may unintentionally exclude somebody or raise some question about that. So I don't view that as a particularly high legal risk honestly. And I also don't really think the broad definition that was used in the initial code language presents significant legal risk either. So to me it's really there. There's some legal risk with with either approach. I don't think that risk is very high in either case. And so it's really just a choice between counsel about how they want to proceed.

I appreciate that. And I think colleagues in the context of this amendment, there's a pretty enumerated list of of structures and relationship types that I don't personally have a lot of experience with. But but it seems to me to be a pretty big venn diagram of a lot of different types of conditions that most people would face in the city of Portland. And so I feel like the clause that says, but not limited to, provides a pretty clear signal to the intent, the legislative intent. And I think when we make these kind of laws, it's about legislative intent. I really don't want us to go down a road where we we create so much uncertainty that gives landlords and gives other sort of private actors in the community the cover to put their own biases into play when we think about that. So I just wanted to make sure I understood whether or not that letter was accurate in terms of the the standard practice of jurisprudence. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Green. Councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: Yeah, thank you for outlining that. And thank you, robert, for being here to answer all of our questions. I think there is some difficulty, it sounds like, because there's some disagreement within your office about what is necessary or unnecessary here. But I think the thing that stuck out to me about what you said is that enumerating it gives more, it makes it more defensible in court. And I think that matters to me. But while also saying that not limited to means that we're not going to accidentally exclude people who shouldn't be there. So that's a I have zero questions about the intent of all of my colleagues up here to defend civil liberties and civil rights. I think that is absolutely something that everybody here wants. It is a difference in policy making. And I think that. I don't know, I just want to ground us in all that. I think that we do all care about that same thing. To me, the amendment is very simple, and I hope that we move forward with it because I think enumerating those rights, one, I think that protects a different types of queer relationships that are not just monogamous queer relationships. And, you know, I think that this is in line with what other jurisdictions are doing. It's not like it's something that's super out of bounds. It's something that we have seen other cities do. And frankly, I think Portland is behind for being one of the most LGBTQ friendly cities, allegedly. Right. So I think that this is just a modernization of the policy that we have, and I hope that we can move that forward. But I believe that we all have the same intent here, and I'm looking forward to voting yes on the amendment.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. And thank you to councilor Morillo for saying the most important part of this, which is that I think everybody up here wants to make sure that we are protecting the civil rights of all of our friends and neighbors. And the proposal that was brought forward in this amendment is an important one that deserves debate, not because the rights on the table deserve debate, but because we need to make sure that when we change our civil rights code, we do it right. We need to make sure that we're not leaving anybody out of the list. We need to make sure that we are looking at any potential conflicting codes and getting those right. And unfortunately, when dais amendments are brought, we don't have the time and space to have that full conversation. I really hate airing dirty laundry and talking about process on the dais, but I feel as though something needs to be said. I mentioned earlier that my team did a lot of work making sure we could have full co-sponsorship by all four out members of the community on this measure. And as we had those conversations, there was a lot of language that was considered in different iterations of the proposals before us that were considered, because that's how this process works. That's normal. You put language on the table, you take language off the table, you figure out where the right places to land for this particular proposal. And some of the language taken off the table is really important. Good language. It's just not what the full group can move forward at this time. And a version of the language that is before us in this amendment was at one point on the table. And wasn't moved forward in the final proposal that the co-sponsors brought to this group. And then one of our co-sponsors brought it back as an amendment. And that doesn't feel like negotiating in good faith to me. And that's really troubling to me, because trust at this dais, trust amongst us matters, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure yet how I'm voting on this amendment, despite the fact that, as my colleague said, we all want to protect everybody's civil rights. I want to make sure we do that right. I want to make sure we get the balance of the two risks that mr. Taylor described. Right. I want to have the proper debate on how to add the right language here, and I want us to have a good, strong vote showing the trans community that this council, this community is here today to make sure that, among other things, when members of the trans community come to Portland to get the life saving health care that they need, they will not be arrested because there is an outstanding warrant from another state for receiving that health care, because that was the underlying goal, among a few other related things, for what we're doing here today. I'm interested in hearing the debate from my colleagues, not about whether the amendment before us is important language or not, but about whether this is the right place and time to move it forward, or if we need to do a little work to make sure that the code is all compliant and the list is right before we move forward. Thank you, council president.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I had questions originally for for city attorney taylor. I think councilor Morillo points really covered them all, so I won't ask them. I appreciate the conversation here. And we've had this conversation around a couple other topics too, which is when we're talking about federal response, national guard, ice, a lot of these different things. Is it better to do the thing that that maybe is the strongest possible thing to do if it has seven, eight, nine votes, is it better to do the thing that we can get to 12 votes for and send a message? I don't know that there's an absolute right or wrong answer to that. I don't know if there's an absolute right or wrong answer in the context of this issue area either. So but I appreciate in particular councilor Pirtle-guiney for, for sort of bringing that up, because I think it's fair for us to say, to give everyone a look behind the curtain. That is the thing that is on at least some of our minds. It's certainly been on mine with relation to this amendment. I appreciated the conversation last week because it gave me time. It was a surprise to me. I'm not involved in the committee conversation, and as some of my colleagues know, I was not familiar with the amendment at all. Didn't initially think it needed to happen given the conversation there. But I got a lot of folks who who weighed in over the last week. So I want to first thank my colleagues for ensuring that there was a week for that, for me to do my homework on, that. I was always going to support the ordinance and the resolution broadly, but on the amendment specifically, hadn't had the homework and a lot of folks, including but not limited to basic rights, Oregon reached out, and I want to just thank them for for those pieces of information that they gave me. So I will be supporting it today, because in this particular case, I think that the balance of this leans towards the comment that was made in testimony last week of of a nothing about us without us, and then b what we're hearing from the people who are most affected in the community. I don't know that there's a a perfect answer to it. And I appreciate the comments that many colleagues have made about everyone sharing intent around this community, these several communities, and the the needs to protect their rights. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Yeah, I think I'm just still a little bit confused. And I'll just say, you know, as somebody who has actually a lot of experience being blindsided with amendments to bills that I wrote, what I have been told in those scenarios is that everybody here has the right to propose amendments, that that is the legislative process. I understand that there's nuances to that because there's interpersonal dynamics that come into play. But from what I understand of how we legislate any bill that gets put on this dais that is up for debate is open for amendments, which are open for debate, which require a vote. Let's not forget, it's not like people proposing things. That is an ultimatum, that it requires a vote. And if you don't vote for it, great. If you vote for it, great. And so I don't really agree with that being the the point of this. I think that if a councilor is responsive to what their community is saying, what their constituents are saying, and is proposing an amendment to update legislation to make it stronger for their constituents, that seems like the legislative process we all agreed to. So if that is the case, then we need to stop choosing when it applies. Because I know I have constantly been berated for those kinds of things, and I've experienced the brunt of being told, well, you just have to accept that I have a different view and I want to put another amendment. Great. So then let's accept it. I think that's very clear what we're doing here. I think that everybody is 100% in bounds to do that. And I genuinely still do not understand, because what I heard from the lawyers, what I'm hearing is that this conversation has been going on for months, that there has been discussion behind the scenes. We've vetted it. We've looked across the country what is left to to figure out. I mean, it sounds like people are saying there's more to figure out of where it goes in code. We've already gotten those questions answered so genuinely I don't understand what is still left to be uncovered before people feel comfortable making this vote. So I guess, you know, I'll pose that back to the group. It doesn't have to be necessarily anybody. Respond to it and it can. I can make it rhetorical, but I truly have been trying to sit here and listen to like, the reason, and I haven't heard a clear reason other than, you know, we haven't debated it enough. Well, I guess I disagree. I think the lawyers have done that work, and there are email trains that show email chains. I mean, that show that this discussion has been going back and forth for months. So if it hasn't been figured out in a few months, I don't know what another few months are going to figure out because I still haven't heard what the problem is. So I'm ready to vote for this. I think this is very common sense legislation. If we all say that we care about these communities, then let's support them. I really hope that we can move past this weird, you know, it just seems like there's a lot of undertone and I'm kind of over it. I think that this is how people legislate, and we need to accept that. That is our responsibility, our duty. And I'm proud to support this amendment for those reasons.

Thank you. Councilor Avalos councilor Smith.

Candace Avalos: Thank you. Council president. I have a question for our city attorney, taylor. So if we wanted to include, let's say, if this passed and then we wanted to include something else, could we amend the amended piece of this?

You could always bring an amendment to the code later to to add to the list.

To add if we wanted to do that, that's that's what I needed to to find out. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Being an elected official and weighing in on. Ordinances about protecting. A group of people who right now are in the spotlight is something that. I've taken very seriously since this resolution and this ordinance change came on my radar. I have seen, you know, I'll just say it's very it seems like a simple act to. Pass in the large sense in quotes, an LGBTQ package, right. In this community that's a broadly accepted. Demographic. But in doing so, I think that councilors and their staffs who are helping write this, we were. Incredibly cognizant of the fact that we live in an era where. The actions of a city council, which seem, you know, like they don't leave our shores, so to speak, they stay just in the city of Portland. But we know that that's not the case. The language that's being proposed here is not language that I find problematic. It's not language that I disagree with, but it is language that. Highlights something in an in another, in a document that has a had a specific focus. And that specific focus for me was recognition that Oregon and that Portland is a place where people who are part of the trans community in particular, but LGBTQ overall, are finding refuge, and that we live in a strange time when state legislatures, legislatures, federal government are targeting everything from health care to activities to identification documents. I thought that we could both take an action and not put a particular spotlight on Portland by those who would do us ill. Perhaps that was a mistake, but I think that when you are doing right by the community and when we are talking about those types of aggressive actions against a part of our community, being mindful that while they are going through that, while their families are figuring out what life looks like as as transitions occur, as maybe reintroductions into new schools or into teams, into neighborhoods to jobs, that that is a heavy enough situation for anyone involved. That extra spotlight by the fox news sites of the world is not helpful. And so I'm laying out on the table where my motivation came from. I think that we can achieve and we have heard today, and this is why the city attorney essentially said, I think that the words that were in it would already protect we we landed on language that covered all of these family situations without creating what we thought might be undue fervor in the conservative ecosphere, if you will. So at this point, and so I put a lot of faith in the team, and I thanked those staffers who were part of the negotiations on behalf of these counselors, because we put a lot of work into. Negotiating and trying to understand what language was helpful, what language was harmful, what language was going to get taken out of context and be then more dangerous. And in this world and in this time and on this topic. Context matters, language matters, and I care very much about that. And so I felt very good coming into this body last week with the agreed upon language where everybody said, you know, I'm not, I got it. I'm not proposing any amendments either themselves or their staff said it. Okay. And so I still feel good about the underlying ordinance. I feel very good about the underlying resolution. I think that portlanders and those who are going to soon be portlanders can have faith in Portland, in faith in our laws. We are cleaning up code that is bygone of a bygone era, and we are signaling a support for members of our community who are deep minorities and are right now the topic of the era for a part of this country who does not think them. The same level of human. That was my motivation and where I came to this, and why I put so much staff time into developing what I think were two good documents. But part of that relied on faith that the process would take its course, that that we could avoid some of those lightning rod moments, those lightning rod debates, and that lightning rod debate has now happened. You have aired it out there. And so. I'm not sure what we can avoid from the perspective of those who will do us harm. I think that ship has sailed. And so I look to all my colleagues as somebody who was not in favor of this amendment, and I think it was a deep violation of our process and the sponsors who brought it. I think we should pass it unanimously, and I think we should pass the resolution unanimously. And I think we need to pass the ordinance unanimously, because at this point. I am at myself for rewarding bad behavior by one of my fellow councilors. But I will not be straight splained by members of this dais or members of this community. I am stay devoted to the underlying ordinance. I stayed devoted to the underlying resolution, and I am channeling everything I can with the people who are better than I when it comes to turning the other cheek, and in gay rights and gay liberation movements, we have been turning the other cheek a long time, and we have been incremental in our improvements in our society. This is one of those incremental moments. It is not lost on me. That there were members and there are people in this community who will speak, that they are deep supporters of us, but will not let us have a thing without being a part of it, commenting on it and changing it. And I'm not going to let that change my overall support. So I do plan to support this amendment, and I despise the fact that we were lied to. But I will support it because now it is all out there. The drapes are down. We're seeing through it. Let's pass it. Let's pass all the protections for the entire LGBTQ spectrum and send the signal that is important for portlanders and soon to be portlanders. Thank you, mr. President.

Thank you, counselor Zimmerman. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue to debate the amendment, I would ask keelan to please call the roll.

And then just to clarify, this is a motion to amend exhibit b moved by councilor Koyama Lane, seconded by councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Avalos I.

Smith I just want to say that. Listening to our city attorney, and if we want to change some of these things to. I heard you loud and clear, councilor Pirtle-guiney, about what happened in the process. And and I hear you too, councilor Zimmerman. But I agree with you. We need to pass this. And if if there's something better that we can improve it, let's just do that after the fact, because it's the fact of the matter is, even in the transgender community, black, trans, transgender folks, they are so marginalized and in a way that I have not seen others. So I think they do need protections. And if we want to beef this up in a way, let's do it after the fact and change it. Let's just get this on and vote for this. And so I vote.

I Kanal.

Thank you.

I pirtle-guiney. I Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick.

Councilor Clark is absent Green.

Mitch Green: All right. Zimmerman I. Dunphy I.

The amendment is approved with ten yes votes and two absent colleagues.

Is there any further debate to the underlying ordinance or resolution at this time? The resolution has been postponed. So no, no debate on the resolution, but any further debate on the underlying ordinance. Waiting a second, seeing no one else in the queue, the ordinance will now move to second reading, along with the now postponed resolution. Thank you. Colleagues, can we please move to item? Actually, before we move to item 13, I am going to have us take a ten minute recess. We'll be back at. And we are back. Can we please read item number 13?

Item 13, document 2020 6-022 amend the Portland clean energy community benefit fund climate investment plan.

And we have claire adam from council for a committee summary, a staff committee summary report, something like that.

Thank you. Council president and councilors again for the record, claire adam, seek council policy analyst and staff to the climate resilience and land use committee. The ordinance before you document number 2026 022 was heard in the climate committee on January 15th and again on January 29th. On January 29th, the ordinance was referred to council, as amended, with a recommendation to pass. The ordinance directs the bureau of planning and sustainability to amend the climate investment plan, or sip, as provided in exhibit a of the ordinance. It clarifies. The amended sip is in effect through June 30th, 2029, and that budgetary changes resulting from this amendment are subject to council authorization through the annual budget process and subsequent budget cycles. Where applicable. The ordinance further directs bts staff to publish the amended documents so they are accessible to the public. It also also authorizes the director to amend funding allocations of up to 10% of a specified program, provided the adjustments are recommended by the pcf committee and preserve the cip's intent across funding categories. At its January 29th meeting, the committee approved an amendment to exhibit a of the ordinance that restored the original five year funding allocations in strategic program one, which is clean energy and regulated multifamily affordable housing and strategic program 13 targeted electric vehicle financing tools. The amendment further directed staff analysis to determine necessary changes to text within exhibit a, to correspond with the amended funding allocations. Following committee action, pccep submitted PCEF staff submitted a proposed conforming amendment to exhibit a to reflect the impacts of the committee amendment that was approved on January 29th, and that conforming amendment is posted online. The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts and community involvement, and the city's 100% renewable goal. 17 people testified during the committee meeting on January 15th. 37 people submitted written testimony prior to committee action on January 29th. General themes of the testimony included the climate climate benefits for low income households through energy upgrades and electrification, specifically upgrades to older housing stock, the potential impacts of TriMet, budget cuts on public access and climate friendly improvements, increased pressure on local funding decisions in light of state and federal funding cuts, retaining funding allocations for transportation uses including bike and transit infrastructure, transportation, decarbonization or universal youth transit pass, and finally keeping PCEF investments focused on renewable and clean energy purposes in alignment with the original intent of the ballot measure. And that concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.

Thank you. Claire councilor Novick. I see that you were the committee chair of this. I also colleagues recognize that we have a number of amendments on the table. Oh, you both were.

It was two meetings.

Steve Novick: Oh, great. Okay, so I will turn first to councilor Morillo and I'm going to turn to councilor Novick. But I'd also like at that time, councilor Novick, if you could share your amendments, and then I will turn to councilor Avalos, who also has an amendment, I believe so. Councilor aye, Morillo.

Thank you, council president. Yeah, just to give a little bit more color to the discussion that happened in committee. You know, I think that there was a big discussion about what we do with these dollars and specifically with 15 million that was found in the PCEF fund. But I think a core part of the discussion was the PCEF committee came. They gave very strong testimony about wanting us to preserve their original recommendations as strongly as possible. They made it very clear that they viewed council tweaking something that they had worked on for a very long time as something that was very concerning to them, and that it was an intrusion on community input. But there was also a debate amongst councilors as far as, okay, if we have this multi, you know, this billion dollar fund, what do we do in a situation where we are getting feedback from community, where they're pushing us in a certain way, like, I think something that we heard about a few over the course of the past few weeks was learning that transit is being greatly reduced because the state legislature failed to fund it. What do we do then to address the needs of our community? So I think my big takeaway as someone who was chairing the meeting was that everybody deeply cares about climate issues, deeply cares about trying to make sure we're responsive to our constituents, and that there is disagreement about how that gets done. And some of my colleagues really articulated, well, what do we do in is council a rubber stamp for the committee's recommendations, or do we get some say and give some feedback on what those recommendations are when they come to us? So that was just kind of an open question. I don't think we landed on a decision, and I just wanted to add some color to the discussion because it is very complicated and important for our community right now. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Novick. You are muted.

Sorry. Appreciate councilor Morillo introduction. So a couple of things. One, what the committee wound up sending to full council was a group of technical amendments, not including the substantive move of money from one pot to another, that the peace f had recommended. These technical amendments are somewhat time critical, and therefore, I hope that we move to adopt those amendments today. As to the question of the $15 million, I have long been concerned that we're spending too little money in transportation, which is our largest source of emissions. We're spending 17% of cf money on transportation when it's 40% of emissions. So when I saw that the committee was recommending that we change the climate investment plan to take 15 million out of transportation and put it into a housing program, which is a departure from the allocation that the committee did. You know, in the original cip approved by council, I thought that was a big deal, something that council should weigh in on and of concern to me. So I solicited ideas for transportation, ways to use that money. Oh, and by the way, the the original transportation purpose was a financing program for electric vehicles, particularly for uber and lyft drivers. That just hasn't gotten really gotten off the ground yet. So I went to vivien satterfield and PBOT and TriMet for ideas to how to spend that money on transportation, and received a variety of proposals. One is saving streetcar service, which TriMet is planning to cut. And of course, we have a long standing city investment streetcar. Vivien satterfield suggested extending the youth pass to david douglas and parkrose high school students. Pbot also proposed taking a look at a proposal to. Within the james beard market, which is going to open next year, to start a net zero delivery system for that market so that instead of diesel trucks causing a traffic nightmare on alder street, we have cargo bikes and electric e-cargo bikes and electric vehicles doing those deliveries. So the committee heard about these various these various options, and it was clear that we were not going to come to a conclusion as to whether to adopt a particular set of transportation proposals or to revert to the committee's original idea and put the money into housing. So what we did was sent the package without that housing amendment to full council and full council can now. Well, one thing I should note is that we passed, we stripped out the movement of $15 million, but there's some additional language, sort of conforming language that bts has previously identified. So there's an amendment in front of you to conform the package. You know, as we sent it to sort of true it up. And what this council could do now is we could simply adopt the conforming amendment and then adopt all the technical amendments and leave it alone. And the effect of that would be that the money, the $15 million, is left in this pot for electric vehicle financing for another year. And then we'd see whether the committee comes forward and has another use for it. We could decide that we, the council, are going to take a different tack. I have one amendment that has a that would use the whole $15 million for transportation means, including the street, the streetcar service retention and the james beard public market. And I highlight those because they're both sort of time critical. Streetcar service is about to get cut. The james beard public market is going to open next year. Next year. We also that my so I have one amendment that is sort of offered as a compromise which I've not discussed with council. Avalos, which would have basically half the money going to those two things and half the money going to housing. And then I have another proposal which has the whole thing going to transportation, but it includes also a proposal from PBOT and advocates, not roger geller at PBOT and advocates to try to restore bike mode share to what it was in 2015. And also it gives some money to TriMet to climate proof, some of their overhead cable lines to the max station and some of their rail lines. That sort of both of which are under great stress, under extreme weather. So I actually am going to suggest that we might not want to try to make a decision on this today. We might it might make more sense to pass the conforming amendments, pass the technical amendments, and then have a broader discussion for another day, and maybe with sort of a preliminary discussion. Now, I also want to note that I think that this process raised significant issues as to as councilor Morillo said, how does council interact with with the pcf staff and committee? Are we a rubber stamp or do we, you know, stomp all over them with jackboots, or does there some intermediate way, way to way to behave? Originally, my hope was that council could send to PBOT committee, the pcf committee and staff some transportation ideas that they could then review and get back to us fairly quickly with their assessment of them. They said that they don't want to do that. They only want to take up cip amendments in their annual process. So I was hoping I was coming up with an idea to have. It's where we're engaging with them, but that seemed not something they're willing to do on an on an interim basis. So that's the situation we're in and I, I move the conforming amendments with the understanding that we might then have a debate about 15 million, but conforming amendments are just to sort of make true up what's before you now and make it make sense and have all the proper language.

Thank you. Councilor, Novick and councilor Moved a the conforming amendment. Is there a second for that? I. I will second it for the purposes of discussion. And councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Okay, here we go.

Thank you. Yeah, I do have an amendment. We have discussed this item before us at length at the climate committee, multiple climate committee meetings. And after hearing some of the arguments and suggestions, I am even more convinced that the best way to invest this 15 million is the PCEF committee's original proposal. So it's why I would like to move my amendment. Avalos one which would restore those funding allocation recommendations delivered to us by the PCEF committee. I have tried to be very clear over multiple committee meetings, and I'll repeat myself again here, just since not all of my colleagues sit on that committee, I strongly support investments to decarbonize our transportation system. What I don't support is yet another effort that puts the process and by association, purpose into question. Let me also just make a quick note about the data on ghg emissions, because what continues to be stated is actually statewide data and not Portland data. Emissions from buildings make up 53% of portland's greenhouse gas emissions, while transportation emissions are 40%, according to portland's climate and energy dashboard. Transportation accounts for 40% of portland's greenhouse gas emissions, while the combined building emissions commercial at 24%, industrial at 11% and residential at 18%. Total 53%. When voters overwhelmingly supported the creation of our groundbreaking environmental justice fund, they also approved a governance structure designed to center community voices, not city bureaucrats or elected officials. And that was intentional because in the old way of funding climate projects, small grassroots organizations like the one that I led never got their fair share, and neither did the frontline communities who experienced the greatest environmental harm through a structured, intentional review of the climate investment plan with staff analysis, public input and deliberation, the staff committee arrived at the recommendations that I'm bringing in my amendment today. They spent months reviewing implementation readiness and impact, and they worked through those trade offs. They debated options. And then at what seems like the last minute, councilors were swooping in to propose their own ideas. And I don't believe that that seems like good practice, and I would hope that my colleagues would agree with that, because for me, that sends a dangerous signal that the oversight mechanisms and processes that govern PCEF funds are optional, and we are seeing the risks play out in real time that threaten the progress that's been made in our community to build climate resilience and reduce carbon emissions. So does council have a role in shaping priorities? Of course we do. But we have to follow the processes that are in place for a reason. And when we are on the verge of the next climate investment plan process, to set up the next five years of where we make these decisions for how to invest our dollars, I don't understand why we're treating a technical, time bound cyp adjustment as the place to ask bigger questions about proportionality, sector balance and long term strategy. So I hope that my colleagues understand that what we're debating today has real implications for the future beyond just this $15 million, and why I'm urging you to support my amendment and would welcome a second.

Second.

Thank you.

Councilor Avalos moves her amendment, councilor Green seconds. So we have some amendments on the table. Colleagues we'll move into are there additional amendments to present at this time? Councilor Smith?

Loretta Smith: So when are we going to debate this?

We will.

Go to technical and clarifying questions. We'll get public testimony, and then we'll come back and debate the amendments.

Excellent.

Okay. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Yes, I neglected to move my amendments. Novick two and Novick three, which I described previously. Councilor two, which allocates the full 15 million to transportation projects, and Novick three, which allocates about half of it to the two urgent transportation projects I mentioned.

Councilor Novick moves Novick two and Novick three. Is there a second?

I'll second for purpose of debate.

Councilor pirtle-guiney seconds Novick two and three for the purposes of debate, councilor Morillo and we are in technical and clarifying questions, which can be both to the amendments and to the underlying.

I don't know if anyone is able to answer a technical question about. So if we move some of these dollars based on councilor Novick amendments, I got some information that some projects might. It was a little confusing because we were told that these dollars are not officially allocated. But then the presentation also said that these home programs expect that these dollars would be there and therefore it might end up killing those projects. And that's kind of concerning to me. So the ones that I had listed as potentially like, if this doesn't move forward with the original allocation, would be path, home village, say, mississippi street homes. And those are pretty critical to our community. Obviously, housing is a pretty big issue, and carbon production in housing is also a top issue. It's not just transportation. And I say that as someone who desperately loves and needs the bus, so I don't know if there's anyone who can answer that, but I think our offices received some info on that too.

I see director Eric engstrom coming up. I also see sam barrasso coming up. Welcome. Thank you for helping us navigate this. And please introduce yourselves for the record.

Mr. Director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. Yeah, the debate or the discussion of would this action take money away from existing housing projects, came up at the committee level? Technically, the money has not been allocated to any particular housing project yet. But some of you may know, housing finance is a long path. And so there are a number of projects that were anticipating the availability of this money. And those may be affected or have to change their designs. But but technically there had been no no promises or contracts signed with the money. Sam, if you have anything else to add.

For the record, sam barroso I do not have anything to add at the moment.

Okay.

Councilor Morillo for the follow up.

Angelita Morillo: No, that answers my question.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you council president. I heard councilor Novick say that what we have before us was moved from committee without the movement of the $15 million. I'm trying to understand if that means that that $15 million, if we pass what's before us today unamended is still sitting in the transportation bucket. If it is sitting in committee still and hasn't been moved forward, if so, what that means, because there's not a vehicle in committee to use it. And I'm wondering if councilor Novick you can help me understand the technical nature of where the pieces of this are. And I may look to the city attorney if there's some pieces that are still unclear. But I want to make sure I understand where the dollars are. If we take certain actions today.

Can I ask that, mr. President.

Please go ahead.

The dollars would remain in the pot they're in now, which is for financing for ev purchases. That is a program that has not been speedily moving ahead. I'm told that staff still considers that a worthwhile program. My guess is that if the remains in that pot, it won't be spent in the next year. And but maybe at that point the program will have gotten underground. Or maybe that by that point, the committee and staff will come up with another use for the money. But the effect of our adopting what's before us now, which stripped out that amendment, is simply that it stays in that transportation pot.

So to.

Be. Yeah.

So to be clear, when when I have heard the committee moved forward everything except for that change, that doesn't mean that the committee is still holding on to that piece of the item to further debate. What it means is that that change was just reversed by the committee. It was amended by the committee to go back to the original location of those dollars. And the rest of the changes were adopted by the committee, but the entire package has been moved forward to full council. Is that correct?

That is correct. The entire package. Without that change, plus these conforming amendments to true, up the language to make sure that all the documents reflect what we did with the $15 million.

Okay.

Thank you. I think the questions that I thought I had for the city attorney then are no longer relevant. That's different from how I had heard this before. I appreciate that, council president.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thanks. I have I don't know if it's a question or just a comment on for for what was said by the staff who are up here. But the the idea that there's anticipation is, I think, a challenge because what it does is it it puts us in a position of saying no to something we never even heard about. And so in committee, we had people who are coming up saying we're taking money away. That wasn't programed because of the communication they received from the staff. And I have a major problem with that. I also think there are a few specific places in which the council, being a rubber stamp is sort of required. We had a vote on the city of Gresham appointing a member to the home forward board, and it's their call who they appoint, but technically we have to approve it. And I want to understand, as we go through this how and where our role is on this, because if that's going to be what our role is, then I think we should be transparent about that and say, everybody who has a thought on this don't come talk to us, go talk to the committee. And that would be an honest thing to say. If, on the other hand, it's it's council's final call, the jackboots example. And we should be transparent about that too. And I think that's unfair to the committee. I think where we're and frankly, to the community, I think what we were talking about is if there is a desired change or simply a desire to not change the strategic program, just to change the specific program within that for a pot of money that was allocated to something that wasn't being spent, what is the best way to engage with that conversation? Because it can't be. Counselors need to go attend the advisory committee's conversation that that's not as that's not realistic here. It could be. Let's refer it back. And I think that's fair. The other thing that I have to point out is moving 15 million between two strategic programs is not a technical amendment. I think it's we have to have that conversation with the understanding and acknowledgment that it is substantive. That doesn't mean that we have to agree with it or disagree with it, but I think we have to acknowledge that it's a big deal. And I think everybody in the city would understand if we said, hey, moving $15 million is something that deserves somebody to discuss and decide on it. So that's my framing conversation to this whole piece. I want to be understanding of it. I have seen now some of these amendments and I'm I'm broadly supportive of of starting the conversation with something that makes sense by approving the, the technical conforming amendments and then having the discussion on the 15 million. I'm perfectly happy to do that, but I definitely had the concern that was raised by councilor Novick during the committee, which is if we were to put this back into transportation with a specific, specific set of, of issues, and this is my question, when would it be able to be spent? Because in the committee it came up that that might take another year or that it wouldn't be able to happen in the next fiscal year? What's the best way to put that? Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues. There's a lot of hands in the queue and I'm not clear if people are in technical or clarifying questions at this point. If you're not, please take it out. Councilor Smith. No. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Novick, did you have another?

Yes. I just wanted to respond to councilor Kanal question just now. If we decide to spend the money on certain transportation projects, that can start now, what what would take what would take a year? Is I my original suggestion was that council identifies some transportation projects. It would like the committee to engage in reviewing and then get back to us. And they said, we don't want to do that except in our normal annual process. So if you want us to do that, that will take a year.

Thank you for clarifying. Can I just put a finer point? So you're saying if we wanted to just decide where it goes, we could do that now. But if we wanted to engage with the committee it would take a year.

Exactly.

Thank you for clarifying.

Thank you. Councilor councilor Green. Okay. Councilor Kanal, are you okay? Colleagues? Seeing no one else in the queue for technical or clarifying questions? Keelan do we have anyone signed up for public testimony?

We we do have folks signed up for public testimony. First up, we have frieda walker, marcus mundy, and brian hoop.

Welcome. Come on up. Please introduce yourselves. For the record, feel free to share your preferred pronouns. And you have three minutes.

Good afternoon, president Dunphy and members of the council. My name is frieda walker, and I'm the chief compliance officer with self enhancement, inc. I am here today to voice my strong support for councilor Avalos. Amendment number one, to reinstate the full PCEF recommendations, including transferring of the budget. The committee's recommendations were shaped by community volunteers who spent countless hours evaluating, conducting rigorous analyzes, setting realistic implementation timelines, and engaging deeply with the community, all with a clear commitment to advance the pcf funds overall purpose. Sdi fully shares that commitment, and today, I want to emphasize a point that is essential in the integrity of this conversation. As you are aware, sf's mission is to fund community driven climate solutions that reduce carbon emissions while centering frontline communities, especially low income portlanders and communities of color. Housing development and transportation decarbonization are both priorities within that mission. They are not in conflict. They are co-equal strategies to advance climate justice, reduce emissions and build community resilience. That's why comparing these categories, treating housing and transportation as if they were completely competing or mutually exclusive is neither productive nor necessary and ultimately harmful. Framing these areas as opponents do not strengthen PCEF it weakens the fund, undermines public confidence, and distracts from the goal, maximizing climate impact for the communities who need it most. The reallocation of from sp 13 to sb one reflects responsible stewardship. Sp1 resources have been fully committed, sp 13 resources, on the other hand, have not yet been committed to any projects. Adjusting the allocation. Now, halfway through the five year climate investment plan ensures PCEF resources are deployed where they can have the greatest impact. Without the sp funding reallocation. I want to make this clear. I'm actually going off my script ci and and the others here today did not have a guarantee that these we would get these dollars. Our projects were developed including them as a source. When you're stacking projects, it's very important to identify sources that are out there. It doesn't say you're going to get it. It does not say that you're going to get it. But I want to be clear that recommendations have come in from people that have worked, committed hours to the city of Portland, and we'd like to see that continue. We'd like to see you accept their recommendation because they're they've been in the trenches in all of these discussions. Thank you for your time and leadership.

Thank you so much for being here.

Good afternoon. My turn, I guess. Good afternoon, president Dunphy. Councilors. City administrator lee, city attorney Clark, and everybody. I am marcus mundy. I'm the executive director and a registered lobbyist for the coalition of communities of color. We are an alliance of culturally specific organizations and have been a long time advocate for pcf since the initial ballot measure campaign. And we continue to work with partners at the friends of pcf table. Thank you for all of your work to adopt the listed amendments to the climate justice plan. This was a robust, community centered process that has resulted in recommendations to spend resources efficiently and effectively. We are in full support of the amendment to allocate $15 million from the ev financing and sp 13 to sp one, in order to adhere to the original recommendations of the grant committee. It replaces funding that was included in the original ordinance as recommended by the pcf committee. A $15 million reallocation from cip strategic program 13 to strategic program one, the clean energy and regulated multifamily affordable housing, which is making needed investments in energy efficiency and heat pumps for affordable housing projects that are already underway. As much as we respect and love, and like the council and the committee members that proposed the change, we are in agreement with the original cip proposal. However, we see this as a pivot that is an efficient and effective way to meet a community need. Affordable housing is desperately needed, as is reducing utility cost burdens for their future residents. Most importantly, that pivot emerged out of an extensive collaborative community engagement process, and that is why we are in strong support of councilor Avalos amendment. The amendment process began in June of 25, held a public comment period in October and November, and the committee recommended the final proposal in December 25th. Process does matter. We need the voices of those who are most marginalized. This very intentional process is central to sf's foundational commitment to community based climate solutions. We look forward to ongoing conversations with the city council about engagement and input as well. Otherwise, we should ask ourselves why have a process? Pcef has evolved, but the cip process remains the lodestar. We urge you to support councilor Avalos amendment that reinstates the original recommendation of the pcf committee. And thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Council president Dunphy, vice president, clerk, members of council. My name is brian hoop, executive director of housing Oregon. Housing Oregon is in support of the ordinance to amend the Portland clean energy community benefit fund climate investment plan. I believe in support of councilor Avalos amendment, or the original PCEF recommendation to include the $15 million for strategic program number one. Just for those who don't know, housing Oregon is a statewide association of 147 affordable housing and community development organizations representing the continuum of nonprofit homeless service organizations to multifamily rental and homeownership providers from across the state. So Portland still faces an affordable housing crisis, as we all know, and PCEF resources utilize for affordable housing continue to be an essential component of climate infrastructure needs for the city of Portland. I understand the challenge councilors earlier have faced in committee weighing competing needs for PCEF funding for transportation, affordable housing and other needs. I can assure you that homeless that homeless services and affordable housing are also facing significant budget cuts in the state legislature as well. Homeless services last year received a 74% budget cut in the 2025 session. It has been estimated these additional funds will support an estimated 580 additional high performance housing units, benefiting low income residents and households of color who are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Our members are ready to deploy these resources as they have already done successfully in the past several years, in previous PCEF grant cycles and a significant percentage of those housing organizations that have received PCEF funds have been culturally specific, community based organizations. And lastly, as portland's affordable housing stock continues to age, and as new affordable housing homes are urgently needed, sff resources are increasingly critical. Without these funds, many of these projects may not achieve full financing or could be built or retrofitted only to minimum code standards, resulting in higher utility costs for residents. So thanks for the opportunity to share my comments and for your public service.

Thank you very much.

Our last testifier is alan hippolito.

Welcome, alan.

Alan ippolito I work for suma. We use technology to fight poverty, racism and climate change. Our suma app is an e-commerce marketplace where almost 2500 low income portlanders buy essential expenses, overcoming privacy and other barriers that prevent these customers from using their phones to pay for food, transportation and utilities. Suma users took over 30,000 clean mobility rides in 2025, saving over $160,000. We know a little about building impactful transportation projects with PCEF priority populations. I want to state the position of the pcf coalition, the dozens of groups and hundreds of people who knocked on thousands of doors to pass the one of a kind measure we're discussing today. You're welcome. We strongly support councilor Avalos amendment because it reinstates the original ordinance, which was developed by an inclusive process involving the pcf committee and public comment from community respecting community processes is the only path forward on this and future actions that aligns with the story and values of the fund. I was fortunate to help draft the initiative and serve as its campaign manager. Our coalition stayed involved if PCEF hired staff, said its grant committee developed the cip, and we're here right now, we're not stakeholders, we're your peers. We've got serious work to do together to meet the current moment. While deepening the fund's community commitments. Many of you ran for office pledging to protect PCEF. I want to tell you what that means to us. In this measure, we are very clear. This fund is dedicated to climate action led by communities on the front lines of climate change, to say our coalition prioritizes anything higher is to mischaracterize our position to protect pcf is to defend this commitment. Pcf is absolutely not about doing things for community. It's about doing things with community through processes that center their leadership. Because that's so clearly the best approach to getting climate justice results. The output of sp1 versus the output of sb 13 is clear evidence of this. It's also evident in other underspent city bureau led cip strategic programs, pivoting to discuss uses outside of the PCEF committee's recommendations is inherently problematic. It raises an enduring concern about the city making climate decisions without community, wholly substituting elected official or bureau director ideas for community ideas, which is exactly what things were like before pcf. For these reasons, our coalition strongly, strongly opposes councilor Novick newest amendments. Decisions without community leadership weakened community power and are completely contrary to the pcf initiative. Our coalition will strongly oppose such decisions forever. The truth is, we don't want to spend time convincing you we should be at the table. We want to spend time working with you to make good things happen for Portland. We hope you accept our sincere invitation. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That completes testimony.

Okay.

Colleagues, we're now going to move into discussion. And just I want to provide a little bit of clarification because there's been a lot of moving parts here. And I'm hoping that this is the order we can take up our four amendments that are on the table, specifically, councilor Avalos amendment would undo the decision in committee and would negate the need for a technical amendment. And so I would like to is my intention to bring councilor Avalos proposal as a first vote for this council? If that fails, then the technical amendment is necessary and it will bring that amendment forward. At that point. Councilor Novick has two competing allocation priority amendments, and we will move to Novick two and Novick three in that order. But for now, we're not moving to the debate of the specific amendments yet, but rather to the general council discussion. And I will. Folks who want to get in the queue are welcome to get in the queue to talk about either the amendments or the underlying councilor Green.

Mitch Green: I'm in the queue to talk about the underlying.

Okay. Go ahead.

This is a good time. Yeah.

Yeah I'm curious. So first of all I'm going to support the Avalos amendment. But I do want to ask the committee whether or not the the question of sb 14. There's an amendment on sb 14 that is substantial in this update process. Was that a point of discussion in the committee? Because I don't see it in the staff presentation. It's actually not talked about at all in the staff presentation.

I don't think we had a significant discussion of that.

Yeah. Can I have somebody from the the bureau staff come on up and maybe ask you some questions for me? Maybe sam or Eric would be great. And anyone from the PCEF committee who's also here. Thanks. Go ahead and introduce yourselves. For the record.

Eric engstrom, director of the bureau of planning and sustainability.

Sam brosseau, program manager for the Portland clean energy fund. And james valdez, strategic partnerships and policy manager for pdf.

Thank you. So I'm asking the question because sb 14 is by the amendment, exhibit a of the amendment, a pretty substantial rewrite of sb 14 sp 14 in the in the the last sort of community driven update process was was very much about providing to me is closer in the spirit of providing, you know, sort of financial products to the underserved. Whereas what we're seeing now in this case is it's very much about providing flexible loan capital to office to residential conversions, some retrofit activities. And so I'm curious if you guys can give me a sense of what drove that change.

Yes. Council president, councilor Green, essentially, when we looked at the when you look at the broader climate investment plan, the original climate investment plan, strategic program 14 was always the place where we had essentially flexibility to provide complementary funding gap funding, recognizing that we had been very prescriptive across several of our other buildings, focused programs around who the beneficiaries were and so forth. As we launched and developed those programs, what came to the surface is, for the most part, what we were seeing when we think about our more moderate and low income households was the benefits we were directly targeting. There were direct subsidies. And so as we started looking at the what the financing mechanism really serve, there wasn't, I would say that there wasn't a clear call out that there still needed to be financing in that space. Now, that program will still have a consumer financing program. It's going to be more the we're still designing that and we're working consultants to design that. So so there's elements of that that remain. But as we worked with our colleagues and as we saw other opportunities come to the surface, office residential was one of those we had in earnest, begun working in understanding those projects. And so as we've gone down this and as you've heard some of the debate play out on the office residential space, what we attempted to do here is just bring more clarity for everyone acknowledging this. This amendment would also set the stage for evaluating that more thoroughly. So it's taking what was ultimately a flexible program, learnings that we had, where the need was less in that low and moderate income space in terms of financing, is really our direct subsidies, which are other programs served and then opportunistically leveraging where we did see demand and need. And that isn't to say that is the only place, but that is the place where we saw those in the near term.

Just also add, I think there was some discussion last year about transparency in that program, because it did give us a wide berth for for making decisions within the administration. And these amendments are are for the sake of transparency, saying what we're intending to do with that.

I appreciate that, because that actually gets to my next question, which was that last may, the mayor announced plans to use PCEF, particularly this fund, to support office to residential conversions. And as I read sb 14, I didn't see that actually as a mission of that bucket. So I was a little bit worried. So do you think that this was sort of an effort to true up the intention of how we're supposed to use that bucket of funds?

It was there was always an a flex. There was always I think we just can acknowledge that. It's been discussions we've had with the climate committee as well. It was flexible. And so while we engaged with a couple early projects, this was certainly to be more clear that we could lean in further on office residential and turn that up. So yes. So I want to just name there's this, that there was always a certain amount of room, but we wanted to be clear that of the 45 million that if we were to go further, we need to be clear about that.

I appreciate that. Thanks. And then in the amended language, there's reference made to two prosper Portland pilot projects. Previously, prosper Portland has also talked about two pilot projects for office residentials, so it might understand that these are maybe two other projects that could be funded from this pool or this or or is this sort of a maybe pursuant to this idea of like saying, well, if this, this bucket funds could maybe support those pilot projects that are already underway, how should I understand that?

I believe the, the, the, the two projects that are currently under discussion are the two projects that I believe we're talking about, the same two projects where those were.

The casket building in old town.

And I think that this the slate building. And so those are the active projects currently where we're doing our evaluation, understand the benefits, the impacts and so forth.

Thanks. And then I think my last I think this is more of a comment and you guys can correct me if I've missed the missed the mark on it. But I think on its face it seems to follow that preserving an existing building and saying let's transform office space into residential seems like it saves greenhouse gas, but I'm not convinced. I actually don't think it does. And I think that if the idea is to to make the consideration and actually we're seeing this a lot, this sort of narrative is a lot when we think about stretching, the use of PCEF funds is to say, well, the alternative is building something new. But, you know, the counterfactual matters. And if the alternative was never to build something new, then you're you're kind of stretching the meaning here. So when it comes to carbon abating, the built environment, like changing the built environment to to validate a land use approach that really does minimize carbon, then I think preserving stock of building that has frankly, pretty low density value and is surrounded by a bunch of, you know, surface parking lots in a part of the city that probably should just be torn down and rebuilt as a superblock with some aye, Morillo modern energy efficiency standards. I, I struggle to be convinced that there's the ghg ghg nexus there that I think that we want to put. So I'm not going to try to amend or change this today because I think that's haphazard. I do want to respect the community process, but I do think I have an obligation to say this publicly. As someone who's watching this stuff pretty critically, because we're going to have more of this, right. There's going to be more opportunities as we evolve down the road in our conversation around this about saying this, this is eligible for PCEF money because it it saves dhs. It's like, well, you got to show your math, you know? Yeah.

Council president council. I can just do a quick response to that. I think what what I will share is we feel fairly confident in the next six months, we'll be having discussions with the PCEF committee around studies that we are doing exactly on that and evaluating what is the counterfactual. Would this building be demoed if that was the case? What would be the delta in terms of emissions saved or sequestered or not? So I think that's frankly exactly the debate that the committee asked for and that we'll be having.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Green. I apologize, councilor Zimmerman, I meant to call you for your technical question.

That's okay. Thank you. I I'm actually more in the technical side of my questions here. So I want to make sure I've got an understanding for just how things. So exhibit a went to the climate and land use committee. I'm getting nods. Okay. Novick passed an amendment to that. And can somebody tell me what does proposed conforming amendment and that's used for two of our documents. What is proposed conforming amendment mean in this in this context? Anybody please.

Thank you. Council president Dunphy and councilor Zimmerman, the conforming proposed amendment takes the amendment that councilor Novick had had put forward in the climate and land use and resilience committee, which was not specific in its language, but said to revert the funding allocations back to the original. But then that also required some changes in that that exhibit a that we went and conformed to that change.

Okay.

So and so.

Novick moved big numbers. You put the details behind it. And that is what proposed conforming amendment attachment a and proposed conforming amendment exhibit a are correct.

Thank you. The exhibit is an explanation summary of the red line document that is the exhibit.

Thank you everybody for riding along while I caught up. Okay. And, councilor Avalos, you want to go all the way back to the beginning? What was submitted? Exhibit a to the climate committee. Got it. There is one aspect councilor Novick that is confusing to me. In the documents that were handed to me in what I'm noting in both Novick two and three are four bullet points, but in. Novick two it adds it looks like it adds TriMet and Novick three it's got a similar items, but there's a difference. In the fourth bullet, one talks about PBOT and one talks about sp1. And also the numbers are different and I'm a little confused. Councilor Novick. And I was hoping that once again we can just get exactly if Novick two passes and then Novick three passes, does it completely supplant what Novick two looks like is to me, I'm a little bit confused.

Here they are. They are alternate proposals. Okay, Novick two would allocate all of the 15 million to various transportation projects. Novick three would only allocate about half of the money to transportation projects. In particular, the james beard public market decarbonization proposal and the preservation of streetcar service proposal. So that being what Novick himself would really like is Novick two. What Novick is suggesting is kind of a compromise as Novick three.

Thank you. I fully support any help that gets our max lines moving and our heat environments. I think that's an important or it's a critical failure, right? Just of a system that has evolved to how hot it is in Portland. I am challenged by. In a in a world where we have to make choices, I'm challenged by housing projects in one hand and train lines in the other, and I think I'm leaning toward housing. For me, is is a is where I would put my resources if they were finite. So. Council president, that's it for my my technical questions. I just there's this strange underlying kind of tone. Sometimes when we talk about PCEF and I offer this up just as a. You know, it at times makes me more skeptical of things than I think really has to be the case. But I find it a little strange that I understand that at the committee, some members of and I'm going to I'm going to use a broad swath here not to pinpoint anybody, but the idea that council doesn't have a budgetary decision making authority on selecting projects that the end all be all ends with the PCEF committee has gotten us into kind of a strange space sometimes in these topics that I think is making it seem. It seems to be like a way of pitting things against, or you are either for or against the climate. And I just find that to be a very strange thing, and not something that we really see with as many of our other advisory groups. So I would just encourage that, you know, public testimony and those that come to work and the groups who work in. You know, groups advise up to and to the city council. And I think that's an important process that we have all the way through. Not that I think that that's necessarily being changed here, but I do think that the the vibe we put, the energy we put into the room can sometimes can sometimes sway how this is discussed. And so with that, I'm going to be all ears to everybody as you guys discuss these amendments. I appreciate you all helping me clarify. Thank you to the staff.

Thank you, councilor Zimmermann. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president.

I'd just like to say I fully support the decision regarding the Avalos amendment. In fact, I'd like to be a co-sponsor of it. We are in a housing crisis. It is essential that community based developers are afforded the opportunity to advance their affordable housing initiatives. Given that pcf's established mission of promoting energy efficiency, decarbonization and community climate resilience, along with its history of significant annual funding allocations for affordable housing developers is justifiable reasons to anticipate that following the extensive committee process and analysis that recommendations to reallocate funds to sp one in October 2025 and this recommendation was subsequently ratified by the full committee in December 2025. It just tells me that this project and these projects have been totally vetted, relying on these expectations, the. Community based developers confidently made financial commitments to their housing projects, and I believe that we should stand behind them. They will be supporting programs in district one. District two. District three. Home path hacienda mississippi, street homes, fci omsi. They have all undergone a thorough community process and we should stand alongside them and have those projects funded. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues, I will note that it is 1242 at this time. I want to make sure everybody has time to have a lunch break, and our staff can get out of here before we come back for a work session this afternoon, so I'm hoping we can move to vote relatively quickly. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Yes, a few points. One is that there was an elaborate public community process to adopt the original cip, which included a measly 17% of the money for transportation decarbonization, even though transportation represents, as councilor Avalos noted, 40% of emissions. The the cip committee and staff are proposing to change the cip by moving money from one significant pot to another. If the city council has no right to weigh in on a decision like that, then we are just a rubber stamp. And as councilor Kanal suggested, we should just tell people anything to do with sff. Talk to the committee and the staff. Don't talk to us. I also want to note that I told the the the committee and staff in December. In fact, I think I told them earlier, but I know they could have the that I know he told them December that I was concerned about this move and that I was going to look for other transportation ways to spend the money. This was not a last minute thing. I want to analogize what's going on here to a children's levy hypothetical. As you recall, I didn't understand why we were, why some folks thought we should override the process of the children's levy. I just didn't understand what the rationale was of overriding what the what the what the various advisory committee said. However, if we were in the middle of a children's levy process and the and council had approved a proposal that 60% of the money go to programs for kids 1 to 5 and 40% of the money go to kids 6 to 18. If that was what we had approved. And then the children's levy committee came back and said, actually, we think it should be 50, 50 kids five and under and kids 6 to 18, then I would have thought that was a significant change, that council would have a right to weigh in on. I would not have said, nope, all power to the children's levy committees. We can't even question it. I also want to note that one of the projects I'm proposing, funding and preventing cuts to the streetcar, does benefit low income people and people of color. To a great extent. There's 9000 riders on the streetcar. 40% of them have incomes below $33,000 a year. That's 3600 people. 29% of them are people of color. That's 2600 people. So the so it is not a matter of the transportation projects do not benefit low income people and people of color. So I mean, that's I mean, I think that there's a strong case for continuing to spend a measly 17% of the overall money in transportation. I think there's specific worthy transportation projects. I think that we should not be saying that council has to be rubber stamped the bsf committee. And one other thing I wanted to mention is that as far as the original intent of sff, it's called the Portland clean energy fund and the measure itself and all the ballot in all the voter's pamphlet arguments about it, it led with clean energy projects and building efficiency, and that kind of thing was always the second thing on the list. The fact is that we spent very little of the money. So I think that most portlanders thought that a big chunk of this money was going to go to solar panels. Very little has. So I just want to note that it's not as if the original the voters who approved pcf thought all the money was going to building efficiency. In fact, they thought a lot of it was going to go something it hasn't gone to at all.

Thank you. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. We are looking at a very small amount of the money in here, and that's just one part of the work that pcf does. And I want to frame this conversation in that because I have a very strong commitment to the community grants within pcf being solely driven by community. And I also am looking at a cip that was built in collaboration between pcf and the previous council. The cip had council's hands on it the first time around, not this council, but the last one, and it was done, I believe, in coordination with the pcf committee when it was moved forward. I understand the frustration with the process here of an amendment after pcf recommendations came in, and we need to figure out how we respect the community driven process that, like I said, must be the final word on the community grants, but also respect that collaboration that we had in the building of the original cip between pcf and council. What I see before us, in fact, includes some collaboration between pcf committee and an elected leader, between the pcf committee and the mayor on the part that, as councilor Greene pointed out, moves money to be more clearly in line with the mayor's goals around commercial to residential buildings. So this is not without collaboration with elected leaders. And I'd like us to put an end to the narrative that council shouldn't weigh in, because that wasn't the case the first time around, and it certainly hasn't been the case with the mayor this time around. We're considering a move of millions of dollars that it's important for us to talk about. To be clear, my district stands to lose a significant amount of needed housing and investment if we don't pass councilor Avalos amendment. I have heard from folks in my district that have already begun moving through the permit review process, with plans that depend on these funds, and we can debate whether they should have done that or not before we approved the funds. But the reality is that's what's happening, and we stand to lose momentum and lose time. But I think there's a bigger question that I want to ask some some pieces about council president, if that's all right. We heard from one testifier that this restores the original cip plan. And while it restores the pcf investments, I see the original cip plan as having $15 million more invested in transportation funds than what came from pcf to us. So so I want to understand the process a little bit. Am I correct that the original cip that allocated funding to transportation projects was approved by both council and the pcf committee?

Yes. Council president councilor.

Thank you. And when the pcf committee looked at making these updates, was there any conversation about other transportation projects that could achieve our greenhouse gas emission goals in the transportation sector? Before conversation about moving that money from transportation strategic priority to a housing strategic priority?

Yes. As they evaluated. And I want to just set the context. They do this evaluation annually. We're setting that up so we can do it in an annual timeframe, not reopen the entire plan itself. And as they did that, they did evaluate some transportation projects that we knew would need funding from PBOT and the timing as such, I have to provide context. Also, the timing is such weren't ripe for those projects. And so they said, when those projects are right, we will consider those next year in our amendment process. But they did consider a handful of transportation projects.

Do we expect there to be funding available to this degree next year that we could put toward transportation projects?

What we have signaled in the work we've done with the committee is we are just we by the time we get to this process again next fall, summer or fall, we will be closing out year two of the cip. We will have better line of sight into how funding is going. Spending is going on our programs and projects, and we think it's probably a more substantive process this coming year to make adjustments at a larger at potentially at a larger scale, if depending on the information that comes back from programs and that two phase. So I think it's fair to say that this will not be the only chance.

In year one. To be clear, Eric engstrom, for the record, we were intentionally fairly conservative about identifying underspending in programs in year one because we know everyone's trying to ramp up those programs. So it's not a real fair question to ask if you're falling behind on spending in year one. But in this case, there was a clarity that we hadn't initiated that program fast enough to fully spend the money. So sam's right. Next year in year two, each year, I think we'll have better line of sight into where there's actual underspending.

Thank you. And did the PCEF committee consider any of the transportation proposals that councilor Novick has put forward? If so, why did they reject them? And if not, is that because they weren't ripe and we didn't know about the need at the time, or because the committee wasn't interested in such proposals, or for some other reason?

Council president councilor I'll relay what I, what I what I understand, and I acknowledge that our co-chair committee co-chairs are not here. They went through a process that began in July and concluded, really in December with their recommendation. I think this has been a work to figure out. How do we balance and work with the committee, work with you all, and there's work to refine that process. We hear that loud and clear. But to do that ahead of the budget process, what they were, what we heard from them is we make a recommendation. You don't like the recommendation, you just send it back to us and tell us to go bring me another. You know, in a way, bring me something else that isn't sustainable for a volunteer body. And so they were saying, if this recommendation isn't taken up, that's fine. That's council's prerogative. But then we will next year in our process, we will reengage our process, start the start the clock, start the process again, make tweaks in that and reconsider.

Just to add to that, some of the specific ideas that councilor Novick generated had not come up at that had not arisen yet. And I think there's been greater clarity over transit funding in general as the years progress, so that it's fair that some of these are new needs that hadn't been identified at the time.

So they couldn't have been a part of that process?

That's correct. They made the recommendation December 10th.

And and I apologize if this sounds like a grilling. It's not meant to be. I just I want to understand where we're at, because I am concerned that we're moving money away from needed transportation investments. I am also concerned that I've got projects in my district that are now depending on funding. So did the recommendation to move money from transportation to housing? Did that begin as a staff recommendation? Did that come from the pcf committee through organic deliberation? Did that come from community groups saying, hey, we'd like the money over here. If there's any extra money anywhere, what can you do? How did how did this change come to be part of the recommendations?

We first worked with the PCEF committee to come up with a framework for how they would consider recommendations. And ultimately, a lot of what their work was doing is figuring out how do they evaluate existing programs. As part of that evaluation, we went through our 37 strategic programs in our community grants process and gave them a read on where the status was across programs at that point. They then zeroed in on about four, about half a dozen programs that they dove into. What was clear strategic program one. Our program focused on affordable housing, and we communicated this is fully allocated. So the conversation started with, okay, there's clear demand here. And then we focused on where was there. Clearly that sort of polar opposite where where where were there more challenges or just things delayed. And so we had a clear conversation with them on what the reality was of that existing program and our ability to deploy that 35 million in the financing program. So that's where they ultimately surfaced that that reasoning of why don't we move funding from the financing program to this program to meet this clear need that exists within this framework?

So it was a staff recommendation that more money was needed here, that less money was needed here. And then a committee decision to say, then let's move it, rather than say, let's look at other transportation things and other funding options here.

I would say we provided them a status on where programs were. And I think that that that naturally leads to that conclusion. Correct.

Part of this. Again, Eric engstrom, for the record, part of this was that the way we framed the discussion was not a call for new ideas. It was a call of evaluating existing programs that were part of the cip. So that that's maybe a learning we have in retrospect about the process.

But thank you. That's helpful clarity.

And if I may just add, I think as you all, as you all will see as we get into the 2027 development process and cip, for every one idea there is another 1020 ideas. And I think we strive to create a process that could be replicable year to year for the committee to make adjustments year to year of the life of the current cip, knowing that that broader full scale redo is going to happen and it takes more work. I just want to acknowledge that the challenges of running a process in this way and being responsive to the moment.

Thank you. I, I know there are things we need to be working on now, both for the year, two adjustments in the cip. And as we start to think about the next cip. And I hope that if we are if this body ends up voting to move money out of transportation today, that the PCEF committee is willing to work with us to look at some really deep investments in transportation decarbonization in those future processes. I don't know where the vote today will land, but I do know that this is a really important space for us to be doing more in than we currently are, and there are a lot of needs.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney colleagues, I just want to note it is 1257. We are back here at 2:00. There are currently six more colleagues in the in the queue to talk, and we have four votes to take. If we are not able to finish this by 130. Unfortunately, we will need to hold this over till next week, but I'm sure we can do that. And I also sure everybody would love to be able to have a lunch break. So councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you. When this first came up in committee, my understanding was that the changes were originally designed and maybe I misinterpreted to be suggestions for the PCEF committee to go back and talk about. I think that was that was a little unclear in the communications. And so that affected where I eventually landed on this, which was where I'm at now, that I don't like the idea of putting some a decision in effect here and now without consultation with the committee. I've never been in favor of that, and I'm struggling with the idea that if we were to send it back to them, that there's no process in place. Having worked with volunteer committees several times at at the city, I think that it's hard and I understand that there are volunteers. They have time commitments. They do so much already. This is one of the more intensive committees already. And also that helps to create a structure that lends itself towards some of the feeling of of being asked to be a rubber stamp. And so my, my question is, how are we going to fix that? So that in a year when this comes back to us, we're not in a two option situation where we either accept it or we substitute our judgment. But where staff staff have created a third door for us to be able to engage with the committee.

Council president councilor Kanal it's this is very top of mind for us as we come back to you to I think it is starting earlier conversations with your with the council offices. I think we've got a process in place currently right now. So we can start surfacing those those ideas, those desires. Clearly we hear the conversation on transportation. We clearly hear councilor Novick. So that's going to provide at least a starting point. And then as we gear up and may June, not too distant, not too far from now to start surfacing, we we start signaling what we're seeing mid-year. And to hear from your offices what you all are desiring, so that we can make sure that there's a two way dialog with the committee. I think the committee co-chairs, I expect, will also be having conversations directly with the chairs of the body that ultimately will be addressing climate issues as we move forward.

Thanks. And similarly, how are we going to make sure that there isn't that people who are looking to community groups that are looking to start a project are not anticipating decisions that haven't yet been made by council. What will staff do to prevent that from happening in the future?

We we certainly we can do more to provide more transparency on the allocation of existing resources. So those expectations are at least are provided with lines of communication for folks to know. Yep, this pool has been fully allocated. Know that from here on it's a question mark. I think that's work that we can continue to do around just tracking where our existing allocations are tapped. We run application processes, so I think that will be a continued conversation with our team, the Portland housing bureau, as well, to make sure we've just that have that more clear line for for folks that are seeking out those housing programs.

I appreciate that, and I want to put a finer point on it and say, I don't view it as the potential, you know, recipient of funds as problem or fault or the council's problem or fault if this happens. And by this, I mean, when a decision we haven't even engaged with yet is being framed as you're taking money away, that hasn't actually been allocated, I view that as a systemic issue on the the structural side. So that's what I'm trying to to get at here. And I recognize that this is a new system. And so I'm not putting fault. But I'm saying it's something we need to fix going forward here. I'm not going to bury the lead here. I am because of the fact that we would have to wait a year this year if we were to send it back, and because of the fact that I don't want to to substitute our judgment here, I'm going to be voting for the amendments that councilor Avalos put forward. I really do share a lot of the concerns around the transportation piece, though, so I'm going to take a second here to mention something about that, and then something about what councilor Green brought up. Many of the things that councilor Novick put forward, I'm very supportive of, in particular, the one time costs, I think, in this, this scenario with the the singular upgrades, one time upgrades to TriMet are things I support. I think some of the work at PBOT that's ongoing is also really great. I've expressed skepticism about marketing, but I do agree with hiring ride leaders and improving bike infrastructure. There's a lot more here that I think is great, and I would really love it if the if the committee did look at that over the course of the next year. While I have major concerns with a process that that discourages the council from weighing in, but but says the mayor can weigh in on on a strategic program. I have massive issues with that process. I actually agree with the particular thing that is being done. I'm supportive of the office of residential dollars personally, and it's one of the very rare things that I'm going to say should be focused in district four downtown specifically, but I'm excited to to to get into the conversation around the process, because I think the process is where the my larger concerns are than the actual content of either of the scenarios that we were discussing. So I will be voting for for the amendments councilor Avalos put forward. And I look forward to working with councilor Novick and with the committee and with everyone who's interested in helping ensure that there's investment and transportation next time.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Just a quick note to our testifiers. We're not Salem, you don't have to address me when you're talking to a councilor. It's all good. Councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: Thank you. I'm going to keep my comments brief, because folks have already said a lot of what I wanted to say. I agree with councilor Kanal assessment that I think that there needs to be more process so that council understands what's coming before us and so that we're involved. And from what I understand, too, it sounds like that process is already underway. My office received an email with a form letter or some way that council can engage on this moving forward so that we can understand what the committee has done, and then also give our input so that we don't end up having this sort of situation happening where we feel like we're a rubber stamp for dollars. That should not have been. People should not consider dollars allocated to them until they are officially allocated to them. I used to work at a nonprofit. I had to do grants for nonprofit. Those dollars, I think are should never be considered yours until they are officially in your bank account, frankly. But that being said, these are extremely important projects that need our help now, and I think the sacrifice is too big. And I say that again, as someone who is transit reliant, who loves public transit and desperately needs it, and I hope that we focus on that in the future, and I hope that we create a process so that council can do that moving forward. So I will be considering I will be voting yes on the Avalos amendment in the hopes that we have that sort of instituted a bit more formally in the future. And I would urge my colleagues that if other people have already made your statements, just say, as councilor Smith always does, ditto to them and call it a day so we can vote.

Thank you, councilor Morillo councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Yeah, I. I'm I'm going to say this even though it has been said I agree. I would like to be able to have this debate that councilor Novick is bringing up, and I don't get to really have that debate in an earnest and honest way when a significant portion of it is. But if this passes, these housing projects are dead. These specific housing projects are dead. I'll admit it. I'm going to I'm going to bend the knee to the housing projects on this. And councilor Novick brings up very good points about the the focus of PCEF. And I would value to be able to have that debate culturally. I think we have a deep problem. There is a culture of things get through that are the friends of PCEF members or staff. I think that's a problem. I think the fact that we have people coming to testify, or that we have advocates in the community getting ahold of us that x, y, z project by name will die based on the decision in this room today. If we don't do a thing that should be grant focused, you have a leaking sieve of a situation and we've got to fix that, because that's not an honest assessment of a grant application. If people already know that they are winners in that application process, you may disagree with that, but that is the deep perception that exists. And the and the pure fact that I am being lobbied by name projects today tells me that that perception is not just a little bit out there, it's a lot a bit out there. And so I, I don't know the right part of that debate, but I look forward to a transportation to a carbon, to a housing debate. These are great debates to have. And my colleagues have, have underlined different aspects of where this seems off. And I think that's when when multiple aspects of something are off, that's an indicator of a cultural problem. And I just hope that we can spend some time if there is some sort of reset that's happening or whatever you guys are citing, I am I am bothered that I don't get to truly have that. And. I'm surprised in myself that I'm going to go back to and be supportive of Avalos one today, because I generally think that what comes out of the committee would have been the thing to pass. So I guess I'm, I'm, I'm surprising even myself in that. So please give us faith in in how dialog process debate happens and that winners and losers haven't been pre-selected based on who they know, how they know, or their previous experience with the organization. And that is parts of it. I just cannot tell right now. And it doesn't feel good, and I want it to feel good. And I'll be sitting this committee with with councilor Pirtle-guiney as the chair and me as vice chair. And this is an area for growth for me and I, and I am looking forward to it because I think these are these are going to be important discussions. So thanks to everybody and thanks for clarifying and councilor Novick I'm sorry, will not be able to support your amendments today.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you. I'd just like to remind everybody again, we are in a housing crisis and. These folks, they did go through a process. Councilor Zimmerman, they they went through an extensive analysis, and they were put in for recommendation by the committee. And this is a perfect example why I said PCEF should be in the committee of the whole. And we need to move the policy piece and pdf to the committee of the whole so that we all can have those conversations at the same time about a considerable amount of money. When you're talking about identifying appropriations for $1 billion, we need to have that. So you may want to reconsider that, mr. President, but I would like to urge everybody to don't think of this as just something that people thought of last week. They all have capital stacks that they have been working on forever. They were not given a approval. They were given the same type of approval that the children's levy folks were. Until we get actual approval from council, will you be able to say that you have it? But they did their due diligence. They didn't do anything wrong. And they're supposed to to lobby us because we're going to vote on it. And so I urge everyone to vote yes on this. Avalos one. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Muted oh sorry. Thank you mr. President. I was happy to see mr. Engstrom. Director engstrom say that maybe it was a little narrow minded to say we're only not going to consider any new projects. We're only going to look at the projects that have already been identified in the initial cip, because I think the idea that the only things we should do with the PCEF money is frozen in amber for five years is problematic. I also note that, as councilor Green raised, that rationale doesn't seem to have applied to using money for office to residential conversions. I also wanted to say that there's one entity that was not consulted on the possibility of new transportation uses for the money, which is PBOT. I asked PBOT were you asked for suggestions to use these this 15 million? And they said no. And then I asked the pkf folks and bts folks, did you consult with with PBOT? And they said, well, we talked to PBOT all the time. So I asked PBOT again, were you consulted about this 15 million? And milton williams said, we have a good relationship with the pkf team and have a good number of regular conversations with them to discuss options about opportunities. That said, regarding this 15 million, our response remains the same. We've not had the opportunity to have the conversation. So to me, if you're talking about moving money away from transportation, you should probably next time talk to the transportation bureau. Thank you. Oh, sorry, I left out the most important thing, which is I started this conversation partly because I wanted to protect the 15 million for transportation, but partly because I wanted to start having a conversation about the relationship between the council and PCEF. And I really appreciate that. Some of my colleagues seem to think that it's a good idea to have that conversation. I really appreciate councilor Kanal raising my concerns about the process far more eloquently than I could, and I agree with councilor Smith's suggestion that the relationship between council and staff should be discussed in the committee of the whole, which coincidentally, I think is going to be led by councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, councilor Novick. Thank you very much, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: I know that I am standing between my colleagues and lunch, but I just have to note that. We're talking about $15 million and I'm going to vote for this one because I think it's the right thing to do. But earlier it was framed that we're pitting transportation against housing, which is unfair to do. And I have to say that the $15 million in sp 14, which has been codified now or will be codified when we take this vote as being for office residential, which will almost certainly never come to pass as a new residential unit. It's too expensive to do. We don't have the money to subsidize that deeply. That's money that could be used for housing right here in this same thing. And we could have kept the money in the transportation bucket, but we don't really get to have that level of debate in any kind of serious way, because, you know, I don't really get easy access to the staff that, that make these decisions. So I think going forward, my expectation is that if if council is going to be required to just go ahead and do this and validate a spending decision, I expect no barriers between my office and the staff who do this work. So that way I can talk to the the staff to do this work and so we can figure out how to better engage. That's going to be my my expectation going forward. And I really look forward to helping shape some of this stuff in the next more thoroughgoing update to the plan. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. Very briefly, I just want to lend my support for in the next round when staff bring ideas to the pcf committee, seen a robust investment, maybe even more than $15 million in transportation solutions that can help to decarbonize transportation and create access for lower income members of our community. I look forward to that next year.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney colleagues. I'm going to now move us towards a vote on the amendments. Just to clarify, we have four amendments that have been moved and seconded. Avalos one will be the first item that we vote on. As a reminder. Avalos one returns the underlying to the pre amended version of that was filed at committee and as such would make a the technical amendment moot. However, because we have them all opened and moved, do we have to do a vote on all four or do we only vote on Avalos? There are four amendments. There's an Avalos one, the technical clarifying Novick two and Novick three.

But if Avalos passes then Novick are moot.

Oh councilor. Novick yeah, please.

Yes, that's what I was going to say. If councilor Avalos motion passes, then my amendments and the conforming amendment are all moot. As you mentioned before council president. So if, as I suspect, councilor Avalos amendment passes, then I think that I withdraw my amendments and I think I'm the one that moved the conforming amendments, I withdraw that too.

Perfect. Okay. Can we please move to a roll call? Vote on Avalos one.

Avalos I.

Smith I.

Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I.

Koyama Lane. I look forward to continuing conversations about how we can responsibly and transparently invest in infrastructure like biking and transit without losing sight of core mission. And I'm also voting I on Avalos one.

Morillo I.

Novick nay.

Clerk is absent. Green. Hi. Zimmerman. Hi Dunphy. I the amendment is approved with nine yes votes, one no vote and two absent.

Okay.

And councilor Novick. With the passage of amendment Avalos one. Would you like to withdraw the three amendments?

Yes. They are hereby withdrawn.

Councilor Novick withdraws the three amendments. Without objection. I was a second on at least one of them. Colleagues. This now amended ordinance moves to second reading. That is the last item on our agenda. With that, we are recessed, not adjourned. We are recessed until tomorrow afternoon. Go get lunch.