The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-08-13
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council's Finance and Governance Committee of the Whole convened Thursday, August 13, 2026, with roll call establishing quorum. Agenda items included committee chair updates covering upcoming September scheduling, oversight hearings, and public safety topics such as response times and fireworks enforcement; appointments to the New Portlanders Policy Commission, including 13 new appointments and four reappointments recommended after a two-phase recruitment process, with nominees introducing themselves and describing their backgrounds; a presentation on public health impacts of chemical weapons, including testimony from a climate organization representative, a pulmonary physician, a toxicologist, and a volunteer medic addressing respiratory, reproductive, and environmental effects, alongside discussion about the scope of the presentation and its relationship to city versus federal enforcement actions; and a two-part discussion of the annual city budget process, including public testimony recommending reinstatement of budget advisory committees, and council discussion on timing of budget guidance, community engagement, and forecast hearings. Votes occurred during the meeting, including on an amendment to the appointments item and on referring the appointments to full council; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next Committee of the Whole meeting scheduled for September 3, 2026.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good morning. I call this meeting of the Portland city council's committee of the whole to order this. Thursday, August 13th at 9:30 a.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?
1 Good morning. Koyama Lane. Here.
2 Morillo here.
3 Novick. Here. Clerk.
4 Green here.
5 Zimmerman. Thank you. Avalos. Present. Dunphy. Here. Smith.
6 Pirtle-guiney here.
7 Ryan.
8 Kanal here. And vice chair Ryan will be joining us in just a couple of minutes. Thank you. Diego. Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?
9 Welcome to the meeting of the finance and governance committee of the whole. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance in the committee agenda at www.Portland.gov/council/agendae or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting in person, testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave, when suggested, is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
10 Thank you. Christopher. Today we have four five as filed items on the agenda. We have the committee chair updates. We have appointments to the new portlanders policy commission. We have a presentation on public health impacts of chemical weapons. And then we have two items together after our break, one of which is a presentation. The other is public hearing on the annual budget process. This is part two of the process we initiated back in late June, and will be leading into some work with the administration starting in September on improving our budget process and hopefully eventually, the content of the budget as well. Diego, will you please call the first item.
11 Item one, document number 2026-288. Committee chair updates.
12 All right. Thanks, everybody. There is a printed copy out for every councilor. And there is also one filed online. A couple quick things that have been updated in here. I won't go through everything, but I did want to flag three things. One, that this is our last meeting for three weeks. So our next meeting after this will be September 3rd, because we've got the city council recess for the second half of August. When we pick back up, we are going to have a pretty significant agenda starting in September. There's quite a few things to get through. I think council president may be able to correct me if this is anything other than tentative. I think it's still tentative that the cei hub zoning, comprehensive plan and drawdown plan are all coming in mid September, mid to late September to this committee. And the other thing I wanted to flag is that in October we're picking up. There'll be an oversight hearing and we will be having public hearing, a public testimony on that topic as well, which is not yet locked in, but it will be as soon as we get back from the break. That's pretty much it for part one. Nothing really to update on parts two and three, so I will pass it over for the committee update to chair of the public safety committee, chair Steve Novick.
13 And chair Steve Novick forgot that he would be asked to do this today. And I confess I'm a little uncertain of which of the things we have. Coming up will be the next meeting of the meeting. After that, we. The last public safety committee hearing, we had a presentation from denise pena, the head of the department of community justice at Multnomah county, and comments from people at the police bureau and ceasefire about the relationship. That's something that I want to do continually is talk about the intersection between the city and the county and public safety issues, which of course, occurs repeatedly. There's the da's office. There's the sheriff's office as meeting the sheriff yesterday to talk about having the same conversation with her. And there's also the issue of the interaction between fire and the county ambulances. We passed out an amended version of the psychedelics ordinance, stripping out the advisory committee last week. We have not did not get to the concealed carry legislation. I actually need to ask the administration to try to brief each of the caps members separately about that in advance. As the administration has indicated, that's a priority, so I expect that to come up next time. And here is where we get to what I'm not sure whether we have nailed down for next meeting as opposed to the meeting after that. We at some point need a supposed to get a report from the psr committee. We've got fire code code amendments to do, and we are going to. At councilor Morillo suggestion. I've asked chief day to be prepared to explain why it is that response times have gotten worse, even though call volume has gone down, and chief day said that he's going to address that. And I think that vice chair murillo is going to suggest some other participants in that conversation. So that's. Oh, and at some point, we're going to get a presentation on fireworks. And the fact that we do not enforce the fireworks law and have some discussion about whether we can do any level of enforcement just to send the message that if you break the law, you might be caught.
14 Thank you. I failed to take questions for myself on the other parts, but I'm going to start since you just wrapped up chair Novick anyone have questions for councilor. Novick. Councilor, pirtle-guiney and councilor? You're both in the queue.
15 My question is for you. Chair Kanal.
16 Great, councilor Ryan.
17 Thank you chair thank you, councilor Novick, I want to applaud that you're bringing in the county. The. In my six years here, I've often asked our mayors if we could have joint sessions on public safety with the county. We've done it with limited success on homelessness issues. But the fact is, on public safety there, half of our public safety system and the public doesn't realize that. And so, as you said, it's the dhs, the sheriff, it's the public defenders, our backlog that forces the quick release sometimes of of criminality that no one can understand why, which is really difficult for our first responders who do that hard work. And then hours later, they're released. Much of that is because of the county's defunding of public safety for the last 20 years. When you compare Multnomah county to Clackamas county, our budget in Multnomah county for public safety is 40% of the budget in Clackamas county at 70%. Washington county is similar to Clackamas county. And I just want to keep daylighting that. Thank you.
18 Thank you, councilor Ryan. I also had a question for councilor Chair Novick on the response times topic. I'd love to coordinate. We have something on here as well coming that may be one of the topics of a hearing, but but specifically for your conversation, I would love it if you and I can help connect with somebody in baltimore. They have had a 20% reduction in police staffing levels and achieved a 68% reduction in homicide in the last few years, six years as well. And it's not because of authorized staffing, it's because of vacancy, which is similar to us with our 80 vacancies, roughly. So I just wanted to suggest that as a reference point.
19 I'd be happy to do that. Actually, my office is reaching out to the mayor of baltimore to see if we can get interest in my smart guns idea. So we're already in touch with baltimore.
20 Thanks. I think it was propublica that came out with it. But yeah, I'll get you that article too. And information I have there. Councilor pirtle-guiney. You had something for me, I think.
21 I do, I'm wondering if you can just share with us a little bit as you're building out your agendas, how you're thinking about the balance between policy work, which could have homes in other communities but could come here. Right. We've talked about how some of the larger issues, including today's issue, it's broader than just public safety, but it could go to public safety as well. You just mentioned response times, which it sounds like public safety is taking up, but you're interested in taking up here and how you're balancing that with the the budget and I guess not budget, but the, the finance work and the governance work. I've noticed that the 3.02 policy is listed as possible, but still not even in a tentative spot. We had a discussion on Morillo 11 on the agenda a meeting or two ago, and that had to get bumped, and I haven't seen it show back up on the agenda. And I just want to make sure that we have a space to do the governance work, since this is the only space to do that. Whereas some of these policy items, there's flexibility, we could move them around depending on what committee has capacity for them.
22 Yeah. So that's I'll kind of break. Thanks for that question. I'll break that up into sort of two parts. So our issue area for the committee of the whole includes finance, governance, oversight and emergency response. And emergency response is defined as including federal response. And then sort of in parallel to that, there's the things that fit into no other committee or things that fit into too many other committees, which is something that we generally discuss at the the leadership team. If it's something that could go into, I think often it's housing and permitting and city life and committee of the whole that theoretically could take it that that seems to be the place that the overlap often is perceived. So in that situation, I think we're we've been prioritizing those first four things, the things that were directly assigned to do, unless there's a deadline from the administration or council president, which is rare. And then in terms of the. The items that I guess the caveat to that, the items that are not a legislative item, but are part of the reason why we created the committee, the whole in the first place. So, for example, the downtown discussion, which is penciled in right now for September 10th, is something that we talked about when we decided whether or not to create a committee. The whole as here's something that fits into so many different issue areas. It's housing and homelessness related. It's public safety related, it's economic development related. And so wanted to make sure I put that in. The other thing in the agenda setting, I would say, and there's exceptions to this one, but we're trying to get the appointments to eventually land on the meeting that we do on Wednesday afternoons, because it's a little hard to to do high cognitive load things in the afternoon, right before we go into an evening council meeting and feel like it's six straight hours of, of stuff. So there's, there's that element as well in terms of the second question, which with relation to making sure we get through those kind of core finance and governance things. With relation to you said two of them. There's 3.02, which I know our offices are. I have an email I need to send you on that. And then there's also the council president election process, which is a work group. We haven't had a chance to get landed on the calendar with five of us.
23 As well. As the conversation around Morillo 11 got bumped, yes, a meeting or two ago, and I don't see it back on this list.
24 That was an administration request to give it that a little bit more time. I don't know what exactly yet, and I actually should follow up with council president on that one. Obviously, I put that on there. I think it's really important. Aye, Morillo 11, for those that don't know, is about how we communicate between the branches of our government. And there was a report proposed from the executive branch to us, I think is kind of how I would frame that. I wasn't part of the workgroup that set that up, but that's how it's been described to me of how the administration would like to see that work, which everybody I've talked to was not the most excited about. And so the idea of having a discussion on on that is vital to me. They asked for a little extra time. So it hasn't landed on here, but it's still in the ether waiting to get scheduled, that one. But I, I think it's really important is yeah.
25 No, I appreciate the overview. I just am seeing a lot of policy conversations that, like I said, could land elsewhere. And I'm seeing a lot of core work, especially around governance, which I think still has work to be done, not moving as quickly as we were led to believe it might. And I understand each case has its individual explanation, but I hope that we can make sure that this committee is getting through that core work. I understand that some of these pieces on public safety are really important to you, but we need to make sure we're getting to the pieces that only this committee can take on as well.
26 Yeah, federal response is one of those things too. I'll just note, like, I, I, there's been an error that was in the resolution from the beginning. That's why we keep hearing it described as finance and governance committee, the whole. But if you read the resolution's actual description, it says finance, governance, government oversight, which is why I mentioned to councilor Novick a moment ago about the response times. I've been asked to do an oversight hearing on that by colleagues, and that's that's a request. It hasn't been considered. But and then the emergency response, including federal response, which admittedly, there is some overlap there.
27 Thank you. Chair.
28 Councilor. Novick and then councilor Ryan.
29 Yes, in terms of topics for the committee as a whole, I want to reiterate a request I've made before, which is I really want to go into next year's budget. Having taken a deeper dive into the issue of span of control. And I think a good place to start would be to have a session where we go through the I think the 50 odd people who supervise fewer than four people. And I think in the course of three hours, you could actually talk a little bit about each of them because and I mean, I know that in each case, the bureau has said, here's why this person needs to be in this classification regardless. But I still think it's the, it's the best place to start because I just do not want to go into next year's budget situation where we're arguing about span of control. And we haven't had that kind of deep dive. The other thing I wanted to mention, this is a new suggestion, is I know, frankly, that one of the things that chief day will say about response times is that they're dealing with more complicated situations, partly because of they're dealing with people who have more severe mental health and addiction issues than we're used to dealing with, used to dealing with in the past. And I met when I met with the sheriff spontaneously, she said the same thing. And I've also been hearing the same thing from housing providers and shelter providers that they are dealing with high, high acuity issues with mental health and addiction that is beyond what they were dealing with six years ago. So I was thinking that that would be a worthwhile thing to explore, you know, in public safety and in housing, but also here just to sort of talk about the high acuity population and how that affects services across the board.
30 Yeah, thanks for that. I think there was a there's another angle to that last piece, which is also the state side. And we were going to have a work session with the office of government relations on behavioral health going into the 2027 session that got bumped. But I think council president mentioned yesterday it's landing in September, if I recall correctly. So I, I think connecting those four different dots, because you're right, public safety here, housing and permitting. And on that side, all kind of makes sense. And I can talk to council president about that work session, run of shows so that we're not overlapping too much content area. In terms of the response times piece. Yeah, I think it's a little unique with the, with the sheriff and housing provider, shelter providers in terms of, I don't know that they necessarily have people to offload that to. I know that your committee has the right responder to each call piece, and certainly an agency ready and willing to take on those calls in at least a low acuity sense.
31 Yeah. Although, I mean, one thing that I would obviously ask chief day is how many of these calls are things that could go to psr or they're calls that psr would not want to take because they have a, you know, a criminal or at least a dangerous element that they wouldn't want to do on their own.
32 Yeah. I also hope you'd ask that question of psr and of the psr committee.
33 Yes, thanks.
34 And by the way, span of control is also on the the the part two of the report. It is coming up. It just hasn't been it hasn't gotten even penciled in for a place yet. And that's just a question for those who don't know, this is also applies to the advisory bodies conversation. There's been some administrative leadership rotation. And that has caused a little difficulty in scheduling. So in both of those two cases, specifically councilor Ryan and then counselor Green.
35 Yeah, thank you, chair. I appreciate the conversation you and counselor pirtle-guiney were having about agendas and where they could maybe go to committees that are focused on policy. I think with item three, I'd like to hear the reason why it's for example, item three today is a good example of that. Why is it being in. Why is it in this committee and not in public safety?
36 Because the federal government is tear gassing people around the city. And this committee deals with federal response.
37 So you're repeating that part about the federal response element of this committee. Okay.
38 Emergency response, including federal response.
39 I'll wait until we get to item three to hear how we've been working with our public safety units to prepare for this meeting today. Thanks.
40 This is an external stakeholder conversation. I'll leave that. I'll explain that when we get to that. Councilor Green.
41 Thank you chair. Kanal. Councilor. Novick. You. Your. Request about the span of control is timely. I was like literally talking about that with the city administrator right before I walked into this room, because there was a budget note that sort of got stranded from the connected amendment in my sort of chop from the top thing that failed. But then the budget note itself survived. And and so he's working on that right now. And so I just I want to make sure we're not we don't have multiple span of control conversations happening simultaneously. And so I don't know if it's this committee or if it's a work session after he's done, kind of done that work. But I welcome that. I, I want to say we, if we go into the next budget not having that conversation, we'll have done ourselves a disservice. So thanks. Thanks for bringing that up. And also, I'm eager to get to city code 3-02 at some point soon. So I see that it's penciled in for September, but I. But I really want to vote for something that makes it. So you can't do floor amendments because I'm tired of them. So let's, let's get let's get that one going as soon as we can. Thanks. Thanks. Councilor Green. Seeing no one else in the queue. Thank you everybody. We'll move on to item two. Diego, could you please call item two?
42 Item two. Document number 2026-289. Appoint members to the new portlanders policy commission for terms beginning September 2nd, 2026.
43 Thank you. And we'll invite up presenting from the administration. I believe we have interim chief engagement officer laura oppenheimer, as well as our immigrant and refugee coordinator, wafa al-mukhtar, and the secretary of the new portlanders policy commission, jorge sanchez bautista. But as you start, please introduce yourself the first time you speak. Thanks.
44 Good morning councilors. For the record, I'm laura oppenheimer. I use she and her pronouns. I'm the city's chief communications officer. But today I am proud to be wearing my hat as the chief engagement officer, which means that I have the pleasure of introducing the recommended reappointments and appointments to the new portlanders policy commission. I just want to take a moment to reflect that we have now had this commission for a decade. This is a really lovely opportunity, I think, to reflect back on some of the accomplishments and achievements of the committee, but also to look forward at the opportunities we have with some new members. Given the national climate right now and some of the commitments this council and the city have made to our immigrant and refugee communities, this commission provides a really vital resource in terms of the expertise and lived experience they bring, and being here to advise us and help us move that work forward. You'll hear today about the 17 members who are being recommended to either remain on the commission or join the commission. That is a significant reset, and you'll hear that we wound up doing this recruitment in a two phase process to really ensure that we had an applicant pool reflective of the city as a whole and the geography, and that's what our team will be able to bring you here today. Wafa al-mukhtar is the amazing coordinator who leads this work as our immigrant and refugee coordinator within civic life. This commission is an important part of that. And then jorge sanchez bautista is the secretary of the new portlanders policy commission. And you will see also recommended for reappointment. He has graciously agreed to stay on and continue serving the city. I'll turn it to wafa.
45 Good morning, committee chair, Kanal vice chair and vice chair and members of the committee. You all hear me? Okay? Is my mic working?
46 I can't hear you now.
47 It's on. But good morning. My name is wafa al-madani. I am the immigrant and refugee coordinator for the office of community and civic life. I'm also the staff liaison for the new portlander policy commission and ppc for short. Today I am pleased to present the recommended appointment and reappointments to the commission for today's agenda. We'll begin with a brief overview of the commission. Then we'll share the recruitment selection process, introduce the individuals recommended for appointment and reappointment, highlight the collective strengths they bring, and conclude with the action requested today. Here are some photos of the new portlander policy commission leaders in action. On the left is gulzar, who is passed away in no longer with us. May she rest in peace. But she was one of the leaders who brought the turkish community to the city and truly connected immigrant and refugee communities from turkey to explore what the city has to offer for them. We even turned the city of Portland building first floor in 2024, like a turkish festival, felt like a mini istanbul. And it was beautiful. I can talk forever about all the amazing things that the leaders have accomplished, but now we want to transition to recruitment. And before we do that, it's my honor to introduce george, who is the current secretary for the npcc. He'll walk us through the next few slides and provide some context about the mpc and the work.
48 Good morning, chair Kanal vice chair Ryan and Koyama Lane and members of the committee. It's a privilege to be before you again. For the record, george sanchez bautista. And as I mentioned, I have the privilege of serving as the secretary of the new Portland policy commission, or mpc. I'm stepping in for our current chair who couldn't make it here today in person. But alongside, I'm here to present the recent work of the mpc, as well as our recommended nominees for council approval. And as director oppenheimer mentioned in 2016, during the first term of the first term of president trump, the city, alongside community organizations and community leaders, established the new portlanders policy commission to bring the voices, priorities, and experiences of immigrant and refugee communities to into local policies and services under chapter 3.131 of city code, the mpc advises the mayor, city council, city administrator and city bureaus, and I would like to also take a moment to recognize the office of community and civic life for its continued support and work over the past decade even aimed to reduce services and funding. They have continued to show up for and support portland's immigrant and refugee communities. Next slide please. Since the beginning of 2026, the mpc has worked on several initiatives to support portland's immigrant and refugee communities. As you can see on the slide, we have collaborated with councilor Pirtle-guiney to allocate $150,000 to soar. Legal services supported the planning of welcoming week in its many community events and has and have been working with the league of women voters to organize a voter registration and civic education event. We hope to encourage newly naturalized citizens to participate in the upcoming November election and strengthen civic engagement within our immigrant communities. Next slide. And on behalf of the commission, we continue to extend an invitation to you all to attend our meetings and use the new portlanders policy commission as a resource and advisory body. Our leadership team, which includes myself and our chair, marissa kritz, who unfortunately couldn't make it today, has been coordinating with wafa and civic life staff to bring elected officials, cbos, community based organizations and government agencies before us to the commission. This is the work of the commission. By collaborating with elected officials, cbos government agencies to create a direct connection between city government and the communities we represent. We bring information and resources back to our communities while also bringing their experiences and concerns and priorities back to back to the city. Ultimately, that is the purpose of having this advisory body, like the mpc, to create a meaningful bridge between our communities and city government. If we are not engaging with one another and creating those connections. I just have to say like, then you have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of having this body?
49 Next slide please.
50 The creation of the new immigrant affairs liaison within the office of the mayor has been an incredible resource for the commission. We have now a direct line of communication to the mayor's office with immigrant affairs liaison, providing monthly updates, answering questions, and working to ensure that information reaches our communities. This has been a clear demonstration of how strong, stronger communication between city leadership and immigrant communities can work in practice.
51 Next slide.
52 The commission can now consist of 25 members, with each member serving a three year term with the option to renew once for a maximum of six years. Commissioners are responsible for attending, as it states write their monthly meetings supporting the coordination and planning of welcoming week, representing the commission at events and advising the city on issues affecting immigrant and refugee communities, and serving on committees and and work groups as needed, in accordance with city code. Commissioners must live, work, volunteer, worship or attend an educational institution within city limits. In addition, bringing of lived experience and a commitment to portland's immigrant and refugee communities. Lastly, I will say that these responsibilities are more than just filling seats. They are about ensuring that voices, experiences, and priorities of all of our immigrant communities have a direct path to city hall, and I'll pass it back to wafa.
53 Our initial recruitment began ended 2024 and continued into 2025. One of the gaps we identified in the original applicant pool was geographic representation, particularly from district one and district two, because representation matters for the commission, we made a decision to relaunch recruitment in April 2026 rather than simply move forward with the pool we had from may through June, we conducted additional outreach through community based organizations, partner networks with intentional outreach focused on district one and district two. Applications were then reviewed by current ncpc commissioners in July, and recommendations were developed for appointment. Today brings us to the final step. Council consideration and confirmation. Across the two recruitment periods, we reviewed a total of 38 applications. We received 29 applications to end of 2024 2025. Recruitment additional nine applications through the 2026 recruitment. The applicant pool reflected significant racial, ethnic, cultural, professional and lived experience diversity, including applicants identify as asian, african, hispanic or latino pacific islander, middle eastern, multicultural and diverse backgrounds. That diversity is important because ncpc is intended to bring perspectives into city government that have historically been underrepresented in public decision making. When it comes to the selection process, current ncpc commissioner Participated directly in reviewing the applications and developing the recommendations before you today. The selection process considered several factors, including lived experience, connection to immigrant refugee communities, community involvement, professional and volunteer experience, experience, geographic representation, and interest in contributing to the work and the mission of the ncpc. From the 38 applications reviewed, 17 individuals are being recommended. That includes 13 new appointments and four reappointments. Geographic representation was an important consideration through this process. Of the 17 nominees, 15 reside within Portland with representation across all four city council districts. Two nominees reside outside of Portland, but meet the commission's eligibility requirements through another qualifying connection to Portland, such as working, attending school, owning business or worshiping within the city. This allows us to maintain a strong geographic representation. Next slide please. At this point, I would like to recognize individuals being recommended for appointment and reappointment. The following slides show the names of the nominees along a short quote of each person about why they want to serve on the ncpc. I'm going to move through these slides as we hear from nominees, giving them the opportunity to introduce themselves and speak for themselves about how, who they are and why they want to serve. We want to provide nominees. We wanted to provide nominees with different ways to participate today. So some are joining us virtually. Some are here with us in person and others have provided pre recorded introductions. We'll begin with those joining us live virtually, followed by our in-person nominees. And then the prerecorded introductions to the nominees. As you introduce yourself, please briefly share your name, whether you are being appointed or reappointed, and a little about yourself and why you're interested in serving on ncpc virtual speakers can speak.
54 We have maritza kritz online, as well as mary karam.
55 Good morning council. My name is mary karam and I am a domestic relations attorney in the tri county area. I'm also a resident of district one. More importantly, I am a syrian immigrant who moved to Portland with my family many years ago, and we've continued to make Portland our home. And Portland has allowed us to to feel at home. Here I am seeking reappointment to the new portlanders policy commission because I deeply value the opportunities to serve and help ensure, serve and help ensure that portland's policies and services reflect the experiences, needs and contributions of immigrants and refugee communities. As an immigrant myself, I have personally experienced how meaningful it is to feel welcomed, heard, and included in community. I'm especially grateful for portland's commitment to engaging with immigrant communities in creating opportunities for new portlanders to participate in civic life. Portland has given me a sense of belonging and made me feel that I have a home away from home, and I hope to continue contributing my professional experience as an attorney, my lived experience and my commitment to equity and inclusion to the commission. I would be honored to continue this work through a reappointment. Thank you.
56 Good morning councilors. My name is maritza kritz, and I'm honored to be reappointed to the new portlanders policy commission, where I currently serve as chair. My background is in social services and behavioral health, and throughout my career, I've worked alongside diverse communities and seen first hand how language, culture, and access can create barriers to services, resources, and opportunities. I'm also the founder of latino outdoors Portland chapter, where I've worked to create welcoming spaces for latino families, build community connections, and help ensure people feel a sense of belonging. I want to continue serving as np because portland's immigrant and refugee communities deserve to have a meaningful voice in the decisions that affect their lives. As chair, I'm committed to bringing people together, strengthening community voices, and helping ensure Portland as a city where everyone feels welcome, represented and heard. Thank you for the opportunity to continue serving.
57 We also have devin tao online.
58 Good morning, city council members. My name is devin tao, and I'm honored to be appointed to the new portlanders policy commission. I'm a gay filmmaker, small business owner and longtime portlander in district four. Much of my work has been focused on storytelling, community engagement, and creating space for people whose voices and experiences are often underrepresented. As an asian immigrant myself, I understand how important belonging, access, and representation can be when building a life in a new city and a new country. I'm interested in serving on the mpc because I believe immigrant and refugee communities should have a meaningful voice in the decisions that affect them. I hope to bring my experience to storytelling, coalition building and civic engagement to the commission, while also listening and learning from the many communities that make Portland home. Thank you.
59 Thank you. Now, I would like to invite our first three in-person nominees to come forward to the podium. So it's going to be alejandro, cindy, and george.
60 Okay. Well good morning. Chair and councilors. Well, my name is alejandro martinez. I am not only an immigrant, but a refugee. I've been here in Portland for a pretty short time. I came in 2020 for from venezuela. My ground is I'm a political scientist with a master's in environment. And I'm really very happy to be here. As many years in my life, I've been linked to parliamentary institutions because I worked for a long time in the parliament of my country, of venezuela as director of international relations, and also worked at the city council in caracas. So well, I'm very interested in, in bringing my my experience in contributing to, to this city that we've me and my family have made our home since the last two years, and it is a place in which I think we will stay for a very, very long time and a place that we like and we're happy to be here. So thank you very much for inviting us to be part of this committee.
61 Good morning council. My name is cindy chen and I am a chinese immigrant. I came to the united states at the age of five, and I was an avid participant in the sun school program, which is schools united communities program run by irco in Multnomah county schools. Through my experiences, I have been so honored to be able to give back to my community by tutoring students and through my experiences, I've also been. I am incredibly interested in serving on the new portlanders policy commission in order to advocate for language education opportunities in Portland. And. When I first came to the united states, I found that being pulled out of my classroom was incredibly isolating. And I want to make sure that people don't feel that same isolation anymore once they're trying to learn a new language. And so on. My time, I hope to be an advocate during my time, I hope to be an advocate for education and language learning opportunities, and I am honored to be an appointed to serve on the new portlanders policy commission. Thank you.
62 Thank you all. Now, I would like to invite our next group of nominees to come forward. Who wants to start brenneke? Go ahead.
63 Hi, my name is brina boelens. I'm a 28 year old 20, not 28 year old. Definitely not 28 year old 28 year portlander when I graduated college a long time ago, obviously a long time ago, I did the europe backpacker thing. I was your average middle aged, middle class white girl, and I'd never even been out of the country before. But the urge to understand the world stuck with me, and I spent many years after that, traveling and living and working in a whole host of different countries. And it taught me two things. One, being in an unfamiliar culture is not an easy thing. Second, it seems basic, but people everywhere are really the same. There's small differences in details, but they have the same needs and fears and joys. And I truly wish that all Americans understood this. Over the years, a focus of mine has become the importance of housing, of stable housing. Growing up, I helped my parents with their little rental properties and I now own a rental property myself. I've been a volunteer for habitat for humanity for over a decade. Back when the ukraine war started, I had friends and I. We organized donations and were able to house ukrainian refugees families and help them get jobs. More recently, I was a manager in multifamily low income housing downtown. And as you can imagine, many of the residents were from all different countries. And I spent a lot of time in my office sitting with them, helping them navigate their new life. I've seen the trauma that people have gone through through problems with housing and how stable housing, plus a welcoming and supportive community, helps newcomers thrive. So I'm excited to join this commission and all of you to develop the best supports possible for our newest neighbors. Thank you.
64 Good morning. My name is soraya. I'm being appointed to the new Portland city commission. I live in district one as an immigrant from the republic of congo, located in the central africa. I understand the experience and challenges many immigrants and refugees community face. I have been involved in my community community leadership, serving as a president or leaders of african community coalition. I've been involved in the community leadership and engage and advocate, advocated for my community, helping connect the community with local government. I'm interested in serving in this nppc because I want to ensure that the voice and lived experience of new portlanders are represented and decisions. I'm honored to serve and look forward to contributing to a more welcoming and inclusive Portland. Thank you.
65 Good morning. My name is marissa tapia, and I'm honored to be appointed to the new portlanders policy commission. As a first generation mexican American born to immigrant parents, I have witnessed firsthand both the challenges and resilience of immigrant communities. As a clinical social worker with a background in mental health and social justice, my work has been driven by a passion for creating more equitable and culturally responsive systems. In my current role, I support unaccompanied minors, helping them navigate complex systems, trauma, and the challenges of rebuilding their lives. Given the heightened. Given the heightened social and political climate affecting immigrant, refugee and asylum seeking communities, I felt a strong call to action to bring that experience to the local level and continue contributing to the Portland community. I applied to the npc because I believe refugee communities deserve not only representation, but a meaningful voice in the policies that affect their lives. I look forward to working alongside such a diverse and passionate group of community members. Excuse me, community members who are committed to centering the voices and needs of these communities and ensuring they are meaningfully represented in local action. Thank you for the opportunity to serve. I look forward to the work ahead and to contributing to a more inclusive, equitable and welcoming Portland.
66 And while transitions to our recorded videos again, we're. And I'm seeking reappointment to the commission as my background consists of a son of mexican immigrants, as well as a supporter and advocate of Portland public schools newcomer program, which assists newly arrived students from different parts of the world, adapt to the us education system and prepare them for their academic journey throughout high school. And I believe in the important work of equity and experience, especially when it comes to young people and hispanic communities during this current political, social, economic, I can go on. But you know, this current climate right now, and I hope to, you know, work alongside diverse, a diverse group of people and ensuring that this body brings in all these experiences and to support and have these people heard and represented.
67 Thank you all so much. For nominees who are unable to join us live today, we also provided an opportunity to submit a brief prerecorded introduction, so we'll hear from them now.
68 Good afternoon councilors. My name is luciani and I'm honored to be recommended for the new portlanders policy commission. I was born in brazil to a family with european and afro-brazilian roots, and I came to Portland as an immigrant myself. I know how difficult it can be to rebuild a life in a new country, and to figure out systems that were not designed with foreigners in mind. Professionally. I received my master's degree at Portland state university in engineering technology management, and I have spent many years working for it and hr departments at the Oregon companies like nike and cuervo. Portland has given me a beautiful place to live and work, and I would like to help the city make this easier for those that are going through a similar experience as myself. For me personally, it's important to create a place where people feel safe and supported no matter what their race, country of birth, gender, or the way they speak. There is lots of tension in our nation right now, and I hope I can help somehow to reduce it in our community. Thank you for your consideration.
69 Hello, my name is stephanie lowenstein. I'm currently on the commission for new Portland policy, and I would like to continue to serve on this commission because I bring a relevant experiences as an immigrant and as a a besl teacher. And I also bring the passion to move things forward. In the last two years, I think we're productive. I'd like to continue to contribute, and I look forward to doing so.
70 Hi, everyone. My name is linda lee and I'm interested in joining the new portlanders policy commission. Because of where I come from. I grew up in a low, low income immigrant community, and I came to America as a refugee. Today, I have a career in finance, but growing up, no one in my community had access to that kind of knowledge. So I want to give back by educating and encouraging basic financial literacy on the things I wish I knew early on. That's the impact I hope to make on this commission. Thank you.
71 Hi, my name is evan and I'm a north Portland resident. I live in saint john's. I'm interested in joining the new portlanders policy commission or committee because as a regular Oregon food bank volunteer, I've seen and witnessed firsthand just how barriers can affect people. And I would like to turn those frustrations into policy change. Thank you.
72 Hello. My name is joanna jefferson. I grew up in Portland, and I've been a therapist in the community in Portland for the last 27 years, married to an immigrant. And I'm very eager to both understand and help affect policy.
73 And I have one video to play that we were not able to embed in the powerpoint because this was last minute, but I would like to take a moment to do it. Just give me one second.
74 Good morning. I am carol and I was born and raised in split, croatia, and arrived in Portland in 2002. Over the past 24 years, Portland has been my home, my community, and the place where I built my life and the career. I'm urban designer and a founder of place, a global landscape architecture design studio with galeria, committed to social impact through community stewardship and art. Our partnerships locally include Portland mercato pdx main terminal, nike headquarters, north park blocks, PSU tech, Willamette falls trust and gateway discovery park. However, my greatest passion is the next generation and for the past 15 years, I've taught at Portland state university school of architecture, and I also serve on governor appointed Oregon state landscape architects board and am involved with the immigrant story. I'm especially honored to join the new portlanders policy commission and help ensure newcomers have a voice opportunity to lead in a meaningful role in shaping portland's future. Thank you for the opportunity.
75 Now we're at the beginning. Thank you everyone who shared their introductions with us today. I also want to specifically recognize the four commissioners being recommended for reappointment. They have already contributed their time, lived experience and expertise to ncpc, and we we greatly appreciate their willingness to continue serving. I also want to take a moment to recognize and thank carrie bernal, sahar collini, mia mahad gulzar. May she rest in peace. Demet, doctor bahar mazara and sancar for their services to the new Portland policy commission on behalf of the city of Portland and the office of community and civic life, I want to express our sincere appreciation for the time, energy, lived experience and leadership you have contributed to ncpc. Serving on a volunteer commission requires a real commitment. It means showing up, sharing your perspective, representing community voices, and helping the city think differently about how we engage and serve immigrant and refugee communities. Taken together. Sorry, let me go back. Taken together, these nominees being bring a broad and valuable range of experiences to the commission. They include people with immigrant, refugee, first gen lived experience, as well as experience in youth engagement, education, social work, mental health, housing, business, public administration, community organizing, advocacy, and community engagement. They also bring multilingual and multicultural perspective and experiences working directly with communities in Portland. Most importantly, they share a commitment to equity, belonging, civic engagement and strengthen the relationship between immigrant and refugee communities and city government. Our goal was not to simply fill seats. Our goal was to build a commission whose collective lived experience, knowledge and perspective strengthens the quality of advice ncpc provides to the city. These commissioners will have an opportunity to begin engaging with the community very soon. Portland's welcoming week takes place September 10th through September 19th, and ncpc will be actively participating throughout the week. Commissioners will have opportunities to engage directly with immigrant refugee communities, community organizations, city leaders and partners. This is one example of how ncpc commissioners move beyond monthly meetings and serve as an important bridge between community and city government that brings to the action requested. Today, we respectfully request the committee approve the recommended 13 appointments and four reappointments to the new portlander policy commission. These appointments will bring the commission to 17 members to strengthen its geographic, professional, cultural and lived experience representation. We want to thank our current commissioners who dedicated significant time reviewing applications and supporting this process. And most importantly, we want to thank all of the applicant, applicants and nominees who expressed an interest in serving their community and the city of Portland. We are grateful for their willingness to step forward and share their experience and contribute their voices to city government. With that, we respectfully request the committee's approval of the recommended appointments and reappointments. Thank you.
76 Thank you, wafa. Thank you, laura, and also no oceans back there. Thank you to everyone who supports. And thank you so much to the current members as well as the prospective new members. Before we discuss the potential referral of this item on to the council, I did want to note a couple things and then we may have testimony. There are the the are there testifiers?
77 No one has signed up.
78 Okay, okay. So colleagues, I have put up an amendment to this. And the reason for it is that we learned earlier this week that this agenda item was submitted without the reappointed members noted on there, it only had the appointees. And so my office worked with immigrant refugee coordinator wafa al-mukhtar at civic life to update this report with the amendment that you received via email, which is filed online. All names are now updated and presented in the the sort of standard table which includes a start and end dates. So after, I guess since we don't have testimony, I was going to float this and then take testimony just in terms of this sort of technical addition of the four people we've heard from, I will move Kanal one and ask for a second on that second. Seconded by councilor Pirtle-guiney. Is there any discussion on the amendment? And then we'll have as soon as the amendment is resolved, we'll have the broader discussion. But this just is just on the amendment. Seeing none. Diego, will you please call the roll.
79 Koyama Lane I.
80 Morillo I.
81 Novick I.
82 Clark sorry. Absent Green. I Avalos. Absent Dunphy. I Smith. I pirtle-guiney I. Ryan.
83 Yeah, we have to have the reappointments.
84 I know. I with eight eyes and two absent votes, the motion to amend the report to add the four reappointments as shown in Kanal one is approved.
85 Great. Thank you. We'll now open this up to questions to staff or appointees or appointees or general discussion from the council or from the committee. I apologize. We'll go to councilor Pirtle-guiney followed by councilor Smith.
86 Thank you, chair. Kanal. First of all, thank you to everybody who's stepping into this role, either as a re appointee or for the first time. We appreciate everything that you are bringing to the city and the way in which you will help us do a better job serving all portlanders. I do have one question. It looks like your entire commission is up for appointment today. Often we see rolling appointments to make sure that there is continuity of work, things like that. Is this intentional? You all prefer to have everybody up at the same time. Is this kind of backlogged because you had to start the process of recruitment over? So things just backed up and this is where we are. Or is this something that we should expect to see drawn out? And the reason that I'm asking is if you want to move to more staggered appointments, there will need to be some discussion between you all and the mayor as the person who nominates people around, whether you nominate people early or extend people's appointments, and it's helpful for us to know what to expect so that if we see people being held over, we don't ask questions and worry that there's something going on in the future.
87 I can answer.
88 Yeah, I would say if there was a more protracted period with the recruitment having been relaunched, so that did back things up and require almost entirely new recruitments. Meanwhile, we are going through the advisory bodies reset, which will be coming back to you on in the fall. So I think that's an opportunity to kind of have a broader discussion on how do we want to stagger those appointments. When you do wind up with this kind of backlog? If you want to say anything more specific about this commission, please feel free.
89 I can add specifically, I joined the city 2023, and at that time we had npc members who have. They were still they had term to like serve. And so I was onboarding and getting to know. And then we, we recruited. And that's when we had george aye, Morillo mary and for join. So most of who are on the list, they've exceeded their limit to renew or be reappointed. And six of them are able to be reappointed, but only for because two of them are, you know, life and kids and work. So from the six who were able to serve again, because we haven't maxed their limit, have decided to be reappointed. I don't know if that answered your question, councilor. I hope it did.
90 That's helpful context. And I think what I'm hearing is there may be a conversation internally about how to stagger things in the future. If you come back and folks have over have been held over on their first term, or you're reappointing early, we should expect to maybe see some of that in the future. Correct. Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's really helpful. An incredible work on this group of portlanders who you're bringing forward to us. It's clear that you've not only really leaned into making sure that we have a diversity of experiences in how people ended up in Portland and, and where in Portland they live and where they came here from, but also a huge diversity of experience in what people have done since they've been here. And I think we will gain so much from all of the voices that are on the commission. I really look forward to the insight and energy and leadership that this body will bring. I do just want to say to everybody in the room, and any of your appointees who are still online with us, please don't hesitate to bring things forward to council. You do a lot of work. We know what the administration advising the day to day implementation of things. If there is work that this council needs to be doing that you're seeing that we're not seeing, please bring it forward quickly. We want to make sure that your time here is really serving our whole community, and that means that we have to be ready to hear from you about what changes we need to make. So I just I'd like to extend that invitation to all of you as you serve on the commission, to make sure that you are letting us know what we need to be doing better as well. Thank you all.
91 Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney. Before I continue with the q council, Clark wanted to just update something real quick.
92 Thank you. Chair. Apologies, I misspoke on the roll earlier. The motion was approved with nine eyes and three absent, not ten eyes and two absent. Thank you, thank you.
93 We'll continue with the q councilor Smith, followed by councilor Green.
94 Thank you, mr. Chair. Congratulations. I appreciate the work that you do. And I just want to piggyback on what councilor Pirtle-guiney said. If there's anything that we can do from district one, which is the furthest district in the city, I consider it our our new front door for the city of Portland. It begins at 82nd, all the way out to 162nd to the north from marine drive, all the way out to the city line. And we have one of the most diverse districts, and I would dare say one of the most dynamic districts in the city, because we are trying to, from our office, make sure that everyone feels like they have a voice in city hall. We put up a district office last year on halsey and 105th. I don't know if you all are familiar with it, but we do have a district office. Melinda valentine, who runs that office, she just got promoted to district manager and constituent services director in that office. And we we are there every day. And if you do need something, please do not hesitate to call. But I had a question because I was looking at your your previous notes, how many folks are actually on the commission at one time?
95 They can be according to city code. It could be up to 25.
96 Up to 25.
97 Yes.
98 And I was looking at the average about between 9 and 10 people who attend the meetings monthly. Couple things that I think that are important. I sit on the the public works committee and I'm the vice chair. And one of the things that I find that is very difficult for communities, underserved communities, period. No matter where you come from, the ability to interface with government and get government contracts. And there has been such an uproar on the national level about dbs and those kinds of things. We want to put together a forum that will teach businesses new portlanders, black and brown folks, how to become certified so that you can actually. You can compete for some of the city contracts. And particularly we have big contracts that are out there. There's there's still work available. We have bull run. It's a $2.2 billion project. We have other city projects that that we have underway. And I think that people have been discouraged from getting their db designation. And that's one piece. But the other piece that is that is really important too, is getting cobid cobid certified with the state of Oregon so that you can have access to state and local contracts that that you can get a actually, you can get extra points for being a db because they on some of these contracts, particularly transportation projects, you can get some advantage on that. So we're going to do that. And we want to make sure that we're contacting new portlanders. Because at the end of the day, I mean we're talking about livability. If we can't help the folks in our community be more successful economically than what are we doing? We want you to have a voice here, but we also want you to make a living and to share with you ways in which that you can do business with the city of Portland. In addition to giving us feedback on our policies, we want y'all working. I want y'all working because I want a social security check when it's time for me to get my social security check. So I want people to be into the system. But at any rate, it is. It is so good to see all of you here online and in person wanting to do this work, because it is honorable work and it is necessary. And we have to be deliberate about when we're serving folks and intentional about what we do. So. I think where is is promise king in here? Promise? King, can you raise your hand? He's in the back and he's on my staff. And if you all could give him your contact information so we can follow back up with you, because I want to make sure that we have folks from your group, and so that you can go out into your communities and tell them about our forum that's going to be coming up.
99 Amazing. Thank you.
100 Thank you.
101 Make it happen.
102 Counselor Green, followed by Novick.
103 Thank you. I just, I just want to say thank you for, for volunteering. Thank you for thank you for bringing that forward, george, bringing forward these great nominees and people who've re-upped again, it's it's such an important interface with the city government and largely our immigrant community, but also just this broader sense that the city works for people in community. And so I, I want to continue to lend my support for, for this work. And councilor Kanal, thanks for really taking this stuff seriously and making sure that we're given the due time and consideration to our volunteer bodies. And I'm going to take a risk here. But some of you guys have used some mandarin this morning. So I want to try and offer a woman to cheung sha, which is. Thank you for helping our city. Thanks.
104 Thank you.
105 Thank you, councilor Green, councilor Novick, followed by Ryan.
106 Thank you, mr. Chairman. I wanted to say I really appreciate the experience and the commitment of these nominees. I also just wanted to say that I've rarely seen so much information conveyed in so little time to have these incredibly meaningful, although brief statements from each of the nominees was just wonderful. So thanks so much for organizing that.
107 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
108 Thank you, chair connell. I was doing some thinking there. First, thank you for this item. I had one year as a commissioner. It was 2023 overseeing civic life. And I I'm not going to lie. You coming on board. Wafa was one of the big bright spots of that year. And in 2023, when I inherited it and you came on, we kind of came on at the same time. It was in a, you know, we needed to do some rebuilding at that time. And quite frankly, the new portlanders commission was ignored, I'll just say, by previous commissioners. And so I'm very connected to this. And it feels good to see you. It's just great to see you, wafa. So in fact, I was nudging my staff when you first got up here to make sure that I got to a welcoming week activity, because they're always so uplifting. You answered. You answered councilor Pirtle-guiney question. Well, and yet I just wanted to add that you did so much work in 2023 to clean things up, if you will, with, of course, ocean. But I want to just say this maybe for you and I don't think it's off. It's not because of your leadership that things got backlogged. It was the government and political transitions taking place since then, starting in 24 until this moment. So it had nothing to do with you. It had everything to do with us, if you will. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. So thank you for your work and I really do appreciate it. I also appreciate that you lifted up the let's just call them the ogs, like miss lynette, who put in so many hours, so many hours to hold it together and build it in spite of, in my opinion, being ignored by the the political governance body above them. And so shout out to her and the others that finished their terms and persevered during a difficult time. George, I want to acknowledge I really appreciate what you said about the dot connection. You also came in in 2023. Yeah. The dot connection that you talked about between your placement as a student that's connected to your student at PSU, but you're connected to the k-12 system, and it's such a big deal to make sure that the new arrivals in our schools and their families feel welcomed. And it's something that the school districts have always been challenged with. And, and so thank you for being that voice. I did have one question. I'm curious. I recall at least one appointment pointing not having lived refugee or immigrant experience. So is that not a requirement?
109 It's not a requirement. The requirements I think there was a slide it had to do. Qualifying connection to Portland, such as working, attending school, owning business or worshiping within the city. So being a resident is not a requirement.
110 That's not what I meant. But thank you for qualifying that. It's more that most of the people that I've ever connected with on the commission are they had a lived experience as an immigrant or a refugee, or they were a child of one. And so.
111 And also.
112 That not a requirement.
113 It is so or and also work with immigrant and refugee communities.
114 So if you have a job, you become an ally of this body. Correct. Okay. I like it better when everyone has the lived experience. My bias, I just want to continue to support your good work. And I'll just always say it. I, I love when I connect with the communities and the immigrant and refugee communities because they're exactly what Portland needs. They tend to get it done. They're resilient, obviously, because of their life experience. And they're so grateful to be here and they're ready to to go. And a lot of them, of course, dive into the private sector, which I really appreciate because Portland really needs to create more revenue and more business license taxes. And so I just love the entrepreneurial spirit of the communities that arrive. That's always been the secret sauce of our country's prosperity and why people in the current white house don't understand that is beyond me. Thanks so much.
115 Thank you. Councilor.
116 Councilor. Ryan. We'll go to councilor. Morillo. Followed by council president Dunphy.
117 Hi, everyone. Sorry I'm virtual today. I'm not feeling very well, but I really appreciate you all being here and to get to hear some of your stories and background as a as an immigrant in this time, I think it can feel very isolating and lonely. So just getting to see how many people in our community are stepping up for our own community, and also the people that are stepping up to fight alongside us, I think is really special. And I don't take that for granted at all. Just the courage that people display every single day doing this work. And I just wanted to open things up to you and let you know that my office is always available to have a conversation. If there's a policy change that's coming up, if there's a community group you want to engage with, if there's something we can help promote on our social media, our newsletter, I would love to help amplify the work that you're doing and the outreach. I think oftentimes in this work, especially in policy, we I actually disagree with councilor Ryan a little bit in this. I think because I do want people that aren't immigrants to be in these spaces fighting for us because it's going to take people of all types to be doing this work. And our lived experience is important, but only insofar as it is informed by. A belief that we truly do all deserve to be liberated from these systems. And, you know, our communities are not a monolith. There are organizations that don't agree with one another on the things, the city or the policies that are coming up. There are people that don't agree with one another within our own community about the best ways to address the harm that is coming at us from the federal government, and sometimes even the local government. And so I would just encourage you to really do broad outreach and to develop a political analysis that is your own, because this time is going to require a discipline from all of us that is beyond what's personal and into what is actually going to be functional for us to survive this. So just saying that and opening that up to you, as well as noting that there have been times where there has been tension between, I would say, the executive branch and the legislative branch here at the city council about what policies we want to pass for our immigrant communities and why and which groups we are listening to and why. And so I hope that in the work that you're doing, that you will take all of that into account and then bring all of that assessment and that wisdom back to us as recommendations that we can really dig into. So thank you so much for your work. My office is always open to you and solidarity with my fellow immigrants. Thank you.
118 Thank you, thank you, councilor Morillo, council president Dunphy and then councilor Koyama Lane. Thank you, chair.
119 Kanal, I want to echo what my colleagues have said to everybody who's willing to step up right now. This is a moment where we really need all voices to step up and proactively defend what kind of community we are. And I'm just really grateful to everybody. I also really want to thank you all for this recruitment process. First, as councilor Novick said earlier, I loved that we also got just the little video clips from folks. It is so much of a more full experience for us to actually be able to hear from folks directly, rather than seeing an excel spreadsheet. So thank you for making that extra effort. I know that's hard and extra work. I also want to just very, you know, echo what councilor Smith said, which is that, you know, district one, I just I really appreciate the extra effort to try and find voices from our community because district one is different than the rest of the city. But it the challenges are also very different. And the population is very different. And we really need, you know, just because it's hard to find people to sign up to volunteer from district one, doesn't mean we don't try a little harder. It means we we improvise and we try to find different ways to find those voices. So I'm thrilled to be supportive of this. I'm thrilled to every single member who is willing to step up right now. And thank you for taking the extra effort.
120 Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane.
121 Thank you so, so much for your work with immigrants, refugees, their families, with allies. I loved slide, I think it was slide 18 that was talking about the collective strengths of the appointees. And what I thought immediately is that those collective strengths really align with the core values of our city of equity, collaboration, communication, anti-racism. This group of appointees truly is amazing. I teared up multiple times hearing those who spoke today. You all truly represent some of the best that our city has to offer, and I'm so excited to support these appointments today. Thank you.
122 Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. I am last in the queue, I think, and I first, I'm very grateful for everyone being here. Absolutely going to support the the nominations and the referral to the full council. I wanted to just kind of follow up on something that councilor Pirtle-guiney said. You know, in code it says there are 25 members, and so there's eight vacancies after this that I'd love to be supportive of and filling. And in addition to any policy needs that may ever come up, which I agree. Please bring them to us. Any appointments, I prioritize them on our calendar, and I want to make sure that we get a chance to, to get you at your full strength. With relation to the dates, my suggestion would be because I imagine as you're rebuilding and as a side note, I've seen wafa doing this work to rebuild and to get everything from my literal seat maybe 30ft from her. When I worked at the Portland building, her and ocean as well. So watch that work happen. As councilor Ryan mentioned it since you started. But as that work goes forward and when it is at full strength, it may be helpful to look at the end of September so that folks are finishing their term with welcoming week and also to stagger it year over year. So maybe if the next eight spots are for a term ending in like September 2029 and can kind of get to that, that point, just with alignment with best practices. And that also, I think will help with institutional knowledge retention. You mentioned an amazing group of people who have cycled off and who we are all grateful for as well. I've, I've spoken with shankar and mia and so many of the other folks and really appreciate the work that they've done on this. And so I want to make sure that that continues into the future. I think we have seen that this commission has had relevance not only in this building, but out in the public, in terms of making folks feel and actually be represented in government decisions now, as well as in the past. That function is among the most important parts of this work, beyond what's in the code. Being a part of our government and being seen is incredibly vital. And I appreciate that, both as a councilor and as an advisory board staffer and of course, as a child of immigrants myself, I also do appreciate the the policy work we saw last year. Councilor pirtle-guiney brought forward legislation that was based on conversations and recommendations from the ncpc about the immigration legal services funding. And so I definitely want to continue that work and broaden that as much as possible. So to new appointees, what you do matters, and we take what you advise us on very seriously. I do want to add one other thing. You mentioned gulzar and I worked with the focus intervention team, community oversight group when chanel thomas passed away, and it mattered to every other volunteer who was on that. It mattered to the staff. It mattered to the focus intervention team officers who worked with that community oversight group. And it was really, really difficult. And so for the for re appointees, for everybody who served and for all the staff, yes. May she rest in peace. And also my support and solidarity with you because I know how hard that is. And I appreciate how you've managed to keep going with that. With that, I will welcome a motion to refer this item on to the full council with a due pass recommendation.
123 So moved.
124 Second.
125 Moved by councilor Ryan, seconded by councilor Novick. Is there any further discussion on this item? Seeing none. Diego, will you please call the roll?
126 Moved by Ryan. Second by councilor Novick Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. I Green. I Avalos.
127 I Dunphy I.
128 Smith I.
129 Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan I Kanal I.
130 With oh, I'm sorry, was that an I.
131 I yes.
132 Thank you. With ten eyes and two absent votes, the motion to refer the report as amended. Document number 2026-289 to city council with the recommendation to be accepted, is approved.
133 Thank you very much. We'll keep you in the loop as soon as it's scheduled at the full council. Colleagues, we were going to do part of the next item and then take a break. I think it may make sense to just take the break now. So we're going to resume with item three when we return in about ten minutes. See you back at 1107. Thanks.
134 Oh, that's.
135 But I know I.
136 Heard that, I guess.
137 Can you grow up on 24? Allied center, london.
138 All right. Thank you. We're going to resume our meeting now. Diego, could you please call item three?
139 Item three, document number 2026-290. Public health impacts of chemical weapons.
140 Thank you so much. I'm going to invite up our panel today. And as they're coming up, I'll just give a little intro on this. It's a but I think we have three folks in the room and one online. Please feel free to come on up to the front. Yeah. Today, colleagues, we're going to hear a brief presentation on the public health impacts of chemical weapons usage here in Portland. Again, this relates specifically to the health side of it. And so its substance is appropriately addressed by those with health and environmental expertise. I'm excited to get this conversation started, as it's been a topic that's come up in public testimony, as well as in communications with my office. One of the goals of, you know, our ability to do these presentations is to start conversations and inform the public as well as ourselves, about things that are of interest to the public and that we're hearing about. So I appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to welcome doctor charis bock, doctor erica morrison, stacey harper, who I believe is online, and chad robison. And I believe we're going in that order. So thanks so much. And take it away doctor bock.
141 Good morning councilors. It's good to be with you. Thanks for the opportunity to share information about environmental impact of chemical weapons. I think I am going to have some slides on the screen any moment now. So I'll just start by saying I wasn't yet on staff at 350 pdx in 2020 to 2021, but many of our staff in their personal capacity and I myself were exercising our rights of speech and assembly then and again in the last couple of years opposing police brutality, kidnaping of immigrants and other intersecting injustices. There haven't been a lot of incidents using tear gas against climate activists in Portland, but there have been many such incidents in other places. So you'll hear from other presenters about the impact on people. And I will note, because I don't know that anybody else is covering this particular piece, that although tear gas is designed to impact the respiratory system of Portland, study of people who menstruate shows a likely linkage to reproductive health as well. So before I go any further, I'll see if we're going to be able to get some slides going. Should I keep going or okay, you can refer to the slides later, I guess. And so what got us involved as 350 pdx as an organization in the issue of chemical weapons was when our then forest defense manager, brenna, experienced being tear gassed by a tree, she started reacting to the tear gas still drifting around midday, and noticed it had accumulated on nearby trees. Though we use the term tear gas, the chemical agents against Portland protesters have often been in powder form, thrown or fired via grenades and canisters. The powder drifts on the wind, then lands on far flung surfaces. The main type of chemical chemical weapon of environmental concern used is what's commonly referred to as cs gas. There are other types, but that's one that has the most research about it. It's a white crystalline solid. The powder occurs in a pyrotechnic mixture that can be aerosolized as a smoke or fog. It's considered explosive and flammable because cs is so harmful, it's illegal to use in international warfare, according to the geneva conventions. And yet law enforcement can use it on our own people. Exposure to 2mg/m■!t of cs is in the category of immediately dangerous to life and health, but much higher concentrations were deployed. Toxic particles are indiscriminate. They stay in the air and spread, meaning not only the people attending a protest experience the effects, but many people over a large area who were not at a protest are exposed as well as all the trees, wildlife, rivers and other animals and plants living in a large dispersion area around places that are gassed. Looks like we're catching up with the slides here.
142 Thanks for bearing with us as we get the the tech set up.
143 All right there. You can see impact on the reproductive system. All the trees in that image, the dispersal pattern. Particles floating through the air. And we'll do one more. You can see the disperse dispersal into the river area. So we'll stay with that one. According to a study of tear gas Tuesday, two kilograms of toxins would have ended up in the Willamette just on June 2nd, 2020 from particles spreading through the air. This could even affect wildlife and farms downriver. Instructions on use of cs gas say not to let it enter water systems and drains, stating it's likely harmful to fish and other parts of aquatic ecosystems. Chemical weapons other than cs have been used on peaceful demonstrators such as h. C gas, and it's often difficult for the public to know what has been released unless someone collects and analyzes the spent canisters. Various toxic pollutants were found in samples such as barium, copper, lead and zinc. Next slide. With the possible exception of battle sites during world war one, to the best of our knowledge, no one had ever used so much tear gas over such a long time in such a concentrated place as we experienced in Portland in 2020 to 2021. There were also many tactical herbicides, such as agent orange sprayed on countries in southeast asia, but that's a different type of compound. There's not a wealth of information regarding the environmental impacts of tear gas and these kinds of chemical weapons, but what information there is is not good. Next slide. A study about impacts of cs on aquatic creatures shows that very small concentrations of it in the water can be lethal to rainbow trout. It likely has similar effects on other fish and aquatic organisms. Even the destruction of chemical weapons may cause harm to wildlife, and studies of sea dumped chemical weapons show there is likely risk and harm to fish and wildlife, and more research is needed, a un environmental program study cautions that chemical weapons cause concentrations in the environment that far exceed safe levels, and that more research is needed to know the full impacts. Cs powder is already not supposed to be washed into storm drains, but of course, it's difficult to avoid. Even if Portland increases filtering on storm drains due to the dispersal range of the airborne particles, much of it can still land in the river and waterways depending on the direction of the wind. Next slide. A great deal is unknown. We don't know what happens if toxins from chemical weapons accumulate and build up in the soil or water. We don't know their effects on a food web. If there are long term effects on aquatic organisms, birds or other animals, or about how trees and plants may be impacted if the cs leaches into the soil or leaves, we don't know the impact of unknown compounds that are being released into the ecosystem with various munitions. What we do know is that when portlanders are sprayed with tear gas, the trees, other plants and soil are also sprayed. And we know that wildlife, including birds, utilize those spaces. The situations are never far from the river. Next slide 350 pdx along with several other local organizations and represented by the aclu, filed a complaint against the department of homeland security in 2020, claiming law enforcement's repeated deployment of so many chemical weapons was a violation of nepa, the national environmental policy act. The lawsuit cites the federal agency's failure to analyze the potentially severe human health and environmental impacts before deploying chemical munitions, as required by nepa. We saw a court order forcing dhs to halt their use of chemical munitions until they perform a thorough analysis and make the information available to the public. An appeal to the ninth circuit court was dismissed because chemical weapons were no longer being deployed in Portland on a daily basis. But of course, as we've seen, that doesn't mean they never will again. No court has yet heard the case on its merits. We continue to believe this level of toxins being released into the environment landing on trees, plants, rivers and impacting wildlife is a likely violation of nepa. Next slide. So, in addition to all the harm to human health, you'll hear about next. Because of the environmental damage we know from chemical weapons and everything that is unknown, we recommend city council bans use of chemical weapons in Portland. Thank you.
144 Thank you, doctor bock. I think we're going to doctor moses next. Thank you so much.
145 Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak about health impacts of tear gas. I'm a pulmonary and critical care physician who cares for people in the clinic as well as in the intensive care unit. And I'm here as a member of the Oregon thoracic society, which is our state society of pulmonary and critical care physicians, as well as respiratory therapists, thoracic surgeons, and all of those who care for people with respiratory illnesses. We are the state chapter of the American thoracic society, which is comprised of over 22,000 members engaging in care of patients and science related to respiratory health and threats to it. The ats section on terrorism and inhalational disasters contains a specific locus of expertise regarding the impact of cs and ozone, which has now also been partially replaced by pava, a synthetic variant. And they study this both from cell culture to mouse models to studies in humans. The ats has called for a complete moratorium on the use of these chemicals, collectively known as tear gas agents, for use on civilian populations, in alignment with their prohibition on the battlefield. As has been stated, tear gas is not actually a gas, but an aerosolized powder, generally mixed into a pyrotechnical charge, and the ignition of these, when used in munition forms such as pepper balls and grenade varieties, combined to generate other highly concerning chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. Our own military has conducted research on the resulting chemical clouds from deployment of tear gas agents, and found a host of known inhalational and liver toxins, as well as cyanide formation. So how do these chemicals work? Like why do they hurt and why do they affect us? They actually we've found the receptors for at least two of them, trpv1 and trpa1. And these actually activate nerves in the eyes and the skin, the respiratory tract and throughout the body. And I think there was there's a thought that they just caused pain. But actually when these ion channels are activated, they actually generate this entire inflammatory cascade, which is why you can get skin burns and you can see similar things in the respiratory tract, which is where I kind of have my area of expertise. And the other, when you study even models for the development of asthma and the maintenance of asthma, some of these actual receptors are actually essential to maintaining bad airway diseases like asthma. And I would say as a lung doctor, you know, I've had to send patients to the er for exacerbations from far less noxious compounds. I've had a patient almost arrest in my office when someone was there with perfume. And with more than 1 in 10 Oregonians suffering from asthma. This is very dangerous to our population. Whether the individual targeted for deployment of agents, the surrounding community, and often the law enforcement officers themselves, who often end up being more regularly exposed to these agents. You know, I have a patient with obstructive lung disease who lived in a building where tear gas was being used nearby. It infiltrated her building as as we discussed, and she almost couldn't live in her own home. I mean, just continuously exacerbating multiple visits, multiple medications. And I don't think we ever really got her control back where it was. For one, you know, it's hard to study these things in these exact contexts because you know, what's needed to actually deploy an entire study. You kind of have to know where these agents are going to be deployed and when. But the studies that have been done have been pretty concerning. A lot of it comes from our own military on healthy recruits who've actually passed, you know, the muster to, you know, join the military. And with even just one exposure, which was this like masked trust study of over 6000 of our soldiers, they found that they actually stopped doing those, those that, that training exercise in that event because they doubled the rate of bronchitis, symptoms of respiratory infections of significant respiratory complications. So and then we also have known from other studies, like in turkey, similarly, we start to see obstruction in the lungs that the the ratios of the lungs indicating a progression towards potential obstructive lung disease. And so these and I can't even imagine what it means when you're in these clouds of agents all the time with these repeated exposures. So these really are potentially lethal. And there is, you know, mortality to them that people it is not just cough and irritation, it's wheeze, it's constriction in the lungs. It's, you know, filling the lungs with fluid and potentially death. So I guess the Oregon thoracic society would also advocate for a moratorium on their use in civilian populations, in alignment with our recommendations in war.
146 Thank you doctor. I so chad, I'm not sure if we're going to stacey next or I think we I think we are going to stacey next.
147 Sorry, I didn't quite hear that.
148 We have a fourth panelist. I think if you I think you're fourth. I'm just making sure. Yeah. So see nods for my team back here. Sorry. A little awkward to switch back and forth, but I want to welcome up stacey harper, who's a toxicologist.
149 Thanks.
150 I thank you. I am sorry I can't be there in person. It was late last night that the decision was kind of made that I was going to be on. So good morning. And I am a professor here at Oregon state university and toxicology and environmental engineering. I was asked to provide an overview of the toxic effects for for on humans of the different crowd control and detention sprays that have been used in Portland. I'm going to focus a little bit more heavily on the reproductive effects that we've we've heard a little bit about, but both through inhalation and through ingestion of contaminated water exposure. So I'm going to start with the cs gas that's already been introduced, but it's the one that we know the most about. Although the evolving picture of safety on this particular chemical agent has shifted. So in the 70s, they had studies with pretty small number of women, maybe 30 women, and did exposures, found no birth defects and no adverse pregnancy outcomes. But some of the newer data that we're getting that focuses more on menstrual and uterine effects. So not contradicting the prior studies, but just looking at more nuanced differences and effects. This new human data is showing from a peer reviewed paper in 2023, they surveyed over 1200 tear gas, exposed people that had a uterus, and 83% of those had reported at least one adverse symptoms. So these symptoms can range from uterine cramping, breast tenderness, either early or delayed menstrual bleeding. And those effects scaled with the amount of exposure. Like most toxicants, the longer you're exposed to it, the the harsher the effects. And so those that were exposed for more than five days had a two and a half times likelier adverse outcome compared to just a single day exposure. So those repeated exposures make an impact. Doctor bock covered a little bit of the Portland Portland protesters. So for those that were surveyed at those protests of women who menstruate, 54.5% of them reported a change in their menstrual cycle after being exposed. So we should be careful to say this isn't causation, right? Because the stress of that event alone can disrupt cycles. But it should be noted that stress doesn't typically explain the the altered or heavier bleeding that was reported. And so this is a concern for reproductive age portlanders, for certain, the cs gas is not just exposed through inhalation. We heard that it gets widely distributed. In fact, after the 2020 protests, the Portland bureau of environmental services vacuumed out the residue from six drains, and they were looking for hexavalent chromium, perchlorate, barium cyanide, all of these nasty chemicals that are associated with cs gas, hexavalent chromium, for instance, is listed as developmental and reproductive toxicant by the EPA. Perchlorate is one that is also found in fireworks. Perchlorate can cross the placenta and disrupts fetal thyroid hormone and can produce brain malformations that persist even when maternal thyroid levels go back to normal. So after the exposure has resided in mom. Also noted are some of these fetal and hormonal effects on thyroid, sperm, testosterone, and those are typically associated more with the metals and the other chemical contaminants that are part of the cs formulation, not the cs itself. The cs itself, though, can hydrolyze in water within 15 minutes at neutral ph, so that first rain event can certainly carry that straight into the Willamette river or other water sources. When we talk about oc pepper spray there, this does cause the same kind of acute breathing distress that was described by doctor bock, but it is specifically flagged for pregnant women, children, and then people with asthma and heart disease because they're the most vulnerable to the reproductive toxin. There's no dedicated reproductive toxicity of capsaicin. It's mostly an irritant and inflammatory agent for mostly eyes, nose, throat, lungs. But enough ingestion can can lead to nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain. So think about when you're inhaling stuff. It's also being ingested as well. Then we have hexachloroethane smoke, the hc smoke that is very persistent and severe. It is comprised of hexachloroethane and zinc chloride. The EPA classifies that hexachloroethane as a possible human carcinogen, and it is listed as developmental and reproductive toxicant and high doses in animal studies, not humans, but high doses lead to maternal toxicity, reduced fetal weight, skeletal abnormalities, and reduced implantation. So reduced fertility overall. There's also some evidence there's reduced sperm counts in males. Although the national toxicology program did do its own study and wasn't able to replicate these findings. So that one is kind of contingent. But the zinc chloride smoke is one that has a documented case report of a fatality through acute respiratory distress distress syndrome. So this was published in 2008 in clinical toxicology, where a 21 year old student inhaled smoke during a fire safety demonstration at a school. It doesn't break down quickly. It's persistent and bioaccumulates and can have a lag time after exposure, so this lag time can range from 10 to 32 days, depending on how much was actually inhaled. And then there's a couple of other notable ones that I just want to bring up. Barium is one that results in reduced newborn birth weight in animal studies. Reproductive studies in humans is sparse on that one, though. And then the last one that I'd like to bring up that's, you know, component of some of these gases is the cyanide. It has the most detailed male specific data. So if, if that's a of interest, these they did a 90 day rat study and showed drops in sperm motility and count, along with significant alterations in hormone levels and testicular atrophy and degeneration. All the hormone levels were suppressed in those. And then in a separate animal study, they found fetal malformations and low fetal birth weights from maternal exposure. I will leave it there and move to the next person. Thank you.
151 Thank you so much, stacy. And I believe chad, who is a retired firefighter and volunteer medic, wanted to have you close us out because of how your experience is more immediate and on the ground, so please take it away. Thanks for being here.
152 Yeah, no, I hope everyone's doing well. My name's chad robison. I'm a retired firefighter paramedic, and since late 2025, I've spent every weekend volunteering outside the Portland ice facility, providing medical first aid and decontamination. Thank you. Providing medical decontamination to anyone who needs it. During that time, I've had the opportunity to see firsthand the medical impacts the exposure of chemical weapons can have on people, and the challenges of providing care in that environment. I first got involved on my own because I care about people, all people, regardless of which side of the political aisle they may be on. That has been at the center of my efforts from the beginning. One of the basic requirements for anyone volunteering with us is that they must be willing to provide care to any everyone who needs it, regardless of their beliefs, politics, or reasons for being there. From the start, I saw the need to organize and coordinate our medical efforts so we could respond effectively to the overwhelming number of people needing decontamination and first aid. When I go down to the ice facility, we work together, bringing our own medical supplies, and by coordinating, we organize into teams positioned around the area so we can respond quickly wherever help is needed. We wait and listen for someone to call out medic! These on site group of volunteers and I have decontaminated countless people exposed when ice indiscriminately deployed tear gas, affecting anyone who just happened to be in the area. This includes not only protesters but media, legal observers, clergy, local residents and others simply going about their daily lives. It broke my heart to see the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons on these people, those we have decamped, those we have decontaminated include peaceful protesters on a March with their children. When I asked one of our volunteer medics what ages he was seeing while pulling families out of the gas cloud, he broke down and said there were strollers while deploying tear gas indiscriminately. There were also a lot of directed attacks. In fact, medics were typically the first to be hit in an attempt to make our role of decontaminating people more difficult. The first canister was often thrown into our triage location. In addition to medics, I've repeatedly witnessed vulnerable and marginalized people, particularly transgender individuals, being subjected to attacks. Our ability to fully decontaminate someone in the field is limited. We start by flushing their eyes until they're able to see again, then rinse their face and any other exposed skin to remove as much of the remaining irritant as we can. Some of the injuries I've personally treated are physical injuries caused by people unable to see while running out of tear gas clouds, blisters on faces when decontamination wasn't done well enough, and asthma attacks, which can be life threatening. My time is limited, but I could stand here or sit here and talk a lot longer about all the harm I've seen from the use of tear gas. My own experience with the effects of tear gas has gone well beyond any immediate exposure. I teach protest safety classes, and for four months I dealt with a persistent cough and difficulty speaking clearly. Even today, I continue to notice the effects. By the end of a class, speaking can become more difficult for me. The impact of repeated tear gas exposure hasn't simply ended when I left the area, or when the immediate burning and irritation went away. Looking back at the time I've spent outside that facility, I struggled to think of a single time when the use of tear gas resulted in anything positive. I repeatedly watched canisters thrown behind groups of protesters and then in front of them, leaving them with nowhere to go. It wasn't an attempt to disperse a crowd, it was to cause pain. After seeing what I've seen, I have one question for everyone why I was there. I saw that pain firsthand. I saw the injuries. I saw people unable to open their eyes, struggling to breathe, frightened and coughing. I saw it in their faces while we tried to sorry. While we tried to wash the chemicals from their eyes and skin. What I never saw was tear gas, making the situation safer, calmer or better. So after everything I've witnessed and everyone I've treated, I keep coming back to that same question. Why? Thanks for listening.
153 Thank you chad. Thank you to all four of our panelists for coming in and for sharing these stories and for your experience and expertise in this quick housekeeping note. And we'll start the q with councilor. Novick. And then. Councilor. Koyama Lane. I believe. Councilor Smith your hand is a legacy hand, but feel free to jump back in the queue. The presentation was added to the the documents online, so you can all go look at that. If you want to refer back to the slides at any point. What. Councilor. Novick. If you have any questions followed by. Councilor. Koyama Lane. Thank you.
154 Thank you, mr. Chairman. On the issue of fatalities from the use of chemical weapons, we heard about we heard about one in particular. Are there other instances that we can talk about?
155 One of the largest series.
156 Put out a 0.03% mortality. But again, these things are they're hard to study in the way it's being used now with these kind of repeated exposures. Another one, the dissipation really matters. So ats the terrorism section has recommendations if you can't avoid it, one of which is specifically avoiding kettling tactics. There was 26 I think, sorry, 34 individuals in egypt who died all at one time from deployment of a tear gas agent into a vehicle where they were being transported and they died, I think 34 or 45 died. And so it really does have to do with the ability to escape ventilation and getting away from these things. And when you see the clouds, I have to say that those are pretty shocking images, but I can get you this was a five minutes and I apologize. I didn't have time to put everything together, but I can. I'm happy to share other references. The ats has a wide.
157 When you say 0.03% is that.
158 That was from one study of heavily. I want to say it was 5000 individuals and I don't want to be giving incorrect information. So I'm happy to provide those references to you guys and staff. But and I'm happy to follow up.
159 That's like a, that's like a worldwide study.
160 No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't a worldwide study. It was a study. So the way these things work is you and again, I'm a I'm a clinician. I'm a full time doc. I'm not a researcher. But once upon a time I did do research. And this was a study of, of people who were exposed in a, in a, in a, in an area. And then they looked at how many of those people exposed what we call a cohort that they followed, like how many seem to have died from the exposure. And then there's lots of case reports where someone is exposed comes in with fulminant respiratory failure. But. So there's many accounts of people dying after tear gas exposure. But if you're trying to get like a rate of how many people exposed from one instance will die, that's, that's kind of a, that's a hard thing to get as a number. Does that make sense? But there's, there's a lot of case reports of people dying, which means that someone was heavily exposed and then died. But trying to get like put a number on it is, is a challenge.
161 And could we see some of those individual case reports?
162 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, those I could send you there. I can, I can get you that later today.
163 Thank you.
164 Yeah of course.
165 And I might be jumping the gun here, mr. Chairman, but we had a lot of back and forth about the capacity of the of the local government to like, force ice, to unmask. I mean, what are we without breaching any, like attorney client privilege? What are the lawyers say about our ability? I mean, we've got we've gone to court to limit the use of tear gas. But what about the ability of the city, just by ordinance to stop that other governments from using tear gas?
166 There'll be upcoming information on that. But I think, well, I'm happy to get you connected to the lawyers we've been talking to.
167 Okay. Thank you.
168 A little outside the scope of the health conversation.
169 Okay.
170 Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor. Koyama Lane. Followed by Green.
171 Thank you chair, I appreciate your focus on public health and the impacts of federal overreach and the use of chemical agents. I will share that in early February, during that during and after that labor against ice March, I had a lot of my former students reaching out in broad daylight. They were with their parents peacefully marching at a March that even my own teachers union was supporting and was at, and were met with force and teargas was deployed on them without any warning. And those kids were really, really scared and hurt. I was so angry to hear about that. And as a mom and teacher, I'm interested in hearing a little bit more, if, if possible, about what we know specifically about the health impacts of these types of chemical agents on children.
172 I'm an adult lung doctor, so I apologize. I don't have that information, but I can reach out to people who study this more in depth and get that and try to supply that.
173 I think that's incredibly important for us to get more information on. As we're talking about specifically federal overreach and, and how this, you know, we saw in February a willingness to cross the line and hurt children.
174 I can say with with other forms of inhalational toxins, children are at a particularly vulnerable time because they breathe more than adults, and then they inhale more. And then you're also hitting a critical developmental window. So anything that stunts lung growth early and this includes air pollution exposure, wildfire smoke exposure, that sort of thing. Premature delivery. Right. So if children are being born premature because of exposures, they are born with lower lung function. And then that just increases their likelihood over time to develop asthma, copd, other forms of obstructive lung disease or stunted lung. So I think I imagine that if there is data out there, it would show exactly the same thing. But the degree and specificity related to tear gas. I would have to just provide you later if there is anything.
175 Thank you for sharing your expertise. And as a mom of a kiddo who needs an inhaler and has asthma and someone who's supported a lot of kids who need inhalers and have asthma, I think this is something we should maybe try to get an expert on to talk more specifically about this. Thank you.
176 Thank you. Councilor Green followed by councilor.
177 Ryan.
178 Thank you, chair Kanal, thank you so much to the panelists today for sharing this kind of environmental and health related presentation on the impacts of, of tear gas in our communities. I wanted to follow up on a question, doctor moses. Right. You had made reference to some training activity is no longer used. Can you say that?
179 Can you.
180 Clarify that?
181 So there's a the the us military did a study and I have that one I do have the reference for. So I can give it to you because it was helpful where it was common practice. And I think they've lowered the exposure to do this chamber study, which was called like a mass confidence study. And again, I have worked at a couple of va's but never served in the military. So I don't want to be saying this incorrectly, where they would actually expose part of basic training camp was being exposed to tear gas, and you would put on a mask to kind of trust the mask sort of thing. But then part of it was also that it would be removed. So they had a cohort of 6000 young, healthy guys who definitely you're not supposed to have asthma to join the army, right. So, so didn't have known lung disease were exposed as part of this exercise at a level that was considered safe. And when they followed them, they found that it was not safe at all, right. That they were actually causing pretty significant lung damage even after one exposure. And speaking to the point of kids and asthma, increased wheezing and increased risk of respiratory infections. So with other inhalational toxins, we actually know you can dramatically alter the immune system of the lung, which makes you more prone to infections, pneumonias, lung failures of different kinds. And so that my understanding from people I know who do research with the department of defense and military is that that had changed that practice in a pretty significant way. But I could follow up on what that specific that means.
182 I appreciate I used to be in the army myself. I went through that exposure chamber. I'm also holding my government inhaler that I got from the va.
183 Symbicort from the va, probably, right.
184 Yeah.
185 I've been fighting to change that formulary.
186 Yeah. It's you know, it's better than not having it. Yeah. But I, I, I remember that experience acutely.
187 And you didn't have it going in, right?
188 No.
189 Yeah. And so yeah, I, I'm encouraged to hear that the military has acknowledged that this is, this is even too much for its recruits and folks to, to be exposed to. I was I was one of my additional duties in the army was the nuclear biological chemical nco for my unit. And so I had to do the thing where I, you know, dust it up, put folks through the chamber and breathe a lot of that stuff. But I breathed a lot more of it on tear gas Tuesday in downtown Portland. And I was at that event in south waterfront in February. And I remember, and I just I'm with you on getting choked up about this because I remember seeing the strollers. So I just want to validate that it's kind of hard to not feel that emotion from the parents who are scared. Their children are, I mean, their babies and strollers being exposed to tear gas. And there's no it's a canyon through there with with the apartment buildings. And there was no wind that day. Oh, yeah. And the feds were just launching tear gas. And it was a thick cloud of tear gas that was just hanging around. And you can't get out of it and you can't get away. And I remember seeing folks.
190 These were these were families who didn't didn't know about protesting. They were just there. One of my medics was he didn't have time to put his ppe on. And he just kept going in because families didn't know. They just stood there in the gas. They didn't know to get out of it. And he would just go and start grabbing people and go back. And I got a picture of him and he's just it's horrible. He's just so messed up. But he just kept going back in to grab families and pull them out. Yeah.
191 So that's a level of bravery. I think that.
192 I agree.
193 Folks, it's hard to it's hard to respect and appreciate unless you see it yourself. So kudos to those folks. Yeah. So we, you know, councilor, aye, Morillo and I brought forward an ordinance to place an impact fee on detention facilities, you know, with the, with the intention here that recognizing that we can't, you know, necessarily direct the federal government on how to behave, we can require that landlords who lease to, to such an entity and allow toxins to be admitted and in that fashion, pay some sort of cost because of it. And I just want to note that for folks who are watching this presentation today, the city is still in rulemaking on the specific manner in which those those impact fees will be administered. I think that's due on August 26th is kind of when the final rulemaking will be published. But the intention behind that law was to really capture the the impacts and almost like a externalities sort of sort of way. And so this type of presentation is extremely helpful for us, bringing in a universe of social costs that are not borne by, you know, the landlord of the facility or any other actor, the federal government in particular. But the rest of us, we all bear that cost. And so as we do this rulemaking and as we adjust that over time, our impact fees need to be commensurate with those costs. And they are significant and they are sometimes hard to measure. But thanks for coming today. I really appreciate the the difficult conversation and sharing of perspective or experiences here and, and your expertise in this work. And thanks for scheduling this councilor.
194 Thank you, councilor Green, councilor Ryan, followed by Novick.
195 Thank you, chair Kanal. First of all, I have the floor. I just want to ask you, chair, this meeting is at 1230. We have one more item. So how many more minutes do we have for this item?
196 The previous item went over on this one was scheduled for one hour. So and we started at 1107. So 1207 16 minutes.
197 My question was what about the next item? Are we going to get to that today?
198 Yeah.
199 Okay. So how many more minutes are left when this item 16. Okay. Thanks. So I understand and appreciate this issue. And thank you to those who are presenting this morning, I appreciate it. I have my own tear gas stories. I think we all do. And so it does impact us emotionally when we listen to such testimony. I'm surprised we haven't talked about I didn't hear the current state and federal restrictions that are in place that would have been helpful. Did someone talk about that and I just missed it.
200 I'm a lung doctor. My my understanding is of the chemical impacts of these agents. I don't I'm not I don't know much about federal law specifically.
201 Sorry.
202 Because it.
203 Anyway, that's helpful. I just think everyone should understand what they are as we dive into this issue. But maybe that's my confusion at the moment, chair, is what are we. I listened to a presentation. It was gripping. But what where's this going? What are we doing today?
204 We're hearing a presentation on the public health impacts of chemical weapons usage. And if there's questions as to the expertise of all four presenters on health, I think that's a great opportunity.
205 To do it. But today, we're not hearing about the current state and federal restrictions that are currently in place.
206 No.
207 Okay.
208 Outside of the scope of public health impacts?
209 Well, I think it's I think a lot of things are outside of scope. That's what I'm trying to get at. And are we not? Are we going to hear from the Portland police bureau who's often mentioned because they're here? And were they engaged in this item?
210 No. This is an external stakeholder panel with public health experts.
211 Okay. I think sometimes I get confused when we don't lean into the experts that are within our own city staff on an item that seems to be connected to them as well.
212 I'm hearing you'd like a presentation with the users of chemical weapons in.
213 The future.
214 I think when we hear implications and we don't have a chance to have balanced dialog, it just doesn't feel right. So it feels like we're not doing objective democracy. So I just was confused about what the scope of this was in this committee at this time.
215 Yeah.
216 And if.
217 I really am just a little lost on what we're doing.
218 I appreciate that and I'm happy to bring this, this discussion back with different panelists. If you have other users of chemical weapons you'd like me to invite, I'd also welcome that. Councilor. Novick.
219 Yeah.
220 Thank you, mr. Chair. So, doctor moses, you brought up and this might be an unfair question, but also since since we have young people here and I want to take the opportunity kind of to warn people not to go out when there's a lot of smoke in the air. So my unfair question is, is there any comparisons of one exposure to tear gas as opposed to four hours of being out in the air that, you know, 100, the 160 unhealthy level we had last last week? And if you can't answer that, I
221 Just want to give you the opportunity to talk about going out and really unhealthy air and why it's bad and why you shouldn't.
222 Do it. Actually, I do know a lot more about wildfire smoke living here than I do necessarily about tear gas. But, you know, a head to head comparison, I think would be challenging because all these things have to do with dose. You know, we do know that elevating levels of particulate matter pm 2.5 in the air, you know, also can increase your risk of asthma. You know, pneumonias that sort of thing. I think the scale, if I'm remembering the studies, it seems like the scale for one one exposure for healthy men. I can't think of a. I don't believe it's as high as doubling your rate of subsequent pneumonias and bronchitis like that. That seems pretty high. I'd have to be thinking about what level the pm 2.5 would be able to get to. But now you're making me curious. I could dive into the results section of a few papers and get back to you. But yes, you know, breathing these, this particulate matter and everything is very unhealthy because the lungs are basically designed to bring things into the venous system. I think people think of the lungs as keeping things out of our body. And that is just not true. The lungs, when you inhale whatever's in the air, including these toxins, hexavalent chromium, cyanide, all these carcinogens, they go straight across the bloodstream, across a one cell thick barrier and into the bloodstream, and they circulate all around the body. So that's why inhaling wildfires and particulate matter in air pollution cause things like heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and cognitive changes in children's brains, all these different things, right? So that's I think people misunderstand. They think the lungs are like skin and they're not. So basically, if you're breathing something, you're essentially it's in your bloodstream instantly. So people like to inhale drugs. You know, it's because it's like doing an iv injection.
223 Actually, just to warn you, I might ask you to come to the public safety committee and talk about the impact of wildfire smoke on people's lungs, because I think we're going to have these events over and over. And I think to take the opportunity to tell people, you really should not go outside. I spent last week arguing with my dog about how long walks we should take.
224 I. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a passion of mine. If I can't come, I'm sure someone else from ots can come.
225 Thank you.
226 Thank you. Councilor Novick. I'm going to go to councilor. Pirtle-guiney and then back to councilor. Koyama Lane.
227 Thank you chair. I wasn't sure if I was going to jump in because I didn't know where we stood on time, but I do have just a couple of questions or clarifications. And if you don't have the answers, that's okay. But before I started digging elsewhere, I figured I'd try. We've heard a lot about the studies and the specifics around cs around tear gas, but I've also heard you all mention oc, which is pepper spray, essentially. Two are the studies that you've referenced particular to cs tear gas, or are there studies on the long term health impacts of repeated exposure of oc of pepper spray as well?
228 Yeah, so it's a mix, I would say. So the one the chamber study for the recruits was in cs. But you have similar, you see kind of similar activation of the receptors. I think with, with oc, they, those, those kind of ion channels that I talked about before and the kind of the propagation of the inflammation in the airways. Again, human epidemiology can be really challenging on this. The other thing that can be challenging is it's hard to know sometimes what's being sprayed. So when they try to do a study afterwards of, you know, in humans who were heavily exposed, unless you know what it is like the military is saying, we're exposing our soldiers to this and doing this, or there's some in, you know, police departments. It can be challenging to know, you know, if you're doing a study like of like the protesters in turkey, it's hard to know, you know, who was exposed to and who was exposed to cs. But the cs, my understanding is that cs o, c, and then this new synthetic variant of that are tend to be the three most common chemicals that are in use. But when you look at the biology of what's going on in terms of the neurons and the lungs, they are causing kind of similar activation of the concerning channels. So I think probably fairly that's helpful.
229 And then for the the longer term reproductive health impacts are those seen with oc also, or are those impacts specific to cs or do we not know because we don't know.
230 I don't know if the toxicologist has a has information on that. My understanding is a lot of those studies were were again probably run into the same problem because they were done on people kind of in this kind of large exposure. So it's, it's hard to know what was the agent deployed, at least as far as I know. I don't know if they have that the toxicologist could speak to that or.
231 I do not have any further insights on that.
232 Okay.
233 I would say the inhibitory when people are pregnant, one of the ways there's this inhibitory peptide, that is a way that they respond to kind of mitigate the effects of the activation of those receptors. And then people who are pregnant, sometimes there's that for whatever reason that that antibody that is used is, is lower or is destroyed. And so they may not for that one, there's the kind of the biological concern about a diminished capacity when people are pregnant to respond, to decrease the inflammation from pepper spray from the from the capsaicin.
234 Thank you. And then I was going to ask a question specific to non-human animals. But if you have an answer on that question, I'd gladly hear that as well.
235 Yeah. My understanding is that for ozone, when it's like an individual is being targeted with a pepper spray or something, it's not as damaging to the broader environment because it's just directed at that one person. But if it's deployed as a gas, first of all, we don't know what else usually is in those compounds unless we have the canister and we can see or, you know, it's reported by the agency. So we don't necessarily know what is being deployed into the environment in a gas or powder that is going everywhere. And so that has not been studied as much as cs and needs, you know, that needs further research to know how all the other things in it are impacting the environment.
236 And while, while you're, while you have the mic, do we know if either of these compounds bioaccumulate or biomagnify? And are there any long term studies in non-human animal populations about population level impacts?
237 Yeah, to my knowledge, we don't know about bioaccumulation or long term studies like they haven't been done. And so that was one of our concerns with the nepa lawsuit was we haven't studied this. We don't know how it's going to impact the long term health of our ecosystems. And so if it does bioaccumulate, that is obviously a problem. It seems like that it's not something that maybe continues past the life of that species, you know, the fish itself, but then it's in the soil and we don't know what happens to it after that.
238 Thank you all.
239 Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Oh, sorry. Go for it.
240 Stacy.
241 Can I just add one thing so that the hexachloroethane is actually bioaccumulative and probably biomagnify as well, so it could go up the food chain.
242 Great. And that's that third substance. Yes. Okay. Thank you.
243 Thank you. We'll go to councilor Koyama Lane and then I'll close out the queue.
244 Thanks. Thank you, chair, and thank you for the conversations around what should be on the agenda. What is committee should be at committee of the whole versus at certain committees. I think these are important conversations to have. Committee. The whole is something that we're new at. It's not new in general. Many other bodies have it, but I think it's important for us to ask those questions and tease that out. And I think that's important for me. The focus on it being about federal response, federal overreach, protecting all portlanders, that doesn't make sense to me, but I appreciate that. Chair Novick of community and public safety asked questions about what needs to be followed up in that committee. I think that's really important, and I think that should happen. And I just want to be clear, because I think we've I've said something like this on the dais, but I've also talked to chief de and pa president aaron schmeltz about this, you know, I don't just to be clear, and I see some of our officers here today. Thank you for being here. I do not see you tear gassing our children in Portland. And I want to just state that I think when we're talking about how this applies and works within our city with city employees, I think that's important conversation to have. But I've had conversations with the chief and with president schmitz about, you know, feeling that this we have we have changed. Our bureau has changed in the last 6 or 7 years. And that they they want that to be recognized. And they want trust to be built back up. And we've I've recognized that I've even I started hearing last fall from people who are like leftists being like, wow, our our police bureau is showing up. They're surprising us in some, like really wonderful ways. And that question about like, how, how do we get that trust? How do we, how do we move forward? And I think some of that is showing up in those ways. And, you know, sometimes trust is like two steps forward, one step back, and that that happens. But I want to acknowledge that there have been there have been shifts over the last six years. They're not going unseen. We're talking even in these specific examples that we're bringing up. We're not we're not talking about our city staff in this moment right now there. There's going to be overlap. I think that makes sense. We need to have that conversation. But when when I do have those conversations about like, we want that trust, it happens slowly, but I see some of that happening. I see, I mean, I saw a little bit of I saw some backsliding with the recent ballot measure. That's not going to go forward around PCEF, but I think some of that is just natural and it's going to happen like that. And that's not related to this exactly. But I guess I just want to name that. I want to name that. I see this as really talking about what we're seeing from federal overreach right now, and that it is important to acknowledge, and I hear often from from our chief and from president, president schmitz, like, can can we recognize that there are shifts and that things are different? Yes, I see that. I see the change. I see the trust trying to be built. And I think it is is still important. And I and I actually hope, I think this is an opportunity for folks from the police bureau and from pa to be able to help see some of those differences, too, when we can talk about some of the federal overreach, what we're seeing, and and be able to thread that needle and know that it doesn't doesn't have to mean that we're we're targeting any, anyone in particular. So I hope that was okay. That just kind of was a little half baked, but that's I wanted to say that. Thank you for being here.
245 Thank you. Councilor. Koyama Lane. I'm going to have chair Avalos and then I'll close it out. Councilor Avalos. Then I'll close it out.
246 Yeah.
247 Thank you. Chair will not not hear.
248 From committee. Sorry.
249 Yeah. Not not at the moment but yes thank you. Thank you. Chair Kanal. I have a lot of thoughts but I'll just say this. It we spent years talking about the impacts of the chemical weapons that were being deployed on our streets. To be clear, Portland police regularly deployed many chemical weapons that had an enormous impact on our community. I spent years talking to community about it, talking to experts like you all, writing a 40 page report that specifically outlined next steps to how we address that. And because the main reason that we're being told that there need needed for is for crowd control. There are lots of ways to control a crowd that do not include deploying dangerous chemical weapons that are going into our water streams, going into our bodies. So many people were impacted in the protests of 2020. And so I hear what you're saying. Councilor Koyama Lane but Portland police is not they are not. What am I trying to say? They are part of the conversation. They they need to be included in this conversation because I'm concerned, as we continue to see political unrest, which naturally comes when you are living in a fascist state, that we're going to keep turning to those old methods instead of seeing how we're going to protect our community and democracy. You can do both. And I don't think tear gas does that. And so I think that it is important that we as a city, as we are looking at overall community safety and health, that we are considering the impacts that that has had on our communities health, people's physical health, the actual built environment. And I want to have an honest conversation with our police about what it looks like to change our methods for crowd control so that we're not, again, relying on these tactics that are having a big impact. So thank you for this conversation. Thank you for bringing your expertise. Like I said, I've spent many years talking to people like you all and being growing ever more concerned as more research comes out about the impacts short term and long term. And I think it's very serious that we discuss what we as a city are doing to protect our community and our democracy. Thanks.
250 Thank you councilor. Yeah. So just to close this out, I have so much to follow up on, and I appreciate it so much. I think we've talked a lot about the economic development impact of the river and the economic health of our city and how it is not sufficiently there. And so I really appreciated doctor bock, among many other things, the conversation with the drainage into the river and and frankly, the clouds floating over the river, as many of these locations are as much of Portland is very close to the river. We talk a lot about the ice facility, but there was tear gassing up in north Portland on fessenden. And, you know, there's as this has happened around the city, a lot of it has been near water, whether it's a river or the flu or something like that. I'm not going to ask the questions, but I'll follow up just for the interest of time. I, I, you know, we've talked about the, the industrial land use and the Portland international raceway in north Portland and its impacts on asthma development for primarily black and brown kids or disproportionately black and brown kids in that area. I now live in that area. And I know that that's been something that, you know, industrial land is, is arm's length. But but we have an impact in terms of how we run the Portland international raceway. And so I've been thinking about that context. As I listened to what you were saying, doctor morrison, about the, the impact that we have and what we can do directly to stop our own contributions to the health impacts on not just youth, but adults as well. I'm very interested in following up with stacey about the number of, of, of exposures and the degree of exposure that causes some of the incredibly concerning things you walked through in terms of reproductive health. And I really appreciate how candid and how blunt and not euphemistic all of you were in describing everything here. I appreciate that. I know it was difficult and probably difficult to hear for folks as well, but I appreciate that. Chad. Everything. Thank you. But the indiscriminate nature I thought was really important and I wanted to to fix on this. And this is the question I'll ask. When you are like, you can't tear gas. One person in this room that we're in right now, you can pepper spray somebody and it might affect the person next to him, but you can't depending on the nature of the deployment. But you can't tear gas, just one person in the room. And you talked about the clouds, right? So the questions I'll ask first, if you lived in an apartment building where the tear gas occurred directly outside of it, what's what is the have you ever worked in a situation where you could see the impact on folks like that? And I'm sorry to not give you a heads up about this question.
251 No, no, I am so glad you asked this question because there's been incidents where they've dumped ice, has dumped so many canisters at once. It's made such a thick cloud that just there's no wind. So it would just slowly waft and we would have to go down block by block all the way to caruthers park. And I saw a lady go down. Amr had to come and transport her completely unconscious in the middle of this cloud as going down those blocks, I heard kids coughing and crying because they had windows open and this is blocks away, so it is the opposite of. It is the most indiscriminate weapon I can think of. It's horrible.
252 Thank you.
253 I had patients guest in their home who were not attending the protest. I mean, who are dependent on dme. They need oxygen. They were not leaving and doing this. And it had infiltrated into their house.
254 Kids in their beds.
255 I think this affects. So we talked about some committees. This affects. It also affects housing and permitting, because I know that some of the low income housing providers that are asking us for money right now have increased costs and unmet needs in their buildings. I met with folks in an apartment building yesterday. The other question, does the same thing apply? If I'm just going to give a specific example, if you're if tear gas is deployed in a backyard, there's a of an apartment building where the upstairs floor has people in it because it's a business. I'm seeing a nod, you know, so happens in a backyard, two floor building, bottom floor is a vacant apartment. Upstairs is a is a business that currently, at the time of the deployment, has.
256 Yeah. The first time I went down to ice, I was blocks away and I was sneezing and that's blocks away. So yeah, it's it will go everywhere. You can't contain it. You can't direct it as much as you think you can. You cannot direct it. It goes everywhere.
257 Okay, so thank you for that. And I guess I'll close by just a psa. If you were in a business on the 1800 block of northwest overton yesterday, where tear gas was, sorry, chemical, chemical munitions of some type were deployed by PPB yesterday in a backyard. I encourage you to to take a look and talk to your doctor about that. We are seven minutes past time. So if you want to close.
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258 Out 30s.
259 Sure.
260 I just want to clarify that I agree that the police bureau needs to be part of the conversation. My hope is that we can start from a place of curiosity, and maybe there's even some collaboration, and I would hope that. I mean, when I hear the impacts on portlanders, I would assume that if we draw a venn diagram, I would hope that there's places where all of us agree. So that's that's where that's what I'm trying to say. Thank you.
261 Thank you.
262 Point of order, mr. Chair. Yes, I had my hand up.
263 I apologize, councilor Smith. I thought that was a legacy hand.
264 No.
265 I'd like to close this out. We are a little past time, but thanks.
266 Thank you. So I just want to be clear about something because I'm. I think we're talking about something that I'm not getting. But to my understanding, Portland police haven't used tear gas since 2020, correct?
267 No.
268 That's not correct.
269 You just said it was used yesterday.
270 But no, not tear gas. It was a chemical something.
271 Chemical according to and I'm reading the the this is on the police bureau's website right now. Update two armed suspect who assaulted a police canine booked into jail talks about chemical munitions, munitions and weapons. We can argue about the distinction of those. Yes.
272 So I want to yeah.
273 This presentation is about the public health impact of chemical weapons.
274 Okay. So chemical weapons. So. Let's see here. Who uses chemical weapons? Is that the federal government or the city government?
275 Yes.
276 Federal government.
277 Both.
278 City government. I think we do need to have some clarification by I know I see commander here, but we need to have some clarification because I think we're getting confused. And you're confusing the public because you're confusing me. What I thought was going on in the Portland police bureau. You're telling me something different now?
279 I'm not actually, it's. This is from the police bureau's website. I.
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280 I need some clarification because I think you're misleading folks, but the reality is we're not supposed to be using tear gas, and we are not supposed to have used it since 2020. That is my understanding.
281 I'll let you follow up with the bureau on that. Okay.
282 So but.
283 In is about public health.
284 Okay. Point of order. So this chair, could.
285 You not a.
286 Point of order.
287 But not a point of order. But mr. Chair, what I want you to do is be clear on how you state things, because I think you're misleading the public in what you're saying and what we're doing here, because we're just getting a health update on what chemicals do to a body. And you went real specific. You went, say, if if chemical weapons were dropped off in the in the top floor, could could you get contaminated and all that? So it sounds like you were talking about something real specific, like at the ice facility.
288 So you.
289 Were.
290 Talking about something real specific.
291 A thing.
292 A 1300 block of northwest overton.
293 Yes.
294 Okay. So just tell me what you're talking about. Don't talk around it. Just make it clear because you're you're confusing it for me.
295 I'm not sure how much clearer it could be about reading the thing, but I'm happy to follow up with more. And I'm hearing the request for more clarity.
296 Yes. Thank you.
297 Thank you to our presenters. And while we're switching over to our next item, can you please, diego, can you please call both items four and five together?
298 Item four, document number 2026-291. Annual budget process discussion part two. Item five. Document number 2026-292. Annual budget process community input.
299 Thank you colleagues. At the end of June, we had a conversation around the budget process, and during that time we asked questions. I think we went through a three rounds of questions and allowed anyone to respond. I was going to reopen some of those questions today because a colleague wasn't there, who I know has a lot of interest in it. That colleague is is unavailable today as well, unfortunately. So I'm instead continuing on with the remaining questions. We also got feedback that we needed to have some public testimony, and I know at least one person signed up. So I had these two items called together just I'm going to have a slide shared in a second here about the different steps in the budget process, which might help inform the three questions. So in terms of run a show and I'm adapting a little bit because of the time we're going to, I'm going to tell you what the questions are. We're going to take the testimony, and then I'm just going to open up the floor until we're out of time for the meeting today to hear any thoughts that you all have on this. This is not the only opportunity you'll have. This is part two of more than two. And so we'll definitely circle back. But the questions are at what points in the process. And the slide you're going to see in a moment is the timeline of the process. Are you interested in making changes. And the idea here is sort of process of elimination for the administration. If there's something that no councilor is interested in weighing in on, I would love them to know about it so they can go do their thing without feeling like they have to come back to us and check. But also it leads into future conversations. And then the two things that are specific that we didn't get to last time. What is council's vision and expectation about community engagement, including the advisory process during the budget development? What is council's interest in providing budget guidance to the bureaus, meaning how does the guidance work at this moment? Historically, the mayor has provided guidance and that has been completely within their wheelhouse. According to the attorneys. They. There's nothing that says the mayor does that. That's just a way it's always been. And so I frame this question a little bit more, just to be fully candid about it. I have an interest in council being a part of that process for a reason that I'll get to when we get to that. But those are the three questions. So any technical questions on that before we get started with calling testimony? Diego, will you please call up our testifiers or testifiers?
300 We have one individual signed up. Terry harris.
301 Thank you so much for being here, terry.
302 Great. Thanks. Learned a lot today. My name is terry harris from hillsdale. And always, always appreciate the opportunity to come speak with you all quick credentials relevant to what I'm going to say. But I served on the government transition advisory committee. I chaired the budget engagement work group there, which had some recommendations on budget engagement. I am also a member of the community budget advisory committee for Multnomah county's departments of assets and county management, and formerly the department of community services, and I'm currently chair of the Multnomah county central community advisory community budget advisory committee. All of which to say is, I'm here to remind you about the budget advisory committees that the city apparently used to have and that the transition suspended as part of the transition and with the intention to reestablish them. This will be going into your third budget since then. And like sort of urge you to consider those processes again. Gtac recommended that these budget advisory committees exist at a service or service area level, and but we're willing to put it aside to be part of the advisory committee overhaul that was going to happen. That overhaul is now stalled, and it punted on advisory budget advisory committees anyway. And I just sort of say, currently you've got nothing on that going on. And that's why I'm here. With the possible exception of pub, which does some budget work and bless their hearts. I would go into some details as to why there are strong reasons to reestablish this, but I think it was demonstrated earlier today with the new portlanders committee. That is a perfect example of why you have these committees. You engage great people doing great things. You let them rise up the ladder of engagement, and you make a capable citizenry. One advisory committee at a time, if nothing else. The other thing that you do, I'm going to go a little bit over, is that you force the bureaucracy to explain themselves to laypeople and on the budget, that's just really necessary. And amount of time. Wrap up by saying, Multnomah county's got a good model, and I'm willing to work with anybody here to try to deploy that as soon as possible. Thanks.
303 Thank you. Terry. I have an interest in that as well as you know. So I'll be looking forward to following up with you and other g tech members, colleagues, I'm going to open this up. We're going to get this slide shared. It has just the timeline. You've all seen it before, but it's the steps along the timeline that that come from the beginning of the budget process through budget approval in June, sorry, budget adoption in June. And feel free. We're not going to do one at a time. Feel free to just jump around and cover as many of these as you're interested in, but as at which points in the process. Would council like to get involved in discussing potential changes? What is council's vision and expectation around community engagement, including budget advisory processes, during this whole budget process? And what is your what are your thoughts on the budget guidance that we give to that the city leadership gives to bureaus in the starting point of developing the budget requests, which is that sort of top middle over to right center portion of the the chart here. And I'll open up the q and I'll pass it to council president Dunphy.
304 Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to to note that there were some significant, I think, improvements between year one and year two. And there were some some major changes that we also did specifically, you know, we we got rid of the city administrator's draft budget recommendation and the work sessions from that. And we pivoted those work sessions to talking about the current allocation level and the current service level. We moved the mayor's timeline up for the proposed two full weeks, and we added an extra work session on that. And then we had so many, so many work sessions going bureau by bureau. I think a lot of that was really helpful, but I think that it didn't actually serve us that well. And I think there's some pretty easy ways for us to improve that. A lot of the work as, as, as terry was sort of implying and also sort of this, this chart sort of shows a lot of the work of discussing and identifying the trade offs happens out of council's purview, out of council, out of the public's view. And so when the mayor's proposed comes up, we're sort of spending our time catching up. We will always be catching up to some degree, but that's I was a steeper learning curve than I think it really had to be. I think a tangible recommendation would be that we have, earlier in the year, a series of baseline service area presentations to start talking about programs and budget allocations. What are we doing now? What are what is how is the bureau spending the dollars as we currently see it? And then that gives us the baseline because we were trying to do that all in one session. We're trying to like, what does the fire bureau do? And here's the parade of horribles of we're going to cut from the from the fire bureau. I think that would help us to, to have some dialog and also maybe give the mayor and the city administrator some time to hear priorities and flag things early. I think that there's also an opportunity for a forecast hearing about the upcoming budgets, so that we could have, and the public can have some better understanding of what these big cuts are going to look like and where the, you know, what the real conversation is going to have. And then lastly, I will say that with regard to outreach, I don't you know, I don't think anybody felt great about how outreach happened on the budget. I will flag, though, an example of, I think, a good collaboration between the legislative and executive was the quick work to set up listening sessions around the moda center. They weren't perfect, and obviously we wish we could have had more time to advertise them and and get word out there, but I really appreciated the way that the city administrators office and the the city bureaucracy broadly worked collaboratively to try and get those stood up, centering the city council in a lot of ways. And I also want to give kudos to director oppenheimer for the work that she did on that, on the short timeline. So broadly, those are my sort of thoughts, is I think that there's more we can do up front to educate more to give early input to the to the mayor on where to take cuts and what, what. Trade offs might look like. And I think that there's some opportunity to be creative around our outreach. So that's all my thoughts.
305 Thank you colleagues. With your permission, I'm going to close the queue if there's no objections, okay, we'll go councilor Novick, then Green, then Ryan, then pirtle-guiney. And I'll close it out. Councilor. Novick.
306 I just wanted to say, I thoroughly applaud the council president's vision for early briefings on just what the budget is. I think that we all need to start off knowing, you know, okay, here's the police budget. How much of personnel, how much is training? How much is external, other external materials and services? Here's the parks budget. How much goes to maintaining the outdoor parks? How much goes to the the community centers? Actually, we did that in the climate committee two years ago, and I think at least we had a pretty good idea of the parks budget. And also, I think it's just important to the extent the public is watching for the public to know, here is what the city does. We do police, fire a couple other public safety things and parks, and then we do water and sewer. And within those, there's sort of limited categories of things you can mess with. So I thoroughly agree. We need to sort of, instead of talking about what we're going to cut in the context of the mayor's budget, we need to have a really have a thorough understanding, hopefully have the public have a thorough understanding of what we do now.
307 Thank you, councilor Novick quick housekeeping note we have a permission to go a couple minutes over. Obviously, I know not everyone can, but I'll go to councilor Green, followed by Ryan.
308 In the interest of brevity, I'm just going to say plus one to the early. The comments from councilor Dunphy, early base budget conversations. Good. Let's have them. I also think, you know, we're going to, at some point soon hear from the cfo on this financial stabilization work group work, which will have some concepts I think will help us think about how to adjust this over time. I support reviving the the advisory, the budget advisory groups. I think, you know, look, look to Multnomah. I'm very interested to see what we can draw from Multnomah county there. I think part of the reason why we get stuck is we're waiting for this five year forecast. And it's always nice to have the most recent data, but I think you can. That's just an arbitrary stop and time with the forecast with some uncertainty. So we can always just sort of say based on what we know now, what can we envision for the next year, two years, three years to give us a grounding in our priorities. And I think we want to do priority based budgeting. I do I'll leave it there.
309 Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Ryan then. Pirtle-guiney.
310 Yes. Councilor Kanal. I will be very brief and I'll have to go right after this. I'm disappointed we didn't have more time for this item, so I'm requesting that we bring it to the next meeting. When we bring it back. Let's have the cfo here and let's have that conversation. So it would be more interactive and fruitful. I want to thank you, terry harris. That was a great testimony. I agree I've missed the feedback. I know when as a commissioner was really helpful to listen to the bts advisory committee on the budget, and that's how you would go through the process. And it really helped a lot. I will just say that I continue to think we have challenges understanding where the revenue comes from, and the general fund is built mostly on business license taxes and also on property taxes. I've really experienced that in the conversations we're having around moda. There's a macroeconomic 101 equation that I think we're struggling with, and we need more clarity on that for us to all accept that and understand it. And then we also need to have better dialog about what our priorities are within the basic services that we oversee. And this council has had a hard time, I think, staying focused on what those priorities are as we do a lot of mission drift. Thanks.
311 Thank you, councilor Ryan council pirtle-guiney. And then I'll close out.
312 Thank you. Chair, without going into everything, I just want to say I also appreciate president dunphy's vision around earlier conversations and especially around having a forecast hearing. I think that's really important for us to start doing in this body to the question of some sort of broader public input, I think we need to make sure that we are finding opportunities, both for education and feedback about the budget. There are some incredible tools that are used elsewhere to give people the opportunity to actually move the levers to, to say, what would you cut and what would you keep, given the situation that we are in, in the budget? And I think we could have our team find something or create something like that, maybe not for next year, but in the long run, that really helps with the education and feedback piece. And then we need to think about the oversight piece and are the proposals that are being developed, taking into account all of the different pieces that they should, and who should be involved in that? I think in the past we have tried to blend those things too much, and we need to have the. The opportunities in district, which I think we actually did very well this past year. Not well enough, I'm sure, but very well. We need to have the groups that are are engaged in the city have an opportunity to say you missed something here in that oversight capacity, and we need the feedback and education that can be done on somebody's own time where they're really looking at what would they do and what trade offs would they make. And I hope we can figure out a system that has all three and not just box ourselves in to saying, we did it this way in the past, of course we need to get back there, otherwise it's not transparent.
313 Thank you. I want to note for those who are following along, that we do still have seven people here, which is corn, because we have someone online, even though you see six here. So I'll just take my minute and a half here and then wrap up for me. There's an l shape here from mayor's budget guidance to city administrator report or whatever sustains that, and bureau budget requests that are my most interests for the council to weigh in on. I love the idea of base budget briefings. Don't feel I need to do anything different on the general fund forecast. So I agree with councilor Green mayor's proposal. I think we have to talk about what that looks like with relation to the community engagement. I staff budget advisory committees in the public safety space. I think I put up a proposal for how year round would work. I agree completely with that and I agree as well with generally the gtac recommendation around service areas and things like that. I think that this needs to be separated from the broader abc project, because that has taken longer. Not for anyone's fault. Had leadership changed there at the top, which has been, I think, a generally a positive thing, but has also and I'm the I'm the council's designee to the abc project, and we haven't had any motion on it in a while. So I think it makes sense to separate these out into two kind of processes, and I have interest in that. In terms of. The third thing, I think council should be giving budget guidance to the bureaus. I don't think it should be the mayor alone, and I just wanted to get this on the record. I think it would be great if we said, look, if the general fund forecast or whatever indicator we have is that it's going down by 3%, that should be a scenario that the bureau has to give a zero base. It's what it was last year with inflation. It should be another scenario and then at least one in the opposite direction. So you have an up down and a hold. And I think it's fine if the mayor would like to have a more aggressive cut, if it's a bad year or aggressive increase to help inform that. But giving these scenarios, I think for us, what we struggled with was we have no idea this year what bureau directors would have liked to add, because all we gave them was a cut scenario. And even in good years, we should always be looking at cutting if we can, to be fiscally responsible if there's a place to do that. And it's also helpful for us to understand the bureau's priorities. If a bureau has 40 things that they do and they say they'll they'll cut this one thing, they rank it 40th in their priority. Budgets are a priority based document. So I think it's always helpful to ask that question to get that information. I agree with councilor Ryan about the revenue piece. I also agree with him that we should have this conversation come back again. So my way of closing this out is to say, we wanted to have at least a little time for council before the administration came in and tried to tell us what their recommendation is. That's why this happened today on September 3rd, 10th, and I believe 16th. We have cfo biery here for various different items. So we'll of course make sure that he's there for that and for the budget specific ones. We'll also have budget director levine, of course, and I know that they're listening and I think in the back there. So thank you so much. With that, I'm going to I'm going to close out this meeting, the next meeting of the committee of the whole. The Portland city council is Thursday, September 3rd at 9:30 a.m. Thanks, everybody, for sticking with us, for going through some heavy presentations and for being a part of it. This meeting is adjourned.