The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-08-14
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council convened a special meeting on Thursday, August 14, 2025, as a continuation of a session begun the previous day, with one agenda item: establishing a new city council committee structure. Roll call confirmed attendance of the full body, and rules of order and decorum were read. Discussion covered whether to reduce the number of committees, potentially eliminate committees entirely in favor of full-council meetings, or restructure committee assignments and leadership roles. Topics included proposals for four versus five committees, whether the council president or vice president should chair committees, sunset dates for revisiting the structure, the relationship between weekly council meeting schedules and committee time, staff workload concerns, and whether housing, homelessness, climate, and land use should be combined or separated into different committees. A proposal to lay the matter on the table was debated and voted on, as was a proposed amendment addressing district representation on committee chairs, an amendment regarding committee assignment limits including for the council president, and an amendment introducing a "committee of the whole" concept to handle governance, budget, and finance matters. Procedural questions arose regarding motions to table, divide questions, and amend motions, with guidance provided by the city attorney. Votes occurred throughout the session; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting concluded with remaining discussion tabled to a future date.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
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0 Good afternoon. Mikes are now live. Colleagues, it is 233 on Thursday, August 14th. I am calling back to order this week's special meeting of the Portland city council. This is a continuation of the meeting that was started yesterday. And there is one item on our agenda. Keelan. Could you please call the roll?
1 Good afternoon. Koyama Lane. Here Morillo. Here. Novick here. Clerk. Here. Green. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Avalos. Present. Here. Here. Here. Here. Pirtle-guiney here.
2 And could we please get the rules of order and decorum read.
3 Welcome to the Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at. Agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in objection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave when ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying one. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. Two if you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Three virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you very much. Colleagues. We have one item on the agenda. It is an agenda item that we started yesterday establishing new city council committee structure. And we were in the process of reviewing a number of amendments. Council. Ryan, you are in the queue. Are you in the queue on this agenda item?
5 I am, I thank you, thank you, madam president. I want I first I need to say that to peel away shortly for a meeting that was really difficult to schedule and it's time sensitive and will move the work on a budget. Note that we passed unanimously. So this meeting is scheduled shortly, so I will be away for about an hour. So I wanted to say that I also wanted to offer some comments since I'll be away for about an hour. As one of the few councilors who has not offered a proposal, I wanted to give my opinion and if their support, of course I'll write up this proposal. This won't be a surprise as I have voiced these thoughts in work sessions previously. I think we should do a bold reset for the good of the order of our city. I think we need to meet as one body with no committees, until we can get on the same page about the top 3 to 4 priorities facing our city. The more I listen to the cosmetic changes, the more convinced I am that this is what our city needs at this time. Both the city of Portland as an organization and more importantly, for the people of Portland who would like some certainty, I think we should come to some balanced consensus on what the top priorities are. And after those 3 to 4 priorities are identified, we could identify several key strategies and identify measurable targets for each. I think we should work with the mayor's office and our city administration, namely having the dcas and as needed, bureau directors and staff to land a unified, focused plan. Yes, it will be difficult and there will be healthy tension. I repeat the word healthy. Yet from this collective plan we can align committees, whether it's ad hoc task force to implement what the city's with the city's public service. Portland deserves a focused governance body at this time of extreme challenge. There will also. This will also help create future budgets and give more certainty for those serving on the ground and those eagerly waiting to see improvements to our services. Based on some conversations I didn't see, it didn't seem possible to have folks go along to let go of gavels, and as such, I let go of landing a formal proposal. Yet the more I sit in these meetings, the more attached I am to this reset I speak of. We must improve the division between council, mayor and staff leadership as we serve our my hometown during this lingering crisis that's really crippling our economy. I thank you all for indulging me at this time. I just had to make sure I said what I really thought in this meeting again. And I also apologize. I couldn't figure out how to be two places at once. I've been trying for decades.
6 Thank you councilor, and we understand, especially as we are still formalizing some of our our agendas and things are a little bit in flux as we move toward maybe adopting a new council meeting structure that sometimes this happens.
7 And council president, you will not be surprised. I was saying things back in January just like this. So you were.
8 Thank you. Councilor Clark, are you in the queue on this item?
9 Thank you, madam president. Councilor Ryan, that was completely unexpected and interesting to hear you say those things. And I'm wondering, when do you have to leave?
10 I have to leave. It's very sorry. It's a short commute. I have to leave right at three.
11 Okay, well, I'm going to go ahead and speak to what you were talking about because I think we're thinking on the same wavelength. You know, this morning, colleagues, when I went to go to my car and to drive into the city, I bumped into my neighbor. He was walking his dog. And I think he's been watching some of our proceedings. And he said to me, make sure you are solving the right problem. And I thought, wow, that's kind of profound. And I think since yesterday's meeting, I've been thinking a lot about this. What what problem are we solving? And I think we all believe that we have too many committees. At least we've all been talking that way, that we believe we have too many committees. But we I don't think we've answered some key questions. And actually, mr. Harris brought some of that up the other day. Questions about our functions, about what is oversight, what our expectations for public input, a variety of issues. We really haven't defined what the committees are supposed to do. So I'm going to suggest that in our rush to change the committee structure, that we've actually put the cart before the horse, and especially after listening to my neighbor this morning. So I'm going to suggest that we take a break, that we reset, that we refresh, that we leave for our two week the last two weeks of August. We take a break. We think about why we're here, what we're doing, and we now we have already voted to have increased council meetings. I think that's a great idea, but I think I share councilor Ryan's thought that we really need to think also not just about our what our committees are supposed to do, but that we work to find some shared goals as a group. And I don't know if that happens in a committee or if that happens in a work group or where that happens. But I would like to believe that we can come up with some things that really address the larger issues that are going on in our community, particularly economic revitalization. I think I mentioned that yesterday. So and I'd really like to find a way for all of us to pull in the same direction. I feel like there's a certain amount of, if you will, toxicity floating around right now. Did I say something wrong? The toxicity made that that probably hit the button. Just a lot of swirling issues right now. So I'm going to propose that we postpone the committee refiguration for a while, and we tease out what we really want them to do when we return refreshed after our break. So I would like a motion, I would make a motion second. Oh, wait a.
12 Minute, wait a minute. I think we need to hear what the motion is.
13 Wait a minute. That I would just begin. I don't know how everybody feels about this, but I would begin that to make a motion that we postpone the consideration of this amendment we're talking about. And one idea is to send it to the governance committee to be worked on, just really identify what we want our committees to do before we launch into some huge reconfiguration, which I think has become pretty difficult conversation for all of us.
14 Third.
15 I, I want to clarify, councilor, is that a motion to table or a motion to refer the measure to governance?
16 I will start with refer.
17 Motion to refer this to governance. Okay. Councilor Smith, were you wanting to second that?
18 Well.
19 Not really, because I don't want it to go to.
20 Hold on, hold on. We need to we need to see if we have a second and then we can have discussion. I'm sorry, counselor, is there a second? Councilor Novick was that had you seconded?
21 I had, but actually, I think I'm with councilor Smith. I would I'm for the postponement, not for the. I'm not sure I hadn't thought about the reference to governance so I'm not.
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22 Can I now okay. Can I change my motion. I will now change my motion to lay the matter on the table.
23 Second.
24 Okay, I think that was the second from councilor Smith that we heard there. Councilor Morillo, are you is this to the motion that is now before us?
25 Yeah. I just have some questions about the process here so I can wrap my head around this. I, I think that this process has been a little haphazard, and folks have been bringing in amendments last minute, and we are trying to implement structures that are going to ideally last for a very long time. So I have some concerns about that because it's been, from what I've heard from everybody outside of this room, a little difficult to ingest all of the information coming at us for some of these very quick changes that we're trying to make. At the same time, I think that there are some common sense changes that I would really like to see, and I'm wondering if we can separate those discussions. I think that we absolutely need weekly council meetings regularly to do the people's business. And I understand pausing on the committee structure, and maybe there's a conflict there with regards to how many meetings we would be having if we're having weekly council meetings and maintaining the same committee structure at the same time. So I'm wondering if we could discuss that a little bit and see what the full scope of our options are on the table at this time. I don't know if that's appropriate to do now or if we have to vote on the motion.
26 First point of order. I believe that could be.
27 I think, the point of order. And then I'll respond to that. Go ahead, counselor.
28 We've already approved the we've already approved the new structure for the for the weekly meetings. Right.
29 We have.
30 Not yet voted on it, but these are two separate measures. One is an ordinance and one is a resolution. And we have closed discussion and moved to second reading. The ordinance on council meetings. So these are the council meeting calendar is moving forward to the next meeting for a vote. Whether or not we make a decision.
31 That's what I was trying to.
32 Figure out today. And I would editorialize on that a bit. Councilor Morillo to say it is possible that in doing that, without limiting committees, we could add more time to the calendar, which I think is not the direction we're trying to go. But when we had talked about limiting committees, we had talked about allowing committees to meet for a little bit longer anyway. And if it is important to this body, I am certainly willing, I think it would be helpful for staff if we did this to look at the calendar and figure out how we could use that additional council meeting time to work more effectively without adding significantly more dais time. Given that we haven't yet made adjustments to committees. Did you have anything additional?
33 No.
34 Okay. Thank you, councilor Canal.
35 Thank you, madam president. I think this relates to a conversation, not just the most recent comment from councilor Ryan, but a previous comment as well, which was about being open to increasing the number of council hours if it was paired with a corresponding reduction in committee hours. So my primary concern around this is does this prevent us when we get when we get to September 3rd, and this is on the weekly council meeting ordinance is on the agenda. Would a active decision through this motion to not change the committee structure? Lead to a rejection of that expansion of hours? I'll just be transparent about that. That's my primary concern right now, given who I've seen in, let's say, apprehension to the overall number of committee hours. And I agree with the council president's point there. As a result, I'm currently leaning towards what councilor Morillo said, which is I think there are a few small things that maybe are not necessarily consensus, but close to it that might be able to reduce the number of aggregate committee hours to resolve that concern. And then we can choose to debate those things that are more controversial. I think there are a few of those as well, but that that would be my question at this time.
36 Councilor Kanal was that a direct question to councilor Ryan or a broader question to councilors as a whole?
37 I think it's a broader question, but I would certainly not mind if any particular councilor Wanted to answer. Okay.
38 I think folks can answer as they're speaking then if they're interested. Thank you, councilor Novick.
39 I never expected us to get to any agreement on restructuring committees this week. I don't know if there's anything particularly wrong about the process we've used to initiate the discussion. I think it's been a good discussion. People have brought forward several interesting proposals. People have made some good points. But I figured all along that although we might mostly in the abstract, think that we should reduce the number of committees, when it came down to the concrete, everybody would find something in any proposal to disagree with. And I don't think that that's, you know, immature or unhealthy or anything. I think that's just sort of normal. I think that maybe we could I'm interested in hearing if people think there's consensus tweaks that we can make short of restructuring committees, and maybe we could amend councilor Clark's motion to say that, that we're tabling the idea of restructuring committees, but we can move on to other things. But I also just wanted to say that only bad things happen. In August, the tonkin gulf resolution was passed. In August, vesuvius erupted, burying pompeii. In August, the soviet union invaded czechoslovakia in August. Marilyn monroe died in August. Elvis presley died in August. So I think that it's.
40 We're both born in August. Oh, okay.
41 Not only bad things, a couple of exceptions, but I think that doing anything in August is always dangerous because it might turn out to be a bad thing that kills marilyn monroe. So I think that it is a good idea to for us to take a break and step back during August and maybe look at this from fresh eyes next month.
42 Madam president.
43 I think we're going to say that maybe births of people are an exception to the only bad things that happen in August. Councilor.
44 Yeah. Thank you.
45 Yes, I think there was a second.
46 Councilor Smith seconded it.
47 So the motion was to lay the matter on the table?
48 Yes. So we're now debating that motion.
49 Okay. Just to be clear.
50 We are debating whether to lay this matter on the table. Councilor Green to that motion.
51 I'm not inherently opposed to this, but before I'm prepared to vote on the motion on the at presence, I think I'd like to hear from my colleagues what they think about councilor Ryan's proposal, because it is a new proposal that hasn't been talked about yet, and we have brought people to the public to talk about committees. And we have ten more minutes with councilor Ryan. So. You'll be back. Okay. I mean, I don't know if we want to wait for you, but. If we have time for a few comments from other councilors who have a specific response to that concept, I'd really like to hear that.
52 Councilor, I believe we need to limit debate to the motion on the table, but I would say that I would not cut somebody off if they were debating the motion on the table and happen to mention their thoughts on that as well. I just don't want us to get too many steps away from a motion that is on the table. Councilor Smith.
53 I just like to say I do support councilor Clark's motion. I do not support the idea of taking away committees. Right now. We have a lot of stuff that's in motion, and we need to continue doing that. And I don't think that, you know, even if we don't approve committees and we keep the committees until the top of the year, like I suggested yesterday, we still need additional council meetings, and we still need to do that in September and vote for that. That has nothing to do with because we have a workload that's crazy, and we need to be able to have official times to get that work done. So no, I don't support councilor Ryan's idea of just suspending committees.
54 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
55 Thank you, madam president. Thank you, councilor Ryan, for sharing your idea. I appreciate your input and your perspective. I enjoy talking to you about governance issues and thinking them through. I do think we need time to work together as a body and talk through some things. No one is surprised by that. I really appreciated our conversations yesterday. I think they were. It was healthy. It was important. I appreciated outside of the governance committee where there's just a handful of us, us all being here at the table to talk about things, and I am hesitant to table this because this is a chance that we have to actually talk about governance together. And from what I believe, councilor Dunphy is the original carrier of this and filed this back in may. So we've already waited months. And this connects to the 90 day issue. And now we're talking about postponing it. So I do have concerns about kicking the can down the road. And I also know that I've heard from many of my colleagues that a concern about our current committee structure is that we have too many, and it's a burden on our staff, and they cost a lot of money. And so I will say, I am confused to hear people wanting to table this and continue a structure that we know is costly and a burden on our staff, when just yesterday that seemed to be top of mind.
56 Thank you, councilor, councilor Dunphy.
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57 Thank you. Yeah. Colleagues, as the original carrier of this and I have been working on this since may, I started ground truthing it with a lot of you back then. It didn't actually get filed until June, so we're not quite at the 90 days yet. But I started this intentionally because I had two big observations. One, I was clear pretty early on that our our committee structure was not serving us well, that individuals were unable to find information and that also the structure inherently did not give the number of people who needed to be consulted on things, the space to be able to do that and the capacity. I also am deeply concerned about burning out our committee staff right now, and I'm deeply I'm glad to have had the conversation. I'm glad that my resolution was in place to be able to spur this conversation, and I firmly believe we cannot have this conversation without all 12 of us. And I think that this is the format we're going to have to do it. And so we're going to have to have some long time sitting here. If we don't come to a final conclusion today, I that makes sense. That's fine. But I think there are some major conversations that won't change between then and now. Additionally, I have real concerns if we switch to weekly schedule when we get back and having eight committees as well, we are essentially increasing the work of our already overtaxed clerk staff and council staff. So I have some worries about that. I don't have any. I do appreciate that not only did we have a great conversation yesterday, but that our staffs have been busy running around the building trying to finally have this conversation. That was really what I was hoping is to spur these conversations. If a few more weeks, we'll get those conversations towards a place of agreement. Great. I don't think there will ever be a situation where we have 12 yes votes on any structure. People have some strong opinions on things. I think that's healthy. I think that's fine. I think that we should continue to have some of these conversations about these amendments as posted, because some of them are sort of foundational, structural questions that can help inform further conversation. But for right now, I wouldn't I would not be supportive of fully tabling this as of right now and adjourning in the next five minutes or something. So.
58 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal.
59 Thank you, madam president. You know, I wanted originally for the weekly council meeting ordinance to be voted on first or at the same meeting. So there was a part of my brain that was already thinking. But towards the end of this meeting, it might be worth because I don't want this to affect that. I'm very concerned about that, as I mentioned earlier, but I agree that it I'd prefer to continue the conversation first before getting there. The places to answer councilor Novick question that I have. I can't find my full list right now, but there were some places that were consensus among the four proposals. So I want to note that there were eight other councilors who didn't put it forward. May not be a consensus there, and I know at least one of them. There isn't one, but there was a consensus around retaining a public safety committee that would be unchanged other than potentially including resilience in it. There was a consensus around merging in those four, merging in labor and workforce development, primarily into the arts and economy committee. There was a consensus around ending the current structure of fixed limited membership, standalone committees for finance and governance. One had it going to work sessions, the other had it going to other three had it going to a committee. The whole structure. I can't remember what the other two were off the top of my head, but I'm finding it. Those are all things that there were. Those four proposals all had consensus over. Certainly the other eight folks should be able to weigh in and discuss it. But that's my rationale for opposing this particular motion at this time. But I there's a very good chance that before the end of this meeting, I'd support it if it followed some discussion. And related to councilor Ryan's point, I want to have the opportunity to explore that a little more, and the conversation can't really develop unless we were to not table at this time.
60 Can I? I have to go right now. Just I'll be back for and I'll join in. I, I really just needed to say that because I've been patiently trying to work with all of you to find which one I like the best. And I realize I wasn't taking care of my own integrity about what I really wish we would do right now. And so thank you for listening to it. Councilor Smith, I just want to say we could continue to do the work from committees that is already materializing and moving. We just do it as a council as a whole. And during this period of time, just think of us having more work sessions and really getting on the same page with some wonderful tension about what that looks like with the other two branches of our government, which I would account as the mayor and the administrative team led today by sarah over there. Anyway. Thank you. I'll return in about an hour. I appreciate you indulging me with those comments.
61 Okay. We may have a conversation when you by the time you get back because somebody may call the question.
62 All right. And of course, we could always suspend the rules for like a month and, and do that and then see where we are. So and I liked what councilor Novick said, perhaps because I'm trying to take a vacation the next two weeks in August. I'm not the only one, so. But my parents raised eight children and they were married in August. They divorced each other twice, so I'm thinking a lot about that.
63 Thank you.
64 Catholic thing, I think. All right. See you.
65 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith, you are in the queue to the motion.
66 And I want to address councilor Canal. He said there's consensus. Are you saying that there's consensus among four people? Because that's not consensus there.
67 Were I fully aware that that the other eight of us did not weigh in on those proposals? Those four proposals had commonality. I know there's not consensus around the labor and workforce development. One.
68 No, I mean, just in consensus of one particular document. And for me, it was just so much right. It was so much going on, all these different. Dunphy a, b, c, d I mean, and then other people came on. It's just too much. And I'm real simple right now. I just need to look at one thing and let's say, what are we going to do? I don't feel and I'm going to say what I said yesterday, I don't feel we need to change anything. We definitely need to increase our city council meeting. That's not going to put more time on the dais. We've had a special city council meeting, two for each week that we've been here for the last 3 or 4 weeks.
69 Councilor anything further? Okay. Thank you. Colleagues. Colleagues, as we move toward this vote. And because I've asked us not to speak with our votes, I just want to say one thing now before I talk, before I speak to the motion itself. I don't know where this lands and where the votes are on this. It sounds like I heard a couple of speeches from folks that sound somewhere in between on it. But I know that as council president, whatever we do today, whether we table this, whether we vote not to table it and move forward with debate, whether we move forward with debate and something passes or doesn't pass, I can't vote to move something forward with the change that doesn't have strong support, because I don't think that will be healthy for this body. And as we move toward votes, I'll be thinking about whether folks actually want to move forward, forward with change or not. Right now, over the last few weeks, we have been talking about how we operate a lot, and I think it's an important conversation and, well, it's taken a fair amount of our time. I think it's time that's well spent because the sooner we set in practice how we want to operate, the more effectively we can do the work that Portland needs us to do. I want to thank councilor Dunphy for bringing this resolution forward, because it did push us to discuss this and to have a more robust discussion than we might otherwise have had. And I think that no matter where we land today, that's really important. I continue to believe that committees are a critical piece of the work we do in this new system that was put in this form of government as a new option, I think for good reason. I think committees are a really important place for us to do our work, and if we reworking that structure helps us use committees more effectively, that's fantastic. But if that isn't where we need to go right now, if what we need to do right now is to say that that will be too disruptive, I will work as your president to make sure that we're not burning out staff with our time, that we are spreading out the work we do amongst more meetings and therefore having shorter meetings, but not adding significant hours, because I do think that that commitment to making sure that we don't burn out our staff, that we work effectively, that we don't have meetings so long or days so long that we aren't doing our best work for portlanders is really important. If we don't make a change. I hope that when we come back after the break, we can think about how we use our committees that we have. I hope that as we move forward, committees can engage in the iterative process with our community that many of us have identified as an important piece of this work. I hope that committees can surface and refine great ideas, and say no to things that aren't ready and really, truly oversee our bureaus and service areas and ensure that our budget, the budget that we passed, is being enacted the way that we wanted it to be. Ultimately, I think our committees should be a tool that helps us to arrive at a collective future vision for Portland. As we move forward, there will be even more challenges that our city faces over the next few years challenges to our security, to housing security, to health care, and all of those things will put pressure on portlanders and put pressure on us as a city, trying to take care of the people who live here. And we have to come together as a unified council to address these risks head on and carve out a path for our future city. So as I sit here and listen to folks feel very torn about whether to even move forward with this debate, I just want to be clear that no matter what we do today, I think that if we make any changes, they need to be changes that we can all feel will move us to a better place. That will help us be more united in how we approach the big problems, the big challenges that our city faces. And I hope when we get back from our recess, because council after tomorrow goes on break for two weeks, we will return ready to have those important conversations about how we go about our work so that we can take on the big issues facing our city, either with these eight committees, with fewer committees, or if the body so decides, with no committees at all.
70 Councilor Kanal I just had a question and it relates very strongly to what you just said. Madam president, my understanding is that this motion would table the item until August or September 3rd. Is that accurate?
71 Table set indefinitely.
72 Okay. May I offer that as a hopefully friendly amendment to your motion?
73 No.
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74 Okay. Thanks.
75 I believe that this.
76 Is tabled indefinitely. Well, actually, I'll say this differently. We can come back to a conversation on committees at any time under this or a future resolution. So I don't believe that this table is the ability to talk about this issue permanently. But this conversation wouldn't be tabled to a specific date under the current motion.
77 Thank you for clarifying. I was asking about the specific proposal. Yeah.
78 Councilor Novick. I just wanted to call out a couple of things that colleagues have said over the past few weeks as part of this conversation that really resonated with me and I think will help guide my future actions, regardless of whether we change our structure. I was talking to councilor Dunphy about my objection to combining climate, land use and resilience with housing and councilor Dunphy said, well, how can you separate land use from housing? And I agree with them. I still think we should have two committees, but I would like to suggest that councilor Avalos and councilor Dunphy and councilor Morillo and I, of course, councilor Morillo has already both committees get together periodically to talk about the intersection between housing policy and land use policy. I think that councilor Morillo and I and councilor Clark, and again, councilor in both committees, should get together on a regular basis to talk about the intersection between climate policy and transportation policy. I also wanted to say that councilor Zimmermann's remark that sometimes he thinks that people's schedule committee meetings just to schedule meetings, although I would never admit that that's happened in either the committees that I co-chair, I agree that it's a very bad thing, and I think that we should all strive to make sure that if we don't have a substantive committee meeting planned, that we let staff know that as early as humanly possible and, and acknowledge to ourselves that that's okay. So I just didn't want to close this discussion without acknowledging those valuable things I've heard from colleagues in the past few weeks.
79 Thank you, councilor, councilor Green.
80 Yeah, I think if we end up laying the matter on the table, we'll be stuck with what we have. I do think that we're going to take a vote and adopt a schedule that has weekly meetings, and so it's going to be really incumbent on those of us who lead committees, which I think is all of us in some sense, given the eight committees. But to just as councilor Novick suggested, to be really intentional in how we do it and how we use our time, I read through terry harris's written comments yesterday, and I think the one of the things that resonates with me is that what we're really not using our committees for now, which they really should be used for, is, is actually crafting policy and oftentimes what we use them for. And I'm guilty of this too, as a co-chair, is scheduling a briefing, asking some questions, and then maybe considering another matter that's already baked, and then we have our votes and then we move on. But we didn't really engage substantively with a policy question from soup to nuts earlier today and labor and workforce development in real time, I think we identified a lapse or a code change problem that may have happened when we did post charter reform. Code change that affect affected a procurement policy. That committee could take up that issue and craft that policy over a series of meetings. And then when we brought it to the council, it's ready to go. And I think that's what it's supposed to be for, in addition to the oversight stuff. So if I lay the matter on the table with my vote today, my commitment is to be more intentional with my co-chair on how we use those committees and maybe consider scheduling them once a month. So that's it for me.
81 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
82 Thank you, president. I think that what I would say to this is that my vote in favor of tabling this is going to be contingent on us having a sunset for when we revisit the discussion. I think that if we don't have a sunset on, when we revisit the discussion, we are going to get bogged down in all of the emergencies that are constantly coming up. Because we are a city council under distress, and so we are never going to get to it. And part of our role as the first city council under this new government structure is to be establishing the new government structure for the next, god willing, 100, 200 years that this body exists. So that is going to be what my vote is contingent on, and I hope that we will consider councilor Kanal friendly amendment to that so that we can get that done. If not, I will probably vote no, hope that it fails, and then hope that we can have an amendment amended version.
83 Councilor Smith, are you back in the queue?
84 Yeah. Folks want to have their cake and eat it too. Because if we change the structure of what this is, then there's going to be a fight about chairmanships. So if we're talking about housing and homelessness and we're talking about sustainability in the same, who are we going to pick for? Because both of those committees have a different chairperson. And so that's the big elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. But yet they want to reduce things, making smaller committees is only going to increase our committee time. It's not going to reduce it because I, for one, don't want to sit in committee for four hours because that's what's going to happen. I like the idea. What councilor Novick said. If you don't have anything to do, just only have a committee once a month and have some substantive stuff. But changing this, we agreed that we wouldn't change presidencies except for once a year. I'm trying to figure out what we we're actually solving for. I know what we're solving for in terms of increasing the number of city council days that we have, because we need that we have enough work for that. But people better be really careful about what they ask for, because I see something else getting ready to happen. Thank you.
85 Thank you, councilor Colleagues, I got a note from our attorney that we can't amend a motion to table or to postpone. So I just want to flag that that if we want to move in that direction, we would need to offer a different motion. Councilor Clark, are you in the queue?
86 Yes. Thank you, madam chair. Maybe we could ask robert taylor another question. I.
87 Mr. Taylor.
88 I believe that when you put a motion or to lay a matter on the table, you can bring it up again at a different time of your choosing. Anybody can. When we're ready, when somebody is ready to do that, it's not a forever kind of thing. But maybe we can ask. And just before robert taylor speaks, I just want to say I really agree with councilor Green, but I want to add to what he said about how committee time is spent, that a lot of the people on this council are new and don't have a lot of background in particular issues, so we have spent a considerable amount of committee time learning about things and teaching each other things, and I think that was a valuable investment and will continue to be as new issues arise. And we don't have the background or expertise. So thank you.
89 Mr. Taylor. I believe the question there was, if something is laid on the table, it can be brought back. Can it be brought back up at any time?
90 Thank you. For the record, robert taylor, city attorney. If a motion to lay on the table is adopted by council, then it can be taken up again by council at any time. If council adopts a motion to take from the table. So that would be the appropriate way to do that, just for the benefit of the body. Motion to lay on the table cannot be amended. Also, technically it's not debatable.
91 This is why we need a parliamentarian up here with us.
92 Of course, if nobody objects to it and the body feels it's useful to have that debate, that's certainly within the purview of the body, and that's what's happened. Now, you can you if a motion to table fails in this instance, another motion would be to postpone to a date certain that could be debated. It could be amended to change the date to which it is postponed. So that's another option I just wanted to give you based on what I'm hearing today.
93 Thank you, mr. Taylor. Councilor Clark, did you have anything further, councilor Zimmerman?
94 We will be reconsidering this topic in 140 days because at the new year, we have to elect a new president. And within that, I expect that a president is going to talk about their vision for committees, committee chairs, etc. And so I feel like we are going to interrupt this if we were to if we were to hear a first reading of something today and then hear a second reading later in September, not to then be implemented until October, I feel like we're introducing flux in the October time frame, time frame to live for the month of October, November, and December, only to then be in flux again. So I just want to offer that up as I know it can feel like 140 days is far away, but when you get rid of 30 of that and then you start looking at the way our first second readings work, I think we're going to have this conversation relative to the new year and the vote we have to take at the beginning. So for that reason, I don't have an overarching concern about a backstop date, because I know there is one already, and it's part of my consideration for council president. And where my vote will go will have a lot to do with the philosophy amongst the size or the number of committees, the size of committees, all those types of things. And so for that reason, I am leaning towards supporting this, because I know that we're going to be having it. And I think introducing flux in three month periods is probably not helpful.
95 Thank you.
96 Councilor.
97 Councilor Dunphy.
98 Just briefly, to councilor Zimmerman's point, this is a resolution, not an ordinance. So it wouldn't.
99 Councilor Morillo.
100 Well, we have time set aside today till 5:00 pm, if I'm not mistaken. So I think we could slow down a little bit and assess all of these questions. We don't have to rush through it unless we really want to get out of here, which it's kind of a nice day. Maybe we do, but I would push back against pretty much everything councilor Zimmerman just said, sorry.
101 That's the norm.
102 Yeah, that's that's kind of our vibe together. But I think that I would actually love for this discussion to be divorced from the council president election. I think that we if we have a contingent at a time where the council president is being elected, it will become a political conversation rather than one about the fundamental structures that are going to guide us for the decades to come. So I actually think that it would be more prudent for us to have this discussion, lay it out together right now, have some consensus on how we're going to end up shaping our new form of government, and then having a president who's going to support that vision that we collectively worked on together through difficult public discussion. I think that is what's going to prove to be the best outcome for the long term. So I would I would urge us to I know a motion got made kind of quickly. Let's take time to really think this through. And I still think that we need to do this sooner than 140 days. This system is obviously a struggle to work under. We have been discussing that for a long time, so let's just get it done and have a sunset clause so that we're actually pushed to get things done. And ideally, I really hope that with these difficult discussions, despite how busy we are, I hope that a sunset clause will also have people bring their amendments and fundamental changes to us all written like a week before, because getting such detailed changes on the dais in the moment has been, I think, very hard for all of us when we're talking about long lasting structural changes.
103 Thank you, councilor, councilor Avalos.
104 Yeah, I have been sitting here listening, trying to figure out where I'm landing on this. I think to start, I will not vote for tabling because I think that this is valuable time that we could be discussing this out. You know, if the issue is that we don't know what problem we're solving for, we don't have a good idea of what we want the committees to look like. I think we need to debate that now before we go on a recess. We already have such limited time together. These are big concepts that require debate, and I think we shouldn't waste this time. So I'll vote no on tabling it. You know, as it relates to the proposal that councilor Ryan put forward, I don't know how to feel about it. I get the spirit of it. I understand that, you know, this body has worked without committees for so long, and they just kind of brought policies forward to the larger body. So there's a precedent there. I think the committees offer us an opportunity with an expanded council, more capacity, to just dive deeper into certain areas, especially for people to who have expertise in those areas or have initiatives that they want to push, and then workshop those things in committee before they come to us. I thought that was the point of committees, definitely debatable on, you know, how many committees we have. And we clearly still need to talk about the process of how things move through. But yeah, I don't know how I feel about the concept of just getting rid of committees altogether as it relates to, you know, making this change here in August. I mean, it just feels like something's got to give. So we keep talking about how things aren't working. And so I don't know how going back to the status quo will satisfy any of us. So I'm not sure why that's an option at this point. I think we need to talk this out. I think this is uncomfortable and hard and we can't. The only way, you know, there's no way around it. It's only through it and through it means debating. What does it mean for us to move the people's work? And how do we do that in this new governance structure? You know, I think some of the amendments that were put forward today that we were going to be discussing. Well, one, I would like to still discuss those. I think there's some concepts in there that we should, you know, have a robust discussion on again, so that we can get I would like to get a better temperature from my colleagues of where you all are, because I think part of me coming into this meeting, I really just didn't know where everyone was landing. I don't want to go two weeks not knowing, and especially the idea of putting this on the table and without a certain date that it would come back. I don't like that uncertainty. I think I, I would prefer that we continue this discussion at the September 3rd meeting, I think, is when we're having the second reading of the council ordinance. And so I would prefer that. So that's why I'm going to vote no on tabling it. But ultimately I think it's worth us figuring out if we care so much about like the staff burden, if we care about the fact that, you know, we just don't all agree yet on the purpose of policy committees. I think we need to sit with that and spend some time today talking about it. That's what I was hoping we would do as we went through these different amendments. So that's where I'm at right now.
105 Thank you councilor. Colleagues, I just want to note that it looks like we're moving toward another divided vote. And as I listen to folks, I think that we also, if we try to move forward with a proposal today, are moving toward a potential situation where folks want change, but we can't reach a majority on what change. And that concerns me. I just want to note that colleagues, the other hands left in the queue, are people who have already spoken more than are normally allotted two times each. So I'm going to ask us to move forward. Unless anybody who hasn't spoken wants to say anything else. Thank you. Okay. Keelan, could you please call the roll. Lane?
106 No. Morillo.
107 It needs a sunset.
108 No Novick.
109 I mark.
110 I.
111 Green. No Zimmerman. I Avalos.
112 No. Dunphy. No.
113 Smith.
114 I.
115 No, no. Ryan. Pirtle-guiney.
116 I.
117 The motion fails to pass with five yes votes, six no votes and one absent.
118 Colleagues. That puts us back to debate on the underlying motion. Pulling up our list of amendments to see what we have open right now. Yesterday we opened Dunphy a through d pirtle-guiney a no. And I believe novick's amendment was put on the table. Councilor Kanal I don't have written down if your amendment was put on the table and seconded. I don't believe that you moved it, did you?
119 I have not moved it at present.
120 Okay. So we have open Novick pirtle-guiney a, Dunphy a through d, and there is another amendment that has since been filed. Canal. The canal amendment. I heard yesterday that before we moved forward with other changes to the language around committees, folks wanted to talk about how many committees and what committees we actually had to. Ensure that we knew what we were working with, with some of the other discussions. So I would like us to use pirtle-guiney a as a platform to do that, because that's a proposal to just have four instead of five committees, which I think was the crux of some of the decisions that folks felt we couldn't make until we had debate. But I would also suggest that as we talk about that, if people want to use discussion on pirtle-guiney a to mention how you feel about which committees or number of committees more broadly, that would probably still be technically to the motion. And I believe keelan that pirtle-guiney a was seconded yesterday. Let's confirm.
121 If it's not, I will second it. Thank you.
122 I think as we check because we have a backup second from councilor Kanal, why don't we move forward? Is there any debate or discussion on pirtle-guiney? A.
123 I don't.
124 Talk about it or.
125 I'm happy to talk about it. First, I apologize, yesterday was a long time ago. In the initial conversations that we had, folks were talking about five committees, and as I listened to our conversations. And thought about the need for our schedule to be a little tighter, the interest in having some items come to a work session or a committee of the whole, and the time that that would put on the calendar and the various overlaps of topics. I started thinking about the benefit of having four committees. If we have committees still meet every other week, we could actually have one day potentially set aside for committees on the calendar, which could streamline work for our support staff. It again allows us that time for work session conversations. Or if folks prefer. It sounded like some people wanted to come back to the conversation of committee of the whole those conversations, I think that our committee is also have done a very good job of taking on big picture conversations, but there is time that I've heard from a few of you. You'd like to dive deeper, not in a committee structure, but otherwise on specific issues and tasks. And it would allow folks more time in their schedules. If we have fewer committees to take on some of that policy development work in other forums as well. So I set to work thinking about what I had heard about the committees that we have that we need. That led to the five committee discussion and thinking about the original proposals that had been brought forward by various councilors to think about what that might look like if we collapsed to four committees. What I'm putting forward is a committee on infrastructure and city owned land. This would take on the work that's in the current transportation and infrastructure committee, but add in our parks department calling out in the title city owned land to note that alignment of all of the various land owned by parks, bts water and the other bureaus, that would be overseen in that committee, that have a significant amount of land, that we need to decide what we do with. I also call out in this proposal which service areas administrative matters mainly come from, to help the teams that support us better identify which committees they need to make sure they have staff time to pay attention to, and where. Things may come up as one offs. But generally we aren't expecting our dca's to be able to be available at a moment's notice. Community and public safety. And I'll note this is in amendment form to the underlying measure that's posted. Bold are new and strikethroughs are deleted. Community and public safety would be very similar to the work that's being done today in that committee. Jobs, economy and entertainment is much of the work in the workforce committee and the economy and that the economy and the workforce committees that we have now, again, dealing with administrative matters mainly coming out of the community and economic development service area, but also public works as it relates to space activation and recreation, which fall into the parks department space activation more broadly outside of parks also, and how that relates to our economy and then housing sustainability and land use, where we can take up those issues of what our city is like 20 years from now. How do we have enough housing for people in the shorter term as well? What is our plan with our land? Where are we moving in terms of what it is like to live in Portland in the future? In a sense, the committee before this jobs, economy and entertainment is the what? What is our city like? What do you do in our city in the future? And the housing sustainability and land use is the where and the how. And again, at the end of all of these, that information about where administrative matters mainly come from and taking the lead from councilor Dunphy. I also listed. Other chairs that the committee members or the committee chairs might coordinate with and on what issues. So that's what I have before us today. Councilor Novick.
126 Yes. I mean, as you've all heard, me be noisy about being worried about combining climate, land use and resilience with housing because I just don't see how there's enough hours in the committee work to both sort of provide oversight, the administration and push initiatives. I mean, we've got a lot of land use issues will be coming at us. I want to be able to engage sufficiently with the committee on how we're distributing $200 million a year of funds, and I also want to have some scope to introduce other standalone climate proposals, such as some that vivian satterfield has had on the, you know, on her table for, for quite a while. What? However, I note that right now it's housing and homelessness. And it seems to me like you've taken homelessness out, and I wonder where homelessness would then land. You and I had a separate conversation where you had an idea for that, but I don't see it in this structure, so I just wanted to that would obviously I mean, your your point was that would make housing sustainable land use more future focused. I'm still not sure if I think that we can bite that much off, but I'd like to hear you talk about what you're planning to do with homelessness.
127 Thank you. Councilor, I did note in here the full continuum of housing, I believe. Or maybe that was in the underlying language. I'm trying to find it right now, but I think that inasmuch as homelessness is related to shelter and housing, that could still be taken up here, I know that as we talk about homelessness in the city, there's a few different ways that we talk about that. We talk about it in the housing continuum, frankly. And I know this is a place where there's some divisiveness, but it is a place where there's conversation. So I'll call it out. It is talked about in relation to law enforcement. It is talked about in relation to our joint conversations with the county, which would of course, continue. Those are full council conversations. And then we've talked about homelessness in terms of oversight of the spending in the programs that the mayor has prioritized. And I think that all three of those other pieces are covered here in various ways or in the work that we already do as it relates to the work with the county in terms of oversight of the spending at the city and the work that the mayor is doing, I think that that could fall within housing sustainability and land use. It could also be that we make a for committee structure and the. Code allows us to have ad hoc committees that take on one off issues. And we could decide that we want a group to oversee that, that oversight specifically that we create in the future. I think that we could also think about that oversight happening in a work session of the full council, given that the underlying proposal which this amends, and I should have noted this at the start and apologize that I didn't. Has, I believe, information in it about there we go. See for matters that concern the business of council, such as governance and the role as the city's budget committee and finance authority. Adam. Items may be scheduled for consideration at work session or assigned to full council. And I believe that oversight on spending and programs that don't fall within any committee could fall within that as well. So we have a few options for how we would move forward. And I would in my role bringing this forward, I haven't specified in my role as council president, I am open to conversation with all of you about the best place for those conversations. Anything further, councilor? Councilor Dunphy.
128 Thank you, madam president. I am supportive of this amendment. Even though I'm the chief sponsor of the underlying. This this brings us closer to what I was originally my plan for a proposal, which is less about the topics and more about who does what. And I think from the way that the titles of, you know, jobs and economy and entertainment, housing, sustainability, I mean, those are quick. We could come up with something else, and certainly. But the core of what you're trying to do here is what does what do city employees do for the public? We issue permits, we fill potholes. We do. You know, we plan, we help with. The machinations of government in order to make sure that the city operates and then having other things about the experience of being a portlander and living and visiting and working and playing in Portland is a separate entity, a separate idea of that. We should have separate entities. Having a combined place to talk about public safety continues to be a smart idea, and then shovels in the dirt, you know, heavy machinery. What do we do with these enormous assets that are publicly owned, require similar maintenance, maintenance to a bridge is not dramatically different if you are in PBOT or if you or if it's a water transporting infrastructure, it's, you know, it is requiring conversations about. How we preserve our assets. So I think that this is actually really a smart way of framing the conversation. And I will be supportive.
129 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
130 I have a few concerns about this proposal. I'm I'm really concerned about the lack of a climate committee. I think that that is going to be that is, if that's one of the biggest issues of our time. I'm very concerned that there's this idea that it's just going to be infused throughout the rest of our committee structures. When we know that when we don't have specific focuses on specific issues, they end up being put on the back burner because of how busy we are and how many things we have to do. I just don't see climate being a priority with this type of structure. And I also have concerns about dividing housing and homelessness, because we are at a time where people are already not understanding the homelessness and housing continuum that needs to happen. And I think that dividing that is going to further exacerbate that division of understanding about why people are becoming unhoused on our streets in the first place. I, I also think that part of the reason it seems that we have to create a subset group to address the mayor's homelessness plan, and his spending on that plan is because we, as a council, failed to properly support the city budget office staff who in the past, under the prior form of council, they actually did independent oversight and review over our bureaus and provided financial analysis that was divorced of politics so that we as a council could get that unbiased feedback and then get information out for the policies that we created. So instead, we're now having to do that in this strange mini ad hoc committee on homelessness specifically. But I just I have a lot of concerns about some of the unintended impacts of how this is laid out overall. And my top concern here is definitely making sure that we keep the climate committee.
131 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
132 Thank you, madam president. Thank you for bringing this forward. There's a lot of this that I like. I am wondering if you can speak to where you envision finance and governance issues coming before the council, if it would be in work sessions, full council meetings, committee of the whole or something else.
133 Thank you councilor, I did not amend the underlying section c of the posted resolution, which says that for matters that concern the business of council, such as governance and the role as the city's budget committee and finance authority, items may be scheduled for consideration at work sessions or assigned to the full council. I would foresee bringing those to a work session for initial discussion and then moving from a work session discussion to full council. I believe that was what I heard. The I believe that what I heard from councilors previously was that they did not want this. Coming to a subcommittee of the full council, I had initially brought forward a proposal that had those items coming to a committee still, but I, I heard loud and clear from many of our colleagues that they didn't support that. So I decided not to make any changes to what was already laid out here in c. Thank you. Anything further? Okay, councilor Smith?
134 Thank you, madam president. I was I was reviewing your amendment. One of the first things that I would that I would add to it is to add the word labor to the jobs, economy and arts. I would also even consider homelessness in that committee, as well as the community and public safety to put homelessness in there as well. Overall, I'm not supportive of this. I'd add an amendment to it, but I'm not supportive of four committees. I will work in whatever committee is approved that you put forward. Even though it's not my first preference. I think it's going to cause too many internal issues while everybody is being nice. Now, if you think there was a bunch of chatter on the chat before. Dwindle us down to four and then go public, record the chat and see what they say. So I if I had to amend it and if this is something that the body wanted, I would add those things and but I don't support this at all. I think we just need to stay where we're at. I guess I'm going to my comments are going to be the same every time.
135 Councilor are you proposing that amendment, or are you just noticing that if this passes, you will have a further amendment to it?
136 Yes.
137 The second that if this passes, you will have a further amendment to it to add those words.
138 To add those words into into move homelessness into, into workforce or community and public safety.
139 Thank you, councilor Green.
140 Thank you, madam president. I like a lot of this. In fact, I like 90% of it. If it passes, I'm going to introduce an amendment which I've already emailed you guys, which replaces section c, which describes the governance finance, budget committee stuff broader kind of. Maybe even oversight questions that would that you envision would happen in a work session and brings in the committee of the whole proposal. As I've been thinking about it, what I like about the committee, committee of the whole over a work session model is our ability to have a more free flowing and informal way of working towards a final policy that, you know, we can adopt amendments in that committee. We can we can move towards something that can then later be referred to the council quickly and swiftly. And I know that's not germane necessarily right now. So I'll wait until it becomes necessary. But. I'm concerned about the climate piece getting subsumed as well. But I think if we had that committee of the whole structure, we might have an opportunity to do oversight that might be missing when we lose that committee. So I, I'm still a little bit on the fence about the condensation of that. But I do like how these committees are mapped to specific service areas that span multiple service areas. I think that's a good effort to do that. I do think we have too many committees. As it stands, I'll note that in the jobs and economy and entertainment committee, it does talk about labor explicitly in that one already. So that is in there. I think that's all I have for now.
141 Thank you, councilor. Councilor canal.
142 Thank you, madam president. I seconded this item. I'm still not sure where I'm going to vote on it. And the reason that I seconded it anyway is because I agree with your assessment of the process that we have to figure this piece out before anything else. And I think it's there's a lot in here that I like as well. I think your reworking of the description for infrastructure and city owned land and for jobs, economy and entertainment and the addition of these administrative matters mainly come from section is really great. I in my notes I had when I was sketching this out, I think we have we're talking about three different concepts in that committee jobs, economy and entertainment as it's currently titled, which could be worded a variety of ways. We've talked about jobs, we've talked about labor, we've talked about workers. Economy seems to be a consensus word. And then entertainment. We've talked about arts, we've talked about culture as well. So I, I could see it being named something different that that encompasses those three ideas. But it makes sense to me. I have the amendment I pre filed has a further it. It does more than what your amendment does to community and public safety description. So as a result I see no need to debate that here and would be happy to do it and then potentially try to improve it further. I do think that there's a separate idea here, which is the question over whether or not to merge housing and homelessness with land use. And so to that end, I'm going to offer two points. One is I think that this council made a decision, in part with the approval of the committee structure back in January, as to how we were going to view homelessness and how we were going to, because the bucket you put that topic in matters as as has been pointed out by several folks here, and I am so appreciative of the fact that it was put in by your original proposal. Madam president, with housing, and I think it makes sense to do it there. And I and also to recognize that regardless of where it's bucketed, there will be the conversation over how law enforcement relates to the houseless folks on the street that they are in contact with, or could potentially be called on, and not just law enforcement. Right? We have heard from both chat and psr in the last couple of weeks about how a majority of their calls relate to the houses, portlanders that there that that they're called on. So that I think makes sense. And I want to really endorse that continued bucketing of housing and homelessness, whether it's with sustainability and land use or not, but because it is, I think, separate from everything else I would offer, that this one might need to be voted on separately from the rest of it. And so I will probably later in this discussion, request either a division or a vote separately, just to separate those two votes out on whether or not to do what I think is a vast improvement to the description of all the other committees, separate from the question over whether or not to combine housing and homelessness with climate, sustainability and land use. Thank you.
143 Thank you councilor. I jumped back in the queue just to address a couple of things that were brought up. I heard two of our colleagues talk about climate and having a climate and a space to discuss climate and sustainability is incredibly important to me. It's something that I've included in every proposal, both in January and this month that I've put forward, because I think it is a critical piece of the work that we have to do, and I think that it should be part of our land use discussions, because how we think about our future use of our land should be directly related to how we are addressing climate change in our community. I took the word out here because we can only have so many words in the title of a committee. Similarly, that's why labor is not in jobs, economy, and entertainment. My commitment is always to our labor unions, our labor partners, and the labor that people in our community do every day when they go to work. I would gladly change the title of either of those committees. If the bucketing in for committees make sense to people, but the titles seem off. I just wanted to note that. And I do know that housing, climate, sustainability, land use is a very big bucket, especially if we're talking about homelessness there also, which I think we still could, but it does affect the size of the bucket. I wouldn't be opposed to calling that out in a more specific way. Again, we can only list so many words in a title, but I think that talking about housing, as we talk about climate and land use allows us to really think about how we have a city that is built in a way that addresses those climate impacts and is as safe and healthy as possible for people, as well as being as affordable as possible moving into the future. Colleagues, is there any other discussion before we move to a vote? Councilor canal.
144 Thank you, madam president. So I'm going to call for a separate vote on the portion of the amendment that combines. So it's the part that strikes out what was one a and renumbers the second to the renumbering. And the new conversation around housing the new text under five.
145 So I believe you are separating.
146 The merger.
147 The old one.
148 No. You're so you're separating. Okay. This is at the beginning and the end. So it's a little tricky.
149 At the beginning and end. Yeah. It's one. And the strikethrough alongside five and the changes. That would be one bucket of vote. From the from two three four. What is now 134.
150 That's a miss numbering. But yes okay. Does anybody not understand the division.
151 Me me okay. Councilor Kanal I clarify it. This is.
152 I want to clarify that this is not a division. I'd verify that.
153 Are you accepting it as a friendly amendment to your thing?
154 This is.
155 This is not an amendment. This is a motion which can be made, which I don't have to accept. It is just made. And it is. But I believe that as the first person who proposed the original amendment, what I get to do is decide the order in which we vote on these. Yes, if I'm remembering my robert's rules correctly, but I would love to have thumbs ups from our attorneys.
156 Yes. That's online.
157 Okay, I'm getting two thumbs ups.
158 Let me let.
159 Me clarify because this is not a motion to divide. It's a it's a ask for a call for a separate vote, which is slightly different. But basically there are two different. But everything you explained is applies. It's simply saying, let's ask the question separately and vote separately on whether to merge those two committees and then all the other stuff in this amendment.
160 What two committees.
161 The merger of housing and homelessness with what was climate sustainability and land use into a new housing sustainability and land use would be one vote. Everything else in the document would be a separate vote. That's all I'm doing is saying, let's consider these two separately. And it's a I mean, it's a it's a motion. It's not a vote to do that or not.
162 But so I believe when that motion is made it's not a debatable motion. Is that correct? The motion to call for a separate vote.
163 So under under the council rules any any member of council can ask that a motion be divided into separate parts. And then the councilor who made the original motion can decide which part is voted on first.
164 But it's not a debatable motion, and it's not a motion that we vote on. It just is. Correct?
165 Correct.
166 So we don't vote on whether this happens. This motion has been made. I believe we need a second. Is that correct?
167 Have you designated which part of the motion is to be voted on first?
168 I have not yet.
169 Okay.
170 So I need to do that first okay. So colleagues this division.
171 And then you can once you once you designate as the maker of the original motion, once you designate that we're going to vote on a certain portion of it first and another portion second, you can make that designation and then you can continue the debate if you would like.
172 My question is whether the call for separate votes has to be seconded.
173 No.
174 Okay. So it just is it has happened.
175 Yes.
176 Okay. So councilor Morillo, do you have a point of information?
177 Yeah. So councilor Kanal. Yeah. So can you just explain if we actually vote on this, what does a yes vote do and a no vote do on what you just said?
178 There is no vote on what I just said. I can just do it. So yeah, what I just asked for happens. We're going to now vote. We're going to vote on this in two parts is what just happened. So she's going to tell us the order.
179 Of those colleagues.
180 One power at the dais that each of us have is that on any motion that does multiple things, any of us can at any time call to divide that motion, which is not it is not needed to be seconded. It is not debated. It is not voted on. It just happens. So councilor Kanal has divided my motion into two, and I would like us to. Do you have.
181 Yeah. Yeah. Point of information. I don't think councilor Kanal has divided your motion into two because your motion you didn't. You don't have one motion to merge homelessness and housing and climate and then other stuff. You have a comprehensive thing to restructure the committees where you actually don't say specifically what happens to homelessness. So I don't think it's possible to divide this up into two things that say that are a vote on whether to combine housing, housing, homelessness and land use as one thing because you didn't actually do that.
182 Councilor Kanal would you like to be more precise?
183 Yeah.
184 Can I take just a moment to catch our colleague up, please? Councilor Ryan, the motion that councilor Clark had made failed. We moved into debate on the underlying. And because there were requests yesterday to discuss four versus five committees before we moved on to anything else, we started our debate on pirtle-guiney a, which is the amendment that has been proposed that would establish four committees instead of five committees. We are closing debate on that, and councilor Kanal has moved to separate this into two votes. That's where we currently stand.
185 Why? Councilor? Yeah.
186 So it's part of answering councilor Novak's question as well. So in the division of the question rules, robert's rules, it talks about that. You can also demand a separate vote when a series of amendments to a main motion are offered together, but can stand on their own. And it has to do with the definition of conforming amendments, which is a whole nother area. And I don't want to get super deep into it because you can all I don't need we don't need me to read this out loud on the dais, but sometimes several changes are needed in order to achieve one end, in which case these amendments are proposed and adopted by a single subsidiary motion to amend, and then other times they're not. And this does two different things. One is it changes the name and description of infrastructure and city owned land. It does the same for community and public safety. It does the same thing for jobs, economy and entertainment. That is a separate functional change than the idea of combining those two other committees. So that's why I've asked for it, because it is it is functionally a separate question.
187 I would suggest from my perspective as the person who brought forward this amendment, that that's not exactly what it does. And I see the point that councilor Novick is getting at, and I'm hoping that one of our two attorneys in the room can help us figure out how we want to do this, because I think that what councilor Kanal is trying to do is have us vote on the portion of the amendment that applies to what is now the numbering is wrong on here. I apologize, there was a mis numbering, but we're going to call it new one. What's listed as three four and new one, and what's listed as three four and have a separate vote on deleting old one. And the changes in five. But I would note that if we vote on those two things separately, and the first of those passed and the second failed, we would have the new descriptions for three committees, but not the fourth, which is listed as five. We also could do this as three separate votes.
188 I'm open to that.
189 I don't know which you prefer, but I don't think that we can call it combining those two committees because there are additional changes.
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190 Can I ask a clarifying question? What order would you put it in?
191 Because if we're taking 2 or 3 votes. So I need you to tell me what you're trying to do.
192 I think the reason I ask is if, hypothetically, you wanted to do all the descriptions together, that would make sense after if it was second. So I'm happy to do it that way, if that's easier for you.
193 So let's colleagues, we are first going to vote on. The. Deletion of b1 and the additions and the changes in what is listed as b5. I think that those have to go together in the way that you're describing this.
194 Point of order.
195 Please.
196 Can we call the question just on yours right now?
197 I don't believe you can do that. Once a motion to divide has been made, but I will look to our attorneys. I am not a parliamentarian.
198 I kind of want you to finish your thought, though, because I'm trying to figure out what everybody keeps interrupting you when you're trying to explain what the three votes are. Can you just say that first? Because I can't. I need that first.
199 Okay.
200 Let's get the answer to.
201 This.
202 Question and then I will answer that question. Can this motion be superseded by a motion to vote on the underlying to return? I guess it would be to return to the previous motion.
203 That's a new one. I'm going to give you that.
204 Point of order, because you can't use point of orders to call the question. So that should be the first thing.
205 I asked the question to ask.
206 The question is asking.
207 So I think you need to resolve this issue of what you were intending to vote on. And if there if it sounds like there is some consensus that there's a way to proceed with three separate votes to accomplish what you need, then you could.
208 Be doing it as two votes.
209 If. Three. You have determined a way to proceed, then you could effectively withdraw your first motion and then state these as two separate motions in order and just proceed that way. The important thing here is that the body knows exactly what it's voting on. When you take action.
210 Okay.
211 We are going to do this in two votes. The first vote will strike through the original b1 and change the language in what is now listed as b5. Again, I apologize for the numbering issue. It was a autocorrect issue. This motion in effect is what brings us from 5 to 4 committees, which was the underlying reason for bringing this forward. There are some language changes as I tried to clean things up, which could be made to the original motion separately or could be adopted here. But the reason for me bringing this amendment forward was to give us the opportunity to move from 5 to 4 committees in order to use our time a little bit more effectively. Given what I had heard from everybody through the last week or so. So this would remove the original b1. That's the strikethrough at the top of page one, and make the changes in what is listed as b5. It should actually be before at the bottom of page two. That is the first vote. So I believe we are still in debate, but now in debate just about those two pieces of this amendment. Councilor Zimmerman, are you in the queue to debate those two pieces of this amendment, which would achieve the underlying goal of the amendment of moving us to four committees?
212 In the last two.
213 In the last ditch effort to let councilor Kanal try and make himself clear in terms of why he's calling this separately, all I can say is it appears that we're arguing over words right now in terms of names. I don't understand the substance. And to be fair, before I give you a no vote, I just want to be fair to say, until that is clear, what the purpose of this is and the motivation, I'm a no vote because I don't I don't see what this is doing to make pirtle-guiney whatever we're calling this more clear. And so I just wanted to indicate that unless that becomes more clear, I would be a no vote on the question. Whatever order this comes in.
214 Councilor Kanal would you like to direct respond?
215 Sure.
216 I don't think it's just words. I've heard multiple colleagues say, I like this part of it, but I'm concerned about that part of it. And so we should decide the two things separately. I didn't think this was going to be that controversial or confusing, to be honest, and I apologize for that. But I, I think there there is I view a lot of value in the other portions of this as well. I think they have standalone value. That is not merely words. And so I.
217 Want to encourage you instead of saying other portions, if you can say things like, I think community and public safety as it's written is fine. But I think number one all struck out is terrible. And I want to I want it reversed. That would be more helpful. I know you're talking in large groups and I can't zero in on where you're at.
218 Yeah, I.
219 Think the change. So first off there's not going to be a yes or no vote. This has been separated that to clarify that. Secondly, I am genuinely supportive of everything I see under the infrastructure city, on land, community and public safety, jobs, economy and entertainment and entertainment. And I know other colleagues said the same thing. I think there are other colleagues who said they were supportive or supportive and against the other change, which is the merger of the two committees. I'm not sure where I'm at on that. That's sort of immaterial at this moment, because we're about to engage in that conversation and that will help me shape my vote.
220 And so in when you say the merger of the two committees in your mind, the way the council president's amendment is written, is that what was the housing and homelessness has been merged into? What was the climate and sustainability? And now we have something called housing, sustainability and land use. You think those two have been merged is how you're you're interpreting that in this document? Is that what you're saying?
221 Yes.
222 Okay. Thank you for that effort.
223 Counselor Zimmerman. Anything further?
224 So given that we will be having two votes when we take that, I guess the second vote, which should be on this amendment overall. My question about that, that would amend the underlying document, but we still have. I think, Dunphy a through whatever and canal and a Novick and so will we be taking up multiple amendments to the same exact paragraphs that were about to take a vote for here. I'm I would love to have the debate about four and five, but we've had a long time on pirtle-guiney only, and I'm trying to understand where you intend to take the remaining votes. Madam president.
225 Pirtle-guiney is the proposal the only proposal on the table that shrinks us to four committees? And in this division, we essentially are dividing the portion that shrinks us to four committees from some other language updates that I added in at the same time. The first vote, which we'll take after debate, is that piece of shrinkage. There are changes to other parts of the language here. In other amendments, there are changes to other parts of the underlying resolution. This is the only resolution that has been pre-filed that shrinks us from 5 to 4 committees. And I just want to note, because it sounds like you're aware of how much more we have coming, that it is 407 and I have not yet checked to see what our options are for staying after five today with any of you or with our staff, but I believe they are quite limited.
226 Okay.
227 Does that does that clarify for you?
228 It's somewhat helpful.
229 Okay.
230 Councilor Morillo.
231 I just want to say that before we take this vote on whether or not we're going to merge climate, land use and housing that you guys should be aware of, how absolutely horrific all the land use stuff has been on the climate committee. If housing is the number one issue in this city that needs to be addressed, I promise you right now you should go back and watch a few of our climate committee meetings, and you should see all of the I'm trying not to cuss because I know we'll get in trouble for this, but there are so many land use questions that we have to answer that take up so much time that are just procedural, that all have to be done on a certain timeline, or we violate some rule and then everyone loses their flood insurance and all of Portland, Oregon. So if housing is the number one issue, I promise you right now, you don't want to merge those issues. You will never have time to address housing. And that is just my caution to you before we cast this vote.
232 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor, I'm just looking to see who hasn't spoken yet. Councilor Novick, go right ahead.
233 I second what councilor Morillo just said. I also still do not think that this motion actually merges those two committees, because I think it leaves homelessness hanging out there without a home. And I said that with no pun intended, by the way. But also, I think that this would be a vote, basically to support the merger of two committees which will effectively abolishes one of them, I think, and outside the context of whether we're going to what we're going to do with other committees, I don't think that we should have serial votes on which committees to abolish. I don't think we should then have a vote to abolish the finance committee, or vote to merge the workforce and economy committees, because then we might up with all voting separately to abolish a bunch of committees and then wind up by seven five and then wind up with fewer committees than any of us want. So that's I mean, I'm obviously a no vote on combining the two, and that's my rationale for why everybody should be a no vote.
234 Councilor Smith.
235 I agree with councilor Novick. There should be a no vote on both of these. Us really kind of chopping this stuff up. It's just adding to the time. That's why we said we needed to table this, because this is more involved than than we than it needs to be. So we if we approve this and it's full, then we still have four of the amendments that we have to work on. Why? That's ridiculous. Y'all need to come together and come up with one thing that y'all want to do and be done with it, because it's causing way too many issues up here. I don't believe I agree with councilor Morillo if you I told y'all, if you merge both of those together, if you're talking about dwindling the time, you're going to be spending eight hours in that in that housing committee, eight hours. So think about it, y'all.
236 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Green.
237 I'd just like to ask councilor Novick, is your amendment still in play? If it has an opportunity, it's because yours has five committees.
238 Yes, mine has five committees. But I was persuaded earlier today that I don't think that we should move anything today. I'd obviously be happy if we adopted my proposal, but I. I'd be unhappy with a with, say, five members of the rest of the council being unhappy. So I still believe with councilor Clark that we should take a break.
239 Thank you.
240 Thank you. Colleagues, I will just note to the comments that we just heard that the underlying proposal also combines and gets rid of committees. The whole process we are going through today combines shifts and gets rid of committees. This first vote that we're taking is about whether we want 5 or 4 committees. And I did my best to come up with the best possible way to get us to four, if that's where we wanted to go. I tried to relieve some of the pressure by making sure that we had parks in a different committee, because there are a lot of really meaty issues here. But everything that we are talking about today combines the work or removes the work that some of our committees do. That's not unique to this proposal. Councilor Clark, I don't believe you've spoken.
241 Thank you, madam chair. Just briefly, I want to say that I appreciate the effort that you put into this, this proposal, the hard work that you put in. But as I said earlier, I really am not prepared to vote for this today or to vote for anything today. I would really like to take more time outside. I'd like us to take a break and come back to this after our break. I don't like going through these things one by one by one and they're all kind of confusing. But I did want to express my appreciation for your work, and she's not listening anyway, so it doesn't matter. Thank you.
242 Councilor. I believe that was an opinion and not a motion. Is that correct? No, no, no, not that that's a bad thing, but just that. That's a that was a thought, not a motion. I'm just clarifying.
243 I'm happy to make another motion.
244 I don't know if we can accept one right now. I just want to clarify that I heard correctly what you were doing. Okay. Councilor. Canal.
245 I'll. I'll withdraw.
246 If there's no one else.
247 In the queue. Okay.
248 So, colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, we are voting on the first portion of this amendment, which is the portion that. That allows us to decide whether we want 5 or 4 amendments. It removes the strikethrough portion at the top of page one listed as the original one a, and it addresses the changes that are captured in five keelan. Could you please call the roll?
249 Koyama Lane?
250 No.
251 Morillo.
252 No.
253 Novick.
254 No.
255 Clark.
256 Regrettably, no.
257 Green.
258 No.
259 Zimmerman. No. Avalos.
260 No. Dunphy I.
261 Smith.
262 No. No no.
263 No. Sorry. Ryan. Okay.
264 Pirtle-guiney I.
265 The amendment fails with two yes votes and ten no votes.
266 So colleagues, I know that councilor Kanal divided this. We can certainly vote on the second portion. That is what is on the table. But I had brought this forward so that we could have the debate around 5 or 4 committees. And it sounds like we want to move forward with the conversation around five committees. That's perfectly reasonable. But I think if I am allowed to, that I will withdraw the second portion of this amendment because it does not make sense to me to move forward with changing the descriptions on some, but not all, of our committees. That seems a little bit silly to me. So as the person who moved this, I'm going to withdraw the rest of this motion. That puts us back. Discussing the various other amendments on the table, I believe we were in the middle of councilor Dunphy's amendments previously, so I'd like to move us back there, since that is where we decided we needed to talk about four versus five committees. I think we are on Dunphy be.
267 Yeah, absolutely. We had tabled it. Do we need to do anything?
268 We had tabled it. So do we need to vote to remove it from the table? Okay. So we would need a motion to remove Dunphy from the table.
269 I move to remove Dunphy b from the table.
270 Is there a second?
271 Second? Okay.
272 Okay.
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273 I'm sorry, commissioner.
274 Councilor Green.
275 I believe that was councilor Avalos.
276 Councilor Avalos, thank you.
277 Can we do this by unanimous consent? Okay, great. Is there any objection to removing this from the table? Okay, so we are back in debate on Dunphy b councilor Dunphy.
278 Thank you. Colleagues. The Dunphy b reads each district shall have at least one chair of a policy committee. Now that we have established that there will be five committees, essentially. Well, and. For the purposes of this conversation, for now, the underlying resolution has and any amendments or debate about changing the number besides the underlying implies that there are five committees, because we approved yesterday that maximum flexibility for the chair to or for the president to determine whether or not we have vice chairs or co-chairs. There's a maximum of up to ten gavels to be held here, in addition to two positions of leadership. I would love to see that each district is represented with a gavel in some capacity as guaranteed, and I would move my amendment and would love a second.
279 I believe that we because we've taken this off the table. It comes with the original second.
280 Great.
281 Okay. Is there any discussion on Dunphy b before we move to a vote? Councilor Zimmerman?
282 Of course there's discussion. As I said yesterday, at least one chair of a policy committee from each district inherently expects that by that, each district is going to have three people capable of leading a policy committee. And I think that that is an unnecessary rule to implement, and that we should be in discussion with council president in terms of assigning chairs, rather than having it be shackled in a in a rule, as I mentioned yesterday, and I think it still pertains, is that we are all equal in that we were elected to represent our districts and our people, and we are elected by and for that reason. But then within the business of council to assert some sort of. Equalness amongst all districts on how the leadership plays out, takes into effect, or takes into account that for some reason we all come with the same skill sets, same experiences, same desires. I certainly after this experience could see an entire district saying, no thank you, I don't want a gavel in this system. And yet the council president would be be beholden to these rules to give a gavel to somebody even though they don't want one. And so I just think that this is well intentioned, but creates an unnecessary hurdle to good governance. And frankly, after that last half an hour, I'm praying for something that looks like good governance. And this, I don't think, is I think this is the opposite of it. Just because it could empower a person simply because they're the last person standing for a gavel, and that's a pretty crappy reason to get a gavel. And I just don't want to do that.
283 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Smith.
284 Madam president, thank you so much. I agree with councilor Zimmerman. We should not even be voting today at all because we're all so very confused about all these many agenda items. And I would urge my colleagues to vote against this.
285 Thank you. Councilor. Seeing no other debate in the queue, keelan, could you please call the roll? This is on Jamie Dunphy amendment b each district shall have at least one chair of a policy committee.
286 Koyama Lane.
287 No.
288 Morillo.
289 Yes.
290 Novick.
291 No.
292 Clark.
293 No.
294 Green.
295 Yes.
296 Zimmerman.
297 No.
298 Avalos.
299 No.
300 Dunphy I.
301 Smith.
302 No.
303 Ryan.
304 No.
305 Pirtle-guiney.
306 No.
307 The amendment fails with three yes votes and nine no votes.
308 Thank you. Councilor Dunphy, would you like to discuss Dunphy amendment c?
309 Sure. I suspect a conversation will go similarly, but Dunphy c reads one policy committee shall be chaired by the council vice president. Plain and simple. I think that the role of the vice president is clearly defined or is not as clearly defined. And I think this helps add some context to it. And. I'd like to put that in the rule. Similarly, I understand the argument that this may be too prescriptive for colleagues. And you know, that's fine. I'm glad to be a unifier on this council.
310 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith, are you in the queue?
311 Yes. Yes, ma'am. It is two. Prescription prescriptive, and I don't know why that particular position warrants some special treatment. If that's the case, we need to add that commissioner Smith needs to have a gavel to. So we need to be fair, I'm serious. I just think it just sets the wrong precedence. I'm a grandma. You just can't give one person something that the other person or the other grandkid don't have access to, but they get a specialty sucker for the day. So no, I would urge you to vote no on this.
312 Thank you. Councilor, councilor, vice president Koyama Lane.
313 As the council vice president, I might be a little awkward speaking to this. I support I. There are things that when I'm not council vice president, I think I'll bring forward. I think it will be better when I'm not vice president to think about ways we can clarify that role. I appreciate putting having some clarity. I'm not sure that this is the place to do that, though. And when we were originally creating the first, the committee structure that we're using now, we had talked openly about governance being a place where the vice president could support and check the president. So I don't think that would fit in here for policy committee.
314 Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal.
315 Thank you, madam president. I agree with everything the council vice president just said. I also think that this would be ideally something we put into code if we wanted to change the role, not this specific proposal, but whatever we want to do for the council vice president role. And I'd, I'd actually request, independent of this vote, that the president and vice president give recommendations in the late fall about what they'd like to see changed in that role based off of their experience living it, so that we could theoretically implement that and or at least be in the process of discussing it before we vote on the next president and vice president, so that candidates can know what they'd be getting into. I think that's fair to them, whoever those might be in the in the future. But I also think that that there's a potential amendment coming that might relate to the role, the vice president in some way from counselor Green. So I'm looking forward to that as well. But I will be voting no on this one.
316 Thank you. Counselor. Seeing no one else in the queue, I'm waiting for a quick note from our clerk because she's not finding the second recorded from our last meeting. Counselor Dunphy, do you remember who seconded this?
317 I don't think we.
318 Got to this.
319 We didn't.
320 Yeah, so.
321 If someone wants to second. Otherwise, it'll.
322 Die, I think. Put it to bed.
323 Okay. Thank you, counselor Zimmerman. I thought we had seconded all four from the same person when we had open.
324 I don't know that it's.
325 Not recorded that way. So we have counselor Zimmerman now. Keelan.
326 I'm here for you.
327 Could you please call the roll? This is on Dunphy. See, one policy committee shall be chaired by the council vice president.
328 Koyama Lane.
329 No.
330 Morillo where? Zimmerman staffer. We need a snack in here soon. No.
331 Novick. No. Mark,
332 No.
333 Green. No. Zimmerman.
334 No.
335 Avalos.
336 No.
337 Dunphy. I. Smith.
338 No.
339 Ryan.
340 No.
341 No no no. Pirtle-guiney.
342 No.
343 Okay, the amendment fails with one yes vote and 11 no votes.
344 Thank you. Keelan councilor. Dunphy, would you like to open Dunphy amendment d.
345 Bringing us all together. Here we go. Dunphy d reads the council president may serve on one policy committee. Other councilors shall serve on at least two policy committees with preference for additional committee assignments going to members who are not committee chairs. I currently serve on four committees. It's a lot. I think that by calling out specifically the intention to have the council president still continue to serve on a committee, and recognizing the undue burden that chairing a committee can have on other folks. I wanted to put intentional guardrails around our time for committees is untenable, but mathematically, it will be likely that more we will be serving on more than two committees regardless of math. So I would like to forward this for the purposes of protecting our own time. And I would entertain a second.
346 Second.
347 Councilor councilor Novick. Are you in the queue for debate on Dunphy?
348 I'm in the queue for a question.
349 Right ahead.
350 What are the current rules? Do the current rules allow the president to be on more than one policy committee, or do we already allow the president to be on one?
351 I believe that the current rules are neutral on this, that they do not specify at all.
352 So would this mean, would this be interpreted to mean that the council president can only be on one policy committee?
353 I'm going to look to our attorney for a legal interpretation. Either of our attorneys. But certainly how I would interpret it in implementation.
354 I don't think so.
355 Mr. Taylor, we welcome you back up here today.
356 Thank you for the record, robert taylor, city attorney. That's how I that's how I would read it. It's a may serve on one not may serve on two or 3 or 4. But of course I would defer to the maker of the motion to provide any clarity that they would like to.
357 It was my intention to have it be that the council president will serve on, up to, and including one committee.
358 Thank you.
359 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
360 Madam president, I'd like to ask the maker of the. Of the amendment and the entire amendment. So would that put six people on each committee mandating that the council president is on one committee?
361 Depending on where we land. You'll note that. Section d, three of the underlying amendment, specifically underlying resolution, specifically says all committees shall be limited to six members or fewer, so it could be as many as six. I think the math works out that 5 or 6 is reasonable for all of the committees, and we would avoid having to have we would not ever be able to have seven.
362 Okay. Again, I would urge folks to vote no on this amendment as well. I think that we need to table all of this and talk about this another day.
363 Councilor was that a motion or a thought?
364 It can be a motion.
365 I'm not suggesting that. I'm just trying to interpret.
366 But it was a thought, okay? It wasn't meant to be a motion.
367 Okay. Thank you. Counselor. Counselor Zimmerman.
368 Okay. I actually don't think the council president should serve on any committees. So I think that it was important. But I don't see a world where finance exists as an independent committee moving forward. And none of the other proposals that I have seen where that would be the case, and I would not have been supportive of the council president serving on any one of the other committees. And I say that as the chair of finance. So I think there was a role there. But I just don't see that that being an important perspective to have on a committee. I don't see other you know, I'm speaking it's easy for me to speak on c and d without it being about the two wonderful ladies who are sitting in those seats, because we're talking about the position and the role. And so please take it, take it about the role and not the individuals. But I don't I don't think that the presiding officer of what will be the final decision needs to be in the in the committee discussion, particularly given that a lot of the role is assigning work to committees. I just think that we should create some separation as it goes along with my idea that the council president does play a different role than the rest of us. So that is my is my one. So when it was originally written as may serve one policy, I took that as only serve one. You've mentioned your intent was up to two. So thank you for clarifying that. But actually made it even worse because the council president on two committees, I think the job is just too big up to one is where we're at now, counselor. Okay. Up to one is like, it's not unreasonable. I'm just saying it's I don't think it's necessary. And the role is big. The other part with this and this is really there's two here all other counselors shall serve. I'm very cautious on the word shall just because it again it leaves us no wiggle room. Shall is an important distinction here. I want to be cognizant that this will probably work for most of us, but I don't think we should again tie ourselves into it. To say that you must. And whether it be because an individual counselor, for whatever reason is going on, cannot do so well, or if it's because, in their own estimation, they can't do so well. This is what I meant by that. Or in the council president's determination about membership 5 or 6 people, if it doesn't make sense. And the other. I just want to note I'm not opposed to the idea that a council president may have to put somebody out to pasture for a while. I think that there's I really mean it, because if you look at the presiding officer's role, if you have a person who is disruptive to committees, if they are not being helpful in committees, that the council president may need to remove a person from a committee, and this shall rule would prevent that. If we had a very bad actor and I don't I don't like that. I want the council president to be able to assert some level of authority over the memberships of the committee and by using shall we would not allow a council president to deal with a bad actor if that occurred. Obviously, that got a little bit of a reaction on this dais that was not intended. But I think over the course of our history, we've seen presiding officers in many governments say, you know, this person is preventing a thing from happening or is causing problems at a certain place, and we need an action to be able to deal with that. And I think that this would limit that. So thanks.
369 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Dunphy.
370 Yeah, colleagues, I'm ready to vote on this one. I just want to note that we have had a lingering question in this body for a while about the power and flexibility of the council president, whether or not the president's role should be strong, whether it should be legislative, whether it should be weak and it should be dispersed. Thank you all for indulging all of my amendments to get us all on the record that we think maximum flexibility for council president is actually the way to go. I'm ready to vote on this and ready to watch it also die as my other amendments have all died. So.
371 Councilor Koyama Lane.
372 Just quickly want to say, I think a lot of what you brought forward are best practices. And maybe in the future, that's something that's put in writing by a council president. And thank you for bringing these.
373 Councilor Dunphy. I just want to express my gratitude, being able, being willing to bring things forward without attachment, because you think that the conversation is important to have and be okay with it when it fails, because it's not about your idea, but about making sure that we're clear about our decision making takes a level of legislative maturity that is really important for us to have. Thank you for being willing to do that, councilor Smith.
374 Thank you. I just had a quick question. You said there was best practices. From where?
375 Oh, like in my, my opinion, thinking, oh, it would be great to have a like the have gavels in hands of people in every district. Some of those things I agree might be a best practice, but it's not something that I want to be in.
376 Right? And normally best practices comes from a third party, so I'm glad you are creating your own best practices.
377 Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue for debate. Keelan could you please call the roll on Dunphy? Oh, that's that's me. Councilor I just hadn't taken my hand down. Dunphy d which creates standards around number of committees counselors serve on.
378 Koyama Lane. No Morillo. No.
379 Novick with the observation. Look forward to supporting something councilor Proposes in the near future.
380 No clerk. No Green.
381 All right.
382 Zimmerman.
383 I want to thank councilor Morillo for quickly googling that putting someone out to pasture means to retire them and not what you all thought.
384 We got scared.
385 I vote no.
386 Avalos.
387 No.
388 Dunphy. I Smith. No canal. No Ryan. No pirtle-guiney.
389 Clearly not enough people grew up around horses.
390 No.
391 The amendment or the amendment fails with two yes votes and no votes.
392 Thank you. Keelan councilor Green, are you in the queue for the underlying motion?
393 Yes. I'd like to introduce an amendment.
394 Go right ahead.
395 Thank you. Colleagues, I've all emailed you an amendment that I'm calling committee of the whole amendment or Green one. It's scalable to any variety of this that we would adopt, scalable to the underlying as well as the one we previously considered. But it just replaces section c that previously had said for matters that concern the business of council, such as governance and the role of the city's budget committee and the finance authority, items may be so. I won't read all that. It replaces that section and it introduces a sort of a clause that says all that stuff will be taken up by the committee of the whole. And so I'll just read it verbatim, in addition to the standing committees of the city council, council may convene as a committee of the whole. The committee of the whole will include all members of the council. The purpose of the committee, the whole is to discuss matters related to governance, budget and finance, authority, appointments to boards and commissions, and other items as assigned by the council president to the committee of the whole. The committee of the whole will be chaired by the vice president as part of the vice president's focus on governance and council process. So this gets to the question, I think earlier, where councilor Dunphy was trying to sort of articulate a clear focus and sort of cement for the vice president, this does that. A committee of the whole co-chair or vice chair will serve alongside the vice president, with a particular focus on budget and financial matters. And forth it says items referred out of the committee of the whole to the full council will be placed on the council consent agenda. Now, I realize that that's a strong, rather strong prescriptive prescription. So I, I can negotiate on that piece. But the reason why I think that's important is we do need to find a way to speed up our business. And if we're going to have a committee of the whole in the first place, it's only going to be useful if that's the place where we can get together in public, flesh out our sort of disagreements, and get to a place of ultimate, if not consensus, agreement by majority. And then and then just move forward and adopt it as the full council. I think it's also an opportunity for us to settle the appointment concerns that councilor Kanal has had in the past. And I think it's also an opportunity for us to hear some of these very critical land use procedural questions. So there's probably a distinction between land use policy that relates to climate and land use procedural questions. I think some of that can go in the committee of the whole. So colleagues, I would offer that and I would entertain a second, second.
396 Colleagues, I'm going to jump in here and I'm not sure procedurally what we need to do, but code specifies that membership of a committee. That that committees must be composed of less than a quorum of council. And I'd like to ask our attorneys if we can do this as an amendment to a resolution, or if this would need to be a code change in an ordinance. I'm not sure if committee of the whole could be defined differently than the way committees are defined in code. And I apologize, councilor Green, to jump in here. I just want to make sure procedurally we're doing something we're allowed to do.
397 No, I appreciate this. And this is exactly what you might do in a committee of the whole.
398 Thank you.
399 Thank you, councilor. Mr. Taylor.
400 Thank you. I, I believe this amendment is appropriate and germane. And you could adopt this if you adopted this. I would recommend that you then bring an amendment to the code that just says, except for the committee of the whole, and just handle it that way so that the two are consistent. But I think you could do this now, but I would recommend that you amend the code in the future to accommodate it.
401 We can we could debate and adopt this amendment and then the underlying resolution with it in there to implement we would need to change code.
402 Correct.
403 Okay. Thank you.
404 And the last thing I'll offer colleagues is that my intention is that that the committee of the whole doesn't necessarily always meet every week. It is sort of something that the council or I guess the council vice president, in partnership with the council president, would schedule as appropriate to conduct our business. So or I'm sorry, council president would schedule it, but the vice president would chair. So that's all I'll say. And then I'll take any questions or, you know, hear your your debate and comment.
405 Thank you councilor.
406 And I believe I did hear a second.
407 There I second it perfect.
408 Councilor Morillo.
409 I just appreciate how thoughtfully this was put together. I think that this is something that we absolutely need to get through some of our more administrative work together, and there have been times where some things that we've seen have gone through committee, where some of us got a really in-depth perspective on it a couple of times, usually related to land use, and then it had to go back to full council, and the people in the committee had to hear all of that stuff all over again. And everybody else was very behind and very confused. So I think that this really solves for a lot of those frustrating aspects and will speed up our work. So I am very highly in favor of this. And I also just want to appreciate everybody who put together different ideas for us to deliberate today. Everyone's putting themselves out there and doing good work, so thanks for that.
410 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Novick.
411 So this might be an irrational reaction, but I said before that I didn't like the idea of taking votes that we perceived as a standalone vote to remove one committee or another. And when I read this, it seems to me like sort of taking a standalone vote to abolish the finance committee is separately from the broader discussion of how many committees to have. That might be a rational, just me being punchy at 440 in the afternoon. But that's kind of my reaction. Also, I think it's useful for appointments to come through the committees, even if councilor Kanal is then going to take them off consent, because I feel compelled to review the biographies of the people whose appointments come through my committees. I can't promise I'm always going to do that. For all appointments that have now come through other committees. So I if the intent here is that appointments do not come through committees, then I'm concerned about that.
412 I hear you, but I do just want to clarify that the underlying motion does not have a finance committee in it.
413 Doesn't have governance.
414 That's true.
415 It feels great to be on that side.
416 Councilor Novick anything further?
417 No.
418 Councilor Zimmerman.
419 I am hoping that not just councilor Green, but but others, you know, we keep seeing this. This vice chair must chair something idea coming up and I'm trying to understand where that is coming from. I don't really get it since they're already in the leadership of the council, and I'm likely to support this overall, but that I don't know that I can get there with requiring that the vice chair is the is the presiding officer. When we meet as a committee of the whole. And I wanted to give people who feel have an opinion about that, to speak to it, because I'm not tracking why that theme keeps on coming up.
420 Thank you.
421 Councilor.
422 Councilor Green, would you like to direct respond or should we just take that up in further discussion? Okay. Councilor Kanal.
423 Thank you, madam president. I'm in the queue unrelated to that question. And so I may come back in to respond to that as I let it percolate. I wanted to speak to this. The reason I seconded is because I think it's fairly obvious that this one of the impacts of this would be to put appointments on the consent agenda. I would be comfortable with that. And I just want to be very clear about that, so that nobody is confused that in the event that an item that was referred out of the committee of the whole on an appointment to a board or commission was placed on the consent agenda, I would not, as a matter of course, feel a need to remove it from the consent agenda. I, I understand councilor Novak's point, and I think that's an interesting concept. If there's a need to put appointments on a narrower committee focus, I'm open to that idea as well. I think that that is a worthwhile endeavor, particularly for those committees that very, very closely relate to the purpose and are within the scope of a policy committee. I'm not necessarily opposition to that idea, but I think it's worth noting that this would save us a small amount of time on the full council agenda from that one little piece alone, as well as, I think, create a better way of discussing financial and governance matters. That would save us time at the council as a whole. Also, and I'll just note, I would be the not this amendment, but the underlying draft resolution would eliminate the finance committee, the way it's already written. That doesn't have anything to do with this amendment. Same thing with governance. And I do think that this second part of c3 is really important to retain that expertise. And we've already found someone who's had that expertise in that role, and I would hope that that person would be under consideration if this should pass for that particular role. Again, thanks.
424 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Smith.
425 Thank you, madam president. I think that if we want to do the council, on the whole, we also have to do some education to the public and the people of what that means. If we're going to do a council, on the whole, we might as well do another. We should do two council meetings a week. And so I would urge folks not to support this.
426 Thank you.
427 Councilor. Councilor Green.
Procedural episode · turns 428–436
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428 Yeah. This is these are great questions and comments. Colleagues. I'll just note that I believe that robert's rules typically does suggest that the vice president of the body gavels the committee, the whole. So that's kind of where it comes from in the first place. But I also was motivated by just the practices we adopted early on that we wanted the vice presidents, whether that was right or wrong, to really chair governance matters. And if governance goes here, that's felt like a natural thing. If this is the sticking point in the final analysis that makes or breaks this amendment, you know, I don't I won't I won't die my sword with this. But I do think there's a good reason for it. In the robert's rules, I think. But broadly, I think the reason why we need it, even if we use it sparingly, is we need a mechanism to move in and out of our full council meetings with some procedural tools left in our toolkit. We don't have that really in a work session. We've got sort of like advisory opinions, but a committee of the whole is somewhere between a work session and a full council meeting. So I imagine with our weekly council meetings, we might get into something that's really sticky. And it's like clear that we haven't yet resolved some key questions. We could refer that back to the committee, the whole to take up in some work session fashion, where we can grind through something and then move it back out so we can move on with that agenda. And to me, that's that's the main purpose for me. So we'll let the calls cards fall as they may and see if this gets put out to pasture.
429 Councilor Koyama Lane.
430 In governance, we have been talking about committee of the whole and trying to understand it. I know it's been a suggestion from some members, and terry spent a long time trying to explain it to us and it and made us. I took your email and made it into a little chart. I haven't understood the purposes of it, and I it's become a little bit more clear to pass this down to me. What it makes sense for is we can have items come to committee of the whole and choose to dismiss them instead of bringing them to full council. We can also take public testimony in a way we can't in work sessions. And then also the expectation, I think councilor Kanal, I hope, I hope you're listening. I think you might you agree that then we would put things on the consent agenda. And so the idea is that it could speed us up. And the way this council Green has written it is that there would be a co chair or vice chair of that committee. I am open to. Either way, I think it is important that we are planning for well, I don't know. It's a balance of what this body needs and then what precedent we want to set. I personally don't love the idea of chairing finance items. I would love if there was a vice chair, and I also am interested if this were to pass, if this were to pass, and I heard councilor Zimmerman talking about how it might not make sense in your opinion, for there to be a finance committee. And so I'm wondering your thoughts on that too, if that would need to be part of this. Thank you.
431 Councilor Zimmerman. Do you want to direct respond to that?
432 Well, I'm next in the queue, so we'll do that in a few others. I it's not that I don't think finance committee should exist. I just I think I've read the tea leaves in terms of where things are moving on this, this body I think there there is real validity to the discussion that that as it relates to the budget committee, there were times when folks felt that the finance committee had a leg up on other members, and that shouldn't occur as it relates to the boring crap that we're doing now. I'm sure you don't want to be in it, but I think the budget one is a more important bill to fix. And so for that, I'm not going to. Try and carve that out. I think that that's why I'm generally I want to find a way to where this could work. I am also pulled by councilor Smith's point of not having worked. I've spent a lot of time in in the, in different governments, and I've never worked in a committee of the whole. I've only worked in in the actual councilor Commission and in the work session model. And I'm recognizing that there is there is, at least on paper, some learning here. And we've heard it from, from our attorney about some options. Those remain somewhat. Theoretical and not practical in terms of how I'm trying to think through this. I'm a fan of times when this body can come together and have more. Conversational discussion. I made the point when we had this discussion a couple of weeks ago that just to try and simply respond to something that councilor Dunphy had brought up, it took 45 minutes of the queue, and by that time we'd all forgotten the points. And so if we're going to do something like a committee of the whole to have a robust discussion about points as they come up, we also have to find a way to suspend our normal decorum and not be off when we don't get equal treatment under the presiding officer's gavel. And so I don't know how to square that because of how I think our, our newness in this role is in terms of, you know, right now, just for, you know, we're all sure the council president is looking at who puts themselves into speak and tracking who has spoken once, twice or more on any topic. And I don't know how that works in council or committee of the whole. So not theoretically against it. Certainly think it solves some of the problems with what was an unfortunate outcome of the budget process. That is interesting. And that's why I'm enjoying this conversation, because I'm not really exactly sure where I'm at. This. Right. I've said my point about I'm not sure vice chair has to be. I think they certainly could be, but I'm not sure they have to be. But then why not just commit to work sessions as well? And then my last question for clarifying is if we establish a committee of the whole and we establish no, if we establish a committee of the whole, is the chairperson of that the presiding officer of that by default, then the presiding officer in the budget system, because our only example where we convene as a committee of the whole now is in our budget committee hearings. I think that's an important consideration to make here that it would not be the council president necessarily, if we go to this idea that it would be a different person. That remains a big, fat question mark for me as we go through. Thank you.
433 I direct respond on the budget committee piece.
434 Go right ahead. We may need to get a legal opinion on this as well, but let's hear your intent.
435 Councilor I think my intent was to not have this supersede the budget committee. And sort of it's analogous in that sense. So whatever rules are appropriate for the budget committee and the presiding officer would stand.
436 Thanks.
437 Can we just get a, a note from our attorney about whether that is legally the case? I assume that budget committee and committee of the whole could operate under different rules, but I don't want to make that assumption and find out we're wrong next April.
438 Thank you. For the record, robert taylor, city attorney, the budget committee is a creature of state law, and it provides that a governing body of a for a jurisdiction of a certain size meets as the budget committee. So in that instance, the president would preside over the budget committee. So that's how I would view it.
439 Thank you for clarifying, colleagues. I want to note that we do have a number of folks who need to leave right at five, and it's 456. I just want to note in this discussion that this is the work that we're currently doing in work sessions. I think it's important to have a place to do it, whether it's work session or the committee of the whole. I'm still grappling with the benefits of committee of the whole, because I still don't understand how they save us time. If we are all together in a work session or committee of the whole or council, it seems like it's all still the same time that we're taking. I'll certainly continue to look at this, but I I'm struggling to understand the benefit there when I think we can do most of this in work session. I don't quite understand the need, but I'm working through that. Councilor canal.
440 Thank you, madam president. I'm going to respond to both your most recent question and councilor Zimmerman's first to councilor Zimmerman's point, as a seconder. I would have agreed with the interpretation that councilor Greene gave about the president should preside over the council when it sits as a budget committee, and that's separate from a committee of the whole. To your second question, the about does this allow for a different type of debate? That's actually the primary purpose of it under robert's rules. So for those who may not know.
441 Where spent.
442 Us, yeah, that's a very important question and I appreciate it, but it enables a full assembly to give detailed consideration to a matter under conditions of freedom approximating those of a committee. And it goes into some details over what. And this is robert's rules. It goes into some detail over how that manifests in terms of how speaking works, where it can be a little bit more free form and can allow for more back and forth so that those who want to refute councilor Dunphy don't have to wait 45 minutes to do so, or to agree with him, of course, and then to the president's question, I think the main reason that it is different from a work session is because you can vote in it. And so there are often these these conversations that are a little bit more nebulous where we we're not allowed to take straw polls under under robert's rules. And so it's hard, you know, we get a sense of the body or those sort of more general terms that don't give us a ton to go off of. But a committee of the whole has the ability to vote, and certainly someone can change their opinion between that committee consideration and the full council. But generally you have an idea of where everyone's at. And I think that's a very valuable tool that creates a distinction between the work session concept and the committee. The other thing is that by default, it would allow for the ability to have public testimony if we so chose. And I think that's a very valuable role as well.
443 Thank you. Councilor.
444 Councilor Clark, we have a few folks who need to leave in one minute.
445 That would be me. I just want to say that I think that this concept has a lot of appeal, but I'm not prepared to vote for it today. And I really appreciate councilor Koyama Lane chart. It's very helpful, but I perhaps we could table this and come back to it later.
446 Colleagues, I was hoping we would vote on this amendment and then table the rest of the conversation moving forward. But if folks would like to table now, because I think we have some people walking out the door, we can open back up with this vote when we take up this issue later. Looks like I'm seeing some head nods to that.
447 We postpone until September 3rd.
448 Oh, that's a packed agenda, but we will find a time. I'm not going to name a date today, but we will find a time without without unnecessary delay. I'm not going to drag feet on this, so we are going to table further discussion on this amendment and on the underlying resolution. To a later date, with my assurance that I won't drag my feet on that. And we are adjourned.
449 Steve. Yeah. In obvious.
450 In August, 373 million people were liberated from british colonialism on this exact. Okay. Yep.
451 That's on.
452 On the midnight of the 14th and 15th.
453 That's a strong counterexample.
454 To. The. Thing over.