The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-04-29
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (26,322 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.
Good morning folks. Colleagues. This is the first official work session of the fiscal year 2020 627 budget process. Today, we are seated informally as the city of Portland budget committee. This is a work session. We are here to ask questions, exchange ideas, and develop concepts for potential amendments to the mayor's proposed budget. As you may recall from my memo on the budget process for the year, if you have budget amendments that you wish to formally move, you should submit it to the budget office for review via the intake form. Big thanks to ruth and owen and the budget team for getting that form out to all council offices last week. Today, the. The focus is on citywide and structural matters. To set the table for the bureau by bureau work to come, we'll hear and ask questions about the city administrators portfolio, the city operations service area, and the core service realignment. The administration's effort to centralize certain basic functions that were distributed throughout the bureaus in the commission form of government. Tomorrow we will be discussing the general fund receiving public works bureaus, specifically parks and PBOT. But to get us started, I'll now turn it over to city administrator lee.
Good morning. Council president, vice president and councilors. Raymond lee, city administrator. Today is the first of several work sessions that are scheduled to cover all of the service areas. The purpose of these work sessions is to cover what is in the mayor's proposed budget. For your consideration, we'll cover the proposed cuts, any ads and what is being preserved in each of the service areas, as well as tough, important impacts and challenges that we may be potentially changing. And that is called out in this proposed budget. We'll start with an overview with from our cfo biery and our budget director, ruth levine. Then I will take you through the ca portfolio before passing to the dca1 for the city operations service area and the dca warrants and chief engagement officer garcia snell for the core service realignment project. We look forward to discussion with this group as you engage in your deliberations in the weeks to come. As I know, council will have questions and requests for additional information. Staff will work with you to make sure that you have that information as you go into further budget deliberation, conversations and decision points that you'll have to make as you go through an adoption of a adopted budget for the next fiscal year. At this point in time, I'll turn it over to our cfo to kind of walk us through the presentation, and then I will come back to talk about city, city administrator's budget.
And just colleagues. Just for some level setting. We have a we are scheduled to be here until 1230, which is about is three hours. And we have three sections to get to. So that means we have a little bit less than an hour per section. So I'm going to try and keep us on time so we can get out of here in time for some lunch before the rest of our day of sitting in this chamber. So take it away.
Great. Thank you, council president council, thanks for the intro. And yeah, before we kick off to service area presentations, ruth and I are going to give a high level overview of the proposed budget, just to sort of set the stage for those more detailed presentations as we go through this presentation, as we go through all the presentations, you know, we'll take general clarifying questions on the city wide resources allocations. I would just note, if you have questions specific to a service area, you might hold those for this service area presentation. So we can keep this moving, as council president suggested for all questions, city budget office staff are recording from these work sessions. Tracking will compile and send back answers and aiming to post faq document by end of day Wednesday the following week. Each week as we collect those questions. Thank you all for your patience as we pulled the budget work forward. Two weeks to publish the mayor's proposed, as we've talked about before, earlier than previously, and we've all been undertaking additional effort to prepare for these additional work sessions, which I think will be really valuable conversation points. I know that the budget has not been perfect. I appreciate the respectful dialog and the many emails and questions we've received, including requests for additional information. We're continuing to work on triaging all of those and will respond as quickly as we're able, though noting in some cases that may still take a few days as we continue to catch up. I want to, again, as we begin these work sessions, acknowledge the efforts of employees in the city budget, office budget and finance functions, and leadership positions citywide, as everyone is doing everything that we can to meet the justifiably high expectations of council and the public. Next slide please. So just a quick preview of what ruth and I will go through at this first presentation. I'll give just a very brief overview of the total budget passed to ruth to talk about how the proposed budget balanced the general fund, as well as a quick summary of non-general fund changes and positions. And then I'll come back to cover some examples of fund balances to walk through what council, through how to find those in the budget and discuss some future improvements related to budgeting and transparency around fund balances. Next slide. So this slide shows you kind of the highest level summary of total appropriations in the budget. So all funds appropriation, net budget and program expenses. A couple of things to note about these high level charts. You may note that the total budget is accurately cited as $8.5 billion. The chart the far left pie chart here shows 8.1 billion. The difference is due to a category called unappropriated ending fund balance, which is not counted in appropriations but is allowed under state budget law and captures some types of fund balances, which we'll discuss more later. We also talk about the total budget size being somewhat misleading, because it double counts some amounts of internal transfers between bureaus. So the net budget in the middle, the pie chart in the middle of this slide removes those internal transfers, reflecting a net budget of total of 6.6 billion. And then the third kind of lens to look at the budget overall with is just looking at program expenses. So this only counts personnel, material and services and capital spending compared to the net budget. This category excludes debt service and contingency reserve line items. So with that lens, the total citywide program expenses and the mayor's proposed budget are $4.4 billion. The last note here, it's kind of reflected in the little box at the top right of the screen. And this is, I think, linkable in the presentation online, is information available at the proposed budget dashboard on the city budget office website. This link contains much more information, including lots of detail summarized detail about the budget, and it's a great resource for councilors and the public to also view. Next slide please. So this slide kind of zooms in looking at the from the going from the total budget to just looking at the general fund, which is generally thought of as the city's most flexible dollars, the total discretionary sources of general fund dollars is shown on the left. As we've discussed before, the three major sources are property taxes, business license taxes, and utility license fees. As you can see, that makes up over over two thirds, almost 75%, or actually more than 75% of the general fund discretionary budget. The donut on the right is a breakout of how general fund dollars are allocated in the mayor's proposed budget. Over half of that general fund discretionary goes towards public safety. Police fire boec 911 and pbem, and noting that the 67.1 million in public works reflected here is all the general fund in public works goes towards Portland parks and recreation, also on a flag. And we'll talk more about this at the next section of this morning. But I do want to preview that the city administrator bucket includes Portland solutions and rolls up things like management of specialty general fund contingency and debt service payments. So while that's a large amount, the programmatic amount is actually much smaller, as we'll talk about here later this morning. One other thing to note is that the figure of 798 million here includes both forecasted revenues and fund transfers that were used to help balance the general fund. And ruth will talk more about that in just a moment, as I now hand her to talk about those key strategies and changes to balance the 2627 mayor's proposed budget.
Great. Thank you for the record. Ruth levine, budget director so I'm going to go over briefly how the proposed budget balances the general fund. So at the top of this bar are the gaps. There are positive numbers. Sorry if that's a little confusing. And then the solutions bring that gap down. And there are negative numbers. They sum to zero, which is because we have a balanced budget. The on the gap side of the equation, the largest gap is the current services level gap. That includes about 50 million of forecasted revenue declines from prior forecasts. So and then the remainder, about 110 million ish is on the expense side. It's a combination of expenses growing faster than inflation and sort of making up for expiring one time resources that are in the 2526 budget. Additionally, there's about $8.7 million in the proposed budget. On top of that current services level, for a total gap that the budget balanced to of $171 million. And then on the bottom part of the bar is, are the sort of ways that that was balanced reading from the top to the bottom, the biggest one, about $60 million is service level reductions. And that's what you'll hear much more about in the coming presentations from the service areas. The Green section is about $44 million of contingency and reserve draws, and I'm going to speak to those on the coming two slides. The 30.5 is the return of the transfer that we've previously sent to the county for homelessness. Response 26.9 is the transfer of interest. That's the actual interest that accrued in the fund in 2425 that is transferred to the general fund in the proposed budget, and then there's about $10 million of other revenue sources that we're able to offset general fund expenses, including fees and grants. So that is the really high level picture of how the general fund is balanced. So I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on the next slides. All right. So the next two slides have the complete listing of the 44 million that was in contingencies and reserves on the previous slide. I'm going to go through it quickly and feel free to ask questions after this section. Remaining 4.3 million. That was sort of left from the transfer of 8.6 in the spring, tore to the general fund. So half of that was used in 2526. Half is in 26, 27, 7 million coming over from the transportation fund contingency that was there for future led light replacements that were previously funded by general fund, currently are being funded by PCEF. The next line is the city wide obligations reserve fund for Portland harbor. Amount for Portland harbor. And this is the just the general fund portion of that, which has accumulated over the past three years. There's an ongoing amount that's maintained towards that same sub fund from the general fund. This is the amount that had built up there from the general fund in prior years. And then the last row on this slide is part of what was formerly known as compensation set aside. So because of the proposed budget, transitioned to current service level budgets, instead of leaving what we used to call compensation set aside in general fund contingency, which was the amount that was previously budgeted for general fund cola, health benefits and the like. It is now budgeted that is budgeted directly into bureaus budgets now, and that left the amount that was in contingency available to repurpose, essentially. And so the proposed budget includes a portion of that as a revenue stabilization for business license taxes. Given the volatility of that revenue source and the risks and the obvious consequences that we saw this fiscal year from that revenue not coming in as forecast, this is proposed to as essentially an operating reserve to shore that shore up that revenue source and protect us against volatility. The proposed budget includes that reserve at eight funds, that reserve at $8.7 million, which is 4% of forecasted business license tax revenue. I'm sure there'll be questions on this, but I'll keep moving and feel free to come back to it. The next. The next rows include we sort of balanced that from $1 million of. We actually increased unrestricted contingency, $4 million of interest that has built up in the American rescue plan fund within the grants fund, because the remainder of those funds have to be spent down by the end of this calendar year. The interest is sort of available at this point, and was used to swap out general fund in the proposed budget. There's 700,000 of funding from the fire, health and wellness funds. That fund was created. It's not its own fund, but those that bucket was created per their collective bargaining agreement. And this is the amount that's projected to be unused at the end of the current fiscal year that was pulled back in the budget. And then the last one is more reallocation, but counts in this bucket for these purposes. And that's the sobering services. This question came up last week in the proposed budget. That amount is split between. The county. A half of it goes to the county for the sobering center in the in the proposed budget, and half of it is used for sheltering for Portland solutions. All right. And then a very brief summary of non-general fund sort of major changes. Again, we'll come back to these. In the work sessions that you'll be getting in the this weekend in coming weeks. So I'm not going to go deep into any of these, but just wanted to highlight them. Obviously, the transportation utility fee that you all have been considering and the street damage restoration fee played a big part in the PBOT budget in permitting and development. There are some fee increases to cover some of their permitting programs, and then a $2.9 million reduction in the tree permitting program. Water and sewer took a total reduction of 6.6 million between them in order to maintain rate increases for 2627 that were forecast as of last year and then p cf. The main changes are the interest that I already mentioned, and the a couple of realignments within the cip to pmo and irp. All right. And then citywide position changes. This gives you a high level picture of all of the position changes that are included in the proposed budget. So there are reductions totaling 203 additions above current service level of 58, although some of those additions are kind of catching up the position authority for things that were already funded. And then the net change of those is 145. But some, depending on the question you're answering, you might need both of those separately. For the table below that on the left, we just looked at the reductions of 203 and broke them out by filled and vacant. So you can see about half of them are filled positions and half are vacant. And then the table on the right cuts the data in two ways. One is by represented non-represented and the other is by manager or supervisor and non-supervisory positions. So you can see those percentages on the right. They both roughly align proportionally to our current supervisory non-supervisory and represented non-represented percentages. So essentially it wouldn't impact that breakdown between those. Each of those two groupings. And I think that is my portion. I'm going to turn it back over to jonas to talk about fund balances.
Great. Thanks, ruth. So on this slide and the next slide, I believe I'm going to talk briefly about fund balances as they appear in the budget documents. We were hoping to have kind of a full, detailed inventory of information for each of the hundreds of individual fund city wide. We don't have that yet. We obviously have time constraint this morning, but cbo is continuing to work on that. And we'll provide a follow up memo. I believe next week is the goal. That includes those additional details and explains some of the more technical aspects of the different types of fund balances. But for today, wanted to kind of provide some examples and walk through a few of those different operating funds and reserve funds, contingencies, fund balances, and make clear where you can also see that information for each of the city's funds. That location is in the section of the budget called fund summary. It begins on page 1001. So if you only read the first 1000 pages, keep going. There's more. But but there is a breakdown of each of the funds citywide that will include the same type of information. So the examples we have here, this is a handful of some of the key operating funds. Comparing the fiscal 2526 budgeted revised contingency as updated in the spring now. So that's the kind of left number column. What was in that contingency amount to three key amounts that are in the proposed budget. The first thing I'll highlight is the first two columns, the middle two columns proposed beginning fund balance and proposed contingency are included in the the category called fund expenses. So that fund expenses category is beginning. Fund balance contingency also includes not shown here. Debt service payments, if any, and fund transfers out, if any. The budgeted beginning fund balance is the forecasted fund balance that as it appears in the 2627 budget, because fund balance is determined by kind of whatever's left over in the fund, this projection is generally expected usually will change during mid-year budget adjustments, but initially it's budgeted conservatively as a resource, conservatively in alignment with financial policy. Contingency is an expense category that represents amounts that are not anticipated to be spent in the current year as program expenses, or can be reallocated out by city council during the fiscal year. Many contingencies, maybe all contingencies, exist for a specific purpose, maybe something that may isn't known but may materialize, maybe sort of expected as a possibility to materialize in the fiscal year, or be intended for specific uses in future years. And we'll talk a little bit more about some of that as well. The far right hand kind of the second category is program expense. Also, it's called bureau expense. And this reflects the amounts actually expected to be spent down from each fund directly from the fund during the fiscal year to do things. So this is what we generally think about as program expenses. When we're to do things. It comes from that program or bureau expense. Again, important to note this chart is only kind of highlighting those three categories beginning fund balance, contingency and program expense does not include other fund expenses such as debt service payments or transfers out, and importantly, doesn't reflect amounts that may be coming in to these funds throughout the fiscal year. This is just the expense side. So to walk through quickly, a few different examples. First, here is the general fund, which is aligned to the various expenditures that we identified in the general fund donut chart earlier. Plus this includes overhead. The second example is the transportation operating fund, which is a restricted fund, meaning that dollars that go into that fund can only be used for specific transportation related purposes, kind of bucket those together, the general fund and the transportation fund. Because in this these examples, those two funds show very large amounts of program expenses relative to contingency and beginning balance as the revenues coming into those funds are generally then spent directly out of those funds. So you can see, obviously, the general fund being among the largest. A third example, just for kind of a different flavor of reference, is the golf fund. Most of the dollars that are budgeted here go back out. The 18 million goes back out to fund golf system operations, with some dollars held in that contingency to protect against revenue shortfalls or to hold to pay for future capital improvements. The golf fund receives revenue throughout the year from golf system operations, and in this example, expected total revenues of around 18.5 million are essentially equal to the expected bureau program expenditures out of 18.5 million, meaning that the contingency and reserve amount is essentially expected to remain unchanged in 2627. Of course, pending unexpected changes in revenue forecast, etc. And then the final example here on the operating fund slide is the recreational cannabis tax fund, which has similar dynamic to the golf fund with revenues coming in being aligned to essentially expenses going out and the remainder being held in contingency to protect against unexpected revenue shortfalls. I know we're going through this super quick, but I wanted to kind of just provide some examples here today and maybe daylight as you look through those other funds. Some questions. Next slide. And I think almost the last year, the different kind of category of funds, dedicated reserve funds, so different from operating funds, dedicated reserve funds are more rare. They each have kind of policy guidelines dictating what the funds are for and how they may be used. And in these cases, fund balance and contingency are more closely aligned because reserve funds do not have program expenses. You can see in that zeroed out column here, we don't pay for doing things directly from these reserve funds, but these funds might get transferred out to then support those those program expenditures. Note also that these reserve funds do often sometimes have dollars that come in. Those are typically transfers in to meet policy or planning targets or to accommodate future expectations. On the flip side, may have transfers out to redeploy those dollars or to release those dollars. If if amounts get above the policy requirement or targets. So again, a few examples here. For reference, general reserve fund is a policy directed reserve fin 2.07. For those keeping score that amount by policy is funded at at least 10% of general fund discretionary and overhead resources. Less beginning fund balance. The math that's indicated here reflects that calculation. Similarly, transportation reserve or fin dictated by fin 3.10, includes restricted revenues generated by the transportation system and to be used in accordance in accordance with that policy. And then the last example here is the sewer rate sewer system rate stabilization fund, which can include transfers in from sewer revenues. This type of reserve, a stabilization fund, or stabilization reserve is a critical tool for managing forecasted rate increases for utilities by drawing down the stabilization reserve, future rate increases can be mitigated. Spikes in rates can be avoided. The water system maintains a similar reserve, as do all well managed and highly rated public utility systems. Final comment about reserves is that strong reserve balances, both restricted balances and general balance. General fund kind of uses is a critical factor in maintaining high credit ratings. Those high credit ratings translate into lower out the door costs for the city over the long term, and indeed, the rating agencies have specifically called out that reductions to city reserves would be a negative factor that could lead to a credit rating downgrade. All right. Next slide. And I think our last one of this first presentation, just to close the conversation on fund balance, we have discussed multiple times over the last year and a half that we're constantly aiming to continuously improve our budget process, practice and communication. We appreciate the importance of accurate and complete accounting, monitoring and reporting related to fund balances at budget time, at the fiscal year end and throughout the year. And in support of that, we anticipate additional improvements related to management and transparent communication of fund balances. One future improvement we expect is shifting fund language to include the phrase reserved for future expenditures. To be more clear about that, and anywhere that funds are held in a contingency reserve to include narrative that's more descriptive about those future uses. And as previously discussed, we're improving our process and practice practices, including working on an administrative rule to make sure that audited balances in the annual comprehensive financial report, or acfr, are accurately and timely aligned to budget balances. Lastly, achieving all this obviously takes attention and human bandwidth, so we look forward to support from council to allow us to prioritize these efforts in addition to the many other budget process improvements that have previously been identified and I expect will continue to be identified as we go through this process. Next slide. Which I think is just leaving space for questions, if any. Before we move on to talking about city administrator's budget. Thank you.
Thank you. We actually have eight.
Councilors in the queue. Folks all recall that this is this first part was supposed to be a high level overview as we're going to dive deeper over the next coming weeks. But there are still some clarifying questions to be had. Counselor Green.
Thank you. It's actually I'm actually going to offer some praise. I, I put my hand up immediately because there was a bar chart early on in the presentation. I believe it's on slide five. And I just think it's a really good way of explaining visually how we got to balance. And so the table is also good. That's in the sort of summary piece of the mayor's proposed. But, you know, I recently did a town hall and I was explaining this and this, this is a good chart. And I, you know, just wanted to you don't always get the praise up there. So I'm saying you guys are improving. And so I appreciate that. In the later slide, then you anticipate my question of I was going to ask like, how do you get the $44 million in drawdown? So the the chart does that for me. I do have a question, though, about. Maybe we'll get into this later, but just explaining a little bit more about the blt stabilization piece, I understand the intent. I think it's good to move away from compensation set aside and just sort of explicitly budget that in and knowing that blt is a volatile source of revenue, presumably that's why you're moving towards a stabilization fund. Okay.
Yeah. Councilor is absolutely right. And, and, you know, the counties had maybe the only other local government in the country that has a similar type of tax income structure specific to the blt. Bit is, as they call it. And so they've had that reserve specifically to protect against the volatility that we experienced this year in the absence of having that reserve at the city. So this has been sort of on the radar for a while. And with the shift in compensation set aside, the way that was managed, it provided an opportunity to start seeding that. Frankly, I was hoping we'd be able to seed it at a little higher number, maybe half and half of the 15% target, but felt like kind of half of that, roughly 25% was kind of an appropriate level to at least start that conversation and start that reserve protection given the moment we're in right now.
Thank you. So then, just so I understand, the $16.1 million that's being drawn from that contingency that's currently called compensation set aside, is being used to seed the stabilization fund, or are we using it to fund gaps? And then we're sort of going to work towards accumulating that. Can you can you clarify that?
Yeah, yeah. Good question. It's the latter. So essentially the 8.7 is what what is left as the stabilization reserve, the 16.1, essentially that bucket of funds was set in the forecast based on calculating cola and health benefits. And so it was the sum of those two, about $24 million. And so the as jonas said, we were aiming for something like 7.5% in terms of the leaving that amount in the stabilization reserve, we ended up leaving 4% of forecasted blt in the stabilization reserve. But the original number and the number, like the original number that was in that bucket, as compensation set aside, no longer has any connection to the purpose of the the contingency going forward. So it was just sort of used in balancing, and it supports expenses across the general fund.
Appreciate that. Thank you. So so you're you're basically you're budgeting that in now to pay for things that are in the budget that are program expenses. The implication, of course, will be that in the fall tau and then the spring tau, there will not be compensation set aside to be drawn for that. So whatever decision we're making now needs to fund the work that we're going to do over the course of the budget, and we're just doing it up front. That's right. Thank you. And then the last thing I have, my thing went up. My little screen went blank. So I can't pull it up in time. But I think I can remember, I want to say that the, the presentation for let's see here. Gosh, I missed it. You provided a snapshot, some samples of how how to translate the different fund balances. Yeah, I think that's a really good way for me to understand. I think that's an improvement from kind of what we saw in the previous budget books. I appreciate that it helps my staff kind of crosswalk how we get from a stock of funds to, you know, the use of funds. And then what's the what's the stock at the end of the period. So this is a basic accounting thing that I've been struggling with, and this gets us much closer. So I appreciate that. And then finally, I think retitling the sort of contingency broad buckets to say, reserve for future use with the sort of recognition that we're going to explicitly say what those uses are, is exactly what we need. I think you guys have been listening. So thank you. So that's all I have. Council president.
Thank you, counselor.
Green. Councilor. Kanal.
Thank you, council president. Thank you for the presentation. Thanks to councilor Green for saving me a lot of time, because there's a lot in there that I was going to say. And I think the compensation set aside piece is helpful to understand because I, I think we're not losing the other advantage that it gives, which is being a checkpoint on potential overtime usage. The way you're doing it. I just want to get that on the record. My question is about slide ten. Nope. Slide. The one with the position changes. Two questions. First, just clarifying. We're talking about the office of community based police accountability ocpa. Right. There's a bee in there. Just making sure on the left.
Yes.
Okay. Just making sure we get that acronym right. My questions are this the the table on the right includes the additions of those 40 positions, right. And these are positions that we basically already have either budgeted and not filled on the cpa side or budgeted and filled on the council side. Is that correct?
That's correct. Yes.
So are the position reductions proportional to the overall proportions of the city staff in terms of manager, supervisor and non supervisor, when you take out those positions that already exist.
I'll get back to you.
Okay. So I'm going to just say if the answer to that question is no, then what we're doing is once again cutting more of the rank and file than the managers and then adding 40 positions to the budget that already exist in practice makes that look more proportional. If, on the other hand, the answer is that it's still that it's proportional. After setting those aside, then that's better. But I also still have a concern there about the idea that we're not correcting for the over cuts we've had in years past on the rank and file where we've we've gotten our proportions out of out of whack. And so if we simply maintain those proportions in the cuts we have now, that's better than making it worse. And I do appreciate that, but it doesn't actually correct it and make it better. And I think we need to be talking about how we can bring that. Those two the ratio back in line. So and obviously if the 40 that already exists is that that's that would actually, I think, be making it slightly worse. It's not a huge number either way, in terms of this isn't like going from 5050 to 75, 25 or something massive like that, but it is just, I think something to, to look at. And I'm, I'm really appreciating the, the content being in here and having that available. I just wanted to understand. What the impact actually is on a day to day basis. And the other question I'd have in the future is if we can break down further between the manager and supervisor. Classification serieses series and the the classifications above that, because I think what you mean when you say manager supervisor here is everybody who has a supervisory role, including, for example, deputy directors, directors, dcas everybody, right?
That's right.
Yeah. Okay. But I think it is actually helpful to have a third category because I don't know necessarily that what we've been talking about as we haven't really had this conversation when we talk about management blow as to how much of it is actually about the manager supervisor series and how much of it is actually the upper management level. And so I'm not saying that there is an outcome to that, but I think that it might be helpful to disaggregate the data slightly further into a third category so we can have that conversation.
Yeah, we can definitely provide that for the proposed.
And we will excuse me, counselor. We will also have a another work session to kind of talk through span of control, where we'll talk through the details of that as well, because there are some nuances to that as well. We do have some classification titles. Then we also have working titles. So there's a difference in there that we want to kind of talk the city council through as it relates to the actual class titles that people have and the working titles that they're working with as well.
I appreciate both of those answers real quick. Is that is that normal in other cities? The degree to which we we differ on working titles and classification titles?
Normal is a very interesting topic.
Is that your experience?
That's an even better question. My experience is no, not to the degree that we have worked with from the standpoint of just working titles as an organization. But when you look at the form of government that we previously had, I can easily see how working titles became such a pronounced and profound thing for this organization because it was elevating people without necessarily touching money for individuals. So I totally understand how we got into the predicament that we're in.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you, councilor.
Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president, I think that I know the answer to this based on your conversation with councilor Green, but I just want to confirm the 16.1 million that is now not needed in compensation set aside and is going directly to bureaus. Does that mean that what would have needed to be covered in the past by compensation set aside, is included in the dark blue gap on the slide before the current service level gap?
Yes.
That's right. And okay, so we are not going to end up in a situation in the fall where we say costs have gone up through normal courses of business that would have been covered by compensation set aside, but those funds don't exist and weren't accounted for. That is accounted for in bureau expenses.
That's correct.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you so much, council president, this is part of a question on the blt reserve aspect as well. I understand how this is coming to be, and I appreciate that we're no longer budgeting compensation set aside separately long term. I definitely think this is a good idea, but for next year, I wonder if it makes sense to be setting up a reserve at the same time that the mayor has balanced his proposal with what is effectively a loan from the super harbor fund, and I'm a little bit concerned about that. So I'm curious to hear what you think about this overall and throwing this out here for my colleagues as well, to consider that if we should seed it with 1.7 million instead and undo the loan. But I mean, people can't all answer up here. But you can.
Thank you, councilor. That would certainly be up to council's discretion. I mean, I do want to be careful just with the language of the word loan, because it's not. I appreciate the point you're making. It is not set up formally as a capital loan. So I just want to make sure for the public to make that nuance. But point point under under. Understood. Right.
There's no interest on it, but we do have to pay it back later, correct?
Correct. We have a choice to to pay it back or not different than a loan, which would be sort of a mandated payback. So I think that's a fair comment. There are different pathways to solve for the gap. I think I'll just say from the seat I sit in recognizing that the comp set aside shift was kind of a one time opportunity that we have, and using that to seed what's not the full reserve, but at least part of the reserve that that philosophically made sense. There are certainly other trade offs that council could decide to to do, to do otherwise.
Okay. Yeah, I think I am concerned about this long term, just because I think we have seen what happens when we regularly take short term solutions. And then later in the following quarter, we are having to find more money elsewhere. So I think this is something we should seriously consider as a body if we want to do that long term. So just flagging that for my colleagues is something to consider. I'm not sure I have a perfect answer yet, but it's something I've been struggling with a little bit. I think that's it for me for now. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Morillo. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. I want to go back to the slide. The slide that that referenced taking pcf monies. And I just wanted to know, pcf money is currently all allocated in one way or another in various strategic priority and community grant pots. So can you tell me which existing strategic programs are being used to fund pmo and ground score?
I think we can speak to that in the ca presentation. Or if they don't have that talking point, we'll we'll get it in follow up. I don't have like the the strategic program number handy, but we can get it.
Okay. And the other thing I wanted to ask about is in terms of, I think some people would be surprised to see that there's general fund additions in this budget when we're subtracting. What are some of the major additions?
Yeah. Good question. The some of them are what would have otherwise been considered carryover. But because we didn't have any resources from the current year to carry over, they act as additions. So they're things that were unfinished in the current year. And we can provide the full list of things as, as follow up. A million of it is in response to the apologies if I get this name wrong. The storefront revitalization program that council passed a resolution on. 200,000 is downtown marketing. So there's a list of a few other things we can get the complete list, but those are some examples.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Novick councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president. I also really appreciate you both and your team for taking a lot of feedback and requests about having a standard, consistent way to look at high level information by program and reflecting it in this process. It's great that there's a section in the program offer document titled equity impact. I think that's great. It's on the second page of every program offer. And yeah, overall, I think the changes made for this, this year's process is making it easier for council and also to the public to see this information. My question is, I'm wondering if there's a way to get an overview or a list of the position descriptions and responsibilities of those vacant positions that are proposed to be eliminated because I, I am wondering if, if there are any positions that we really should have should be considering keeping and filling. For example, last year we eliminated the position for the black male achievement program in the office of equity. And in my opinion, we should have considered filling that. I'm concerned that we might be unintentionally making cuts to unfilled roles that could be really, really vital to reducing costs or require us to bring in consultants to fill in. So I'm wondering if we can see those details.
Yeah. And you'll you'll hear some of it. So, I mean, the process itself doesn't distinguish between filled and vacant, but as the bureaus come forward with their reductions and speak to you about what is being reduced, that they can speak to some of those, I can see what kind of detail we can get to council specifically, like on the full list of the 100, 103 vacant positions, but they are kind of embedded. It wasn't like we separately did a look at the vacant ones and filled ones. It was part of the whole part and parcel of the whole process. So you will hear more about them, but I can we can also try to get a little more detail.
Yeah, that would be great for that to be concrete detail rather than maybe it's brought up in conversations if possible. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane councilor Avalos.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: All right. Thank you. I heard your responses to councilor Novick. I have similar questions. You know, I see that like in the city administrator presentation, you're going to go a little deeper. But I think I want to just get high level on the pcf reallocation. I just want to understand why it appears that the use of pcf is a mechanism for backfilling broader general fund. And I'm not talking about the interest. The interest is a separate conversation. So can you just walk me through what authority you all believe you have to redirect or repurpose money that has been allocated in the cip is supposedly for programs in bts PBOT that we'll hear more about later. But what is the actual authority you believe you have to redirect things out of a cip?
Councilor I think it's more of a recommendation, not authority, to appropriate those dollars. It's just a mechanism to show council this is an option as you kind of review your budget overall.
But why do you think it's an option? That's my question. I get that it's your recommendation, but why do you believe you can even make a recommendation on money that is cip allocated?
Well, we can make recommendations on anything as it relates to the operational piece of the organization. Those pcf dollars are a part of the operational piece of the organization as it relates to making recommendations, how you could potentially feel any budget gap that the mayor was looking doing in his proposed budget. Council holds the authority just as well to. If you don't like that proposed option, you most likely can say, hey, that's not a direction we want to go.
That's unclear to me because I think that I don't believe that pcf is just allocating money. It has a sip. It has a voter mandated direction for how to use the dollars. So I, I don't understand your answer.
We can get legal interpretation on that as well and get that to council.
I would I would like that.
Okay.
I think ultimately, I think it's it just is really concerning to me that we continue to believe that we can just move money out of a cip into other uses. And this isn't just you. This is a conversation I'm having with all councilors all the time. But what I guess what I mean, if it's not obvious, it is my intention to take that money back. Do you have a plan for what's going to happen for if we claw that money back from those things that you allocated it towards?
I don't know necessarily. We have a plan. We would have to go back to the drawing board. It's like a change of priorities. We take from one bucket. We'll have to replace it from another bucket within the proposed budget. So if council is looking at potentially saying, hey, we don't want to use those funds, what we'll be looking at council to say, okay, what are those priorities or shifts that you want to make within the budget and your recommendation that we can remove those funds from another area to replace those funds for those pcf dollars?
Well, that's assuming that we want to replace them. I think that's my point. Yeah. So, you know, I don't I don't know the answer right now to whether I want to replenish the dollars that it has been, where it's being taken from. But I think it just concerns me that I don't know that like, what is the strategy around what are we funding and how we're using pcf dollars to do that? But also, I think this is a broader conversation we're going to have about the role of Portland solutions and pmo and shelters and all these other things. Based on the discussion we had yesterday with the county, which, you know, from my view, I didn't feel like I got good answers around like the theory of change for why we're making different decisions from the county, especially given the data. So I'm going to continue to harp on that. But I, I don't think that it is a satisfying answer to say that we just get to change that. I don't agree, so I'll just leave that there. I think there's some other questions that I have generally that we'll go into in the next couple of presentations, but I'll just flag early that I'm really concerned about some of the realignment suggestions. I'm concerned by a lot of dollars that seem to be removing workers and replacing them with consultants, or replacing them with managerial positions. So I'll just flag that as something that I want to get deeper into. As we get into those presentations, I'm trying to organize my thoughts based on presentation, so I kind of have them all jumbled in one, but I wanted to flag that that concerns me. And then lastly, I think in general, you know, something for us to keep talking about, you know, councilor Morillo brought it up around like if we're depending on all these one time pots, I get it. We're in a crisis. I understand that we have limited options. And yet, like, what are the hard decisions we're making structurally so that we're not just every year finding a new one time pot to fill operations, right? Like we need to make hard decisions about what are the services that we deliver. And I don't, I just feel like we keep saying that we're not trying to kick the can, and yet we're kicking the can even further. So I'll leave it at that for now. I'll have some more specific questions about realignment, but thank you for your time.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, president Dunphy, and thank you for this big picture on both jonas and ruth. It really is helpful. And you want the council to be really competent about the big picture. So it's necessary. I think you make the revenue struggle so real in this in the earlier graphics, clearly business license taxes and property taxes aren't keeping pace with our fixed costs. And so here we are. We hope that with the investments we did with the money that came on aye, Morillo from the feds, and we focused on issues that would help get confidence back, we're still here. And so that's our struggle. I hope that my colleagues continue to have a lens when we bring legislation. Will this inspire confidence in portlanders to invest in our economy or not? Because that's what we're seeing here, is the lagging of our business license taxes and our property taxes. So I think that makes it really clear. Real quick micro question. If we give the county money to the sobering center, do we have a voice at the table? And that's a question for the mayor and his team. I'm I'm burnt out on giving money to the county and then not having a voice at the table. So I'm always going to say that when we when we do such an exchange and what that agreements like. I'm uncomfortable and I may be a minority point of view on this body, on how high some of our fees are for the fees for the utilities that we're going to pass on to working class portlanders, especially when they're higher than inflationary data. I think that's a real concern for affordability, for working class portlanders. The city wide position changes. Like my colleagues, I think it's so important for us to understand that graphic, and I think we're all asking for more information. I've spouted off that. I think that our transition from the old form of government to this one, we haven't taken advantage of where I think we could be top heavy with the formation of the d, c, a s and the bureau leaders at the top. And so but but I want to really know if that's true. And so just more information would be helpful. I think what would be helpful if I saw the denominator of of represented non-represented. I don't think I see that. So percentages for me, when I used to focus on that in economics classes and such, I always, you always need to know the denominator. And I didn't sense that from this. So that would be helpful. Deferred maintenance. We all know that we've been haunted by that. We've been haunted by that since I've been here. I'm sure councilor Novick was haunted by it when he was here prior. And so I need to really understand the relationship between the contingency and reserve drawdowns and our deferred maintenance. I don't know, I think sometimes there is a direct relationship and sometimes there is not, but I don't think any of us want to be a part of the council that continues to do such transfers that feel good today. And I think I was in agreement with a couple other people on these comments, but I just wanted to reinforce that with my own lens. Thank you so much.
Thank you, councilor Ryan, councilor Clark, vice president Clark.
Thank you, council president, and I appreciate your comment, councilor Ryan, particularly when it comes to asset management, I have a very simple question, and I guess I need some assurance. I really appreciate the presentation, the high level presentation and talking about reserves. But I just need to know to be assured that you have scoured every reserve, every contingency fund to what we can use at the same time, preserving our bond rating, having enough money for contingencies. But I just need to hear you say that you have scoured these things because I'm concerned about how we fill the gap, the general fund gap. I just want to hear that from you.
Yeah. Thank you councilor. The question we've worked with the d. Cas and bureau directors and finance staff to look at every fund fairly systematically and assess any of those resources that might be available to deploy. And with understanding of those trade offs.
Thank you.
Okay. I think we're ready for the next part of our presentation.
Thanks. Thank you.
Actually, just councilor Novick. Is that a legacy? Legacy. Okay.
I'll go ahead and start as the presentation comes up, the office of the city administrator, and I'll go to the next slide for me, please. The office of the city administrator oversees day to day operations of the city. The broader c a portfolio runs central programs for the city as well. Budget proposals are designed to build the structure, capacity and systems needed to deliver excellent services in portland's new form of government, as no. Portland solutions is part of this portfolio as well, but will be covered in a separate presentation on may 12th. So the numbers you see today do not include Portland solutions. And some of this came up in the conversation yesterday, as this program is still looking at how they're going to meet their budget need with the services that they have to provide. There are 332 staff and 261.1 million in the proposed budget. Next slide. We have a broad portfolio. What you see here is how we are structured today and how we will build. The proposed budget includes three of our chief officer positions engagement, equity and sustainability. In addition to those bureaus and programs listed, as well as many other offices, Portland Portland solutions will be presented their budget separately, as I just recently said, and we'll go through that with more discussion. Next slide. This year, our focus is establishing the structure, the capacity and systems we need to deliver success across this organization. We also have made cuts to help address the city's financial challenges. At the same time, we are putting basic resources in place to run the city and lead the organizational change that is needed. We are also applying city values and working to appropriately resource teams, from sustainability to performance management, and to our central equity team. Next slide please. This is a similar this is similar to what you've seen already in the last work session and shows budgets and our service area with the largest several called out. You will note that the cfo funds are so large because they include a number of other funds such as the arts education and access fund. Also other bond interest and sinking fund. These are funds with a specific and established purpose. The rest of the work of the service area is a much smaller slice by comparison. Next slide please. Most of our programs are starting from a very small base. The numbers you see here reflect several reductions and several strategic additions. You'll see throughout the budget that the ca and the d.c. Office often include several smaller programs in their budget. In this case, the city administrator line includes the chief sustainability officer in their team, the performance office, and the office of the ca in the office of the a, c a, the d, cas and the equity and engagement officers are not accounted there. We'll walk you through the proposed changes in future slides. Next slide. The slide summarizes the csl plus additions, reductions and realignment. I will note that council will hear the term realignment used throughout these budget presentations. It's important to note that not every reference is tied to the core services realignment project. In many cases, realignment simply refers to the routine one time adjustments such as transfers or position changes made across bureaus or service areas to meet specific program needs. The core services realignment is a distinct, comprehensive effort and will try to clearly identify when items are part of that project. The additions you'll see include both staff and funding for city wide strategic planning. The cuts you'll see include positions, savings and risk management, reallocating cdo salary to non-general, fund divisions, contract reductions and moving the flood safety fee 5 million from the cfo to be recovered through utility rates. Again, we'll talk through specifics in the next few slides. Fte summary this table shows changes to fte for the entire ca office portfolio, including the cfo, but not Portland solutions. In this. There are a lot of movements in the service area, including realignments, again spelled out here in a moment. On the next slide, you'll hear more about the realignment project later in this work session. So we'll save some time for discussion there. But for now there is a slide that shows for the ca portfolio the number of fte before and after the realignments across the five areas. Procurement is the sixth area but is not listed as. We don't have dedicated procurement staff in the ca office. In our service area, we reduced five fte, added two ftes and then moved two into our service area and three people out of our service area. These moves were to balance the skill sets coverage across the topic areas. Ca office on the next slide. This slide shows a few strategic additions to my office, adding the assistant city administrator and chief of staff roles to the organization. These positions will help ensure that my office is stood up and staffed up adequately so that we can engage meaningfully with council, directly, engage with community, and strengthen strategic planning, and support organizational change management. The change also addresses a span of control challenge and increases my office ability to effectively lead and manage the operations of the city, ensuring that teams across the organization can be successful. Keeping in mind my current direct reports are around 13 right now. This office structure gets us closer to what we are seeing in cities of our size across the nation, and this is just what I've seen through best management practices. In my own work experience, we're building an infrastructure that was not present in the old form of government to set up. As for success moving forward? On the next slide, the strategy slide. This slide shows how we will make progress towards our strategic planning goals. This includes funding for a city wide, comprehensive strategic planning efforts and create strategy and change management lead position. And keep in mind this is pushing us to our first ever comprehensive strategic plan for our organization. This also realigns an existing position from city operations to the ca portfolio to focus on strategic asset management. And this is looking at our long term asset management and how we are doing with our deferred maintenance as well. On the next slide on climate action, this alignment adds two positions to support development of the city's climate action plan. These positions will support coordination with bureaus and service areas, development of implementation strategies, and tracking of progress towards our climate goals. The updated plan will translate portland's climate commitments for the new government structure. It also aligns with recommendations from the city auditor's office in the c40 cities climate action planning framework, providing clear actions, timelines, roles and funding considerations to support effective implementation, performance office, which I've been hearing a lot about and I've talked a lot about since joining the organization and last year's budget, the performance office manager was realigned to the city's administrator's office to begin a building a program. This adjustment realigns five positions and associated resources from the 311 program in city budget office to establish a centralized city performance office, bring together staffing, performing similar city wide work and service innovation and performance management. We are under. We are creating a framework to truly improve how we do business and how we use data to make informed decisions for our organization, and this work will help support bureaus and delivering more consistent and effective services throughout the city. Next slide please. In the city attorney's office, we see reductions, including three vacant or soon to be vacant ftes, including one chief deputy, city attorney, one deputy city attorney and one paralegal. The cuts will reduce capacity but retain all core operations. Office of government relations is taking a few steps to help reduce general fund spending. We are reducing the budget for temporary staffing and contracted lobbying support. We are discontinuing or reducing the internal relations program, international sorry relations program, which is managed by a single employee. The program manages portland's sister city relationships and coordinates visits for international delegations. We will look for ways to continue the essential functions of this program, but would likely not be able to continue at the same level that we have in years past. On the next slide, civic life independently from the realignment project, civic life is saving money through rent savings made possible by staffing cuts and previous years. The remainder of the cut is related to the engagement realignment, which we'll discuss separately. In closing. Overall, the intention behind this service area budget is to effectively and strategically lead the operations of the city. Thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you today. We look forward to answering any questions or discussions before we move into city operations and the realignment presentations that will be coming up next.
Thank you very much. City administrator councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: I'm realizing that I think the questions I have might be better suited for the realignment portion, so I'm happy to wait for that portion. Okay, thanks.
Councilor. Novick.
Thank you, mr. President. Mr. Lee, the 700 000 for expansion of the city administrator's office and the 600,000 for change management. Is that general fund or is it a mix? What does it consist of?
It's all general fund dollars.
Okay. I just have to say that I think that you can expect some pushback on on those things when we're making cuts to frontline services.
How about the money from. For which I think is desperately needed to fund people to help vivian satterfield write a new climate action plan? Is that general fund?
I believe some of that is piece of funds as well that is involved in that.
Okay. I mean, can we get back to us as to whether any of it is general fund? Because I I have to tell you that I mean, if any of it is general fund, that seems to be a better use of PCEF funds than some other things that have been suggested. Oh thank you.
Hi. Just to answer your question, elizabeth hill, interim business operations division manager the sustainability positions are all self funded.
Thank you. That is reassuring. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you. I'll just let me ask if. And please feel free to say this is better for the realignment, but my understanding is that the realignment would generally be adding to the centralized function numbers. And so I'm curious as equity going reducing in position if that is that a better conversation for the realignment. Yes, it is just for the record. Okay. Big picture. I'm comfortable conceptually with adding to the city administrator's office. I think we've talked about investments in democracy being important, important on this side and on the mayor's office. But good governance is broader than just the democratic side. It's also a capable administrator's office that's not dependent on the bureaus or the mayor's office for staffing. I also want to make sure that we're not talking about a net increase solely at the higher levels, but also moving and or offsetting. And I think councilor Koyama Lane budget proposal last year to move the vision zero lead up into the office is a good example of this performance office as well. I wanted to understand, is the proposed chief of staff role in e or executive assistant? Is it separate? And if it's separate, how does that differ from an a, c a?
It's different from a c a because it won't have all the bureaus or offices reporting to it. The chief of staff will have my staff that I have in my office, which includes my e and my two senior analyst roles reporting to them. This role is really to help in the coordination with the chief of staff's, with the council offices, along with the mayor's office, along with working with our labor groups as well, too, and having that constant communication and line of communication with the city administrator's office.
Okay. Thank you for that. Why? I understand moving cbo staff into performance. I, I imagine there is a performance function in cbo already. Is there a performance function in 311 that we'd be moving, or is it just position authority that's coming over?
I'll let jeff comment. Cut my mic. I'll let michelle come and talk up regarding the actual positions. That is in 311 right now. That will be kind of reallocated to her office.
Hi everyone. Michelle clinic north, manager of the city performance office, former manager of the 311 program. Thank you for the question. Councilor Kanal. The 311 program since its inception, had done a significant amount of work to help bureau city wide look at processes and try to improve how they deliver services. And we, through the performance office, are looking at using those same staff and elevating them to do additional work citywide based on the relationships and experience they have. Those three positions include two coordinators and one analyst who would help us build out the performance team.
Thanks. That makes sense and I appreciate the context there. With citywide strategy being conducted by, I guess, a chief strategy office. Will it be conducted there or is the intent to contract it out?
It's much bigger than just the strategic plan. The actual plan itself or portions of it will be contracted out for the facilitation of the work that will have to be done externally in the community, along with facilitating kind of the conversation. This role within the organization will help facilitate those conversations and management. Like a lot of times what a lot of organizations do, they create a beautiful document and that document goes nowhere. We don't want to be in that same predicament as other cities have been in. This role is really looking at how do we operationalize the strategic plan? How are we creating those dashboards and those linkages between the operations that are happening within the strategic plan and other priorities in the organization? And what is it? What is that alignment throughout the organization? How are we presenting this to the community, and how are we holding the community forums to actually talk about progress that we're seeing on our strategic plan? This is also internally in our organization as well of how we're having strategic sessions for ourselves to think through how we're moving our strategic plan forward as an organization. And what are those opportunities for growth. It's really having that person internally within the organization that is championing the strategic plan. Another component of that, which we have been struggling with as an organization with the change of government, is change management and really looking at how we're managing some of these projects citywide through a change management strategy, which would be quite frank and honest. We really haven't had a strategy as it relates to change management for our organization, and this individual will be looking at a lot of the realignment work that we're doing now, but looking at how we improve and get better with that realignment work that we're doing throughout the organization. What we've done a lot of in in this change management work as an organization is ask people to do their current job duties on top of manage the changes that need to happen in the, in the government. And we just have a capacity issue within our organization to do this work as thorough as it needs to be done.
Thanks for that. To the degree that this is about implementing a strategic plan, that makes sense to me. I think to the degree that we're talking about creating it, I'll just note that from January to about this time last year, we were told that a lot of the function of in work sessions like this, a lot of the function of the city council was to lead on the strategic planning process. So I'd like to have the conversation if there is a change in vision on that from the administration. I think this has already happened to some degree without a whole lot of conversation on the engagement side, which I think is properly a council function in our form of government and not an administrative one. But that's a broader conversation that we can do in the realignment. But I just that's helpful facilitation being contracted out, as I can understand that as it's not an ongoing, but the broader part of it being contracted out would be something I'd want to avoid. My last question is the international relations program at ogr being eliminated entirely, and when will we have the opportunity to. Is that. Yeah.
It's not being eliminated entirely. I think by code we're required to do certain things as it relates to the program itself. We're looking at internally. How do we manage that? Is it other resources that we need to add to ogr from the standpoint, is it things that we can ask additional staff to do? Those are the things that we're kind of doing an analysis on right now.
But the standalone position.
The standalone position will go away if council adopts the mayor's proposed budget.
Okay. I imagine that will be a topic of conversation because I will make sure it is.
Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.
Thank you, council president. Three kind of discreet questions. The first is under your city administrator office budget, you're asking for a chief of staff. I recall last year this council moved to remove the assistant city administrator position and replace it with a chief of staff. Help me understand what you have and what you need, because I think you have a chief of staff position in your office already.
No, I don't have a chief of staff. I have a senior advisor role in my office, not a chief of staff role in my office. When when council eliminated the a c a role within the organization, that position, that money went down to fund two roles within the city administrator's office from the analyst, senior advisor and the analyst role in our office. So it gives the city administrator administrator to staff in the actual c a office, not including the executive assistant.
So right now you have an analyst and a senior advisor, and you want to add on top of the senior advisor, a chief of staff, and an assistant city administrator.
The assistant city administrator would oversee all of the offices. Currently, right now, I have 13 direct reports. What the a c a would oversee is the office of sustainability, the office of equity, potentially communications, looking at the performance management office as well, all those chief roles that we have within our organization that are currently reporting to me.
So would chief of staff be a new position designation that we would be creating.
For the cas office? Yes.
Okay.
Not for the organization.
We have chiefs of staff elsewhere in the organization.
Yes.
Okay. I may have more questions there in the future on the performance office launch, we're moving five positions. What happens to the work that those positions are currently doing? Is that work moving with the positions, or is that work being distributed to other people within three, one, one and the city budget office? I think the answer we heard before from 311 didn't quite touch on the current work being done.
You know, I'll have to follow up on the kind of the current work that's being done by this office right now. From my understanding of where we are, that work is being redistributed amongst the people that are currently in the office currently, but we can kind of follow up with council with the details of that.
I think both 311 and the city budget office are places where this council has raised concern about not having enough capacity in the past. So I'd like to understand the program impacts to moving positions out of those out of those offices. We can get that in follow up.
Yes.
Okay. And then finally, the civic life reductions look like it's a cost savings because their rent in the Portland building will be going down. The city owns the Portland building. So that is not actually money off the books. That to me sounds like a transfer of who pays city civic life will not be paying for that. Somebody will be because those costs don't go away. Who is picking up the tab and is that accounted for in the budget, or is that something that's going to cause strain on another bureau's budget?
And currently, right now, since they're on the floor with water and sewer, that's who will be picking up those costs. They were paying the lease rates to the enterprise, who pay for the renovations of that floor.
Clear. In my mind, this looks like a $300,000 transfer from our general fund to ratepayers. Is that what we're doing here?
I don't know if it's that simple. As a transfer to the ratepayers. I'll have jonas is in still in the room to kind of talk through that piece of it.
I'm concerned, broadly, that as we try to figure out how to fund our general fund programs, which I want to be clear, are hugely critical. And I am not proposing that we cut deeper into those. But I'm concerned that we are making decisions that will drive up rates in other areas, not just here but in other spaces as well, and that we're not saying that out loud and having that be an intentional decision. We're kind of hiding it. And so I want to know if that's what is happening here.
Okay.
Sorry. So just on the specific on the civic life, move the there on the first floor, which is, is not the water floor. It's and the floor will become or those seats will become vacant. So that does mean that it would get sort of spread out throughout the enterprise through.
Rates paid for then by the bureau that owns the Portland building on the books, or is that distributed to all of the other tenants of the Portland building, or is that distributed to higher costs in our internal service costs for everybody?
Yeah, basically the latter. And it's there's sort of a lag in terms of how they reflect in rates, but that the overall vacancy rates in the Portland building do flow into rates for all kind of ratepayers, essentially in the city.
So, and I know $300,000 is very minor in our budget, but this means that we should expect that internal service rates next year, because of that lag will go up to account for this. I just we're calling this a cut for civic life. And this is where we budget as if these are independent entities. We need to figure out how to reduce our total budget right now. And we're not doing that. Is that accurate?
Yeah. Councilor. I think that's generally accurate. I think that pause on our end is just because of the way the costs flow through. It's a little bit difficult to make that, you know, if if this, then that in this budget cycle, fundamentally, you're right, our costs are not declining over the long term of ownership and operation of that building. In the context of this budget, in this fiscal year, we're pushing that's less that's less.
Direct distributing. We're pushing those costs to next year and distributing it across more bureaus.
Again, I think philosophically correct. There's also a lot of changes that happen to the inputs to that. And so, yes, I mean, I want to be clear, you are correct fundamentally that we're not reducing an overall net cost reduction. The way those costs get distributed through the system are just a lot more. Indirect than that, than that straight line relationship.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, council president.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney vice president Clark.
Thank you, council president. Mr. Lee, I just want to signal some concerns. I don't necessarily have any questions. I really appreciate the effort to to recognize that we're still moving forward into a new form of government. And we're missing a lot of pieces in in that. And we've also met with resistance. And I think that I'm very supportive of your change management role to pull those bureaus forward and to overcome that resistance. And I don't know that we've done a very good job of that. I think you mentioned that earlier, that we've been asking people to do two things at once. So I'm very interested in that as a best management practice as well. And I think on the strategic plan to councilor Kanal point, I mean, we've started we did start. We've never had one. It's kind of embarrassing that this this big city has never had a strategic plan. We're not like other cities. We're not like other organizations that have normal strategic plans. And then they have a strategy to implement that plan, and they have ways to measure those things. And we don't have any of that. And that's it's very embarrassing. So we have started actually with our retreat. And I think we're going to hopefully we build off of that and we start to identify strategies and ways to measure progress on those areas. So I'm very supportive of what you're trying to do and to moving us ahead. I do want to express my concern, though, about the government relations reductions. And again, I know people have used my term penny wise and pound foolish, but I'm worried about this, that this could be definitely fall into that category. I think we're already lean in that regard, and I definitely want more detail about what this really means. The contract for lobbying support. I think that's very important. It's strategic. I don't want to just play defense all the time at the state legislature. I want to be on the offense, and the league of Oregon cities is just beginning to have a conversation around revenue reform or property tax reform. And I think that's going to be very important that we have the resources we need to to move that conversation. But I don't want us to become just a defensive team. I want us to be an offensive team. So I'm going to dig into this. I'm really concerned about those cuts. And as far as international relations go, I'll want to know more about that as well. But I just want to put a stake in the ground that those are my two areas support for change management and what you're trying to do with strategic planning. But a real concern about government relations reductions. Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, president Dunphy. City administrator lee, it's an understatement to say you inherited an organization that's in major transition, and you've also only been here a short time. In fact, this is your first budget, which is an operational plan of our of our organization. This is your first one that you have an influence over. So I want to acknowledge that. And I think it's important for us to continue to hear your vision on what it looks like as you streamline services, as you look at especially that upper tier and how you take advantage of the fact that we haven't done that exercise yet of where there might be some clutter at the upper tier. And so I'm looking forward to hearing your vision. I also want to now just go into some direct specific questions. How does a performance office connect with the strategic planning office?
The performance office is really the measures and key key performance indicators we're using within our strategic plan. And that office is really tracking the things that we say we wanted to achieve as an organization, and the measurements that we're using to track those changes and outcomes. How are we doing overall in doing that and really building the backbone for the organization to have this? We haven't had this type of operation happening holistically for the organization. We had it in certain specific bureaus, but looking at the organization as a whole and figuring out what those key performance indicators are that are going to inform and engage us of how we're progressing as a government and as an operational organization. That's what those roles, that role and that office is supposed to do. It's supposed to work hand in hand with the strategic plan and the strategy work that we're doing. Those things have to be linked together for us to have a comprehensive model.
My history with trying to get this to be cultural so that data driven environment is not just up here and not just the indicators that you. It's like watching paint dry because they change slowly, but it's a sub indicators. It's the one closer to the ground. And so I think it's important that we make sure that we make this a bigger part of the culture if we're going to do it. I think there's a lot of talk about data driven, but there's very few operational strategies that work in big organizations. And so, you know, how we have in our legislation that economic impact section, which is often blank and it comes from which clearly bothers me. And it comes from prosper Portland. I think it's important that we do something with that within the economic impact. Like what? How do you measure success and then make it a standard practice that six months to a year to implementation? The enterprise leaders come and tell us what the indicators are in addition to the 3 or 4 big ones up here. So in other words, I'm excited about this clearly because I did it for a decade and it's really hard. But it started to work when we actually went into the schools. We had a councilor Teacher and a community provider all at the same table, and we looked at the data until they understood those data are people.
Exactly.
Behind every data, there's a person that's suffering, and our focus needs to be on them. And I think this city hasn't been customer service driven enough. And you can make data as a way to get that culture going. Thanks for listening to that. Bless you. My concern, I have a lot of concerns about dropping the international liaison position, no matter where it's located. To me, it's it's it's a big hit to our economy. I know there's a monster in chief and I don't like to talk about that guy much in Washington. And he's making it really hard to get passports. And god, please don't put your picture on it. But we have to make sure that we don't give up. And international travel, especially from the pacific rim, was a big part of our economic success, especially in the aughts. And the the ten spots. And so I think it's important that we don't give up there. And my experience with the one person that happens to be housed in government affairs is she does such a great job of stewarding those relationships. We're so blessed with so many volunteers in our sister city network that are dying to be helpful to us. And so I worry that we're not going to have anyone stewarding them. And as a person that has gone on a couple trips to kaohsiung, I see the advantage. In fact, I get frustrated they aren't doing more. I saw recently that the mayor of san francisco went to shanghai and seoul, and he came back with a signed agreements for cultural exchanges, signed agreements for business trade. We can't give up. We are one of our upshots for our economy is is that big, that little body of water between us and the pacific rim, especially. And I don't want us to be out of that ball game. And I don't trust that we can just rely on the state for this. I think it's something that has to connect between the city and the state. So I'm pushing back on that role. You say that there's going to be people doing shared responsibility on that. It's hard to have accountability when it's shared sometimes, which goes against everything I said earlier because it's supposed to be shared accountability with data. But my point is you need one person that really takes charge and is stewarding that work. So yeah, thanks for listening to that rant, I appreciate it. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president, and thank you for laying this out. Ca lee I see that there. It's clear to me there's reducing and eliminating. There's realigning and moving. So I that seems like it's a position that's already there and it's it's moving that somehow I don't know the difference. Is there a difference between realign and move.
Yes, there could be depending on how we're looking at it for this one. It's just really moving. I guess you're talking about the asset roll. If you're talking about the asset roll, it's moving that roll. That was just in one of our bureaus to the cas office, almost like we did the vision zero roll and and uplifting that work within the organization.
Okay. Thank you. And then where it says adding the positions, is it only the two positions, the a, c, a and the chief of staff for you? That's also that. Just want to clarify. That's adding to the general fund.
Yeah. And the strategy role.
And the strategy.
Okay. That's three roles and one role that's being moved from one bureau to the cio to uplift that role within the organization.
Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. And I'm noticing a pattern with the city attorney's office that I wanted to talk about. So last year we did cut, I believe, three fte from the city attorney's office. I'm looking to I think that's right. To save around 949,000. And then it was estimated to cost over 2.1 million. To replace that work with outside counsel. But this year's decision package proposes proposes having three fte less to save about 760 000, and says replacing that work would cost about 1.5 million. We don't have fy, we don't have outside counsel metrics for this current year, but we know those costs have been jumping and rising. I wanted to bring bring that part up because we're I'm seeing that pattern. I don't know if we can talk about it now.
They're coming up right now.
Aye, Morillo robert taylor, city attorney, thank you for the. Thank you for the question. Yes. Last year, the city attorney's office had reductions. This year, they're. The mayor has proposed reductions. We do utilize outside counsel. We can get you the reports on how much we're spending on that. It does fluctuate from year to year. So that's one issue. The other thing is when we propose the reductions. So we say we're going to eliminate a lawyer position that will reduce our capacity in the office. If we were going to replace that capacity with outside counsel, it will often cost more. So that's the sometimes you'll see that in our budget submissions. Just to give you an idea of, we're going to reduce the capacity by cutting our budget. If you were going to try to maintain that same capacity with outside counsel, it costs you more. We wouldn't necessarily need to always get outside counsel to fill in that capacity. It's really just a comparator. So you can see how the cost for our services compares to if we had to go outside to get it.
Thank you, mr. Taylor. I'd love to continue the conversation about what these impacts would look like and talk more about capacity.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Kanal.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thanks. I think most of what I was going to say was just covered in that last exchange. I'd forgotten to talk about the city attorney's office. And I think it's worth having this conversation not only to ensure that they have the capacity to do what they do, but we also need to be having the conversation about how we can ensure charter interpretation is being done adequately. And last year we had two proposals, neither of which actually I think one got voted on, I think, but the other did not. But I do want to have that conversation too. And this will probably involve some increased level of spending to get there. So just a conversation to have. I just wanted to to put a finer point on how many people who maybe don't always agree on everything, just talked about the importance of the international relations program. I actually was intending to look at. No. Councilor Clark too, there's many there's many folks who who touched on this, but I think it's worth noting that our sister city program does have a lot of volunteers that want to help make the city a better place. And I, I agree with that, but it's also under utilized broadly in terms of cultural exchange and economic exchange relative to some of the other cities that I've looked into on this. And sister cities are not the only part of, I think, a successful international relations program. When I was in tokyo, there is a bar there, which is a pdx taproom, and it's a local chef from Portland, and you walk in and there's like blazers and timbers and thorns stuff on the walls. They serve Portland beers there. And I got to tell you, I imagine that for someone who maybe, you know, we don't know every city and every other country, we might know some of the big ones, the new yorks and las of other countries, and to get other cities like Portland on the map in other countries. Those sorts of things help a lot. And I don't know that any in that that our city, it's not about the person and the role or even the role itself. But our broad approach to international relations, I think, is less expensive than it could be. Not not only on the on the cultural side, but the economic side. Tourism is huge. We need to be talking about the impacts of on canadian tourism in particular, which is our single biggest source of tourism income in Portland. This is, I think, something where there's a an important and underexplored part of the work that needs to be explored at a greater degree. And I think we should actually be not just talking about playing defense, but actually investing more in the idea of bringing in more international. I guess I would have said dollars, but whatever their currencies are. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor. Colleagues, I just want to note that it is currently 1110. We have two more full presentations, including the core services realignment to be done by 1230. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. Mr. City administrator, there's a question I forgot to ask you earlier with regard to change management, it's my understanding that the city has had a contract with consultants at something called nex strategies, who have been working on advising the city on. On, among other things, change management. And that's been $1 million contract. And I'm just wondering, have we gotten any value from that contract? Can you take advantage of what they've done on your change management work? Could that reduce the need for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of new money on change management?
I'm unaware of that contract. I'll have to look into that contract.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Novick councilor Ryan. Yeah.
Just to add on and another thing, I appreciate that councilor Kanal went a little deeper on the stuff I was trying to do highlights on, but I do think we didn't touch on something really important, and that is that our international airport is one of the big wins of this region of late. And for us, we have to align with that. And so people land in this beautiful airport, state of the art, and now we want more people to come to it that are from international destinations. That's my point. Like, I think it it's a good time to focus on this. And we need to find any economic driver we can at this time again, because we have such flat revenue coming into the city.
Thank you, councilor Ryan, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. Ca lee, I have a question. I think we there's about 17 or $18 million in the travel Portland fund. And as we're talking about, you know, our our ability to bring in resources because of because of it, I'm wondering, can we get travel Portland here to discuss some of the things that that they're doing because they're largely funded by a city pot and we never get a, a review or a presentation on what they've been doing with all those millions of dollars that we that we send over to their office.
Yes, we can make arrange for that to happen.
And the other issue is that the auditor had a report and they talked about how we were actually naming our economic development developments revolving fund, and that it didn't have its own line item. Have we corrected that yet?
Not sure. I'll have to ask jonas or ruth if if that's on their radar right now, they.
Could put that on their list of questions to make sure that that that is fully corrected, because the auditor found that as one of the recommendations in this latest audit for 2425.
Will do.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith, colleagues, because we are running behind. I'm going to give us our ten minute restroom break right now. We'll come back and we will dive into the city operations service area and then the core services alignment and hopefully be out of here by 1230. So please be back at 1125. I just want to share that. Thomas lannom. Was like.
Oh my god, this is you are the nicest. Part of the city unions. Yes.
Yeah. We're a bunch of about 800. Exactly.
Yeah. One of the biggest.
All right. Call us back to order now. We got seven folks here.
So just a programing note, folks. We have about an hour left of this. We are unfortunately running long and we're still supposed to hear both about city operations service area and the core services realignment. I do not believe we will be able to make it through both of those presentations. So we will be working to hopefully reschedule what we don't get to. So let's start welcome dc a tracy warren up to talk about city operations service area.
I'm just going to bring up my talking points. All right. Thank you, council president and good morning ish. We might be on our way to afternoon council and city administrator. Thank you for the opportunity to present the proposed budget for the city operations service area. I'm tracy warren, I'm the deputy city administrator for city operations. We are presenting this budget proposal during a particularly difficult fiscal moment that requires hard choices, shared sacrifices, and a clear focus on the city's long term stability. We recognize that behind these numbers are real impacts to our workforce. Employees who are facing uncertainty change, and in some cases, the potential loss of employment. The reality is not lost on us, and these decisions were not made lightly. This proposal reflects careful deliberation, effort to balance significant financial constraints while preserving the critical internal services that bureaus depend on every day to serve the community effectively. I appreciate the chance to walk through how this budget continues to support people, systems, and infrastructure that keep our city government functioning every day. City operations is largely behind the scenes, but our work is foundational. We support the workforce, facilities, fleet procurement, budgeting, customer service, and oversight systems that bureaus rely on to serve portlanders. We have a very short period of time for the city operations service area presentation, so I'm going to try to move through that quickly so that we can save the bulk of the time for the follow up presentation related to core services realignment. The majority of the reductions in services and costs are out of the realignment efforts. And so I hope that we can spend a good amount of time there. And while I'm leading the presentation for our service area, I do have all of our directors available to answer questions. But because we are trying to move quickly, I'm hoping we can save that for the question and answer session section. Next slide please. Oh, sorry. Back a slide. The proposed budget for the city operations service area includes 764.5 staff and 1.1 billion total budget. The service area includes both operational support functions and specialized programs. Our mission is straightforward provide reliable, effective administrative services that reduce risk, improve efficiency, and help over 7000 employees. Deliver services to the public. This is a high level view of the programs and services that are within city operations. Next slide. When developing our budget, we remain focused on delivering reliable operational support to bureaus by leaning into standardizing processes, tools and technology, avoiding legal and security and operational risks. This is a budget focused on stability, fiscal responsibility, and practical improvements based on the moment in time we're in. Next slide. The city operations budget reflects a mix of general fund, internal service funds, grants and legally restricted funds such as the fire, police and disability retirement fund. These figures were reflect both reductions from realignment of the core services and the city operations portfolio, as well as other adjustments in the mayor's proposed budget, which I'll walk you through in the following slides. Slide. We're going to start by focusing on the city operations dca office. The proposed budget is for 175.5 staff in 54 55.4 million. This budget includes internal realignments to strengthen policy analysis, legislative coordination, cross bureau, project management. These changes do not add new staffing. They reposition existing resources to better match current needs. Overall, we are shifting capacity towards enterprise coordination and execution. Next slide. I think it's important to hone in on the dca of operations office. The reason that I'm highlighting this is because it shows 175 staff. And the reason for that is because budgetarily all of the programs and offices roll up to the dca office's budget. So that includes the business operations section that includes communications. It includes pdx 311 procurement and grants, security, small donor elections, and then our newly formed data and privacy office. Next slide. This slide gives a high level overview of positions within the dca's office. You'll notice a reduction of six fte. This is within 311, which we will discuss in more detail a little later on. And 12 realignments that include both core service realignments, as well as the internal shifting of resources between offices within city operations to better match needs, as well as things moving outside of city operations. Next slide. This slide provides a summary of the dca office budget. This budget reflects the realignments and reductions, which we'll go over in more detail in the following slides, as well as the subsequent presentation. Next slide. This slide talks about a realignment to strengthen policy and project coordination within the dca office. This transfers a position from the bureau of human resources to the dca office. It's a general fund to general fund movement and does not create added expense. The position currently focuses on project and policy coordination within the bureau of human resources. I'm looking to elevate that to the dca office to provide support across the service area, versus a singular focus within human resources. Next slide. And this was discussed in the city administrator's presentation. But this action is to realign an analyst three to the city administrator's office for citywide asset management. I won't spend a lot of time there because I know the city administrator talked about his plans for that. Next slide. Pdx 311 remains the city's front door for many residents seeking nonemergency services. Their proposed budget is for 35 staff and $5.4 million. The subsequent slides I'm going to talk about the reductions plan for 311. Next slide. This proposal includes reduction of six positions, reducing hours from evening coverage to 7 a.m. To 6 p.m. Daily. The current hours of operations are 7 a.m. To 8 p.m. So this will reduce evening hours by two. What that means is that there will be less availability to take calls during those periods of time, and they would likely be shifted to boec to manage and dispatch. Next slide. What we're preserving are a single point of contact for city services. Seven day a week operations, multilingual and multi-channel access 24 over seven dispatching for road hazards and park safety issues, as well as we've worked to preserve the core 311 model while reducing costs. But service levels will be lower. Next slide please. For small donor elections, this budget includes a partial added funding of 450,000 for the small donor elections program. This preserves program operations through reduced resources, but may limit available matching funds for participating candidates. The program continues, but at a more constrained funding level. Next slide. Special appropriations proposal to reduce 658,000. These reductions are spread across multiple grants for external partners and community based programs. The impact would be lower funding to external organizations, reduced grant support in select areas, and no direct staffing reductions. When we approached our reductions in special appropriations, we looked at all of the grants that the city is offering under that program, and there really were no good places to cut. As in, there was no place that we could turn where there was not a need. So what we did is we applied an even reduction across the board for all of our available grants, while continuing all of our legally mandated required amounts. Next slide please. This slide goes over the special appropriations budget summary. So you can see from this slide there are reductions to the overall grants and then realignments as we discuss in the follow up realignment presentation grants is combining with procurement. And so they will be sharing staff. Next slide. The office of police accountability community based police accountability. So this budget funds the city's new police oversight system in alignment with charter requirements tied to the 5% of the police bureau's annual operational budget. Through this budget process, if there are changes made to the police bureau's operational budget, this will be changed to be comparative to the 5% that's required by charter. Next slide. Independent police review, which is also part of our oversight system, is staying unchanged. It will continue to be able to fulfill the city's requirement for independent investigations and meet our doj settlement obligations. Next slide. This budget begins the formation of a city wide data and privacy office focused on responsible data governance, privacy standards, enterprise policy coordination. Initial staffing will come through realigned positions while we continue to work with sponsoring counselors to evaluate options for realigning more staff to support the office. So the mayor's proposed budget includes the realignment of two staff. And then we are working on a proposal that will be shared with the full council for other options that potentially could be realigned to help support this office. Next slide. Now we're going to jump into slides regarding the bureaus that are outside of the realignment. So the bureau of fleet and facilities. It's a proposed budget of 141 staff, 271 million fleet and facilities is operationally critical. It maintains city buildings, manages vehicles, supports public safety assets and ensures regulatory compliance in relation to fleet and facilities activities. Next slide. This slide reflects the realignments occurring as part of the core service realignment, as well as reductions that we will talk about in follow up slides. This shows the bureau going from 146 fte to 141. Next slide. This slide shows an overview of the bureau of fleet and facilities budget. The bureau of fleet and facilities has a very small general fund. The rest of its funds come from the internal service funds, which is a model to pay for the services within fleet and facilities. So the total budget is 271 million. Next slide. Now we're going to jump into the proposed reductions within fleet and facilities. So the first reduction that we're looking at is a lease termination of space. We talked about this in our March 11th work session. What this does is it relocates allocated space to another area in the building, which allows for folks who are sitting in a subleased space to reduce costs. I know that there was a conversation in the last presentation related to this. It does shift the the cost to a rate bureau. I think the the challenge is when the Portland building began renovations, portions of the building were purchased by the water bureau and the bureau of environmental services. They did that through their own financing, which created an added cost for debt services repayment. So when we have folks who are in other bureaus residing on space that's allocated to those bureaus, we have to pay at the at the regular blended rate, plus the debt services recovery cost. So by allocating the space differently, the water bureau's obligation stays the same, but it reduces cost to the general fund. Next slide please. This reduces contracts and services by 611,000. It would reduce janitorial services in the downtown core. It would reduce security for a northwest building that has seen improved surroundings and is no longer needing the increased security level. And then it would reduce ems related contract spending and fleet. Next slide. This would reduce two positions at a 299 k savings. It would eliminate an os two and a welder position with minimal impacts to current services. The bureau of fleet and facilities has been working to adapt their workflows and processes. And so this is a reduction they feel they could take and still meet current service level demands. Next slide. What we're preserving compliance and inspections, debt service obligations, critical maintenance functions, long lead skilled trade vacancies. So for example, we've had in the past extremely high vacancy rates within our facilities operations teams. This allows for us to continue with programs that allow us to keep a pipeline of talent available to reduce those vacancies. We continue to have fleet readiness and essential services. We will reduce costs while protecting safety, compliance and mission critical operations. Next slide. Now we'll talk about the city budget office. The city budget office has a proposed staff of 15 and a $4.4 million budget. Next slide. This slide provides an overview of the budget office's budget. The budget reflects realignments within the city to better align the work with other departments. The next slide will show more information about the positions. Next slide. This provides a position summary. So the current service level has 18 positions. We are adding one position and realigning four positions. The work of these positions are responsible for performance related and will be shifting to the performance office, as well as to another department within community and economic development. So one position to community and economic development. This was previously discussed in the city administrator's proposal related to the realignments, but I'd like to add some additional information, which is my understanding is that the realignments of staff out of the city budget office would mostly take their work because it's comparably related to the performance office. There would be a few pieces that would need to be picked up, and that's what the additional staff that we added is for. Next slide. The city budget office remains focused on managing the annual budget process, coordinating financial policy with the city administrator and the chief financial officer, providing information and conducting analysis to support, to support decision making and to continue working a transparent city budgeting process. Next slide please. This slide talks about the fire and police disability and retirement budget. Those are all other funds. They are driven by the city's obligation for eligible public safety employees to receive pension and disability. The office or excuse me, the bureau has a budget of 354 million. Next slide. One staff within the fire and police disability and retirement bureau is being realigned as part of the technology realignment. Next slide. In closing, this budget reflects careful choices during a constrained fiscal year, with a focus on protecting core operations, reducing risk, practical improvements, and positioning city operations to better support the city as an enterprise. Thank you, and I welcome your questions.
Thank you, dc warren. Colleagues, we have about 42 minutes. I do not believe we're going to be able to get through to the presentation, even the presentation on core services realignment. Today, we're going to start with councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you, council president. Thanks for being here to answer our questions. I had a few questions about the. Well, I have one question on the dsa, dc overhead models, and then I have most of my questions on the core realignment. So hopefully we get to those at some point. It looks like there is a new model of dc charging interagency agreements from their offices to the bureaus in their service areas to pay for staffing in the dc offices. Can you share more about those generally, and is it being done in all the dc offices?
I'd have to defer to our city budget office.
Aye, Morillo thanks for the question. This is a little bit related to realignment, but I can answer at a high level the model that that we set up in this budget is to create sort of enterprise service teams within the service area offices. So we're going to have to relabel them. It's a little bit of a misnomer that they're called the dc offices. As tracy said when she began the presentation, it's labeled that, but it encompasses a lot of things that fall into that bucket in the service area. And so these enterprise service teams are going to be one of those things. The model that we set up is essentially a service area overhead model for each of those teams, which is a new structure within our kind of citywide cost allocation models, because not all of them are properly eligible essentially for general fund overhead under financial policy. Eventually, the hope is to not have those not have the money change funds via ia, but we were just time constrained in setting it up. And that's the quickest thing to do because we have all those structures in place already. So they are it is the case in each service area that there is one of those. It's not just for the the dc office, it's for the service area, the, the, all of the staff and materials and services that serve each service area. And the the ia was just a convenient budgetary mechanism to get it there given our time constraints.
Okay, so for clarity, this isn't creating new cost to bureaus that are being charged. This is realignment of staff that already exist within different spaces. Is that what you're saying?
Yes. I mean, I think it depends on the specific packages that are in, in each of those. But generally speaking, yeah, it's just putting putting staff into those buckets and then and then charging it out, allocating those costs out.
Okay. I think that this question might have some to do with realignment, but I think it's also relevant to both of you up here. So I'm going to ask it now, because I don't know when we're going to get a chance to do it. On Monday, we had a number of internal job openings for nonunion hr positions that were posted that duplicate the work of formerly represented staff that have been since cut through realignments. My understanding is that staff are being are set up to be laid off, have been encouraged to apply for these new non rep positions that duplicate their work. Why is the realignment dissolving union positions and recreating them without representation?
I think we would need to come back with more details to be able to provide you a full breakdown. My understanding of what has been advertised are things that are needed to provide basic services to get us started in the implementation of the core realignment. An example of where you might see a switch from a position being represented to non represented in human resources is that as we work through the realignment process, we recognized that there were positions that were classified differently doing similar or same work. So for example, we have human resource analyst ones who provide medical leave administration and ADA support. We have folks who are doing that same work within bureaus who are classified as administrative specialist threes. So as we're realigning them to move into the bureau of human resources, we want to make sure that folks are compensated equitably and are in comparable classifications for the work being performed.
Okay. Okay. I think that's all for now. I will hold off for more realignment questions later. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Yeah, I'm in the same boat of having some questions about realignment that it seems we might not be able to get to just hearing that exchange there. I, you know, I, and I, like I said earlier, just feeling concerned on a, a reliance what it appears to be a reliance on consultants while also cutting a bunch of positions. I'm very well aware and agree that we need change management support. I know that that is necessary as we're changing our form of government, but some of the decisions about, you know, what the discussion you just had around positions that are becoming nonunion represented, that seem to be similar. And then just overall feeling like the strategy is to reduce a lot of frontline staffing, but also investing heavily in organizational development and change management consulting. So it just feels when we're looking big picture at the long term, right? And we say things like penny wise pound foolish, right? That to me is that we are cutting dependable city staff to replace them with consultants. That's just how I view it. That's how I'm seeing it. So again, we can talk more about that later. I'll save some of those questions for there. But let me end by asking, where is the mayor? I mean, genuinely, is he not planning on being here? Because I don't understand how this is the mayor's budget, and he is expecting staff and the city administrator to answer for these decisions that are made, many of which are values based, are clearly strategy in how he sees the operations of the city that he's put in this budget. And he's not here to answer to those. So where is the mayor? Has he shared why he's not coming? Is there any plan for him to be at these work sessions? And if not, I would like to request that.
Yes, he will be attending these work sessions.
So he's just not here for a scheduling conflict or like just in general.
Can't answer that question.
Okay. But he it is intended for him to be at all of the, the future ones.
I don't know from a scheduling perspective, he will be on all of them, but he will attend work sessions related to budget.
Okay. Well, just wanted to state that on the record that I think it's important that the mayor be here to answer to his own budget, that it not be on your shoulders. Because again, this is his vision and values for how we're supposed to operate the city. And I want the questions to be answered by him. So I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Avalos, councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thanks.
I'm looking in the fleet and facilities and maintenance and repair page 272 of the budget. Generally, it's looks like it's floated in the external revenues. And around the 2 to 3 million. Last year it bumped up to 42 million. This year it's less than 1 million, which generally I can put together based on what's written in the content of that page. But I'm sensing a trend here that many of the narratives are not really getting to what the numbers are telling us. And so can you help me understand? And I what it is that is going in the into that in the significant changes and. What that jump from 32 grand total in 2024, 5 to 84. Now to 75. What that what we're signaling there that would be helpful.
Hello. Aaron beck with business operations. And I believe you're what you're seeing there is the impact of the cutter garage project, where we have the bump up in the revenues for the debt sale that we're anticipating.
Okay. Got it. I think that. To classify that as an operating fund is sending an incorrect narrative. And I look to the cbo's office for once again, just like we've got to do a better job of, because I had a feeling that was exactly your answer. And. Because I cannot make a rational decision when in 2425, the operating funds, the operating fund city fleet operating fund was 2.6 million. The next year it goes to 41 million, and this year it's 820 000, meaning there's no way to do apples to apples, oranges to. Oranges. When that kind of difference happens in the way we lump things together. So I want to highlight that mostly to nip it right now before we go a lot further on that, if there are things that in your budget that are going to have broad changes like that, I think that our categorization and how we use it would be more helpful. Similarly, I could point to the very next page 274 in new and replacement acquisitions, we go from 23 in 2023, 675,000 in 2024, 1,000,000 in 2025, 17,000,000 in 2026, 11 million. I am sure there are good explanations behind that. I just think that categorizing them as operating funds doesn't. It leads us to question. It leads me to go, what is happening here? When I bet one sentence within the description could probably solve that question, but I appreciate that clarity and, and just the benefit of being first up there. So I got you. Now I want to move a little bit into the budget office. I have made the point now through two budget processes about the size of the central budget office. I'm noting that you've identified 15 fte as I go through, and I've been going through all of the other bureaus, and I'm trying to find how many budget and finance people do they have. Now, I'll just tell you, that is not something that really flies off the pages, the way our documents are written, given that if I go to any sub group program offer, it won't tell me how many employees are in an area. So my question from last year remains how many bureaus or sub bureaus have a larger budget and finance office than the central budget office?
We do have rough numbers that director levine could provide for. How many finance staff are in bureaus, I would add, and I was going to talk about this in the realignment presentation, but the city budget office and the budget and finance function was originally part of the core service realignment. We paused that work so that we could get through budget development and make sure that they could, you know, support this process. But there is a need to pick that back up. And they will continue to look at ways to collaborate and provide better support across the city.
Okay.
But I will invite ruth up if she wants to give that rough number.
Thanks.
So just an answer to the direct question. There are 72. We we did go through the process of identifying, you know, which positions currently do this work. There are 72 budget positions citywide, including the city budget office. I don't off the top of my head, know the numbers in each of the bureaus, but we could get that for you.
But my question was more about making the point here. So I given the answer that tracy just gave. This is similar to how you approached the realignment with hr, which was we have some that we're going to do, then hr is going to happen at a different point. You're identifying that later in the upcoming fiscal year, more budget will budget teams will happen that way. The reason I'm bringing up, mr. Administrator, is I think that you should ask for the support from the council to really strengthen the centralized budget functions and the centralized finance functions to ensure that the bureaus and the staff who work on those functions within the bureaus understand that they do so as a customer service to that bureau, and that their real true bosses, if you will, are our central budget office and our central finance office, because I think that part of our apparatus, in the old form of government, was always subdued. And we are we are decades into them playing second fiddle to who should have been second fiddle. And so I think I wanted to highlight that for you. And this is an area where investment will be worth our time. Now, I waited given the last presentation, and this kind of goes to both presentations because I wasn't really sure where it was going when I listened to some of the services that are coming out of central, excuse me, city operations. And then I also listen to the city administrators. I'll tell you, I'm still a little bit concerned about the operations that I see come out of civic life. So as I read the neighborhood outreach and support document. It says that they're going to revisit and go through the, the, the operating guidance, which I think in parlance would be the only standards. It also says that they are going to put out a request for proposal for people who run the coalitions. I want to highlight that as something I've now been hearing from the neighborhood coalitions, the neighborhood associations. Not once has that director ever come and said, this is what we plan to do. So I find that abrupt, and it reeks of the old war that existed in this bureau, which was a war against neighborhood associations. So I offer this up. I'm damn close to just proposing an amendment to pull this entire program off her out and put it somewhere else, because something tells me the office of civic life has an ax to grind here, and that if we're going to protect the neighborhoods, we have to take drastic action. But I want to offer that up to the both of you, because I see some alignment between both cas office and city operations, d, c a and frankly, the the 311 operations, I think there is a place in which some really good stuff can happen, but I also think that the neighborhood associations could easily work for council ops. And so I'm really trying to get a sense for what is the culture that exists in civic life, and why has this been such a surprise that, frankly, has members of our communities hair on fire and we've had no briefings on it. So I'm prefacing what what could be a fairly drastic amendment to protect the neighborhood coalitions and neighborhood associations. But I have a feeling just by raising it, that the three of us and others can have a conversation about how to maybe nip this real fast and get that stuff out of this budget document. Thanks, mr. President.
Thank you, counselor Zimmerman. Counselor Green.
Thank you, mr. President. Thank you, dc a warren, for the presentation. I'm going to kind of start back at the small donor election program offer. I know we're in a tight budget year, and it's difficult to find the money to fully fund that program, given that we're laying staff off and all this. And I just, I just need to I need to raise this up for my colleagues that when we when we do adopt budgets that cut the small donor elections program, it privileges the incumbents privileges those of us who've already been elected. It's much harder to beat an incumbent if you don't have name recognition. And so that's why the. That's why those dollars exist. And so I say that at my own risk. I mean, if someone want to challenge me for my seat, it'd be much harder for them to do it if we continue to whittle away at this program. And last year, we did adopt a budget that beefed that up a little bit. And so I'll be looking for opportunities to find something here that that does that because I think it's unfair. I think it pulls the ladder up. And I know that's not your intention, but that is the practical impact for those who pay attention. So I'll be looking at that. The other question I have is actually I'm going to the weeds a little bit, so forgive me, but it is about the internal service fund and it is about the line items in the budget for internal materials and services, because I suspect that the budget line items are where you would account for the internal service fund rates. But, but that's not all they do. Is that true?
That is true. But I'm going to look behind me to get the. Yeah, I with me. Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yes. Aaron boec business operations. Yeah. When when the bureau when you see in the internal materials and services part of the budget, you're seeing the total cost of the internal service funds to deliver those services to the bureaus. And so what you're seeing is a combination of rates and the units of services. So that and those are the rates that we've developed for the services that we anticipate them or to provide them during the fiscal year. Plus, we're also including estimates for variable services. Those could be things like fuel in the case of fleet. So it's the whole package really that the bureau needs to budget for our services.
Yeah, thank you for that. I guess I ask this question because I I've been thinking about this for a while because I know it's an internal rates fund model. Do we have do we have that rates fund formula methodology posted anywhere for the public?
Well, all of the individual funds have their own rate methodologies that we include in our website to describe how we're calculating each one of those rates. So it's the methodologies are actually kept by bishops, but the actual explanation of that is on our website.
Okay. That's helpful. I think for any, any entity that that has a rate methodology for funding its work, I think the best practice is to, is to publish a very clean model with data. That's this data is already publicly available, right? So so that way when folks kind of look, because I, I'm going to this place because I'll give you an example. If I'm a member of the public and I'm reading the fire police disability and retirement fund item, and I'm not picking on the work that that a very important charter function of our city does, but the internal materials and services line item is $65 million for this proposed budget. And I know why I'm going to get there, but it goes from 40 million and it goes to 66. And that's actually just for the sworn pers contribution, largely, but it's not the same dollar amount for the sworn sworn pers contribution. So if you didn't really know that nuance and you're like, well, the I am, this is all just internal rate services. You would think that there's a rate methodology that is somehow lumping a lot onto fprfpdr in a way that it doesn't elsewhere. And so does my question or sort of statement make sense to you.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so basically when you look at the internal materials and services, it's not just fleet facilities bts risk management. There's a whole world of bureau referred to as bureau to bureau transactions that are billing for very specific, specific things. And that's what your, for example, is.
Thank you. And that's why I asked that question originally is, you know, is, is just a one for one on the internal service fund or is it more than just the. And it sounds like it's more than just the internal service fund.
Much, much more.
Okay. That's important because when we talk about bureaus that are funded by the internal service fund and not so much general fund, it does eventually hit general fund because, you know, my office, for instance, has an ims line item that funds my part in the broader cost to fleet and facilities and all the rest. And so it's just an indirect general fund fund. It might also be an indirect non-general fund funding source. But the point being is it just needs to be really, really transparent how these dollars are flowing together and how that methodology is proposed, because it can always do different methodologies. We might want to have a conversation as we approach, you know, dc area in the work that we're doing on our financial stabilization work is thinking about, is there a strategy to decouple that and think about other ways to pay for the stuff that are the large fixed costs associated? You know, the Portland building is a good example. That was a very expensive project. It's driving a lot of this isf, I imagine. And so when we think about capital strategy that's related to our asset management strategy, that's related to our get well health plan, I think that that conversation should happen. And I'm not proposing that we do it now, but I just it's hard to read these documents and then think about that monetary transfer through that service fund in the back of my head without sort of daylighting it a little bit.
Thank you, councilor Green. I agree. I think there's an opportunity there to review for sure.
Thank you, I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me dig in deep there. And I understand that the sworn pers it's just something that we have to do. It is part of law. It's part of part of our charter reform. Okay. I want to go back to, I think one of my colleagues picked this up a little bit, was there's a line of questioning about the core services realignment. And there was also a line of questioning about the use of consultants. And so as we've gone through the hr realignment, have we relied upon consultants for that rather than sort of in-house staff?
So when the project first got started, we did use a contract. And that is the contract that councilor Novick was speaking to. That is a broad umbrella contract that has done different activities across the city. And we'll follow up with councilor Novick office on that. But they did do a portion of work at the start of the realignment to assess work with bureau directors, folks who are performing the work and identify where there were key opportunities for change and realignment. So they developed an initial analysis, and then they did some initial work on. Subgroups and work groups to bring staff who are performing that work to kind of dive into those different functional areas for human resources, I.t. And procurement. That ended up. Gosh, I don't know, several months ago, last year and all of the work that has led us to this point has been done by myself, by my senior advisor, haley blonsky, and then the bureau directors. So we've really been lifting this project internally since that initial analysis.
Thank you for that. And was the scope of work for that contract? Did it include sort of direct engagement with those line staff, interviews with those line staff and those sort of those who might be affected in this strategy? Or was it more disconnected high level? We're just going to give you our first pass, because I think what I want to know is, did we ask them to do direct engagement? Did they do the direct engagement? Did we follow up on that.
There there was some direct engagement, but you're talking about a footprint of roughly 4 to 500 employees. So there was no way to do direct engagement with all of those folks through independent interviews. So they they did do some of that. And then we did some direct engagement through subgroups where we asked for bureaus to identify employees, to sit on these work groups, to inform how we would structure the process moving forward. I would say that since that time, most of our efforts have been on doing eternal internal analysis of the work through managers, and then the next layer of work that we're going to be doing is direct engagement with staff as part of the service level agreement developments. Before we move into the new structure.
Okay. I appreciate those answers. Sounds like there's more work going on. I just wanted to flag that, you know, if you're the ones being affected by this conversations, when when there's this outside consultancy that's making decisions about your job, about your job and not with you, it hurts pretty bad.
Absolutely.
Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Green. Colleagues, we have 15 minutes left for more people in the queue. My team is going to work with the budget office to find a time to reschedule the conversation about core services realignment at one of our other upcoming work sessions. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I'll just, without repeating it, agree with councilor Zimmerman's point about the central budget office, councilor Greene's points about small donor elections, and both councilor Novick and greene bringing up the next contract. I'd love information on that. I think enough of us have talked about contracts that are paying people to think for us, that I think the whole council might benefit from that. On staffing, you said there were no staffing changes, but I also know that ocpa is adding 14 positions on paper to, you know, allow for that hiring. Does that mean that there's a net of zero because 14 other positions are going away? Or is it actually 14 positions separate from a net of zero? Is that.
My understanding is for the cbp or the oc, p a so the office of police accountability is that there's 20 positions in the budget as placeholders. There is one position filled on a limited term basis. And then there is a director that they are recruiting for. Once the director is hired, the director would need to develop a budget for spending within their office that would then come back to council.
Right. But you they've already had six positions authorized. This would be adding 14 authorizations to get to the 20.
That's correct.
And so my question is, across your service area, you led off by saying there were there were no there was no net change in staffing. Does that mean that 14 other positions were cut somewhere across the rest of the service area?
No. That may have been a misspeak from my end. So the c p the cpa ocpa excuse me. I keep getting these acronyms confused. The ocpa is having placeholders for staff so that when a director. When a director is hired, they can. Then they can then hire. That is not increased across the city operations. And they are not. They are in their own budget, if that makes sense.
Okay.
I, I'll just make a comment and then I'll ask the other question. The comment is I want to have some information on the other buildings that we rent. You mentioned one in northwest for city employees. I know there's a couple in northeast as well. And as we look, while it's important for us to have a presence around the city, obviously fire stations, police stations, things like that, the rental, I want to look at that and where and get more information on that because especially to talk about what councilor Pirtle-guiney was talking about, if there's space being vacated by bureaus within the Portland building, might be a good opportunity as as leases expire to bring people back in-house and avoid that general fund impact. The indirect one. My questions are on fpdr. So the Portland central city task force made recommendations in August 2025. Strengthening portland's future. Item 14 was on fpdr. The proposal is to begin a phase transition from pay as you go funding towards pre-funding to the extent feasible, and I just want to note that this is something that could prevent a line item that is currently one third of the city's property tax obligation from growing to over 40% in the next decade, without making any changes to benefits that are guaranteed to the retirees. Is this something that the service area is interested in? In principle, I understand there's a money issue to pre-fund right now, but in terms of setting up the structures, is this something that that there's been a conversation about and do you as dca support exploring this?
I'd ask for sam hutchinson, the director, to come up. I know that he works closely with the board that manages the use and gives direction for their bureau. And so, sam.
There we go.
There has been discussion. I think we've talked about it before. I'm sam hutchinson, bureau director for fire, police disability and retirement. We've talked about it before. The scope is the board authority does not include changing the funding plan, because their job is to make sure that the plan and the fund are being operated correctly and within the scope of that board. So there has been some discussion, but they do not have any authority to take any action on that. You have heard before that some of the people on the board would be willing to participate in any of the exploratory options for what goes forward, but it's not up to the board to initiate that action. It's been the our concerned citizen has been at the board meeting several times, and there's been a lot of discussions, but the board can't do it because the only people that really can initiate that has to come from council, especially if there's a charter change. And again, the board is willing to participate on that, as well as my staff providing some expertise and information.
Yeah, I appreciate that clarity, and I think the distinction is important here. I was more asking if in terms of the higher level, we all know that if the administration were to come out against a council proposal, that makes it a lot harder for it to happen. It's happened several times. Likely to happen, maybe even this week. And so I want to just see if there's high level administrative buy in for exploring something that could prevent our. And by the way, it's not just one concerned citizen anymore. This is now Portland metro chamber. The central city task force is a governor, you know, convene that. These are not people who necessarily align politically on on everything with each other, who are exploring. How do we find a way to save tax dollars and create generational equity? So is there high level meaning d.c. City administrator buy in, in exploring? This is what I'm asking.
I would just answer. I'm always open and interested in considering any opportunity that helps us to be more efficient and effective and saves money. So it.
Great, thanks. And then I'll just ask a rhetorical question and then pass it along, which is I am still not clear and I'd love to know where in the charter or city code. It says that ipr is a part of the oversight system established under charter 210, which is still being used in the mayor's proposed to fund it when it is actually. The vestiges of the system being replaced by the oversight system. Thanks. Council president.
Councilor Kanal councilor Pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I am looking at the reduction in operating hours at 311, and I want to understand the program impact to that. Do we receive do we do you know do you have data around when we receive maximum call volume? And if those are the hours when we should be reducing to have the least impact on portlanders, or was that chosen for financial reasons and is actually perhaps not the right time in terms of impact for providing service to portlanders to cut back hours?
Thank you, councilor. I appreciate the question. I'm going to turn it over to betsy, to. Aye, Morillo betsy studstill.
I am interim program manager. And yes, there is definitely data on the call volume. It is peak before 6 p.m. That's true seasonally. So we have information I can share too, in terms of like charts and all of the records of this, so that you can understand kind of why that is still technically the best place. If we are going to cut hours, it is the fewest people impacted. It is, however, a unique space in the community because there is not anyone else. So there's boec and 911, but actually 211 is now closed after 6 p.m. And also on weekends. So for us to decrease our hours, it is still going to hit vulnerable persons pretty significantly, but at a lower volume. So that's kind of where the trade off was.
Are the calls consistent in terms of type of call, or should we know about a disparate impact on one type of call versus another? By choosing those evening hours.
I would say that the calls that come in are still consistent across the day, not like dependent upon the hour. It's just that more people are going to call for things that they know they can only reach the government for before 5 p.m.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. I am nothing else. On 311 okay. But similar in that I want to understand program impact the data and privacy office transfer of positions from said. Is there a program impact in what we are already doing from that, or are they bringing the work with them? What happens there?
My understanding is they're going to be bringing the work with them because their work currently is mostly focused on data governance.
Okay. And then finally, can you help me understand what the 18 people in fire and police disability and retirement do? We have one position coming out for realignment? You didn't share what that position does. What we're realigning there. And that's just an area that we haven't talked about much in terms of what our staff doing. And it's notable to me that they are not taking any reductions at all.
Yeah. And they do they they manage the the system. So the disability and retirement system, the one realignment I'll speak to, and then I'll ask sam to come back up and give you a little bit of an overview. But the one realignment is for business systems analyst, I believe, who helps with their their system. And so it would still be providing support to fpd. And it just would be doing it from a centralized reporting structure.
So is that part of the realignment.
That is. That's correct. And then, sam, could you give. A brief overview of.
Staff who support the system? But it stands out to me when over half of the offices within city operations are taking cuts, that this is one where it's a war and you chose not to take any cuts. I don't know what was in the.
I'll give.
You some back.
Just one minute. So I would add that that has to do with the funding type and the control over that particular budget, which is the the board governs how they are resourced. And then we present that to council.
So are all resources internal and taken from the specific portion of the property tax that is allocated to fire and police disability and retirement.
It is it is completely funded through the charter tax obligation.
I don't need to go into other details then. Thank you. I will just note that there's a lot in here on realignment. I know we're not going to get to talk about that today. When we do get to that, I have some questions about how some of the decisions were made around who was moved and who wasn't that, I think get back to questions that some of my colleagues have asked about the inclusion of voices from frontline staff. I have heard, in a few cases, conversations about somebody being labeled as hr or it or whatever else is in the realignment position, but that what they actually do on the ground is functionally different from what you might consider a core service. And so I'd like to understand, as we move through these budgets. How the decisions were made to move positions and how the decisions were made at times to keep positions, and whether our frontline staff who are doing the work were involved in that or not. I can hold on that until we talk about realignment, but because there were so many positions moving around in your section, I just wanted to flag that here as well.
Absolutely. Thank you. That's very helpful. As we prepare to come back to you.
Thank you, council president.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Ryan.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Yes, thank you, president Dunphy, and thank you, tracy, for your presentation. You move through slides really fast. I just have to say.
I was trying to get to both. I'm sorry.
No, it's it's a skill set. I realize you're in a hot seat, and I want to call that out. Leadership has great responsibility, and you made it clear that we're talking about people's jobs in an environment in flat and declining revenue from our bread and butter sources. So this is really hard. And so thanks for naming that I had. I loved the questions about 311, I had almost all the same questions. And it makes me happy to serve with the council member pirtle-guiney in district two, but I still want to get out a little bit more. I did a sit along last week at 911 boec, and they made it really clear that activity gets busier late afternoon, early evening, and I experienced that as I was leaving at 4:00. I, I didn't want to leave because it was just so riveting. My point is, do we have data that goes on over the last three years on this? So I was going to ask, is there a heat map? Is there impact map about when we receive calls? And is some of the reason. Aye, Morillo some of the reason why perhaps the calls go down at six is because they assume that we're not open. And has there been a trend, as people expected, maybe to be open because, you know, Portland wants they want portlanders want someone to pick up the phone and they want someone to listen to them. And three, one, one has that space in a way that the boec 901 people do not.
Yeah. So thank you for the question. There is absolutely data in terms of the relationship between our open hours and the impact and benefit that boec has from us being open until 8 p.m. Absolutely. That was the original decision when we first opened. Evenings was actually to match where they were busiest. The ratio is still much smaller, so if we are going to need to back out of time and again, I just want to make sure that the relationship between us cutting hours is because of staff and not having enough capacity to fit those hours.
But has there been a trend since this has started where maybe there are more calls after 5:00, as people realize that we're actually open?
Yes, but very small. So I can provide you also with.
That could.
Be on us. We're not promoting that enough. But anyway, I just had to say that I, I'm going to keep picking apart this one a little bit. Yeah. Small donor office. What is the generous public funds ceiling for a council candidate each cycle? Susan I forget, is it 125 per candidate per campaign? There she is.
She's here.
What is the ceiling for which I'm sorry. Susan. Small donor elections director. What is the candidate ceiling? For which office?
Yeah. So each candidate has a ceiling, I assume per per election cycle. Not per fiscal year. What is that ceiling.
For, mayor? It is 750 000 for auditor rede.
The gift from the match, from the public.
Matching from the public. Yeah.
Not total. Okay.
Correct for auditor is 5000. And then for council it is divided into three tiers depending on how many contributions from unique portlanders they've collected. If they've collected 250 contributions from Portland donors, it's 100,750 is 200,000 and 1250 opens up 300,000.
So a candidate can receive up to 300 000 per election cycle.
And for.
Council council members, okay, that's higher than I thought, but thank you. And then since this is dormant for the most part, from little into November, all the way through June, it'll be important to see like if a candidate actually hits that ceiling, which is higher than I assumed it was. And I apologize for not tracking this. It's changed quite a bit, and I participated in it three times, and it changes every time. Then we'd have a way to look at the data differently, because right now it looks like it's for 50 k from July 1st through early November.
I, let's see, oh 450 0000. That is the additional funding over the $1.3 million of ongoing funding.
Just made me more confused. Okay, okay.
Yeah. You're looking at the $450,000 in the mayor's proposed budget.
Yeah.
Okay. Right.
So that's what we that's all we can go from here. Yeah.
Yes. So the program gets $1.3 million of ongoing funding annually. And the mayor proposed adding a 450 000 of one time funding to this year's budget.
Okay. And each candidate running for city council has a ceiling of 300 000 per election cycle.
Yes. Fiscal year.
We do carry over unspent funds from each prior cycle because basically the mayoral cycle in 2028 costs about twice as much as the auditor cycle in 2026. And so rather than asking for a small amount in odd numbered years and more in even numbered years, and a lot in the mayoral cycles, we look at four years of elections, divide that by four, and then make an even request every year. So the program, the Portland elections commission, estimates that the program needs $2.2 million all four years in order to cover the 2026 and 2028 election elections. And so in 20 last year, it got 2.1 million. This year, it's the mayor's proposed budget has 1.3 of ongoing plus 451 time.
Okay. And in aggregate, in the past elections in 2024 and 2022 and 2023, of which I'll participate in, I don't recall the ceiling being this high of 300 000 from the public.
Oh, it was for council. The ceiling was 440,000 before the change of government. It was 200,000 in the primary and 240,000 in the general election.
Point of clarification. Can you describe the administrative rules that that office has done to limit the tiers? Because I think that's what's happening here is there's a confusion between the. Yeah.
Thank you.
Well, so in the 2024 election, the program was underfunded. And so it had to reduce the match caps in for the mayor's race from 750,000 down to 100,000 from auditor, from 100,000 down to 40,000. And for council, tier one was instead of 100,000, 40,000 instead of 200,000 for tier two, 80,000 instead of 300,000 for tier three, 120,000.
Okay, I'd like to see that in writing. Maybe we'll have these questions. I really want to keep it simple.
Sure.
How much per cycle can a candidate leverage from the public coffers period.
For council 300,000.
Yeah.
Thank you. And you have made that clear. I just want to do a comparison to the past with each cycle. So we're in a really tough budget cycle right now. So I just want to make sure that we're clear about that.
I think you.
Understand how much the political sector is costing us.
Sure. I can get you one pager with all of that historical information.
Okay. Thanks so much.
Okay. Thank you, councilor Ryan. Colleagues, we are over time, so we will reschedule our council conversation about core services realignment. And we will be back here for our council meeting at 2:00.
Thank you.
We're adjourned.