The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-08-12
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council convened its regular session on August 12, 2026, with roll call establishing attendance and the agenda approved without amendment. During public communications, testifiers addressed council civility during the election cycle, and one individual raised personal grievances involving state disability payments, housing, and a service animal. The council held a second reading and vote on an ordinance directing the Bureau of Transportation to evaluate and implement no-turn-on-red restrictions at high-crash intersections; discussion covered pilot scope, cost estimates, and crash-reduction data; a vote occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. A second reading on a comprehensive plan and zoning map amendment for a Northwest 31st Avenue parcel also proceeded to a vote. The City Administrator delivered a monthly update covering signal box art, a leadership development program, a Lloyd Center relocation grant, a solid waste permit, street cleaning pilots, National Night Out events, and litigation claims data, followed by councilor questions on RV site services, small donor election funding, a PGE agreement, and claims processes. The remainder of the meeting focused extensively on a non-binding term sheet and resolution concerning Moda Center renovation and a Trail Blazers lease; multiple amendments were proposed, discussed, and voted on regarding rent terms, escalation formulas, reporting requirements, and Portland Clean Energy Fund protections, with votes occurring throughout and outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The underlying amended resolution was ultimately voted on, with the outcome recorded in the vote ledger, concluding the session's business.
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0 Good morning. I'm calling to order this meeting of the Portland city council. Can we please call the roll?
1 Good morning. Koyama Lane here. Morillo here. Novick. Here. Clerk. Here. Here. Zimmerman. Avalos. Present. Smith. Here. Kanal. Here. Pirtle-guiney. Here. Ryan.
2 Dunphy here. And can we please read the rules of decorum for the chamber?
3 Good morning. Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.Portland.gov/council/agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found at the council clerk's web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you very much. Our first item, as always, is agenda approval. Colleagues, are there any requests to amend the agenda to reorder items or to reschedule an item to a future meeting date? Not seeing anyone looking excited? Do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda? The agenda is approved. Great. Thank you. Keelan, can we please move to public communications?
5 First up, today we have joel corcoran.
6 Good morning. Come on up. Introduce yourself. For the record, you're welcome to share your pronouns. And you have three minutes.
7 Good morning. I'm joel corcoran, a resident of district three and also a candidate for city council. Kathleen sadat's comments last week moved me to come address you today. We've been working with a new type of city government now for about 18 months. This offers a unique opportunity for a new style of politics, particularly during this election. Yet city council continues to replicate the same cycle of polarization, demonization, and alienation we've seen play out at the federal level for over 25 years. Those of us who've served in the federal government have seen this firsthand. That knowledge and experience makes us informed critics. But criticism is easy. Collaborating is hard. Governing is just difficult, even at the best of times. And we certainly do not live in the best of times. Right now, our federal government poses existential threats to democracy and the republic generally, and to Portland in particular. Our state and local governments are the last line of defense against those threats. It's up to us to mount that defense. All of us, we the people, but especially of those those of us who are running for state and local office incumbents and challengers alike. I think those of us seeking elected office should work to restore democracy and solve the political problems that need to be solved. We are the ones who will lead portland's political culture and norms. We should take that responsibility seriously. This election offers an opportunity for all of us to help city council work better together as an institution, but that will require all of us to work better together. That will require reversing the conventional wisdom of politics and elections especially. We could continue with the conventional wisdom of elections, those practices of vilifying each other, demonizing our opponents. Or we could try something new, actually collaborating now in advance of taking office in January. We can encourage diversity, equity and collaboration. Now, some of our core city values, or continue mimicking the so-called values of national politics. This election will decide who serves on council next year. It will not decide who gets to continue working for the public good. We'll all still be around after election day. We'll all still be trying to help the city of Portland and our communities. We can choose to engage in collaboration. We can share ideas and work together to create good policy. We can demonstrate passionate advocacy without polarization. We can disagree without demonizing. The choices are entirely up to us. Thank you for your time this morning.
8 Thank you very much.
9 Next up, we have injured and off.
10 Good morning. Come on up.
11 Good morning. My name is andrew pestov. I swear my name is injured and off. And I have a paper here from the state that says that the state pays $19,166 a month. That's in dollars. That figures up to $628.39 a day. That's. I figured up what the golden years mean. That means that the state pays a lot of money. This is only recently happened. This this since February 3rd. I'm in a care facility and I've got to pay 1375 on top of that of the 19,000. $166. And there's good ideas and there's bad ideas and, and 95 days will be November 15th and November 15th of 2010, which will practically be 16 years. I had a catastrophic, catastrophic injuries, broke my left hip and fractured two of my vertebrae and my spinal cord and got mistreated at the hospital after the hip surgery and ignoring the spinal cord injuries. And maybe that's the reason why the state's having to cough up that much money. But the city and the county and the animal control and the home forward, it was half at the time. The injuries hasn't paid me even a penny. In fact, even the state hasn't paid me one penny. I'm rather disappointed at that, of course, being injured and off, well, you kind of get used to that kind of stuff. I'll be leaving this paper here for the board clerk, if that's all right. My service animal was a real service animal. It was attacked seven times in less than six years. It's against Oregon law to even interfere with the service animal. But when the city owns the property that you rent at and and the state controls your medical appointments and or the lack of care or anything, well, they couldn't get away with all that, what they were doing, which was nothing. Thank you.
12 Thank you very much for being here this morning.
13 Next up we have john rosapepe.
14 Can I.
15 Hand it? Of course. Thank you. John rosapepe. Okay, next up we have leigh king. Leigh king. That completes communications for today.
16 Okay. Thank you. Colleagues. Our third item on our agenda is actually a time certain that starts at 945. And so we cannot quite move to that quite yet. Start with some jokes. That's a full five minutes. I don't think I can actually do that. Colleagues. Let's move to item number five which is the only non the next non time certain item on our agenda.
17 Item five document 2026-213. Direct the Portland bureau of transportation to evaluate and implement. No turn on red restrictions at signalized intersections within the high crash network.
18 Colleagues, this is the second reading of a nonemergency ordinance. Is there any further council discussion before we move to a vote? Seeing no one in the queue keelan can we please call the roll? Oh, there we go. People jumped in as soon as I said it. There we go. Councilor Smith first. Thank you.
19 Thank you, mr. Chair. Just wanted to say we read this last week, and it's a very important ordinance that will save lives in the city of Portland. And I want to make note that this is a pilot that's going to be piloted in specific areas in the high crash corridor, and it is going to cost about $800,000. So I think today we take a a long overdue step to fulfill our promise to the people of Portland. I believe far too long our street design has prioritized moving cars through intersections as fast as possible, rather than ensuring our neighbors reach their destination safely. So for far too long, we have placed haphazard motorists, convenience over the elderly and pedestrian safety. The numbers do not lie, and neither do the stories of the families in district one. In district one, we've lost to date 11 lives. District two. Lost five lives in district four. They have also have lost five lives. And in district three, there are seven more lives that will not be here in the city of Portland. We know that when a driver looks left for an opening in traffic, their eyes leave the crosswalk on the right, on their right. And that split second, we risk the life of a child walking to school, a neighbor in a wheelchair, or a commuter on a bike. Something has to be done. The no turn on red ordinance is our best response, and I think it's one of our best response responses. It changes the default setting. It establishes a fundamental truth in our city code that pedestrian life is non-negotiable. This policy is also an issue of equity. Our mobility impaired residents and elderly community members deserve the confidence that when they walk to a signal that turns white, the crosswalk is truly theirs. Because we know that no turn on red signage reduces all crashes by 9% and decreases pedestrian and bicycle crashes by 41%. Safety should not depend on how fast you can stop off of a curb. I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the advocates who brought their lived experiences to the chamber, to PBOT staff, and for their leadership, and to each of you for recognizing that leadership requires action. And I am proud to be able to cast a vote for this ordinance in in the affirmative on the ordinance today for safer, more walkable and more human Portland roads. I also want to thank Oregon walks and verde for all their help in making sure that we had language that would be acceptable in the community, and that it would help to save lives today. Thank you.
20 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Novick.
21 Thank you, mr. President. I feel kind of silly making this mundane point after councilor Smith's eloquent speech, but I just want to point out that this is a pilot, that this is not banning. Right turn on red throughout the city. This is something that could add 30 no turn on red intersections, adding to the 200 that we already have.
22 Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Koyama Lane.
23 Thank you. I just want to say thank you again to my colleagues, especially councilor Smith and to the staff at PBOT, to director williams, to dana dickman, for all your support with this and with vision zero. And thank you to the community groups that engaged on this and had conversations. Thank you, councilor Smith, that you were willing to open your door and really hear them. Oregon walks verde bike loud families for safe streets. This is important work. It's really hard work, but it's hard work and it takes a long time, but it's worth it. And I'm very proud to vote I and hope that the rest of my colleagues join me in that.
24 Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Ryan.
25 Yes, thank you, council president, and thank you. Co-sponsors. I have to admit, councilor Smith, I went into your office yesterday and I, for some reason, have had so many random people say, you can't pass that, but I, I like them at first thought it was universal throughout the whole city on every stop sign and a. That wouldn't be very realistic and b it wouldn't be too popular if it was every stop sign throughout the city. When you're in an area that's quiet and there's no one around. And then when you targeted it on high crash corridors, when you had data that said, these are the intersections where we're having the most pedestrian incidents, I was all in. So I appreciate the fact that you all edited this and made it a targeted use of pedestrian safety. And I'm I'm in. So thank you. I do look forward to the findings. And so I hope that we have reports on the data that shows the impact of this. And so that we continue to make our decisions based on that type of information called data. Thank you ma'am.
26 Thank you, councilor Ryan. Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll?
27 Koyama Lane I.
28 Aye, Morillo I.
29 Novick I.
30 Clark I Green. I Zimmerman I. I Smith.
31 I I. Pirtle-guiney I.
32 Ryan a Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with 12 I votes.
33 Congratulations, colleagues. Thank you. Can we please call item number three.
34 Document 2026-242. Amend the comprehensive plan map and zoning map for a vacant lot on northwest 31st avenue, described as Willamette heights addition block 18, lot 14. At the request of Portland parks and recreation lieu 26-00796cp zc.
35 Colleagues, this is our official second reading, though I think we've heard this a dozen times at this point. Is there any further discussion on this hopefully final reading of this item? Seeing no one in the queue. Keelan can we call the roll?
36 Koyama Lane I.
37 Morillo I
38 Novick.
39 A.
40 Park, a Green aye, Morillo Zimmerman I. I. Smith I. I. Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan a Dunphy I. The ordinance passes with a vote of 12 ayes.
41 Okay. Our next item is also listed as a time certain at 950. It is 948. We're going to wait. 90s. You can.
42 Other people can volunteer.
43 Did I tell my joke about the caveman and the bear?
44 Yes.
45 Okay, hold that one time. Sir.
46 Can you do it again?
47 Council president, I would invite people to the national night out at hillsdale tonight. Have a great time. National night out is a great event. I've been to a couple this year. Looking forward to it. If you're able to come out or go to one in your neighborhood, they're on different nights. Sometimes you should look it up because they can be a great connection to people you haven't seen in a while. Post COVID pro-social activity outside, away from your screens and off your couch is a good thing.
48 That doesn't sound like a show.
49 No thank you.
50 Counselor.
51 Mr. President.
52 Counselor.
53 I fear I need to say that I think that councilor Greene should have declared a conflict in the last item because, as greene, he obviously is biased against red.
54 That's a good one.
55 All right.
56 That just shows you I'm willing to overcome my own personal biases in the interest of the city as a whole.
57 Council president, can we go to the administrative report?
58 Unfortunately, we listed the time. That is a time certain.
59 Oh we did.
60 Yeah, that's my bad.
61 Okay.
62 Got it.
63 This is good.
64 Honestly, I appreciate the levity. Folks, this is a this is still a fun place to work sometimes. All right. That's close enough. Keelan. We call item number four, please.
65 Item four. Document 2026-293. August 2026. City administrator update.
66 Thank you and thank you everybody for your patience on this. Mr. Administrator, mr. City administrator, it's a full title, I apologize, raymond, please update us with.
67 Thank you, council president. And good morning to city council. The theme of this report this month is creativity. This is an opportunity to highlight creative solutions to problems and innovative ways to approach our work that our city employees have done. A few items I wanted to highlight this month on that theme is the public environment management office has seven signal wrap installations planned for summer 2026 across all four districts. These installations add color and joy to the city's sidewalks and proactively address issues of tagging and other damage that occur to signal boxes, with the goal of saving money on maintenance costs long term. 2627 path to leadership is accepting applications. This is a program to support leadership development for a wide range of folks across the city, and we encourage all interested parties to apply. The law and holiday relocation grant is a limited time grant program developed to support lloyd center mall tenants, activate vacant storefronts and drive foot traffic in the lloyd holiday tif district by providing funding for moving expenses and tenant improvements. Thanks to the prosper team, city councilors and mayor's team for quickly standing up this program, Oregon deq issued the city a solid waste permit after creating creative collaboration between. Besppnd PBOT maintenance and operations in deq in metro yielded updated operational plans, a new storage location, permitting solutions and efficient daily operational continuity. Pbot is launching a street cleaning pilot before bringing back local street cleaning citywide, which we are hearing is a big demand from our public. This is in addition to the regular street cleaning of major arterials and collector streets, bike lanes and other fall winter leaf day services. The pilot in keaton cathedral park in saint john began this summer. The city of Portland safe blocks team, alongside our partners across the public safety service area, is hosting. Like councilor Zimmerman just mentioned for national night out events this summer. The events provide an opportunity for community members and public safety programs to build relationships, foster trust, and strengthen partnerships. I also want to note to council that the behavioral health work session reference on page two has been rescheduled to September 9th. And also, you'll also note that this month, the budget note tracker included as appendix a includes the current fiscal year fy 2627 budget notes, as well as updates from last fiscal year as requested. And just one update on the ice facility in the land use. This is still being in the court system now. So there's still no new updates on that. I have the dcas here with me as well to answer any questions or take any feedback that council may have. Thank you.
68 Mr. City administrator. Councilor Kanal.
69 Thank you. City administrator thank you, council president. First, thank you for adding the the appendix back with the last year's budget notes. I'm going to be following up on a couple specific things in there. I wanted to ask if you could give a little bit more specifics on a couple of things. The 24 over seven rv location at north Portland. North Portland road being closed and. And the folks who are in the rvs, it talks about assistance, but it doesn't really say more. What is the city doing to support that transition?
70 I know through Portland solutions, we're looking at how we provide wraparound services in these type of situations. If the person needs aid or assistance with housing or anything of that sort. That's what we've been looking at providing and those type of situations. But I can have Portland solutions do a more in depth memo to the council as it relates to the services we are providing, and how many people are we interacting with in this operation?
71 Yeah, I guess just to put a finer point, just where is someone supposed to go in their rv is the real question. That I have there.
72 I'll follow up with you on on that.
73 It notes the number of candidates who have opted into small donor elections for the year 24, which I appreciate the update on, but I'm not sure if I should read into that. Any concerns or positives around. Are we still on track for the full, you know, 100 k per tier that all that. There's no nothing to worry about there.
74 I haven't heard any concerns from staff as it relates to that, but we can make sure that we follow up on it too as well to make sure.
75 Thanks. On the pge update, it says that the city and pge reached an agreement on the harberton project. I have a two part question. Were there other parties to the mediation and were there other parties to the agreement?
76 There were other parties in the beginning of it. I think towards the tail end of it, it was city negotiating with pge on as relates to the overall agreement that we signed off on, that would be coming to council.
77 Okay. Okay. So there were others. Okay. Thanks. Appreciate the update on the lloyd holiday relocation grant program. I'm very appreciative of that, specifically for the idea of keeping folks in that neighborhood and eventually expanding it to others who would like to move into that neighborhood. I appreciated the shout out to to safe blocks, to pb's partnership with osp on the, the, the drug mission there, the street cleaning pilot in Kenton and cathedral park in saint john's. If you live in those three neighborhoods, please look out for that indie two. I did want to ask a couple questions on the claims clarifications here on the claims list. There are. When it says defense verdict, that means that we went to court. We chose not to settle. And ultimately the court ruled in favor of us or ruled in favor because it. I'm noting there's a line here. It's on page 36. It alleges the person alleges that they were injured when PPB officers sprayed him with chemical irritant while filming police activity during protests, and it says total incurred $173,000. It also says defense verdict. Can I get a little clarity on.
78 What I would have to ask legal to weigh in on that? If they that have to be a legal interpretation of what that means.
79 Okay.
80 I guess it implies that the defense won, meaning us, but also we have a cost. So I'm just trying to make sure I understand that piece. If that was just our legal cost or if that if I'm misinterpreting. And similarly, we asked a couple months ago about information on the claims denied piece. So for example, a few lines lower down. Also on page 36, there's an allegation of PPB officers damaging property with chemical agents when entering to arrest subject that's marked among many others as claim denied with zero. And I just want to understand like, what's the what's the does that just mean that a person can sue after that, but they haven't yet? Or what exactly happens in those scenarios?
81 Let us follow up with a legal memo to, to your councilor on that to kind of just break that down. Okay.
82 Great. And I think that's everything. I'll follow up with you on a couple other things afterwards, but thank you so much.
83 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Koyama Lane.
84 Thanks.
85 Council president. Thank you for sharing in your report about the path to leadership program. My office had the opportunity to attend this year's cohorts presentation day, and we're really genuinely impressed by all of the good ideas and projects that came from our staff. So the path to leadership program is a nine month program. It's a leadership development program for emerging city employee leaders who are not in a manager or supervisor supervisor role, and it's designed to build leadership skills, foster collaboration across city bureaus. I know that one of my staff on my my council team staff was a member of a cohort in the past. And this is a really challenging time where we're navigating a lot of change and reductions. And my team has been so inspired to see many city staff showing up with energy and commitment to make our city services better. I know that two of the projects those project teams presented at a recent chief of staff's meeting, and those two projects were quarterly review and and cross service, and both of those ideas around quarterly capital project reviews and cross service area circles of practice are ones that can actually be implemented with little to no additional expense and could make a really positive impact. And so I would love to plug if it's possible to schedule a time council president for those teams to have a chance to come present to councilors, or maybe even at committee of the whole, whatever the appropriate setting would be. I would love to see that. I think it's really important to highlight that there's a lot of creativity and innovation amongst our city staff, even as reductions are happening. So let me know if there's anything I can offer in support with that. Thank you.
86 Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Pirtle-guiney, before I go to you, our city attorney actually has an answer for councilor Kanal.
87 Oh.
88 And I'm happy to put this into an email or memo if it's easier, but you asked the two questions about the claims and the claims technically come from risk, but I can speak to what they were. So the first one was a defense verdict. And you asked about amount incurred. And yes, that would be legal expenses. And so looking at that one, just because I know what that case is, it was a sum the city and the officer won on summary judgment. So in federal court, on summary judgment, the judgment was in favor of the city. And those were costs incurred both in the city's internal defense. And I believe in that case, the officer had outside counsel. So and that would be the total expenses there. And risk could probably give you a more specific breakdown of that. And on the claims denied. That's correct. So that would be a claim that risk received a tort claim notice for denied the claim. And then the individual could sue. But I'd have to look at any given one, but presumably hasn't sued at this point.
89 Yeah, just the two I would I appreciate that the two I was looking at were the two alleging use of chemical weapons by by the Portland police bureau on page 36. Just to clarify that first one. That's the one that summary judgment was granted based on qualified immunity.
90 So we got summary judgment on that. On the one that you asked about. I believe the officer got summary judgment on qualified immunity, and the city won summary judgment with respect to the monell claim that was raised. Yes, there were two claims raised in that case.
91 No claim. Thank you.
92 And. I don't I don't have a specific we can kind of get a specific one on chemical agents and the the claim denied there. I'd have to follow up with risk because that would have never come to our office yet on what kind of where it is in the process. But given the claim date, it it probably was just a claim denied and they could sue at some point.
93 Thank you.
94 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Thank you.
95 Thank you.
96 Council president. Mr. City administrator, in one of the staff shout outs, you all had a shout out to our immigration officer, brenda and the work that she did with one of my team members, faisal osman, to put on a, a forum to help people in our community understand what their rights were. I want to thank you for including him in that shout out. And also thank the administration for putting those forums on. I know that was, I believe, the second of 4 or 5 that you all are doing with different communities to make sure that people within our city know what resources they have available. And I think that's a huge part of the work to make sure that everybody not only is welcome in our community, but is safe in our community. And it's a piece of the work that happens behind the scenes, not at this dais. So people outside of those communities don't always hear about it. And I think it's important to elevate that. So I appreciate you including it in your report this month.
97 Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney and councilor Koyama Lane, your idea of getting a presentation of those those leadership cohort proposals is a great one. My office is going to work to figure out how to make that happen. Thank, colleagues. Any further questions for our city administrator about his monthly report? Thank you very much. Can we please call item number six.
98 Document 2026-280. Authorize a non-binding term sheet with rip city management llc and trailblazers holdings, llc outlining the terms for moda center arena renovation, operating in lease agreements that will keep the Portland trail blazers playing in Portland for at least 20 more years.
99 Thank you, keelan colleagues. We are here at last on August 12th. We have before us a draft term sheet and a package of amendments carefully put together by our professional negotiators in response to council's input. I appreciate how these amendments are responsive to so many of the different amendments proposed last week, in a form that our negotiators agree empowers them as they move through this process. We are in a position to move this resolution forward with adjustments that have been authored by, and have the full support of our negotiating team. They're responsive to city council deliberations and maintain a market rate deal that reflects Portland values. It has been said many times, but it bears repeating that this term sheet process is unique. Usually, a legislative body steps in to review terms that have already been discussed and approved by both sides. Professional negotiators. Our sports team, the Portland trail blazers, have yet to officially negotiate on the proposed terms, and so this sheet is both a carefully measured proposal and our first offer to our negotiating partners. As this is its own beginning, I would like to quickly review the recent steps that we've taken to arrive here. Two weeks ago, council considered a draft term sheet in a work session. That hearing marked the first public engagement in this negotiation by our partners, the blazers. We heard them affirm a commitment to the city and heard their feedback on draft terms. We then worked through the draft term sheet together, learning with the public about what the document actually says and would do. Then last Wednesday, council returned and heard testimony from the public on the draft terms. We heard a panel of community leaders speaking to the moda center, the rose quarter and the low end and the terms and then heard from the community at large, stretching over three hours of intelligent, passionate commentary from portlanders. On Thursday, we finally turned to the legislative process. Our elected representatives brought a range of proposed amendments to the terms that we've been discussing, and on which we'd heard so much feedback at the time. I took a principled position that I was not comfortable voting yes on amendments that had not been touched by our lawyers or our professional negotiating team. And while none of the amendments were adopted that day, we did open and discuss them, and I made a commitment to bringing what had been discussed to our professional team to assess my ask to the team was this please take what we can from these concepts and bring back to us a package that you think moves these terms in the right direction, more responsive to portlanders and a stronger position for our negotiators. All fully lawyer reviewed. And that package of amendments is before us now cosponsored by our full district two delegation and crafted with the leadership of our negotiating team. I believe that the amendment.
100 Is that inside or outside? Okay.
101 Thank you.
102 I believe these amendments give a fair and direct representation of the city of portland's first offer to the blazers, adopting smart technical amendments, strengthening our commitment to oversight, and including an additional commitment to revenue shared back to the city we all love. Negotiations will continue. I stand by our professional team's assessment that this is a good place to begin, but I and I do want to acknowledge that some of my colleagues that while I set to some of my colleagues that while I set an expectation that amendments heard last week should have been reviewed by our negotiating team to earn my support, there was some genuine confusion about what that request meant. And when. Emotions can run as high as the stakes are for the people, for our people and our city, I offer my thanks to this council for mending our fences and finding a way to continue to move forward together. Today, we will open the co-sponsored amendment packages together. Dunphy, pirtle-guiney Ryan Kanal one and two discuss and vote on them in that order and after any other and after any other discussion, we will consider and vote on the proposed technical amendments that conforms our our terms to conditions approved by our partners at the county last week. We'll close with the day with a vote on the. To adopt the underlying resolution and term sheet, and with that, I will move. Dunphy, pirtle-guiney Ryan Kanal two, one and two and ask for a second,
103 Second.
104 Counselor Clark, I believe, was slightly ahead there. Second. Thank you. I'd like to start by recognizing dca donnie oliveira and our our negotiating team to help us walk through this amendment package. And at the end of the presentation, we'll recognize co-sponsors for their remarks and enter into discussion. Team, it's all yours.
105 Thank you.
106 Council president, council vice president, councilors. My name is donnie oliveira. For the record, my colleagues will introduce themselves in a second point.
107 Of order, mr. President, can we please have technical to turn up the volume? I can't hear you, tony. Thanks.
108 Adam's going to help us crank as much juice out of this system as we can. And I'll ask our presenters to speak directly into the mic.
109 All right. Thank you. Do you want to go and introduce yourself?
110 Ken maguire from the city attorney's office for the record.
111 Carl hirsch, managing partner, stafford sports.
112 All right. Thank you counselors. Thank you team. So before you is going to be three proposed amendment packages. We'll walk through those in a second. Just want to set the stage here just for the public's record that as council president alluded to, these are not normal circumstances by which a term sheet would be developed. Ideally, we would have been sitting here in front of you with terms that included details, not just on the renovation program, but other aspects of a normal term sheet would have included the other side's interests, this being the blazers. Nonetheless, we're at a position today to ensure that the city's team, now the county's team and now the state's team, understand clearly where we're going. What is the roadmap and and how do we ensure that the deal that we get to keep the blazers and more specifically, to renovate the moda center, have clear outlines and defined goals? The last thing I'll just offer is if the council chooses to adopt the resolution today, which includes the term sheet, our task at hand is clear but still very uncertain. In order for us to come to you all in December with the details, you need to make definitive decisions on financing and the renovation. We will need information from the Portland trail blazers with apologies.
113 Point of information. Can you say again, I couldn't hear the first part of your sentence.
114 Sorry. In order for us to come back to you in December, we will need details that we currently do not have. Those details are related to the renovation specific terms, the renovation plan, and of course, a term sheet that the blazers will agree to. Nonetheless, we move forward because that's the right move for the city of Portland. On behalf, again, of the county and our partners at the state as well. All right. Next slide please. Before you is I'm going to walk through the proposed amendments to the resolution. And these are actual these are the actual language in the resolution. I'm I'm stating that because when we walk through the term sheet, the way to share it is a little bit more tricky. The resolution amendments before you are are incorporates changes that we heard from the council and county deliberations last week and prior. The spirit of these resolutions. Amendments are to tighten up the understanding in your direction for us to understand about how the deal will be made. It'll also emphasize the types of revenues that we're talking about. And we also want to clarify, you know, how the financial decisions come to you all in that next phase. Next slide please. On these two changes there, the last addition, this continues with the theme of fiscal responsibility and ensuring that we aren't making any commitments before council has an opportunity to review and have input on that. Again, those details will be incumbent on our ability to collect information and work with the blazers to have those details on what the renovation is being. Renovations dollars are being spent on, but again, no specific funding sources until those details are outlined. Next slide please. In the last chunk of additions, relate to details that you've asked for that we will in the term sheet, but reinforced here that we will come back to you all with clarity on the roi of our financial contributions, everything from the potential revenue streams from the deal, as well as the community benefits that we hope to engage the blazers in our community. Partners on that are outlined in exhibit b, the final result that's on here, just as explicit, to say that we will not weaken our position from the bridge agreement ensures that our our next lease agreement and terms are consistent in strength to the existing bridge agreement. I'm going to stop there to to take any questions related just to the resolution amendments.
115 Councilor Avalos okay, thank you, colleagues. Any further questions on this portion of the amendment?
116 All right.
117 Next. Oh, councilor Novick.
118 We're talking just about the resolution, not about the term sheet, correct?
119 Yes. This amendment just changes the language in the resolution. Yeah.
120 I'll also offer in this moment regarding the resolution, there are a lot of discussion last week about questions that we think are honored and already resolved in the term sheet, and we're happy to answer questions about those related to the joint authority's decision making authority, its oversight abilities, and its final decision making on a variety of different aspects. But nonetheless, let's move to the term sheet slide, please.
121 Oh, councilor Kanal has.
122 A I'm sorry.
123 Thank you. This this might be a good pivot point anyway, because I think you might have a response that includes the the term sheet at the end in the resolution at the end of page three, in the beginning of page four, there is a. Whereas clause that is struck and then rewritten. And I would like you to kind of explain what that means. What what exactly the change was there. It's the one that says that any future ongoing city investments in a moda center during the lease term will be paid for by the actual user fee revenue, and then it replaces it with user fee revenue the city receives from blah, blah, blah may be explicitly dedicated. It seems clear if you just look at that in a vacuum, but given that none of the text related to it in the actual term sheet changed, I want to understand what that change means.
124 Thank you for the question, counselor. I think there's an opportunity for flexibility there. We're opening ourselves up to options with that versus the will to may.
125 Okay.
126 Simply put.
127 The term sheet still says everything it said before. There's no change in the user fee portion there, right?
128 Correct. That's correct. Counselor and the user, the term sheet. Actually, I think what you're driving at is the term sheet actually says that the revenues received by the city beyond the amounts that are shown on the exhibit d, and we've talked about that a few times over the weeks, will not be available for capital projects at the arena. So a put a finer point on that. Or another way of saying that is anything above what we have said would go to capital expenses and exhibit d reverts back to the city.
129 Thank you.
130 Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Green.
131 Thank you.
132 So I'm looking at the text just following up on councilor Canales question. So I see that the whereas clause appears to soften that commitment as a sort of. We may spend up to the dollar amounts in d, but I. I don't see anything that amends the financial impact statement that does say that we will spend 275. So was that an oversight or is that are we still putting in the financial impact statement that. The other part of this funding is $275 million pursuant to exhibit d? Yeah. Councilor so the commitment of the the ongoing in the exhibit d is still there. I think what we can just alluded to is, in the event that the user fees go beyond those those amounts collected, they are not guaranteed to go right back into the mode of center. That's the flexibility that was I was alluding to as well. It would be the spectator venue funds discretion on how the number above that was dollars amount collected in exhibit d or how those are spent. I understand that part, but the change in the red lines in the resolution are talking about the numbers up to that amount and softening it from will to may. And so that's the piece that I'm saying is the financial impact statement speaks to the numbers up to the 275, which is not what you're talking about, which is over the 275.
133 Well, I mean, at this point, councilor, I think one way of answering your question is we still don't have a scope and budget from the trailblazers about the renovations. So we don't really have any idea of what that ongoing. 275 over the 20 years is going to be. So we're just trying to provide ourselves flexibility within that. I think that, you know, the kind of the discussions that have been ongoing over the last few months have always presumed that 13.75 annual amount or 275 million total would be put back into the building. And this was simply meant to clarify and give us flexibility with regards to any amounts over that at some of the questions from from others.
134 Okay. And that's just just to be clear, that's in addition to the renovation budget.
135 The 275 is in addition to the renovation budget.
136 Thank you.
137 Thank you, councilor Green.
138 Councilor Kanal I'm happy to be to wait until after.
139 Till after.
140 Chris. Yeah, yeah.
141 Kristen. Go ahead.
142 Thank you. Council president, again, for the record, my name is kristen dennis. Working temporarily with the city. The just to answer the question a little bit more, part of the intent behind changing this language and addressing it this way is we heard last week from particularly councilor Green and Avalos, wanting to have some flexibility on which buckets are used for which which financial contributions. So, for instance, this allows potentially spectator funds to be used for that initial 120 should that should the council decide to do that, it just creates some flexibility and reflects that council is going to be able to decide which funds to match with which commitment.
143 We should be working.
144 Thank you. Kristen councilor Kanal.
145 Yeah, just to follow up on councilor Green's question, there were other things that were brought up in the impact statement last time on the this is on the resolution still specifically the second full paragraph, third total, I guess, on the financial and budgetary impacts that were raised. As you know, should we be presenting as fact things that are contestable propositions in here? Was this discussed or was it just it's in the impact statement. So it didn't get to be a part of it. How can you describe the process for evaluating that?
146 Yeah.
147 Thanks for the question, councilor.
148 And I'll and I'll honestly, we didn't contemplate redrafting the impact statements. We were largely focused on the term sheet and resolution. It's something that we can can go back and, and change though if that's if there if there are things you want to strike.
149 I think I think that third paragraph at the at a minimum, noting its contestability for me, but I will defer to councilor Green on what's relevant to him.
150 Yeah. I mean, I offered an amendment last week that would have done what we need to do, which would I mean, the financial and budgetary impact statement, if you look at the drafting manual for the auditor, is not a place to describe potential economic impact analysis. It's to describe very specifically the impact on the city's budget. So all this front matter doesn't belong there. If we want to make a change, you need to go back and look at Green envelopes one from last week, which does all that. Thanks.
151 Thank you. Councilors. Don't want to take us. All right. Through the next part.
152 Okay. There's advanced slides, please. All right. So for the term sheet review, just given the nature of how the edits landed, they're a little bit more challenging to share on a slide. We're going to walk through the sort of the, the each amendment just describing its impact. Again, these details came from conversations from you all and as well as the county. So one of the first elements that was added is we added a footnote in the preamble referencing sb 1501 and included that as an exhibit. That was logical, given that we did the same maneuver with the county's resolution as well. We also strengthened language related to the renovation budget regarding the joint authority's approval for the public funding contribution, this was heard loud and clear that we wanted to be more explicit about the approval stance that the joint authority has. We also included clarifying language related to the city's development rights. We had that conversation at city life, and we just were explicit that the city owns the parcels and will and continues to own those parcels and have development rights authority beyond the bridge agreement. We also added this language related to third party leases that acknowledges that the funding contributions will include benefits for third party tenants. I think it's pretty clear on who we're referring to on that. Next slide please. And probably one of the more material changes was adding of a of a rent element at $2 million per year with an escalator of a cpiw this was obviously we heard from both the county and you all about interests and, and rents or, or tenant lease payments. And so this element is in there reflecting that we also added some stronger language related to the community benefits, and specifically talking about their investment in their charitable work with the community, and also a language related to them reporting back. So provisions about reporting back on whatever community benefits are negotiated, having a report back mechanism on that. We also to to strengthen the list of organizations we gave examples of in the cba exhibit b, just to again demonstrate the types of organizations that we would work with. Again, just want to reiterate that we are not negotiating the cba today. The cba would be negotiated with all parties, blazers, community organizations, the county as necessary, but the exhibit b outlines the direction that we'd like those conversations to go. Next slide please. And then last, the third amendment package that's in front of you today is a technical amendment, which really adds the Multnomah county Multnomah county, as a party to this negotiation, including them as a joint authority, a member, as well as added the resolution, which is included as an exhibit and the complete package. And so that wraps up the additional two packages.
153 Thank you, donny councilor Kanal legacy. Okay, great. Councilor Avalos.
154 All right. I have a series of questions, and let me start with a quick one, which is as it relates to the rent. Thank you for putting it in there. Is that money going directly to the general fund? Where is the money from the rent going?
155 We haven't contemplated that mechanism. Councilor, but I it would, it would assume, be a general fund contribution. We'd have to talk to our finance team about that. But it would not go to the you know, the spectator fund that got.
156 Shut down.
157 Yeah. It would be helpful to just understand that that rent is not going to just go back into the building, because that's my concern. It is not explicit in here. The way that it reads in the term sheet is that it is. It doesn't have where it's going.
158 So this year we got seven schools shut down and we want to talk about renovation. This our taxes should be spent on our children. That's going to bring more taxes to our community.
159 I agree. Thanks. So yeah, I think my next question then. Well actually let me just end on that to say, is there a way to make it more explicit? Is it that you don't want to be explicit about where it goes or councilor?
160 Yeah, we can make it more explicit. It was we were not intending it to go back to the fund.
161 Yeah. There really has nothing to do with the blazers. So in the term sheet we're focusing on the blazers and what they give us. How the city decides to utilize that is up to the city. So I think it confuses the issue. If we put it into the specific use into where the to the blazers.
162 Sure. But we are dedicating other revenues for specific uses. So why would this be different?
163 It would it would be we can check in with with director levine and, and get back to you about that mechanism. But that seems like a reasonable addition.
164 All right. Next question. So here's what I want to understand about where we're at with this amendment package. What has taken to get to here? Right. Because the whole thing that we heard last week was we want the negotiating team to vet these ideas, right? And so can the negotiating team clarify for the record which of council's requested owner contributions, for example, were actually presented to rip city management or trail blazers ownership, specifically, where private capital contributions, revenue sharing, participation in naming rights. Things that I brought last week that I was told were not viable. But is it because they were rejected by the blazers, or is it because the negotiating team did not advance those requests?
165 Thank you for the question, councilor. We requested all those things and more of the blazers back in June. The exact date.
166 Can I believe it was July 6th.
167 July 6th. So all those all those things plus were asked of the blazers. And while we did not get a formal response, which we've been requesting, we've heard very clearly through the conversations we have with the leadership that those were our nonstarters. And also, just broadly speaking, change the math on that 573 component that was originally framed in the spring.
168 Okay. So they did not give us an affirmative. No, they just gave vibes that they don't want to. They talked to the media that they didn't want to, but they didn't tell you in writing officially? No.
169 Correct.
170 That's correct. I think councilor It's it's fair to say what we asked them is what will be the private contribution. And as part of the negotiation, I think as donnie started off the meeting, in a normal scenario, we would have reached a meeting of the minds on this term sheet and come to you with a term sheet. And we asked them what would be the private contribution the next, you know, the negotiating would have been and how is that made up? And that could have been from all of the things that you listed in your proposed amendment last week. You know, a combination one, it it just never worked out that way.
171 Okay. Thank you. As it relates to the protections, the amendment package, direct staff to preserve protections, quote, comparable to the existing bridge agreement. Again, this was another amendment that I had raised that concept. So thank you for adding some language on that. But can you clarify? And I don't know if maybe the city attorney needs to clarify this, like, what does that mean? Like, does that include preserving existing like private matching principles, for example, existing city rights and claims any like I want to understand in lawyer speak what that means for how to protect those existing agreements in the bridge agreement.
172 Sure. I think it's fair to say that the 1995 agreements are antiquated in some respects. And and mr. Hirsch can speak to this a little bit. And I think you've heard from from others that the new suite of agreements for arena and stadium deals are more protective of cities, or they're structured a little differently. We have no intention of going downgrading any kind of the rights and remedies that the city has right now. In fact, we will probably strengthen them, particularly with regards to the non relocation agreements and some of the other terms in the lease. That will be a little bit more specific and a little bit more enforceable.
173 Thank you. We have three amendments before us. I wanted to understand the I want to make sure that amendment three and just so I'm sure, amendment three is the one where we're adding the exhibits f and e, right? I just want to make sure that when we.
174 I think it's just it's just amendment three is just f that's the county. Yeah. Right, right.
175 Thank you. I just want to, I guess because the way that you all did that, right, you essentially just copy pasted what the county asked for, what they approved. But I don't I want to understand how is that going to interact with what we approve in either amendments one and two or whatever we end up approving, is that what am I trying to say? Will amendment three not inadvertently weaken anything that we approve in our version? I just want to understand what the county's relationship and us putting that in there, how that affects what we're asking for as the city.
176 Thank you for the question, counselor. I should have said this in my original talking points. Our current read of the. Oh yeah, our current read of the resolution language is that many of the themes that would be in a term sheet are in the term sheet, minus the rent, which was included, and all the other elements will be will be discussed with the city and the county outside of the term sheet. They're more city county relationship issues, not term sheet. So our current understanding is the amendments are in there either already were in there or we've added language to strengthen and be consistent with our directives.
177 I think we want again, the term sheet is to the trailblazers. We wanted to make clear to them that the county had conditions for their funding and some requests. And so how we've structured it is as a footnote that says the county will be part of the joint authority, and the conditions to their public funding are expressed in the exhibit, which is the resolution. We didn't want to at least I didn't want to speak for them other than what they said themselves, which was the resolution.
178 Thank you. That's helpful. Last question, and then I'll have one thing to say. We've been talking a lot about the term sheet being a floor or ceiling we've been talking about at least I have. Right. Is what is the box you are negotiating from? And because we're coming at this term sheet without all of the information, as you said at the beginning of your speech, can you help me understand that? Is this what we approved today? If we approve it today, is it intended to serve as the city's minimum negotiating position and that any material weakening of those protections would return to council before approval? I just want to again, and I also asked you last time, if you have another great opportunity that they magically present. That wasn't something we discussed. Are you going to feel free to pursue that as well?
179 Thank you for that question, councilor. I'll take a stab and turn it over to carl. We're not thinking about this as a ceiling or a floor. This is just a position to start from. You can appreciate that in any negotiation, they're going to come with their own asks and aspects, which will change the dynamics quite a bit. So to your second part about if there are new elements that come in over time that are especially those that are beneficial to the city, of course we would, we would take action to to realize them. But carl, do you want to add your thoughts, please?
180 Yeah. Thanks, danny. This is really the framework for us to open negotiations with them. So I assume there will be a lot of push and pull on a lot of these different issues. So I think everything is really on the table once we get to the table. And this just gets us to the table.
181 Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for answering those questions. I will then share my comments on how I feel about the packages. So I'll start by saying something that might surprise people after our conversation. Thank you. I am genuinely grateful for this amendment package. I spent a lot of time going through it, and I think that you all heard a significant amount of what council raised last week. So thank you to danny and the team. I want to give you that credit. Last week I introduced a lot of amendments. 12, I guess, 13 with Green Avalos. One and because I believe that the term sheet needed stronger protections for portlanders, and not all of those ideas were, I didn't expect them to appear exactly as I wrote them. But I do see in here how you wanted to or how you got to the underlying principles. And that's what mattered most to me. So some of the highlights of what I appreciate that you added. I wanted us to protect the city's development rights. Thank you for making that explicit. Like I said last week, I just felt like it was silent on that. And I wanted to be clear that the blazers don't get to keep those two. I wanted protections around the other professional sports. Thanks for adding more language on that. Stronger maintenance protections. That's why I'm asking these questions about the bridge agreement. I just want to ensure that we're not going to get back a deal where we have to pay 100% of the maintenance when we're currently paying 50. Thank you for adding the accountability stuff around community benefits. Again, not exactly how I asked for it, but I think still accomplishes what I was trying to do. And, you know, a lot of my other amendments were about getting greater clarity about the city's financial exposure and more council oversight before additional public dollars could be committed. So thank you for attempting to address some of Green Avalos. One, it doesn't definitely doesn't get to what I'm asking for, but I think it starts to. And importantly, I wanted rent. So I put that forward last week because I think that rip city should pay rent for a publicly owned arena, that they operate and get a lot of revenue from. So thank you for that. Rent is in this package. Ultimately, I think how we got here is that council. I'll thank councilors who came forward last week with proposals. They did their job last week, scrutinized the proposal, asked difficult questions, offered amendments. We disagreed. We voted. And to your credit, I think the negotiation team listened to that discussion and came back with a stronger document. So thank you. That is exactly why I was so insistent that council needed an opportunity to legislate. And so I'm really grateful that this package is materially better because we were able to. And I also want to be clear about what I think it demonstrates, that putting amendments forward was not undermining the negotiation, because that's kind of what I kept hearing. Asking for more was not irresponsible, because clearly you put things in there that we asked for. And council exercising its legislative authority did help improve the city's negotiating position, which is what I'm hearing you say. So I just want to make that clear on the record. I hope we remember that as this process continues, because this is not the last time that this agreement is going to come before us. So I want us to remember that it is important for us to legislate as councilors. So I do support this amendment package. I appreciate the work that went into it and I will plan to support it. Thanks.
182 Thank you, councilor Avalos. I actually am going to, before we continue with council discussion and some technical questions about this, I do want to turn it over to the co-sponsors first and go ahead and get opening remarks from them on this, and then we will return to full technical questions and council discussion. So, councilor Pirtle-guiney, please kick us off.
183 Thanks, council president, and thank you, especially to our negotiating team and attorneys who spent some time over the last week looking these pieces over. Colleagues, this has been a difficult process the last couple of weeks. And in part, that's because we are in a really tough position. We have a massive decision about what to do with the city owned space, and we don't have a good faith negotiating partner, so we're having to figure this out a bit in a vacuum. And despite the fact that this topic has gotten enormously heated at times, though, I think we are in a better place there. Today. I want to remind us all that nobody up here is the other side. We'll be negotiating against another side soon. In fact, I think all 12 of us have a shared goal which is getting the best possible deal for Portland. I think that's a goal shared by portlanders as well. Some councilors have focused on getting there by securing as many concessions as possible in the term sheet, and those councilors brought some critical improvements by way of amendments last week to address this. Other councilors have been laser focused on making sure this term sheet is as practical as possible to show everybody involved that Portland is serious and acting in good faith and ready to get that best deal. I've been set on ensuring that whether maximizing concessions or practicality or landing somewhere in between, we have the strongest position at the negotiating table, which is sometimes the strongest term sheet and sometimes a little bit different. I've negotiated many things over my career, but I have never negotiated a sports arena deal. So in trying to figure out what gives us the strongest position at the table, I have to rely on our negotiating team and trust them about what will get us there. When I talk to portlanders in my district, what I hear genuinely is that folks want to see a fully activated and vibrant moda center, and they want a realistic, practical, good deal for the city in any lease agreement with our anchor tenant. And I believe that both of these values are critical. The first is critical for its implications for our economy. Jobs at the moda center, our ability to attract investment in the surrounding area, and yes, for sports fans and concert goers who need access at the arena. And the second is critical for all portlanders, including those who don't see themselves in these categories, in this discussion, in this deal, who don't live in that part of town and are honestly just trying to make ends meet in our city. I voted no on amendments last week because I was worried we could put at risk holding both those values, that we could step into a situation where they came in conflict with each other. And I wanted us to continue to prioritize balancing them. I believe that the process that the council president offered us, that we could take all of our amendments, have our negotiators, our experts about what they need at the table, review them and bring them back, rather, I'm sorry, and bring us back a proposal that both strengthen the term sheet, but also focused on setting us up to have the strongest position in what we are know are going to be difficult. Negotiations with the blazers could work. I know some councilors disagreed with my analysis and with the approach that I took last week, and I want to be clear that I think we all came in good faith with the approaches we brought to the table. And I know we can disagree on strategy and still work together. I was clear in my remarks then that I liked much of what was on the table, and hoped to improve the term sheet. If our negotiating team felt that, it would be that they would be in a good negotiating position with the blazers, both in our ability to get a deal done that keeps the blazers in Portland and in our ability to actually deliver on these benefits for the city. It has to be practical, functional, enforceable. I'm really impressed with what our team brought back to us. It included many of the terms that we heard last week, some of which are materially financially better for the city. And it also, from what I have heard from our team, ensures that we continue to have the strongest possible position at the negotiating table, and that strong position at the negotiating table is not just the term sheet, but how we present it and how we work together in bringing it forward. So I hope that as you all look over this term sheet, you can feel good about our next step. And I would ask for all of you to consider this with the same good faith that we all brought last week, and to help us move forward on the advice of our experts with what can give us the strongest position at the negotiating table. Thank you all.
184 Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney, councilor Ryan.
185 Thank you, council president. And first, thank you for holding this very challenging process, which will go on through December. So I know you were a reluctant council president, but you're doing a really great job trying to bring us all together and keeping us civilized as we move through this very difficult conversation. Thank you, council president, and thank you, negotiating team, for always being direct and clear. I know we've had a few salty conversations over the last couple of days, and that will continue. And this is complicated, and I appreciate your perseverance and your clarity. Thank you. As many of you know by now, my heart is ripped city. I have a lot to say on this topic, and I'm proud that we are here today to come together as a majority to set up our negotiation team for success. My why on this is guided by both my head and my heart. Let me start with my heart. I was 8 in 1970 and attended a blazer game and I'll never forget it. In fact, I didn't miss a game in every season, even when I rooted for them on the road. When I was living in new york city in seattle, I was able to skip school in 1977, my freshman year of high school, and be part of the championship parade. I was numb with pain after we blew the fourth quarter lead in la in the western finals in June of 2000, and I can still feel that the joy and the pain of being a blazer fan is a wild roller coaster. It truly begins. But it does do this. It brings us all together. When the blazers are in the playoffs, this town lights up. Thank you to the many blazer fans who have come up to me randomly to share their stories. The amount of parents and grandparents talking to me at the various night outs I've been going to in picnics about taking their kid to a blazer game, a being that kid and those cherished memories have really reminded me what deep love we have in Portland for rip city. Here's to all of us as we hold that eight year old kid in our hearts today. Summary. My summary of my head on this is clear jobs, macroeconomics, roi, which is crystal clear. If we want to see more money in our general fund during our budget season, you want us to secure our team for the long term. And again, jobs. I'm grateful to my council colleagues, the administration, for the spirited conversations around this starting point for negotiations. I'm also grateful to rip city management for finally showing up recently and joining us for the work session. That was a refreshing little step. And this the state, the county have done their part, and it's time for us to do ours to keep our team home. In my six years on council, I can't think of a time when the state, the county and the city have been aligned on an important issue. I've seen enough from tom dundon to know that he is actively pursuing opportunities elsewhere. In fact, I'm no longer really talking to tom dundon. This is for the nba commissioner, adam silver, and fellow owners and the trail blazer fans as we come together and bring texas tom along. As a lifelong blazer fan, no matter where I resided, I have been a true blazer maniac. And as a city councilor, I have to look at the big picture and I'm going to fight to keep the trail blazers home. Throughout this process, I have doubled down on the economic imperative of keeping the nba franchise in Portland. And I want to remind portlanders that we are what we are fighting for our city, our community, and portland's economic longevity and vibrancy. We are moving forward in good faith. Our negotiation team will be set up for success with this vote. And this is just a start. The final product is in November December, and we will look at look at it the same as it does today. So this fight will continue until we until we secure 20 more years of rip city in the rose city. I want to close with acknowledgment of my colleagues in d2. As you know, we cover a lot of ground with our points of views on this issue. The most important economic development issue. In my six years on council, we have had many thoughtful, sometimes heated conversations with all three of us, always committed to success, defined by setting up our negotiation team to win. We know our city is much better off for the long term. With the Portland trail blazers remaining in Portland and yes, residing in d2. So glad we're here today for jobs, for macroeconomics of our city to improve the general fund of our city's budget. And for that eight year old kid, I'm proud to vote yes today to move this important work forward and rip city. Thanks.
186 Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.
187 Thank you, council president. Thank you to two colleagues. I'm happy to bring these amendments forward again, this time as a package, regardless of what people might think of the overall term sheet. And we'll discuss that right after these two amendment votes. The amendment package improves the resolution and improves the term sheet before us, and I hope colleagues will support it. I'll keep my comments specific to the amendment package. Just a quick recap. The resolution amendments include a commitment to use a regular budget process to allocate dollars, not the continuation of backroom deals. Clarity on the mayor's authority to sign this term sheet by adding that he can commit to the content of the term sheet, but cannot commit to the use of any specific funding source. Clarity on the city administrator's authority to negotiate to get something based on this framework, but cannot commit to any specific funding source. And in addition of a clause which says that we're committed to some return on investment. Last week I said that this was the bare minimum. I'm grateful not only for the general things, but specifically that this was included. The term sheet amendments include a note that the joint authority has final approval over how the public dollars are spent. This in and of itself does not solve any problem, but it is half of a solution, the other half of which will be ensuring council has a direct voice in choosing, not just rubber stamping, who is on the joint authority and ideally serving on it ourselves. It notes the development rights are with the city that a commitment to the benefits not only supporting the blazers but other tenants like the fire for the first time and ask for rent. Clear language on cost overruns being privately funded, annual reports on compliance with community benefits agreements, which will create transparency and trust. On that side of the deal, the addition of more community partners for community redevelopment so that in addition to albina vision trust, we're also asking for collaboration with the strength in our communities coalition to elevate Oregon and the school. Finally, it asks for a commitment from the blazers to continue their charitable donations, which I think they do anyway, but can't hurt to include. There are also some technical things. These are all good things in my view. My goal is to consider each amendment today not for what it could be, but for what it is. And then once we decide on each amendment, look at the overall package and decide if we've gotten far enough to earn my support or not, or if there's something else that we can do that hasn't yet been proposed to make it a little better each time. So on these two amendment packages, I'll be voting yes, and I'd ask colleagues to do the same. Thanks.
188 Thank you, councilor Kanal. Thank you colleagues. Now we are in council discussion, both technical and just open discussion of the amendments as moved. Councilor Novick.
189 Thank you, mr. President. Assuming that I know that it's 3% or cpi, whichever is less, but assuming that there is a 3% increase in the $2 million in rent over 20 years, what would that work out to in nominal dollars over the course of 20 years?
190 Councilor that was it's about approximately $45 million approximately.
191 And also going back to the payment in lieu of taxes, what do we think that that will come out to in nominal dollars over the course of 20 years? The city's share of it.
192 It's approximately 95 to $100 million.
193 The city share.
194 Oh, sorry. The city share. I think we'll need to negotiate that with our colleagues at the county.
195 But if it's a third, then it's around 33 million.
196 Yeah. I'm sorry.
197 Thank you.
198 Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Morillo.
199 Thank you. And are we just in clarifying questions or everything?
200 Everything for the amendments to the amendments, though specifically, but clarifying and discussion.
201 Okay.
202 I'm wondering where the number for the rent came from or how you decided how you landed on that number. If you can explain that to us.
203 Sure. We looked at what was out there in the industry. We looked at what would be reasonable. We looked at what the county did, and that's how we determined the rent number. We wanted to be aligned with the county.
204 Okay, but we're not aligned with the county on some other things.
205 There are things that the county put in their resolution that will that are more city, county relational conversations, less blazers focused.
206 Okay. I mean, I think that the the conflicts of things that they have promised to certain groups and on, on the deal are going to be a conflict that the city has to address as well, because some of our amendments to the term sheet directly conflict with that. But I understand that, okay. I would have preferred a more rigorous analysis for the rent decision, since it was one of the biggest asks that we have up here. Thankful for my colleagues who brought up amendments last week. I appreciate your efforts, our efforts really. And it is because of that, that this term sheet is going to be improved. And thank you to the advocates for pushing us to bring all of those things. And for all of the, frankly, free labor and research that the community did to get us to a much better position, because we wouldn't have been here without you. And I am glad everyone got a chance to give a big speech now that they cannibalized our amendments from last week. But whatever it takes to get people to a better deal, that's fine with me. I'd rather get that done now. I have a lot to say, but I think I will. I will say, as far as the amendments go, this is definitely better. So thank you to my colleagues who brought those forward. And thank you for being responsive to that. It is because of the tireless efforts of community members and of some members of this body, that this is being improved at all. And I will say, even with these changes, renowned economists who focus on this issue are still calling it the worst deal of all time. And we, as a council body can sit up here and talk about the eight year olds who live in our hearts, who love the blazers all we want, but those in reality can't eat because they don't have school lunches, because we have chosen as a state to fund a billionaire over their school lunches. And I say that as someone who was a snap policy advocate before I became a city councilor who worked on those issues, the one thing that is missing from these amendments is the Green Avalos one amendment. That one to me was actually the most critical of all because it would have strengthened council and joint authority oversight powers and removed a commitment of $275 million of city funds to post renovation capital projects. The freed up money could have then been used to fund the city's $120 million upfront renovation contribution. And so to put that in simpler terms, it's essentially saying that we didn't want to sign a blank check of $275 million for projects that haven't been justified or even identified yet, especially when we are already committing to $120 million upfront at a time when the city is gutting core services, nothing stops management from coming to the city joint authority at any time to ask for funding for clearly defined and justified projects, where we can then publicly debate the merits and tradeoffs of that funding. But the idea that we would write a blank check of $275 million for undefined expenses without even considering if or how the blazers would contribute is pretty outrageous to me. And if we weren't committing this $275 million now for these undefined projects with no defined blazers contribution, we would be able to bond against it for our 120 million upfront contribution. This means that we wouldn't have to cut into the Portland clean energy fund or the general fund, or break our parks levy promise, or cut police. So by doing the responsible thing and not writing a blank check for undefined projects, we would be rewarded later because we wouldn't have to cut core services. And it is not lost on me that the other amendment that didn't make it into this package was Morillo one. And what did that one do? It was one of the most basic amendments I could have brought forward. It was asking for the city's budget office to bring us a report 30 days before council is supposed to commit to financials on this. That's all I asked for. I asked for if we are going to take money from this, if we're going to do bonds, is that going to impact the sidewalk improvement plan? Cip that we all voted for to fund with bonds? By the way, we cannot endlessly create bonds. There is a limited amount of revenue to move in the city. We cannot endlessly target the general fund. We have already cut 160 million from it and laid off a bunch of services and employees. So what's going to happen? Because I think what was really the stickler with Morillo one was the 30 day deadline. I am telling you now, I'm going to call it right now. Council is not going to be told about what the options are until the day before. We have to vote on this, and we're going to be told, whoopsies, we don't have the money. You're going to have to take it from the Portland clean energy fund, because if we had time to examine this 30 days before, we would probably argue with you and try to find different options and not touch the things that the community has held sacred. So the two amendments that I think are really critical for council information and to actually concretely get us a good deal, did not make it in this. And that was Morillo one, and that was Green Avalos one. So I will definitely be supportive of these packages because it's an improvement. But make no mistake that this is not a good deal. This is still the worst deal in the country. We are still paying more than any other stadium is, and the public is getting fleeced, and for anyone to act like it is mature or it is a good governance thing to push this forward without doing our due diligence is not doing their due diligence, and I'll leave it at that.
207 Thank you, councilor Morillo, councilor Green.
208 Thank you, mr. President. First of all, I just want to say that the sort of combined set of packages is a significant improvement from where we started. So thank you for whoever heard us on that. But I want to note that I know that some of my colleagues, maybe some folks in the administration, maybe some in the public are frustrated that some of us put up those amendments, but it was because we put up those amendments that we saw this improvement full stop. And I appreciate councilor Pirtle-guiney for your explanation of why you were silent and didn't engage with the amendments last time. At least you've explained yourself. I don't agree with that, but I would like to understand why this was a sort of what was the thinking behind this being being like a district two delegation type of thing, because councilor Ryan didn't engage at all and instead sent out in his newsletter that like, quote, we blocked all the amendments and sort of bragging for that, suggesting that there was kind of a coordinated block there. So I'm just curious what the thinking was. Why are those councilors now supporting these amendments now? Does anyone want to answer that?
209 Councilor.
210 I'm happy to speak to my my own position. I can't speak to why others are there. And I think I was clear last week and have been in the interceding week that I take seriously, making sure we have the strongest position at the table and for better or worse, what we have are our negotiating team, our experts, to tell us what they think they can do with things at the table. I wanted to hear from them. The fact that we hadn't heard from them last week left me not able to support things. The fact that we have heard from them now saying that they think that they can bring this to the table and have the strongest position, led me to say, I'm happy to lend my support here. And in order to be honest in what I said last week, I wanted to make that abundantly clear, to not just sit back and at the end make my vote, but to say, I have heard from folks now, and therefore I want to step forward and suggest that this is the right path for us to take. This is the right decision to have the strongest position for our city.
211 And was there an idea that because the moda center is in district two, it should be the district two councilors?
212 That was mine. That was my request. It is a guiding philosophy for my work as council president that I choose not to intervene or lead on efforts that don't include the councilors for where something is physically located. And it felt really important to me to demonstrate to both the public and to my colleagues that this is centered in district two, and I wanted to demonstrate to the full public that this is a council moving forward in a collaborative way. So that was my my intent of inviting all of the district two councilors to join me.
213 So there's your invitation.
214 Absolutely.
215 Okay.
216 I appreciate that. Do either of you want to say.
217 Thanks, councilor Green? Yes. Similar to council pirtle-guiney, I wanted to make sure our negotiating team was set up with an opportunity to win.
218 Okay, thanks.
219 I've been consistent with that for months. Thanks.
220 Yeah, obviously, I supported all this stuff last week. I wanted to make sure it could pass this week.
221 All right. Thanks. I wanted to give you guys that courtesy. I think the challenge that I have with that methodology, although I hear your position, I really do, is that we can't do this negotiation and come to a consensus position behind closed doors because this is a this is a resolution, this is a council action. And under Oregon public meeting law, we cannot settle the question that way. And so the way that we do this with our community members and the public is to say, okay, the negotiating team needs to know our starting position so they can go behind closed doors. And in order for the public to know what their councilors are fighting for, we have to do it up here. And so I hear I hear you all on your strategic thinking, on making sure that we broker this with the negotiating team. But that, I think, sets up a pretty dangerous precedent for how we're going to do the next big public investment conversation. I don't want us to go down this road where we essentially pay short shrift to the deliberative process up here, say no block amendments, and then huddle behind closed doors and bring together a package that sort of says, this is the this is the will of the body that that can't happen again. That being said, I want to speak to the amendments on the floor. Like I said, I think that there a a significant improvement. I want to speak directly to the rent clause. I want to thank councilor Avalos for cooking this up and asking for it and putting it in there. And I want to note that your original language did leave the negotiating team quite a lot of discretion on how to set that up. And so I think in the spirit of, of making sure our team is successful, I think you hit the mark with that your first time. And so the number there are $2 million and 3%. Those are largely arbitrary. I understand, mr. Hirsch, you said you've kind of looked at the market and kind of did a gut check on what's out there, but that is this is not a liquid market. There's no price discovery in a market like this. These are all just 1 or 2 data points. And these are sort of kind of gut checks. And so at this point, colleagues, I think the and by the way, I want to correct the record. Donna, you said dca oliveira you said that it was $43 million or 45 maybe with interest or with the escalation rate, it's it's 53 million.
222 Thank you for correcting that.
223 Compound growth.
224 Yeah, that was back in the envelope. But yeah. Thank you.
225 Gotcha. That's okay. I did the math too. So that's that's better. That's actually much better for the public than 40 million plus 3 million. And if you took it, if you looked at well, let me just I'm not going to go into the weeds on the spreadsheet much longer, but I will I will note that that's, that's an improvement. But these are still largely arbitrary. And so at this point, I'd move to amend this amendment. I think it's pirtle-guiney two or no, it's.
226 Pirtle-guiney. Ryan.
227 Yeah. Dunphy pirtle-guiney. Ryan Kanal. Let's see here. Two, which is the actual term sheet. And on page three, I think is where the language on the no. Page four is the language on the rent, which reads rip city will pay rent in the amount of $2 million during each year of the term escalated by cpi w, which is clerical workers and urban workers index, or 3%, whichever is less. I'm going to move that language to read instead, and I'll send this to the clerk. I'll send this to all of you as well. I'm doing this on the fly. Rip city will pay rent in the amount of $2 million during each year of the term, escalated by the maximum allowable rate established annually by the Oregon department of administrative services. Pursuant to Oregon revised statute 93, two, four, and colleagues, that is the Oregon rent stabilization act. So there's already a methodology that establishes the maximum rate at which you can raise rents for Oregonians. And I think that we should key it to that because, one, we have something to hang our hat on. And two, I don't know why we would charge rip city management. We would give them a better rent control deal than we're giving portlanders, Portland tenants. 53% of my constituents are renters in district four. And if we can't do rent control at the city of Portland because the state has preempted us at a 7% plus cpi rent, which is. Which is deplorable, then why? Why would we give dundon a better deal than that? So I think that's quite reasonable. In fact, it creates an incentive structure for if we adopt this term sheet and we adopt some definitive agreements, then maybe rip city management, maybe tom dundon can lobby the state legislature to lower the rent cap and do a more aggressive rent control body, and that will lower his exposure and give a gift to tenants. So I will hope for a second on.
228 This second.
229 Thanks, great.
230 Councilor Green moves the Green amendment to Dunphy pirtle-guiney Kanal Ryan one two and councilor Avalos seconds colleagues discussion to the. The amendment to the amendment. Councilor Smith.
231 Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. Question for you, councilor Green will this, this this this ordinance or this item that you just described is that for commercial leases or residential leases?
232 Thanks for the question. This is only for the tenant in the moda center in this deal.
233 This is no, no, no, but you referenced something. You referenced something. Is that is that in accordance with commercial leases or residential leases?
234 It's in accordance with the residential methodology in ors93. What is it?
235 And so my question would be to for. Okay. So my question would be to the legal counsel. If this is based off of residential units and this is not a residential lease, this is a commercial lease, it would not apply.
236 It's just a formula rate. Councilor. They've they've they've added a arbitrary number here. I'm also adding a number as well.
237 Right. But you're using something that's based on a residential rate. Legal counsel please advise.
238 Sure. Counselor. I think counselor Green is correct. He's asking that the amendment reference the statute. We would not be able to apply the statute standing alone to a nonresidential tenant. What councilor Green is doing is simply referencing that statute. Obviously.
239 I understand that, but yeah, but understand that you can't reference something to me about a commercial lease and and make it apples to apples about a residential lease. So it is not appropriate.
240 I, I don't opine on whether something is appropriate or inappropriate, but.
241 It I need you, I need your I need your legal counsel. Is robert here? Because I need to understand if we're going to if we're going to add an amendment based on something that's in ors for a residential. And we are trying to craft a commercial lease, it does not match up. You're never going to get those kind of same residential and commercial attributes in a lease.
242 I would agree with you on that. That would be something obviously the trailblazers would say, and that would be a significant argument that they would make. That being said, I don't know what the commercial lease. Right rate says.
243 Exactly. And if we're going to talk about this, let's talk about some some statutes that that govern commercial leases, you're not going to just about anything to me and think that I'm going to go for it. Go ahead.
244 I would just say it is very common in stadium and arena leases around the country. That cpi is what is used to govern the increases. Okay? It is in most cases, that's what it's in. And that's why we chose it.
245 And you you chose that. But if that's the case, why did we have to put it in an amendment? Why didn't you put it there to begin with?
246 We didn't have rent in the in the beginning.
247 Right.
248 So this is tied to the rent specifically.
249 And are you okay with it?
250 I'm okay with it. Doesn't matter as a starting position, I understand it. And and we will work with it.
251 Right? For folks who may not have the ability to, to even pay for their rent in the city of Portland. Thank you. Robert, could you take a seat in and help me out here for a second? What I'm trying to what I'm trying to make sure is that if we're going to discuss this, that we should discuss it with things that that are clear for me. And if that's what you normally do in leases for commercial leases, and that's what you're saying, that they use that in commercial leases as well.
252 Yeah. These are all usually leases between teams or operating companies and municipalities. Cpi is usually what governs the rent.
253 And even though it says it's based on residential.
254 It's not based on residential.
255 Not based on residential. Well, that's what I.
256 Asked based on the overall, I mean, councilor Greens amendment, residential, but cpi. The law.
257 Yeah.
258 So robert, could you help me out to make sure that we're we're being consistent.
259 Aye, Morillo.
260 I'm sorry, city attorney taylor.
261 Is this one. Hi. Robert taylor, city attorney. So we would be entering into a contract with the tenant here at the moda center. They would be agreeing to pay us rent. And then the question is, how much is that rent going to be increased each year? And in that contract with the blazers, we can set the rate of increase in contract. And you can choose to set that rate of increase in peg it to cpi.
262 Right.
263 Or you can peg it to some other number that's created. Councilor Green is suggesting that we we do not. Yeah. That we do not use cpi, that instead we use this rate that's set at the state by statute.
264 For residential.
265 Normally that that statute applies to residential increases. Councilor Green has a explanation for why he believes that's appropriate to do as a matter of policy. There may be other reasons why we. It might be appropriate as a matter of policy, to keep it pegged at cpi. That's that's a choice you as counsel.
266 Yeah. And I think if we're going to do something, let's keep it to what a commercial lease would be. Not mixing apples and oranges together. If if cpi is what it is. But we're adding this extra piece through this amendment process. I just don't think that it's it's it's appropriate.
267 And I think that's that's a good debate and discussion for council to have. And you can choose either one.
268 Okay. So what do we have in there right now? Cpi we got cpi and so. Councilor Green what do you want to add.
269 So this law raises the rent per year by 7% plus cpi in the Oregon state statute and the lesser of the 2 or 10% whichever whichever is less.
270 Okay. Tell me.
271 The so what I'm trying to do here is say we should do the same thing. It's 10% or cpi, the methodology which which well, yeah, it's I'm just adopting their methodology for this fiscal year. It's 9.26%.
272 Right. And so you want to move it up to 10%.
273 I want to move it up to the maximum allowable rate that the department of administrative services sets every year based upon the cpi plus 7%.
274 And so the department of administrative services, when they're doing residential rates, this is what they this is what they would raise it to. And so you want us to put a residential kind of amendment on a commercial lease.
275 I want us to say we're going to cap our rent increase at the rent increase that the state sets for renters. And if tom dundon would like a lower rent increase, then he can lobby the legislature to lower that cap for everyone else. That's what I'm saying.
276 Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Thank you.
277 Thank you, councilor Smith.
278 Councilor Kanal thanks, colleagues. At the end of what I'm about to say, I'm going to move to request to close the queue. So just fair warning if you want to get in the queue. So I think it's important to note that if we're talking about commercial leases, the reference to cpi is itself not perfect because it's for urban wage earners and clerical workers. It's not itself an index based on average commercial rent increases or anything like that. It is common to use it. And I recognize that I agree with you, but it's also imperfect in terms of the sort of ideological logical connection. Sorry. If on the other hand, we wanted index it to the maximum allowable under Oregon state law for commercial rent increases, we could do that because that is infinity. So actually we are by doing it the way that councilor Green is proposing it, we're actually saying that we're we're protecting the, the, the tenant, the primary tenant here from the maximum allowable commercial rent increase per year. So if councilor Smith would like to propose that amendment two of the amendment to the amendment, I would probably support that because it would allow for increased rent over time. But I think that's not actually what we're going for here. Neither one of them is perfect as my. The point I'm trying to make one is more common than the other. And so I think it's fair to look at our state law for it. I also have some doubts about the bureau of labor statistics at the federal government and its calculations of inflation at this time. I think that's fair for anyone who's been watching out there. So I'll be supporting the amendment, and I'm grateful to councilor Green for putting it forward. And I will request that we limit debate to those currently in the queue on the amendment to the amendment and the amendment.
279 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. I am going to limit debate to the amendment to the amendment, though I will not limit debate on the underlying amendment yet, because there may be some conversation after this vote. So I'm limiting debate on the amendment to the amendment to those in queue. Councilor. Morillo.
280 Thank you. Thank you so much councilor Green for bringing this up. I think this is a fantastic amendment to the amendment, and I find it wholeheartedly ironic that just a few weeks ago, everyone was a tenant's rights advocate. When the tenant is a is not a regular person renting. Suddenly everyone was saying that we have to make outrageous improvements, luxury upgrades to a building because a tenant needs them as a renter, as one of what, 2 or 3 renters on the city council? If I wanted vaulted ceilings, I wouldn't get to tell my landlord that that was part of a regular maintenance upgrade. They would say, no. The only thing that you can do is safety, and most landlords don't always follow through with that either. So I, I think that this is a really big improvement and the cpi doesn't apply to commercial leases as was already outlined. I would also like to point out that there actually is an apartment in the moda center. So it actually, you know, maybe there's some legal legal area there to discuss about what counts as residential. But this is not about the law. This is about using a methodology and using, yeah, some sort of standard that we can actually measure this by. Because right now what was given to us is a little bit arbitrary. And I appreciate you bringing something that creates a standard by which we are measuring this. So I will wholeheartedly be supporting that. Thank you for bringing it forward. And, you know, we live in a country with citizens united as a court case, which means that corporations are people. So there's a very wishy washy line in this country about if a company is a person and, you know, so maybe residential rates are going to apply commercially and so be it.
281 Thank you, councilor Morillo councilor Novick.
282 Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Green, what do you we've heard that assuming that cpi winds up being 3%, that the proposal that the negotiating team brought to us would be, according to you, $53 million over 20 years? What do you think that under your proposal, the amount would be over 20 years?
283 I'm so glad you asked that question, because that's why I got back in the queue to provide that precise answer. And so the methodology under o, r, s, 90 dash, whatever that had on the screen a second ago, establishes a lesser of two values. And so it's 7% plus cpi or 10%. But if so, in a worst case scenario, most conservative assumptions assume that zero inflation it's 7%. And so letting 7% escalate. At annually for 20 years starts from $2 million a year and gets to 7.2 over the course of that series. And that's a total of $82 million a year for the entire duration of the lease.
284 So an increase of. An increase of 29 million from what's there.
285 Something like that.
286 But I mean, cpi isn't going to be zero. I mean, do you have a calculation that assumes like the average cpi over the last ten years or something?
287 Well, if so, 7% average cpi on average cpi is 3% over the last 40 years. State law caps it at 10% at most. So if we put 10% in there, that's a total of 114 $115 million in rent collected over 20 years. That grows, that compounds, you know, annually.
288 Okay.
289 And if you do that, it reduces our net cost of this deal to $245 million with the most conservative financing assumptions, instead of 436 with interest.
290 Mr. President, is this the time I have to make comments, not just ask questions? Yeah. So here's where I am. I mean, I have been pushing to get a deal where the city gets back, what it puts in expressing that really liberally and based on a, based on an assumption, which is just an assumption that we borrow the money. I've asked jonas, and also based on my assumption that we count the estimated $45 million in business license tax as sort of part of the deal. And so we'd be borrowing 75 million. I asked jonas what does that work out to under a reasonable reasonably predictable interest rate over 20 years. And it was 117 million. So I'm looking for a proposal. The numbers add up to 17 million. And right now, if it's 53.33, then it's about 31 million short. So I'll support any proposal that gets us to the range of, you know, the range of 31 additional million. I'm not sure, sure that I'm willing to support a proposal that goes significantly beyond that. So I'm going to I'm going to puzzle over that. But I just want to tell you, if you wanted to amend your amendment to the amendment to an amount that comes out to additional 31 million, then I definitely support it.
291 You're welcome.
292 So are you doing that math based upon the 120.
293 I bet, yeah, based on 120, -45 plus the interest rate that jonas thought we might get if we borrowed 75 million.
294 And you're not doing that math on the extra 275 in capital contributions.
295 That I'm not that I'm assuming you know that, you know, we're we're we're using the money we get. We we get. And it washes out.
296 Okay. Thanks.
297 Thank you. Councilor Novick vice president Clark.
298 Thank you. Council president is there. I don't know who can answer this. Is there a law, a state law that actually regulates commercial rents? I'm sorry. I walked out of the room. I may have missed that. There is no law. There's no law at all at the state level that okay. You know, it gave me a lot of comfort and confidence that our team had vetted all of the amendments from the other day. And I really appreciate the work that you've done to incorporate those that made sense. And I'm wondering, did I miss you commenting on this particular one when I left the room? Or have you? I just it gives me a lot of confidence that these things have been vetted by our team and they make sense. So I'm a little nervous about about this particular amendment. Does anybody want to have you already said something about this or opined at all?
299 Want to restate?
300 Did I miss it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry I missed it. Okay. My fault.
301 Carl had said that they they could work with this, but that is is that accurate? Carl.
302 About the the rent in general? Yes, I did say that.
303 And I think he also said that cpi was normal in the escalator for these type of deals.
304 These kinds of negotiations, I that's what I would imagine. It's just a standard across the industry.
305 You would see that in most leases, I would say 99% of the leases.
306 Maybe instead of doing that here, we should be working on state legislation to change the the percentage on rent control. Anyway. Thank you. Thank you for answering my question.
307 Thank you, vice president Clark, councilor Avalos.
308 Thank you. And thank you, councilor Green. Happy to co-sponsor this amendment with you. You all should have it in your inbox. Now, you know, we talk all the time about inflation and all that. A flat 2 million payment 20 years from now is not the same as 2 million today. So this simply preserves the value of the rent over time, using an existing Oregon standard that everyone is already familiar with. I think it's pretty straightforward. It's clear that we can do these things. I see that there's a tension between what people feel they can do as legislators, and what they need permission to do by the negotiators. I believe we have the right to put this forward. I believe that it's it's pretty open ended, frankly. So the negotiating team has plenty of leeway with how to interpret it. But putting a standard in there so that we can make sure we're getting a true return over 20 years, I think is the bare minimum. And I think you should support it. Thanks.
309 Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Colleagues, having limited debate to those in the queue on the amendment to the amendment keelan, can we please call the roll on? Are we calling is it Green Avalos one okay.
310 I move by Green. Seconded by Avalos Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. Nay Clark. No Green. I Zimmerman.
311 No.
312 I Smith. No Kanal. I pirtle-guiney.
313 No.
314 Ryan.
315 No.
316 Dunphy I.
317 The amendment to the amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six nays.
318 Colleagues to the underlying amendment. Is there any further discussion, councilor Smith?
319 Thank you.
320 I just want to be clear to the negotiators that I appreciate the work that you've done. I know that this is really tough. This is not a giveaway that you put forward to us. It's not a handout. It's very deliberate. It's a structured partnership with equal access between a land and a tenant anchor, an anchor tenant. And I want to give you kudos for doing what you're doing. This is this is a lot of high pressure stuff. And you brought back a 3 million annual direct payment back to the city, Multnomah county and Portland public schools, which I which I think should be commended. And it captured event user fees, parking revenues and a direct share of profits from the veterans memorial coliseum. That being secured, if we can get a binding commitment for for union labor protections, community benefit agreements, and an alignment with historic restoration of the albina neighborhood and the rebirth and revitalization, I think we can call it a good day in December, but I'm looking forward to what you're doing because, you know, I've heard a lot of conversation about this being a really bad deal. This when we looked at other deals and you compared this deal, this nba arena agreement across the country, from oklahoma city to milwaukee to sacramento, portland's negotiated terms stand out as an incredibly responsible and protective document of the public trust. So I think we're securing a guaranteed 20 year commitment. If we can get that with rip city while reinvesting in the city owned asset. And I want to repeat, this is a city owned asset that we must keep up not only for the blazers, but for concerts and for the fire. That is what we're doing. And as as a owner of a small plex, you have to keep it up. And I think that the real world trade offs that you had to make, you did a great job and nothing is going to be perfect. And we cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good. And when we demand an impossible standard of absolute, we do not get a better deal. We get gridlock. So I want to make sure that we're not risking our state funding timelines that are going to expire in December. And I want to signal to our our workforce, our labor partners, and our central city businesses that Portland cannot take yes. For an answer. We have to have yes for an answer. So the moda center is is a. It is, it is. It has lots of memories and family stories and all the things that we talked about when we even talked about the, the lloyd center. But I think this is an economic engine for downtown and for the city of Portland and for the state of Oregon. It is a hospitality hub of the state. It is the front door of the state. And we need to keep it. And I want you all to do everything that you think you can do at the negotiating table to make sure that we have a fair deal and that we keep the blazers right here in Portland, Oregon. Thank you.
321 Thank you. Councilor Smith. Councilor Kanal to the amendment.
322 Yeah. So we're debating both amendments. Just to clarify, right?
323 Yes.
324 I request to limit debate on both amendments.
325 Okay. I'm happy. I'm going to give folks 10s to get in the queue. And then I'm going to limit debate to the amendments to those in the queue. Councilor Novick.
326 Thank you, mr. President. I'm planning to vote yes on the amendment, but I wanted to ask you something. You. Mr. President, you surprised me by voting for councilor Greene's amendment. And as I've said, my goal is to get to an extra $31 million in order for me to vote for the underlying package. So I'm contemplating making a front room deal with you. If you're willing to contemplate that. I wasn't planning to offer any additional amendments myself today, but I would be happy to offer an amendment which would increase the amount of rent sufficiently to get us an extra $31 million. And but I'd be counting on you to support that. So I just wanted to ask you now if that's worth thinking about.
327 I at this point, I'm ready to move forward on a vote on the underlying.
328 Okay.
329 Thank you. Thank. Great.
330 Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll? We're going to we're not going to vote on them as a package. We're voting on amendment one, first amendment two. Second, can we please call the roll on Dunphy pirtle-guiney Ryan Kanal one.
331 Moved by Dunphy, seconded by Clark.
332 Koyama Lane aye, Morillo.
333 Morillo.
334 Aye, Morillo.
335 Novick. Aye, Morillo Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. A Dunphy I. The amendment is approved with a vote of 12 eyes.
336 Thank you very much, colleagues. And can we please call the roll on Dunphy pirtle-guiney. Kanal. Ryan two.
337 By Dunphy. Seconded by Clark Koyama Lane. I Morillo.
338 I.
339 I Clark Green.
340 Zimmerman I.
341 Sorry, I didn't hear that. Thank you. Avalos Smith. I Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan I. I Ryan sorry that is very loud out there. Thanks.
342 Dunphy I.
343 The amendment is approved with a vote of 12 eyes.
344 Can we please colleagues discussion of the technical wait let me see if there are any other further amendments that are being proposed. Councilor Kanal.
345 Thank you, council president. So, a note on the amendments we just passed. I want to be clear. I don't think the mayor's negotiating team needed to vet these. I think we should have done this the way the charter intends and that voters approved, where he exercised our independent judgment as 12 elected officials and make decisions. That didn't happen last week. But given that it mattered to colleagues who evidently didn't know that at least two of us who proposed amendments, councilor, Novick and I did, in fact, follow the process as outlined in one of the several emails we got with recommendations on how to do this. We got to where we are today, and I'm grateful that for the first time in this process, I personally felt listened to in part with the content of these amendments by the negotiating team and by three colleagues who had voted no on all of this last week. And I appreciate that. I also that's basically me saying I agree with everything, councilor Avalos said earlier. I also appreciate that my colleagues have been willing to do the hard work of thinking creatively, listening to constituents, looking at the evidence and coming up with policy proposals to improve the term sheet. Several of us brought the energy and ideas to the conversation that portlanders have been asking for. And specifically, I want to note that four other colleagues councilor Avalos, Morillo Green and Novick, along with myself, offered the amendments, some of which ultimately got repackaged into this rent is a huge deal. Councilor Avalos, among others. There's a lot of credit for this. It seems to be based off of Avalos six and a bit of five. Rewording in the resolution appears to be based off of Green and Avalos, as does the added text on the joint authority in the term sheet. The development rights are based on Avalos one. Avalos three appears to be incorporated into resolution. Avalos four seems to be nodded to in the term sheet amendment about other tenants. Avalos, nine and 11 seem to be referenced in the community benefits agreement updates the updates, with clarity on the authorities of the mayor and city administrator are part of Kanal one and Kanal four on a return on investment was added in full. There are other things, however, that aren't in those packages that I did want to note and potentially open conversation on. We've already noted councilor Greene's point about the impact statement. Councilor, Novick and I both both raised the issue of having flexibility over a slightly higher user fee. Councilor Novick discussed reconfiguring the parking split. Councilor Morillo added proposed clarity in 30 days notice, among other things, before we vote on budget and funding sources, including opportunity costs and opportunity costs may be the biggest part of this. That has as a stone that has yet to be turned over here, because it's not as though, despite what you may have heard by a signature gatherer in the last few months, it's not as though PCEF money is sitting around unspent. Right? It's all appropriated. So if we are going to use it, or frankly, general fund money, there's an opportunity cost, something that won't get funded. And we haven't looked at that yet. And there's a concern that if we don't look into it, if we don't guarantee in the term sheet that we're going to look into it, we might not. By the time December rolls around, councilor Green and Avalos proposed being clear that the council can remove people from the joint authority, which I think is really important. It was in one of the amendments down in the footnotes, but it was clearly in track changes. And councilor Avalos has, of course, raised private capital contributions, revenue sharing and participation naming rights. I want to focus on one missing piece, though, which is the part of Kanal, one that didn't get in to protect PCEF. I propose that we say we can only evaluate the use of a restricted fund source with enough information and time to evaluate it through the standard evaluation processes. I think that both councilor Murillo's amendment and mine were attempting to resolve a similar concern, which is the idea. I think it's December 9th, that that the plan is to have a final vote, ideally on this. Then on December 8th, we're told by probably somebody who works for the city that this is all acceptable. Don't worry about it. Just go with it. And I I'm very concerned about that, trying to get out ahead of it. We haven't managed to yet. If there's the votes to do it today, I definitely want to do that today. If not, I will, you know, certainly have that as a concern going forward. But I wanted to note that in brief, in passing, when I asked questions, the negotiating team told me that you think PCEF evaluation processes are already protected. And I wanted to ask if you could give a little bit more detail on that to me, my colleagues and to the public.
346 Thanks for the question, councilor. So in this particular case, I believe we are talking about any time that in the code, any time that council will take an action related to the piece of code, the piece of committee will deliberate on those topics. So in the event that we have details that could potentially utilize piece of dollars for the renovation, before that came to council, the committee would contemplate it. The original plan for this particular moment in time was that we had scheduled time in July for the subcommittee to receive details from the blazers and their architect team, by which they could have, in theory, assuming the data was was obvious and eligibility was clear, would have made a recommendation to council to proceed with contemplation of the $75 million or whatever the number would have been. Because we didn't get those details. That meeting never happened. So our working assumption remains the same. Like all other piece of actions before they come to council, the PCEF committee will evaluate and make a recommendation.
347 So that means that in the event that we don't get the information in time for that process before a final vote in December, that your proposal would, by necessity not include PCEF councilor.
348 Absolutely. But also, if we don't have the details for PCEF, that means we probably don't have the details for the whole package.
349 Okay, I agree on that. I appreciate the first half of that because I agree that probably on the second half, but the first half did not have properly. And I appreciate that. The other thing that I wanted to to try and get on the record here is there's nothing in this that outsources the decision on PCEF eligibility to the joint authority in this document. Right?
350 Correct.
351 It's 100% the the allocation of city resources follow the normal city process.
352 Which means city council determines that based on input for the subcommittee.
353 Correct.
354 Okay, I appreciate that. Obviously, colleagues, my concern has been that having the way the joint authority is currently contemplated, having the same people who are appointed by someone who wanted to use PCEF for sweeps a few months ago, be deciding whether or not it's eligible for this has been a concern to me. I. And I appreciate that several of my colleagues have worked on fixing that latter problem, and we'll do that here. I appreciate that I would still like it to be more specific than that, I doubt, but I will ask, as colleagues are discussing this, for them to prove me wrong if I am wrong. But I doubt that there there are the votes to reconsider that previous amendment. If so, I would love it if someone who voted no on it previously said so, so that we could do it the the rest of either Kanal one or aye, Morillo one. I actually think Morillo one is is longer and may take a little longer to read, but I think it's better. It's more comprehensive, frankly. And I got two thirds of what's in Kanal one already in, but either one for me would be sufficient to meet that particular concern. And so I am curious about that, and I just wanted to get that on the record. And I appreciate the answers to the questions, but also, I still would prefer it to be a little bit more explicit, because one of the things that's come up here is there's not a lot of public trust around this process. I think I'm saying that in the most under-statement way possible. And I think that one thing that we can do, I understand that from a legal perspective and from the jobs that you all have, it doesn't necessarily need to have certain things in the text, but for the people that are one row behind you and evidently outside in the plaza, it might be helpful to have those things to, to be clearer. So that's my interest there, but I'll leave it at that for now and let the discussion continue. Thanks.
355 Thank you, councilor Kanal colleagues, just to for clarity, it is my intention to get us through to the technical amendment, and then we'll take a restroom break. Councilor.
356 Novick mr. President, did you say that it's time for us to offer any other amendments?
357 Absolutely.
358 Okay. A couple of weeks ago, president hankins told us that no team would sign a lease that puts it in the red for 20 years. I asked the question, why would a landlord sign a lease that puts us in the red for 20 years? Based on, as I was saying earlier, I think that the amount that we'll be putting in, assuming we borrow the money and discounting the, you know, the business license fee money would be $117 million. We are right now, thanks to the proposals that have been brought forward at about $86 million. So based on my pure back of the envelope calculations, I think that in order to get to 117 million and get to an even deal, we'd have to increase the rent to $3.17 million a year. So I moved to increase the rent amount to $3.17 million.
359 Councilor Novick has moved. We'll call this Novick one two, I don't know. And are are you able to reduce that to writing?
360 Yes.
361 Thank you. Is there a second?
362 Second, because I want to debate it. I want to know more.
363 Okay. Councilor Green seconds colleagues to the Novick. I believe it's Novick two at this point. So colleagues to Novick two to those in the queue. Councilor. Morillo.
364 I was going to talk about something else, but I'm interested to learn more and see the language. I'm not really sure why you didn't support councilor Green's amendment, but sure, we can just do a different one.
365 Councilor Kanal okay. Councilor Green.
366 Yeah, I just need you to clarify what you're doing here, counselor. Is that flat nominal across 20 years? Is that the base and then escalated at 3%? Will you.
367 Sorry. It's it would know it would be changing the 2 million in the current proposal to 3.17 million with the same escalator.
368 Okay, that's my question. I'm doing my math while we sit here and talk.
369 Thank you, counselor Green. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
370 Thank you, council president counselor Novick. Your calculations are.
371 Based on us borrowing and paying interest as bonding for this essentially. Is that correct?
372 Yeah. My assumption. My assumption was that we're not going to approve using PCEF money. Or even if we did, we'd only approve it as a loan. So I told jonas, all right, if we're going to put up 120 million, let's assume we are going to get 45 million in business license tax money from the sale of the blazers. I realize that's money we would get anyway, but at least this blazer related. So that leaves us another 75 million. And I asked jonas, what is it reasonable interest rate we'd expect to get if we're borrowing 75 million? And I think he said something like 4.6% applied that to 117 million. So I'm trying to figure out how we get back 117,000,000/20 years.
373 Understood. If we were able to do this without borrowing, and I'm not looking specifically to see if I want to be really clear, there are other funding sources that have been floated through this whole process. We would be at even now, correct. Based on your calculations that you've done.
374 Yeah, but I don't care. Okay. I mean, I'm closing my mind. I'm assuming that we have to borrow the money. Okay. That's my assumption.
375 Thank you for that clarification.
376 Thank you. Counselor pirtle-guiney councilor Smith.
377 Thank you. That's a really thoughtful idea, but it is making us make a decision on the money piece when we haven't been presented with the money piece. And I don't want to just piecemeal something together when we may. As councilor Pirtle-guiney says, we may have some other options to be able to pay for this outright. So I don't want to mess anything up right now. But thank you for, for coming up with that very clever formula. I just don't think that it's I don't think that it is good for us to, to, to make a decision like this outside of the bigger conversation that we're going to have around, how do we pay for the whole thing?
378 Thank you, councilor Smith.
379 Thank you.
380 Counselor Green.
381 Yeah, I'm inclined to support it. I'll note that it is it is more revenue, more revenue in rent than the sort of most rosy scenario for tom dundon and less revenue in rent for the worst case scenario for tom dundon. It's a little closer to the the point, the 7% zero bound. So I'm fine with that. It's certainly better than not having the extra here significantly better. So. The total cost is 400 million. So it does leave a gap. But I appreciate what you're doing. You're you're getting us closer to a thing. And I would also urge my colleagues to support this because you if you're going to be a fiscally responsible person in our budget setting choices, like we had a lot of conversation last spring about what it means to be fiscally responsible. And if you're going to say, well, maybe we hope to get some other revenue later on. A hope and a prayer, I don't know. I don't know how that squares with with previous positions taken. So kudos to councilor Novick you have my endorsement. Let's vote yes on this.
382 Thank you, counselor Green. Councilmember, still for the okay, cool. Okay. Seeing no one else in the queue, can we please. Oh, you are in the queue again. I'm sorry. Councilor Smith. Councilor Smith.
383 I just have a quick question. So adding this amendment, which is adding to a non-binding term sheet already, it does not bind us to that. If we in the future to this amendment that councilor Novick is trying to to push through.
384 Councilor. We would that would be our starting position with negotiations. If if it if it was adopted.
385 But what I'm saying but it's not this is not a binding document, right.
386 No, but it's directive. It's we're taking it as a starting position.
387 Okay. I appreciate you taking it as a starting position, but what I'm what I'm trying to say is if we do this amendment saying where the money comes from and how much money we get back and how we how we pay for this. Now, does it bind us to doing this thing that he's trying to do?
388 I don't I don't think so, counselor. I think if I understand the counselors amendment, it's he's really tweaking the details around the rent and he's basing it on some assumptions about the broader funding, which I think, in all fairness, we have to sort out. But the.
389 But we haven't decided that yet. But what I'm trying to what I'm trying to find out is does it make us do what he says he's going to do? Since this is a non-binding document that we're sending?
390 No, no.
391 Okay. Thank you.
392 Thank you, counselor Smith colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call the roll on Novick two? I'm sorry. Yeah. Is that right? Are we calling it Novick?
393 I don't know.
394 We'll call it whatever. Yeah.
395 Moved by Novick. Seconded by Green Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick.
396 I Clark.
397 No.
398 Green I Zimmerman.
399 No Avalos. I Smith.
400 No. No I. Pirtle-guiney no.
401 Ryan.
402 No.
403 Dunphy I.
404 The amendment is approved with a vote of seven eyes and five nays.
405 Thank you colleagues. Councilor. Morillo.
406 Thank you. I, I appreciate everything that you laid out. Councilor Kanal. As far as accountability for these public dollars. So because of that, I'm going to re I would also like to hear people's rationale for Morillo one specifically. And everyone keeps asking me this. It's Morillo or Morillo. It's english and spanish. It's fine either way, but I want to bring this back
407 Because I think that we need some accountability and understanding for not just ourselves, but also for the public, for why we are making certain decisions, and also to figure out the opportunity costs. Because if we are being given information that's very last minute about the budget vote in December and say, we do end up having to use PCEF dollars for this because we have obligated ourselves to something and there are no other alternative funds, which is a very real possibility. There are currently invested in climate projects that are going to have to be. We're going to remove the funding for those projects. Every single piece of dollar is already allocated. So if we are not willing to get clarity around what we are going to be cutting. I don't really understand what the drawback is for us having more information as a council body to make a responsible vote. So I've emailed that to you and your staff to review the language. Again, it should be in your inboxes right now just for easy access. And I would just like to hear if folks have any, any rationale for why they would be against having more information as the body that has the power of the purse on this.
408 And councilor, are you moving this or just is it for the purposes of discussion?
409 I will move it. I'm going to move Morillo one second. Thank you.
410 Okay, colleagues.
411 Point of information. Council president.
412 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
413 Can a previously failed amendment be reintroduced, as is by somebody who voted for it? I thought previously failed amendments could only be reintroduced by somebody who voted in the mine, who voted in the prevailing. And therefore a tweaked language of this might be able to be introduced under a different number. But this cannot be reintroduced as is.
414 That was my understanding as well. Recognizing that we are going to be introducing some more amendments before we get to the technical one, I'm going to go ahead and give us a ten minute break right now, and we will plan on having another break after the technical amendment is back. But we will figure out that answer to that question and give everybody a break. We'll be back at 12:00, please.
415 Voted.
416 Not a reconsideration. Yes.
417 Which makes me think he doesn't care. You guys really jumps in.
418 It's still the same.
419 Now I know, I know because I. I just read eye contact. Now he won't jump in and help me. Oh, it needed to be reconsidered.
420 And we are back. Thank you all very much, folks. Councilor. Morillo.
421 Settle down everybody. Okay. Thank you, council president. I wanted to clarify. So I think some of our colleagues are still coming back, but I will be dropping the original introduction of the original Morillo one. And instead you should have in your inboxes right now something from susie from my office. Morillo Kanal amendment to this ordinance. And it changes it to instead of 30 days having a report 30 days before council has to make a vote on it, 15 days, because we heard from the administration that having the standardized two weeks deadline would be a better option and would be more feasible. And if I could get a second for that, I would.
422 Like councilor Morillo moves. What are we calling this? Morillo three two.
423 It's Morillo Kanal I think one.
424 Morillo Kanal one and councilor Avalos seconds colleagues. Discussion of the amendment. Councilor Kanal is not here for a second. Councilor Smith.
425 Thank you. Is this to give a mandatory 30 day that they have to give us something 30 days before they give it to the blazers?
426 15 days for us for our consideration.
427 I'm happy to re-explain it. So what this is asking is for the the chief financial officer and the city administrator to give us a report 15 days before council has to make a decision, because they said 15 days was more feasible than 30 days. On the financial aspects of anything we will be voting on. And that is going to be an opportunity cost analysis. So, for example, if they say, okay, we're going to be able to fund the arena changes with a bond, we would be able to see what the cost could be to cip moving forward, since that's also funded with bonds, or if we're going to take money from the Portland clean energy fund, we're going to see which programs and things are going to be defunded in order to fund this instead. So just having more clarity for ourselves and for the public, what the opportunity costs are of every decision, it doesn't limit our decision. It is simply more information for us to make a vote before we have to take it.
428 One of the the concerns or challenges to this in the way that it's written is when I've seen folks, they go up to the to the last minute, and they're not able to tell you what they're going to do. So I think that this could be problematic. And it's putting too stringent of guardrails to give you information that they may not have. So what happens if if they don't have the information in 15 days, what happens to them? What's the what's the consequence?
429 I think that we're just asking them to provide whatever information they have. There isn't a built in consequence for our employees or something like that. But I think to say that we don't have any information to make this decision is also false. We know which programs in the Portland clean energy fund, for example, are funded right now. So I'm just saying, say that the moda center is able to justify the renovations under PCEF. We still need to know which programs are going to be defunded in order to fund this new thing. So there will be trade offs, but the council and the public deserves to be very clear about what those trade offs are going to be. So and we have been calling for public process. I mean, I think part of the frustration that the public that we're witnessing from the public is that there is a lack of information for us and for them.
430 So you're assuming that there's going to be a defunding of something. I think we have some debt that's going to be flying off. I think we're going to have an increased blt. I think we're going to have we're going to have the PCEF interest. So there there are a lot of avenues. We don't necessarily have to cut anything to pay for this.
431 Debt would be paid back by revenue that could be spent on other things. And I would say, you know, councilor Smith, if there isn't going to be a cost, then they can just explain that in the report.
432 Okay.
433 Thank you. Councilor Smith councilor Novick.
434 Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Morillo. I'm with you on the pcf part. The problem I have with the general fund part is we know what the general fund is, and we can't ask the administration to predict how we, the council might change the general fund based on anything that happens here. I mean, we know that the general fund goes to police, fire and parks, but largely. And it's our decision as to what goes where. So I don't really think that that the general fund part really adds anything that we don't know. The piece f thing, I totally agree. If the administration is going to propose using PCEF funds, they should say where it comes from.
435 May I respond? So thanks. I appreciate that question. It it can contextualize the potential cuts within that five year framework. So I think that that's really important because we have a five year forecast for what things are going to look like. So each of the sources that we list in this, which is PCEF, the general fund, debt capacity, business license, tax forecasts and models for capacity. Those are all things that we have for the general fund. We have that five year forecast. Sorry, I'm getting a lot of messages right now at the same time. But whether this analysis is done before or after we are getting there is going to be a trade off. And we need to to me, this is the bare minimum information that we need to decide what that trade off is going to be. Because while we don't know exactly how councilors are going to vote on the budget overall, we do know that there are some things that are absolutely essential that can't be cut without, I don't know, destroying the fire bureau or the police bureau or something. So that's part of what's important here.
436 Thank you councilor. Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Pirtle-guiney.
437 Thank you, council president. So, councilor Morillo, you're adding to this document, which is otherwise about our relationship with rip city management and the negotiations language about our relationship within the city. Is that correct? This isn't about when we get the information. I'll say it differently. This isn't about when we get the information from rip city management in the blazers. This is about the relationship that the council has with the administration.
438 No, this is about the financial options that we have to make a vote with rip city management, because we need to decide what our funding options are going to be, and we need all of the information before us. Obviously, the body delivering that will be our cfo, but there's a portion that says, be it further resolved that the city, the Portland city council directs the city administration to work with rip city management, the trail blazers and the state of Oregon and the arena joint authority to develop a formative, definitive, definitive document and amendments to the existing agreements as necessitated by the terms contained in exhibit a. So we are directing them to do this in conjunction with them.
439 Tell me where that is, because what I'm looking at is something that says, be it further resolved that at least 15 days before council votes. On various instruments, the city administrator and chief financial officer shall prepare a report for council. I guess my my concern here, colleagues, is that we're putting together a term sheet for how we work with the blazers. I was I absolutely agree that we need to have a clear public process. That's what I think we did in our work sessions and what we do when we're up here. I absolutely agree, and I'll look to the city administrator, as I say this, that we need information about funding options in time to make decisions. And we need more than just this is the only option. We need to be able to understand what the trade offs for various options are. That conversation needs to be had to be had, not just in an executive session, but up here as well. But I am. I've had a few principles going into this work, and one of them is that I don't want things in the term sheet that aren't about our negotiation directly with the blazers. And in fact, there have been things that I've said on this dais in our work sessions I thought were an appropriate for the term sheet, because they were about how we did our own internal work. And I worry that this moves us back in the direction of airing our own distrust with each other. I want these things I want to say on the record right now. I want these things. The public must have these things, but I don't think we should be putting it in this document. I think we should be saying, mr. City administrator to you, mr. Mayor, to you, dca oliveira to you. This is how council needs us to do business. And if we're going to meet that December deadline, mr. Council president, please make sure we're scheduling things early enough that we can get this information, and we're not right up to the deadline. Thank you.
440 May I direct respond?
441 Absolutely.
442 So for clarity, councilor, I was reading the resolution. That's where it is. So in the resolution it says, be it further resolved that the city, the Portland city council will consider formal, definitive documents and amendments to existing agreements as contemplated by the terms contained in exhibit a no later than December 31st. We are not modifying the term sheet here. We are modifying the resolution, and we are already dictating the process for council in the resolution. So I read you the passage from our resolution that does that. And there is another. Be it further resolved that the Portland city council will consider all all of those things. Right. So. Again, this is, in my opinion, the bare minimum that is required for transparency from us, for us as a council to make this decision and for the public, we are adding to the process the consideration of these definitive documents. And there there is limited funding to go around, whether it's going to be bonds general fund, maybe we'll magically come up with some new city fee or tax, god willing, not another fee or tax on regular people who can't afford it. But the money has to come from somewhere, and our amendment adds to the process for how and when we are going to consider those documents. Because I'll remind you that without a clear outline for these things, we have sat in negotiating rooms for three hours and then had a term sheet released against our will. Immediately after that, we were not informed about. So if we don't explicitly lay out our demands for a process that may or may not happen, and there has to be some sort of requirement that the administration get us documents in a timely manner, because I am very certain that if we don't have this in here, they're going to push it up to the line. And then the the way that this is always done is through a false sense of urgency. We will not have the time to consider anything else because it will be pushed up against that line.
443 Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.
444 Thank you. Yeah, I think councilor Morillo speaks everything that she said. I would probably have just said, but I won't repeat it in the interest of time, I think that. It's not a secret that there is distrust between the parts of this government at times, sometimes all the time. I think that's not going to become a known or unknown thing based off of whether or not this is included in the resolution or not. Resolution does also have several other things about the process that will follow. I think if this was being put into the term sheet, that would be different. But given that it comes in, by the way, 15 days with a Tuesday filing deadline and a Wednesday council meeting for an ordinance is the filing deadline. So we're not asking for any additional time, any additional time for this information beyond what would normally be done. We're just protecting against exactly what councilor Morillo just brought up, which is the last second piece. And it's also, I think, making it clear to the public that our expectation is to have enough information in time to make serious decisions about serious matters, like whether or not to use restricted funding sources on this. But I think we I think this is just a relatively low level conversation that way. That's that's bringing in a bigger, higher level, 30,000 foot view of whether or not we should be legislating for things or simply asking for things verbally, sometimes in public, sometimes not. I subscribe to the belief that the city council is a legislative body, not an advisory board to the mayor. And I think the question is a vote for for a concept of where we just ask for things verbally, to me sends the message that we are just an advisory board. I love advisory boards. I worked with them for years before I ran for council. They're great. That's not what this is. It's not what the voters chose to create. Thanks.
445 Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Green.
446 Thank you, mr. President. Thank you, councilor Morillo, for bringing this back again. I want to just reiterate what I see when I read the resolution that came into my inbox is that it is a directive in the the resolution for how we expect the city administrator to move as part of this process. There's a lot of there's a lot of directives in there. And this is not an amendment to the term sheet. This is an expectation to say, okay, if we adopt a term sheet, go forth and do great things, negotiate on our behalf based upon the parameters of the term sheet. But here are also our expectations along the way. And there's actually that document is is constituted by those directives. So this is just another one of them. I, I guess I'm a little confused why anyone would not want this in there, because I think even if all of us voted together every single time on every vote, and none of us ever had any kind of a spat, and we all were kind of unanimous consensus making people. We have an obligation to legislate and to put sort of basic sort of oversight controls in the actions that we pass before a body. And so it's not really about trust at all, actually. It's about making actually. Well, it is about it's about public trust. It's about public trust. And so if we are going to be presented with definitive documents which are binding in December, that will be a 20 year commitment of cost and benefit relationships, which are still unknown. Then we are setting our city on a path for 20 years that validates the choice that we make in December. And if we don't have the basic level of due diligence and the ability to understand what our trade offs are, because there's no such thing as a free lunch, there is no free money here at all. Like when we say things like, oh, it's going to roll off, we can get that's still an opportunity cost. Like we, we, we've talked ad nauseam about our credit rating in this body. You can't just willy nilly issue new debt just because some credit rolls off without it having some consequence on your credit rating. And you can't just sort of. We received a memo from the cfo on the nature and timing of the blt revenue that we might receive from the sale of the trailblazers. And guess what? It's highly uncertain the level of how much we should expect to get. And when the timing is it's uncertain. And then there's the matter of the PCEF. So at this point, we have to assume that there is no money. And so the only money for this is going to be issued by debt, or kind of come at the expense of some other future goals and policies that we have. We have five year plans for capital formation in the city of Portland, and we're trying to adopt a financial sustainability work group that sets us up on a forward looking path to some level of stability that's rooted in our our strategic priorities that we've tried to discuss as a body. And so if we don't get a document 15 days before definitive, if we don't get that report 15 days before the definitive documents that say, here's what we know right now, if we made this assumption, here's what the impact would be over the next few years on the general fund, then I don't know how voters would have any faith in our ability to legislate, frankly. And so maybe we'll do that based on trust. But, I mean, this is a this is the most this is the richest public stadium deal in the history of stadium deals for a market our size. Okay. So just need to note that I don't I don't know why we can't get 12 votes on this. It's there's there's really no there's no downside to this. Thanks.
447 Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Koyama Lane.
448 Thank you to this amendment. I actually really appreciate the conversation that we're having here around this. Honestly, I hear councilor Pirtle-guiney concerns. We've had a lot of conversations around governance, how we'd love to see an ideal relationship between the different branches of government. I hear what she is saying that ideally, we wouldn't have to put this in writing. And I will say when we are when we get to talking about the underlying, I do plan to ask on the dais the same thing that I asked for last time, which is to see what we're going to be asked to be voting on at least 30 days in advance that we see it, and that the public sees it. Last time last week, I heard council president say, that is very reasonable. But the truth is also I can ask, and it is also important to get something in writing. And I would say while it is ideal that we can ask and tell our constituents, we've asked for this and we really think it's going to happen. It is also true what councilor Green said there is low public trust around this topic for a lot of different reasons that have to do also with outside of the city and other deals that have happened, and access to information has not been something that public, the public has felt like they've had when this passed at the state. And so I see this as a chance to to get some of that public trust. I think there's an opportunity to get some of it. We should take that option. This is going to be a big public investment. I think sometimes around negotiations, it can feel like let's folks can feel nervous to give some more access to information, but honestly, it can help explain things, help us explain things, and can help even bring some community members along. So there's not just a void that people will fill if they don't know the information. So I do plan to vote yes on this. I think it's a chance to build in some of that public trust. I'm not sure exactly what we lose by putting it in there. The goal, ideally, is that we can just talk about these things and folks will believe it's going to happen. But I think it's important for this term sheet and for portlanders to see us showing that we're willing to, to get some of that public trust back. Thank you.
449 Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane councilor Smith.
450 Thank you.
451 Thanks, colleagues. I put myself in the queue here. I would just like to with regard to process, I would just like to say that broadly, as council president, it is my intention to never blindside anybody. And I have been working with the administration on tightening our filing deadlines and the clerk's office. Regardless, my intention is to move us as a city towards a two week advanced filing notification for council. I've heard over and over again in a thousand different conversations, that this council wants more information earlier so that they can be responsive, and that is the direction I am intending to go. Then to that end, that aligns with largely what I'm reading in this document. It means that in order to make it by the end of our calendar year, our final calendar, our final council meeting, which is currently scheduled for December 17th, this item would need to be filed by December 1st. I will also note for my colleagues and for the public, we have an intention of hosting a public work session scheduled currently for October 14th on this issue. Additionally, the city council will be having some further executive sessions on this throughout the next four months, and so we will have more opportunities to improve information. And lastly, I will say that the city has recently revamped our moda center website, and we will be sharing out information on there periodically through the process. So it is my hope that we will continue to keep the both the community and the council brought along as these negotiations are happening, obviously, things change dramatically in real time, but it is my intention of moving us towards a two week filing deadline anyway. And so I this aligns thematically with that for me. So. Councilor. Morillo. Last word.
452 Thank you, council president. Colleagues, what we have before us is a generational decision that is going to impact not just the moda center, but what we can do with the keller, with PSU, with land decisions around who owns the surrounding land of the moda center and who gets those development rights. And it is sort of absurd to me that we can't even begin to ask our team at the city to grapple with the potential for opportunity costs. This is very standard budgeting. We can't quantify risk and uncertainty without information. And to make a decision without that, without two weeks in advance, which is not very long at all, means that we are abdicating our responsibility to interrogate the financial aspects of this deal. It also does not require an ordinance for us to get a report. It could be a work session, so there's no need to make it unnecessarily delayed or to have an additional timeline to file something. This is information that we can receive in a report in a different manner in a work session. So, colleagues, for the sake of having transparency so that we can trust the negotiation and so that the public can trust what we are doing if we actually want to get to 12 yeses in December, we need the public to see what this is so that they can have actual input and agree with us and bring them along in that process. If we don't, then we will lose the public trust. You will lose council's trust, and we are going to make a generational decision for this city without the proper information. And I'm sort of exhausted being a legislator up here and constantly being told you'll get the information later before you make the decision. But put this in writing now, and then maybe later you'll get it. And then by the time we get there, they say time's run out. You got to make this decision today or the entire city will collapse. That is the repeated pattern of this body. So this is the most basic, basic governance question that we're answering today with this amendment. And I really hope that you will vote yes. But I've seen how the votes have gone today, so I'm not holding my breath. Thanks.
453 Okay, council.
454 Thank you. Councilor Morillo seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan, can we please call the roll?
455 On this motion to amend the resolution as shown in Morillo Kanal one moved by Morillo. Seconded by Koyama Lane. Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo. I Novick no.
456 Clark no. Green I.
457 Zimmerman. No. Avalos.
458 Y'all. It's obviously I come on.
459 Smith no.
460 Pirtle-guiney. Oh sorry.
461 Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney no.
462 Ryan. No.
463 Dunphy I.
464 The amendment fails with a vote of six a's and six nays.
465 Okay, colleagues, I would like to move the technical amendments. This is bringing conforming language to our from our colleagues at the county. And I would request a second.
466 Second.
467 Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues to the amendment, councilor Zimmerman. Okay. Is there any further discussion? Keelan can we please call the roll on the technical amendment.
468 Moved by Dunphy, seconded by Smith.
469 Koyama Lane I.
470 Morillo I'm sorry, which amendment are we looking at?
471 This is the.
472 Technical conforming amendment. I don't know what it's called.
473 It just says proposed technical amendment.
474 It's listed as technical. I thank you,
Procedural episode · turns 475–483
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475 Novick. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Dunphy. I amendment is approved with a vote of 12 eyes.
476 Colleagues, we're going to take a 15 minute recess and come back to have discussion of the underlying resolution and term sheet, please, everybody back here at 1245. I'm calling us back to order. We are now debating the underlying amended resolution and term sheet. Colleagues, feel free to get into the queue and. Let's have some discussion, some final discussion here. Okay. Councilor.
477 Novick thank you, mr. President. One thing I want to say is that I respect the arguments on all sides, the positions people have taken. I think that a number of the issues we've talked about, you can quite easily make a case for one position or another. As far as the economic impact of the blazers leaving. You can look at all the economic studies that show that politicians routinely overestimate the economic value of sports franchises. And you can look at the fact that seattle and Vancouver didn't collapse when the supersonics or the grizzlies left. You could also reasonably argue that in a city whose economy is largely is unusually dependent on reputation, the reputational hit of losing our one big sport, one major league sports team would be very dangerous. I don't know the extent to which portland's reputation depends on the Portland trail blazers, but I think, you know, I think that that's a reasonable argument. There also appeared to be reasonable, conflicting positions on whether the blazers might actually leave. I've seen very cogent arguments that there's 12 places they could go tomorrow, and others that there's problems with all 12 places, and there's really nowhere for them to go. So I don't really know the answer to that. What we do know is that if they did leave, there are actual human beings who will be working there, who will lose work. Like the iatse 28 members. We also do know that the state has committed to putting up over $300 million to help renovate an arena that we own. And that opportunity might not come again. So I am willing to stretch to get to an agreement, but I'm only willing to stretch so far. And where I landed was I want us to be able to do a. State legislators, I think, are in a good position. They can say, we're only putting in the amount of money that we expect to get back from taxes on player salaries. So I wanted to put us in a comparable position. And with the amendments passed in the term sheet today, I think this does that. I mean, I'm making some generous assumptions. I'm assuming that we get $45 million in blt revenue from the sale of the blazers, and that it's reasonable to plow that back in. Does that mean that's that's the biggest, biggest assumption? But with that and with the payment in lieu and with the rent, we get to a point where we should be able to pay ourselves back for $175 million plus borrowing costs, equaling $117 million over 20 years. I should also say that I to me this is a strong opening offer, but I have already signaled that I'd be willing to accept something that's arguably less. I mean, last week I proposed an amendment counting charitable contributions the blazers make as part of a return to the city, which obviously is different from a return of tax revenues or rent or what have you. So having said that, if there's a proposal that comes back in December that uses that to some extent, I'm going to have to look at it. I've also said repeatedly publicly that I'd be willing to consider business license tax payments that the blazers make on an annual basis as part of what we get back. We don't know what, if anything, what if any amount that is. But I'd be willing in December to consider a proposal where that's factored into account. So I'm pleased where we are today. I'm going to vote yes. There's a couple of other things that I want to say. One is that based on what mr. Hankins was saying a couple of weeks ago, you might get the impression that Portland is the weakest market mba market in the country. That's not true. In 2020 425, the last year for which they've seen complete data, the blazers were not in the top half of teams in revenue, but they made $361 million. That was more than the thunder, the bucks, the kings, the pacers, the jazz, the hornets, the timberwolves, the magic, the grizzlies or the pelicans. I think that's something to keep in mind. And finally, to the extent that nba officials or owners of the national sports media are listening, I have two words for them. Clint capela the amount that I'm asking for the city to get back over 20 years is about $6 million a year. That is less than the salary of clint capela of the houston rockets. Now clint capela is no disrespect. He's a good rebounder. But he's 32 years old and he doesn't score. And I would ask you what would you rather have an established fan base and an arena newly renovated to a first class standard or clint capela. Thank you.
478 Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor. Morillo.
479 Thank you council president. I am grateful for the changes that were made to this arena deal. To the term sheet as we are seeing it so far. And I want to really thank the public for pushing us on this, for coming to town halls, for giving us feedback, for asking tough questions, and for pushing your elected officials, some of which were actually responsive to that and asked more questions. Because of you, we would have a much worse term sheet to start our negotiations if it wasn't for your repeated, relentless input and feedback. And. They want us to believe that this arena deal is going to be different, and that this is going to be the first one ever that pays for itself and benefits a city. But we have 50 years of conclusive evidence from economists who are not known for being crazy leftists. Okay. Showing that that never happens. But they keep telling us, don't worry about that. This one's going to be different. It's like a like a crappy boyfriend that tells you he's going to change but never changes. That is what these deals are like for every city that takes them. This one is not going to be different. And in other words, they think that we as legislators are stupid. And perhaps we are, because for some reason, we are relinquishing our ability to get information that we desperately need to make decisions. I'm afraid that today we are proving them right about that. I want everyone here to remember their vote when budget season rolls around. And remember that the reason that we are going to make cuts to parks, cuts to public safety, cuts to homeless services, is because we gave away $400 million to a billionaire when we didn't have to. When we held our webinar, councilor Greene and I, with economists who are renowned for focusing on stadium deals specifically, by the way, who are not socialists, who are not even progressives. They told us that when these deals are voted on by the public, it's 5050. When city councils make these decisions under pressure on a manufactured timeline, they always get it done. That's how the billionaires get their way, by removing public access and input. If this actually went to the ballot, I think this would fail because we have people who are shouting in here earlier and who may not have been the best with their decorum, but who were saying very real things. They can't pay for rent. They can't pay for food. A few of us up here are starting to knock doors for reelection, and I can tell you, everything that I'm hearing on the doors is people can't afford their utilities. They can't. They are choosing between food and rent. The state legislature has money to allocate to this, but never to transit. That's being cut or to snap, or to school lunches or to anything else that people need to survive. And we laid off a ton of employees and we cut a bunch of core services, and we are setting ourselves up to do that again. And we're not even giving ourselves the dignity of asking and receiving basic information before we do that to ourselves, to our constituents, to our employees. So I cannot in good conscience move this forward today. I appreciate that it is much better than it was before. And I also want to point out that we were largely chastised for taking the lead of the public and asking tough questions, and that is the only reason that this term sheet is better. So again, thank you to the community for showing up. Your efforts are not wasted. Every single effort and push that you did got us to a better term sheet. And I'm going to be continuing to push through December to make sure that we get as much information as possible, because people deserve to have a democracy that actually serves them, and not just a billionaire that comes to threaten our city whenever he wants. Thank you.
480 Thank you. Councilor. Morillo. Councilor Green.
481 Thank you, council president. Thank you. Council. Councilor. Morillo. I think you took the words out of my mouth. I want to speak to the heart for a moment. Speak from the heart for a moment. So there's a bus stop near my house. I live on the 39, which is the arnold creek bus stop. That's the bus stop that students at ida b wells take to get to school. There's a notice on that bus stop that says starting on August, August 23rd, you can expect this service to be reduced or cut. Same cuts come into the number one on vermont. Another line that students take to get to ida b wells. If the state legislature does not somehow come up with a miraculous funding package for TriMet in the next legislative session, we're going to lock those cuts into place for years to come, and we will have decimated our transit system. And so for me, this vote is about the broader stakes that we're in. We're in a situation where our state legislature asked zero questions, none over the course of five weeks, basically said, what do you need $600 million? We got you. We're good for 365 didn't tell us about a study that they commissioned from echo northwest that made the case. If they would, I mean, they would have shared that it would have been undermine my position. So that tells you something. But they never even asked the question. I talked to mike wilkerson in echo northwest yesterday and said, hey, why didn't you share that study from last spring with us? And he said, nobody asked for it. Nobody ever asked for it. And he's under an nda, so he can't just volunteer it up. So that means no one at the state legislature, no one in the mayor's office, no one in anyone else's office that had any involvement in that ever asked for that and ever asked to bring it to city council. And so the perception here, every step of the way has been like, don't worry, there is no problem here. This will all pay for itself. It's self-contained, but it's not. There's no such thing as a free lunch in public economics. The blazers. All of this is predicated on the idea that they're just going to leave and walk. Where are they going to go? Name a city and explain how that city can do better than us. No one's done that. And when I've asked those questions, I have been told it's just it's in the rumor mill, man. You got to trust me. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sent here to just trust you in a rumor mill. I'm sent here to protect taxpayer funds and fight for our communities, especially when we are watching the rest of our public investments in education, health care, public transit crumble around us. And so sorry if I'm a little hot about that, because some of you have critically, uncritically accepted claims of economic development that just aren't there. They're not there's no study on the table that has been substantiated in any sense of the word. The benefits could be zero, 600 million, 2 billion, 15 billion. It doesn't matter. Those are all reasonable guesses because there's no credible study so far. And so where I'm at with this is last week, I tried to bring an amendment that would have cut our exposure down from $400 or $400 million, which after interest would be anywhere between 460 and $476 million, depending upon the interest rate you assume and bring that down to 184 to 200 million after interest. That's what I tried to do in my amendment last week by basically asking the question, if, if we're putting up a total of $600 million to renovate a stadium, then what business are we? Why do we need to plow $175 million into new capital formation for the next 20 years? Right away? Didn't we do that when we renovated the stadium? The fact that no one has been able to address that question head on honestly, is scandalous. And it means that you're trying to hide the ball on what this really costs to the portlanders. But they're not. They know right where the ball is. They see where they see where the ball is going in every single play. That's why they were upset here today and had to be escorted out of this office or this chambers. That's why they were outside, and that's why they're going to be at your town halls over the next six months. And so because of that, and because this body refused to do any measure of cost control in this first term sheet, because, colleagues, it does not get better. The deal doesn't get better. After we start negotiating. It gets worse. Has anyone ever been a part of a negotiation here? Do you get your starting position? You do not. How am I supposed to accept uncritically this idea that here's my starting position. Thanks for giving me an extra 10%. That doesn't happen. It's ludicrous. So we didn't do that. We didn't. We? We decided to ignore the total cost of this project, pretend it's only 120 million, and pretend we have a source of funding for that. We would have passed my amendment. We would have found a source of funding for that, and I would have been a yes today, but we didn't. And someone know today I'm going to be no on this this term sheet.
482 Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
483 Thank you, council president, I want to start by speaking to portlanders. I spent a lot of my career sitting on the other side of rooms like this. I spent a lot of my career questioning whether deals just like this one were good enough for the community, whether they were good enough for working people. I spent a lot of time wondering what on earth elected leaders had seen, or what calculations they were making that led them to make what I often saw as irrational decisions. So I want to actually lay out why I think this investment could be the most reasonable option. We have the most rational option we have, possibly even the best one for our city. Because, as one testifier said last week, we need to ink the best deal for the city and we need to show our work. And if we're not willing to show you our work, then we shouldn't be willing to vote on this today. So here's what I'm looking at. Portland owns this building. So whether or not the blazers are in Portland, whether or not we get a deal, we have to decide what the future of moda is. And I want to name the options that I see before us there. One, the most obvious. We move forward with finding a deal the blazers will sign on to. We agree to terms that probably aren't as great as anybody in this room or in the city want. It costs us $120 million. Now we use the revenue that comes in from the arena to cover the rest of our investment. As has been laid out in the term sheet before us. We might get some funds back. We probably shouldn't depend on it. We hopefully receive some of the rent, and in lieu of tax funds that we have put into the term sheet today, that's yet to be negotiated. We've got the other funding on the table from our our partners here to pay for this renovation. Alternately, maybe we don't reach a deal with the blazers, but we still decide that we want to remodel the arena. We know that there are fewer and fewer concerts that are going to be able to come our way over the next 5 or 10 years. We know that there are some major upgrades that are needed for folks who are working in that building. Some accessibility upgrades. We focus on the needs for the fire and other sports users, for concerts, for recruiting events. We do this without state and county funding because the opportunity for those dollars has expired. It's all on the city. It's probably a remodel that has a slightly lower price tag, but a slightly higher cost for the city, maybe a significantly higher cost for the city. The trade offs are different. Another alternative is we don't remodel. We find a niche for now to put on other events for which the money is good enough, not as many of them. And eventually that fades to the last option, which is we don't remodel any events decreased to nothing. Eventually we close the arena. There's a cost to that too, though. There's a cost to not activating this largest space in our city. There is a cost if we decide to tear it down. There is a cost to trying to retain events at memorial coliseum without moda, and there is a cost when I am completely unwilling to pay to the albina neighborhood for turning our backs, for refusing to reinvest in this part of town just as the black community is buying back property and rebuilding community next door to it. We literally took property from families a decade ago to build this space. The theft of property value from their descendants would be a new data point in that unjust history. So I want to be clear. I would love to be in a situation where we have an owner for our city's largest sports team who is actually invested in the city of Portland, but we don't. So we have these choices before us. Try to get a deal with the blazers, remodel the arena without a deal with the blazers, don't remodel, and eventually close the arena. There is a cost to each of those which we must compare. Tom dundon does not care about our city. He does not care about our team, our values or our future. He has made that clear. And I want to be clear about another thing. Portland's future is one with many needs. Needs that community members have rightfully raised, which are critical for us to take into account. So for folks who say, don't worry, having a team will pay off for the community, that is not only tone deaf, but it's a promise we can't make and which history shows does not pan out. So I'm not looking at that. I'm looking at the costs. And I have to tell you, as I look at these options, I think the first two are better for our city and certainly for my district. For district two, I think we're going to have to remodel the arena one way or another. So how do we get there? Does it include a deal with rip city management or does it not? This isn't a decision about a motion to me or about. Love of a team. It's about financial trade offs and our city's bottom line. Based on facts around what we must compare, the investment we're going to have to make, the potential benefits we're going to get from any of those scenarios. So I want to really briefly speak to tom dundon. You have heard us debate our negotiating position in public. You have heard portlanders plead with us to spend our money on critical services. You have also heard them plead with us to do everything we can to keep our home team, the home team. You have literally seen our cards and seen us discuss our bottom lines. I'm ready for us to sit down with you. We know the term sheet before us is in a final deal, but it is our framing for this negotiation. It is what we want to see. I'm going to vote yes today because there's a lot I like here. Our labor peace agreements hold the line because Portland is a union town. Our community benefits plan commits rip city to partnering with albina vision trust on rose quarter redevelopment projects. We ensure the moda center works for portland's values around accessibility, around improved sustainability features, around public transit and bike parking and ev charging infrastructure, affordable parking and concessions. Because a night out should not have so many added costs that it's only accessible to the richest few. By the way, tom, these are good for your business too, not just for us, and holds the blazers to a non relocation agreement for all of their games, with consequences among other critical provisions. But tom, we need you at the table because I certainly will not approve anything in a final agreement. If you do not get us information that we need to make sure that it is a good deal for all parties. We have to know when there's a final vote, what we're talking about. If you, tom, continue to come to the table with nothing more than proposals which try to bleed Portland dry, and which, frankly, leave me wondering if you even knew this team was located in Portland when you bid on it, we're not going to be able to get to a deal. We want a reasonable deal in Portland. We are scrappy and practical and ready to make it work, but we also will not be taken advantage of. You have said yourself that any deal must make good business sense. I agree, and my business is the business of the people of Portland. Any final deal must be a good deal for our city and for our people, and we have to take the step today to be able to get there. Thank you.
484 Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney vice president Clark.
485 Thank you, council president. I'm not going to be nearly as eloquent as my colleague. I really appreciate your comments very much. And as I said earlier, the the package that's been put before us today gives me comfort that the teams reviewed the amendments. It's incorporated some of what were just barely discussed the other day. So I appreciate your work. I just want to say that, again, I appreciate the work of the team, and I appreciate council president managing this process so well. I know that we have a long row to hoe. We have a long way to go. It's been rather difficult and I don't see it getting a lot better in the future. But I want to be clear that I don't believe this is a bailout for billionaire. This is about taking care of what we have. It's supporting our labor community. It's supporting the other community partners that councilor Pirtle-guiney lined out. We're getting a 3 to 1 match and the renovation of the moda. I don't want to lose that, that opportunity because as councilor Pirtle-guiney said, we're going to have to take care of this place no matter what happens, and it may cost us more in the future. That concerns me. I want to address some of the comments that were made by my good colleague, councilor Green. I'm the first person to care about TriMet. I was able to raise the TriMet taxes twice in my career and get the money for the tilikum bridge and the Green line and the red line and the Green line and the orange line. I know, I think there's plenty of money available here for transit, and I think that we should consider going for piece f for transit. I think there's plenty of money, but with that, I would just say that I, I think this is a very reasonable package. I appreciate the work that's been done and I'll be very supportive of it.
486 Thank you. Vice president Clark, councilor Avalos.
487 Oh, boy, that last note. Colleagues. This has been one of the harder votes I've had to make. I feel like I have been pretty consistent along the way over the last several months of what I needed to see and what I felt that portlanders, but particularly east portlanders, needed to ensure that this was an investment worth their while. Like I said earlier, I appreciate the proposal before us being substantially better now that we've approved some of those amendments. Again, inspired by all of the work that we put in last week. And so again, thank you to donnie and the negotiating team. They listened and they took council's concerns seriously, and they incorporated many of the concepts, definitely not the economic concepts that I needed, but many of the other non-economic concepts that councilors across this dais fought for. We now have rent, we have stronger oversights. We have clearer protections around ownership and development rights and maintenance and community benefits. And those improvements do matter to me. So thank you. And also, portlanders testified, who testified should know that your advocacy mattered too, because that was also a reflection of what you have been asking from us as your legislators. The 12 amendments that I put forward was based directly on what I heard from you all you said you needed in order for this to be a deal to be made with your money. We pushed this deal. It moved. That's a win. But the question has been for me is it enough? Did we move enough? And the answer is no. From the beginning, my concern has not been whether we should keep the trail blazers in Portland. I want them to stay. My concern has been whether portlanders are getting a fair return for what we are being asked to contribute. The new language makes clear that any future city contribution is going to come back through this budget process, and I do appreciate that protection. But let's be honest about what that means, because I have heard people say that this is not new tax money. Technically it's not. Technically that's true, but it is still public money. And every dollar that we commit here is a dollar that's not going to be available for parks and housing and public safety and climate investments and filling future budget deficits. Remember, we just closed 170 million budget deficit. And we know that our challenges, our fiscal challenges are not going away. So this isn't about whether this requires a new tax or not. This is about whether this investment is worth what Portland is being asked to give up to make it. And so for me, I still needed to see more. I fought for rent because I felt that a private operating, a private business, operating in a publicly owned building should pay rent. I'm glad that we have that. I'm glad we increased it. Any more money, we can get out of it. Wonderful. But I also continue to believe that the owners should be making a meaningful private financial contribution, and that Portland deserves a stronger return on its investment before I can support the final economics of this deal. So my vote is no. But I want to be clear about what that no means. It is not a vote against the blazers. It is not a rejection of the progress that we've made. And it is a not a decision about the final agreements that will come back to us later this year. It is a message to the negotiating team. You have strengthened the city's position now keep going, keep going. Use these protections as the floor, not the ceiling. Bring me back a deal that asks the owner to meet Portland with the same specificity that we've been asking, that they've asked of us to meet them with. So I hope that we take one big lesson from this whole process. Again, last week we were told that council shouldn't negotiate from the dais, but many of the ideas that were rejected last week are now in the what is approved that we are voting on. And I think that speaks to remembering what our role is. Council's role is to tell the negotiating team what Portland needs. The negotiating teams role is to figure out how to get there. This week proved that two things can work at the same time. We are closer than we are a week ago. We're not there yet, and I sincerely hope that the definitive agreements that return, that you will bring them back to me and earn my. Yes, but you have to earn it.
488 Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Briefly. Councilor. Novick.
489 Thank you, mr. President. I apologize for not saying this before, but councilor Ryan, I have to respond to what you said about the 2000 blazers in game seven against the lakers. I don't think they blew it. They didn't choke. It wasn't like there were lots of turnovers. The shots just didn't fall. That happens.
490 Thank you. Councilor Novick. Councilor Smith.
491 Thank you. Council president. And I'm my name is Loretta Smith and I'm a district one city councilor Which serves east Portland. And I'm here to express that I have strong support for the proposed renovation of the motor center and the surrounding rose quarter, along with the 20 year lease agreement with the Portland trail blazers. And I believe that the moda center has been the heartbeat of portland's sports and entertainment scene for nearly three decades. This proposal represents more than just a renovation of a building. It is a critical investment in the future of our city, our economy and our community identity, and the economic impact of the moda center cannot be overstated. As a premier destination for sports, concerts and events, it draws millions of visitors to our city. Each year. These visitors support our local hotels, restaurants, small businesses, particularly in the central city and the lloyd center district, a modernization moda center will do a couple of things secure long term revenue, ensuring the trailblazers remain in the Portland area. It guarantees decades of tax revenue and economic activity that would not otherwise be lost. Job growth the renovation project itself will create hundreds of family wage construction jobs, while a revitalized rose quarter will support thousands of permanent positions in hospitality management and service sectors. Boost tourism by upgrading the facility to modern standards. We remain competitive in attracting top tier national tours and sporting events that bring out out-of-state dollars in our local community. For generations of Oregonians, the moda center and the rose garden before it has been the site of our most cherished memories, and I want to create additional memories investing in the existing infrastructure of the motor center is a sustainable choice. By modernizing modernizing a centrally located facility. This agreement is a balanced and necessary step forward. It protects the city's interests, secures our professional sports future, and it provides the spark needed for the next chapter of portland's downtown recovery. We urge from district one councilor Loretta smith's office to support. We want the council to support this term sheet and move forward with the vision of a rejuvenated moda center that will serve our community for another 20 years and beyond. Thank you all for really coming with your best foot forward today. I really appreciate all the comments.
492 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Zimmerman.
493 Thank you, mr. President. I I'm glad we're getting toward the end here in terms of this, the long deliberation. I do want to just start with respect that there are different positions on this. I know that some folks won't be able to vote no today, and I think that that's okay. I do want to talk about why I'm going to vote yes and why I think this is the right thing for for the community, not just for Portland, but actually statewide. I think that we all benefit to a future with a, an nba team here in Portland. You know, when I think about the $670 million every single year in returned economic activity, that's one of my reasons. When I think about the thousands of jobs that are directly connected to the moda center, that's one of my reasons. When I think about the fact that the blazers occupy the building for 41 days a year, and there are another 320 who are up for grabs, and the fact that Portland currently only gets just about 200 nights a year used, meaning it's time for us to stop being a flyover city for concerts, shows, events from seattle to san francisco. Because the moda center is no longer capable of putting shows on of a certain caliber to get us up closer to 300 nights a year. That's one of my reasons. So when I think about those things and $670 million with the most out of date stadium in the league, I think about the potential for how we grow past that 670, how do we get higher than $670 million? Olivia Clark and I, this morning we were at the east Portland chamber of commerce. Not even really our district, maybe a couple, but boy, we had a wonderful conversation. And one member, one person said, I don't really go to the blazers. I have a tiny little business over here, but I, as a business member, I in east Portland, I rely on that kind of economic hub. And I thought that was really interesting. That kind of trickle support across the community from east Portland. North Portland. Southwest Portland. There's an identity here. So I'm okay with the no votes, but I do want to make sure that there are folks that understand that I'm one of the cheerleaders. I'm one of the yes votes. I'm not a blazer dancer, but I am as into the blazers as into this deal as we can be. I look at this and I want to be really careful. Right? I think that unfortunately, the way that things have been covered a little bit is that some reason I think some of the news stations and others are putting this as a final document. In fact, this is a first document. Some coverage of this is all about amendments that couldn't pass. But this is about a document that has, I think, majority support, and that's a good foot forward. So it's time for Portland to have some more wins. It's time for Portland to have some more cheerleaders. We've had a rough six years. I am so ready to have a good next six years. And so I look forward to the best deal that our negotiating team can bring forward. That has been my goal through this entire process, is that we put a good foot forward that makes us a serious contender, a serious party at a serious table in the eyes of the nba, so that this choice is clear. Portland is in it for this market. I want to definitely thank governor kotek, senate president wagner, senator kate lieber, their leadership at Salem helped this happen. It was valuable. I appreciated your partnerships, and I cannot imagine portland's rough few economic years and hoping that this chapter is about to turn the page on this poor economic, these poor economic years. I can't imagine adding a few more pages to this long, dark chapter. So I think losing the blazers, I think having a mothball, the moda center, I think having to say we have an old, outdated thing that nobody that we have no anchor tenant in would be a problem. We are the headquarters for women's sports. The Portland fire is here. The blazers need to stay here. Portland has some of the strongest, most dedicated crazy fans out there. And I will also say, I know there's a lot of rhetoric out there about I hear from or I'm hearing that people don't have trust in this. I just want to talk about my experience, where I'm at in this world and in this city. I have had more conversations with people who have come up to me and be like, you cannot lose this team. You cannot lose these blazers. What are you going to do to make this happen? And I've said, I think we're going to get it. I think we're going to be there. And so I say that because there has been a very robust argument and that has been healthy, but it doesn't speak for the grand majority of where the city is at. And I do hope, colleagues, that we pass this today because the job isn't done. We, of course, eventually have to get to a deal, but our job today is to put our best foot forward and to make sure that the league and the owners and everybody knows that we are at the table to be a serious partner and keep this team for 20 years. I want to be an old guy looking at the next city council who has to decide what is the future of the entire rose arena area when this when this garden is is dead and gone and it's someone else's problem. But for now, this is our home for the next 20 years. Let's invest in it. Let's use the funds appropriately, and let's entice this team to stay with us because we want to stay with them. Thanks, council president.
494 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Koyama Lane.
495 Okay, bear with me, colleagues. I just have a couple amendments. Just kidding. I know all 11 of you would lose it on me. That was genuinely okay.
496 Finally, a real jerk. Okay.
497 I do want to start by thanking everyone who has put in a lot of work and time on this. My colleagues, our staff, our staff, let's be honest, they do a lot of the work. The negotiation team, our city staff, and above all, thank you to the public, to the advocates who are here today, who are watching online, who keep showing up again and again. I read every single one of your emails. This is a long and difficult process. And, you know, we just talked earlier about how an ideal relationship between our body and the administrative side is one where we can share our expectations and they're heard, and we don't necessarily have to have them written down. And so I'd like to repeat what I had said last week and said earlier, I see this as a trust exercise. I'm trying to say on the record, I did not bring this as an amendment about, you know, I think we need to hear on the record what are the next steps after today. And so I gave council president and donnie oliveira a heads up that I would ask a couple questions and ask for these answers to be on the record. My first one is what can portlanders expect after today? How can portlanders expect to get negotiation updates? Because what I really hope is not the case now is that all of this is just none of it's in the public eye. Because not only is transparency the right thing to do or, you know, without it, we're going to erode public trust. But also, and I hope our negotiation team hears this, I think the strength of our portlanders is our biggest leverage in negotiating this deal. And the public opinion and public pressure and engagement is our best leverage for making sure we get a really good deal for portlanders to make sure that we have strong labor protections, to make sure that that this is a good deal. So I think it's in our strategic best interest to be as transparent as possible. Can you share what portlanders can expect?
498 Thank you for the question, councilor Donnie oliveira, for the record. So I'll start by saying this with a significant caveat that the joint authority and the membership of that body will have an oversight role of a lot of the details related to the renovation. So just acknowledging that they're going to have a functional role in this. But I think what's a fair and reasonable expectation for the next four months as we sprint towards December would be that, as the council president alluded to, a couple of work sessions that we have can daylight where we're at in the process. But on a more positive note, and I hope we can get there with the blazers. And there's a lot of there's a lot of hopes doing a heavy lift with this comment that we'd be able to share with you, all the public, that the renderings, the ideas behind the renovation kind of do a more detailed analysis of what we can expect under normal considerations and circumstances. That would be a part of this deal where we would be walking through with you all and the public. The really cool features that the new arena will have, the the amenities, but more functionally, how the arena is going to work for the community. That's our expectation. We'll continue to push for that. And it's pretty, it's, it's pretty normal under these, under these normal arena type deals to have the team work with us, to share information to the public about what the public is getting for their dollars. So we have some dates already scheduled tentatively for work sessions. And hopefully with the blazers at the table, we'll be able to schedule those. I'm using the word design charrette. That's more of a planning speak, but opportunities for the community to see what comes to the table. As far as the specifics of the negotiations, we'll work with the joint authority on briefings back to you all publicly, and we'll continue to have executive sessions where we can share details about where things are at. As you can imagine, they'll be very fluid over the next few months.
499 And if I could jump in and add, I've been working with the bureau of technology services and the administration on updating the city's website on the future of the moda center. The website is Portland.gov/venues/moda-center. This is a place that we will continue to update with any concrete information, including materials from work sessions and future things that we have to try and keep the public as going as long as possible. And I will do my best to keep councilors and the public informed of every step that anything that lands on my desk.
500 Thank you. This is going to come back before us. I am not sure if we know the exact date, but it'll it'll either be December sounds like ninth, 10th, 16th, 17th. Can I get can the public get a commitment from council president, from the mayor, from mr. Oliveira, do you feel comfortable saying that you will try to come back to us within. Give us at least 30 days and to review what you're going to ask us to vote on so we can make sure that we're doing our due diligence. I have I do understand that oftentimes negotiations, negotiations led up to a certain deadline. That's also a tactic I've been part of negotiations. You can also say there's a deadline and it's 30 days before we have to vote on it. Can you explain your intentions? And if you can commit to trying to do that?
501 For our part, councilor, absolutely. We can commit to doing that with with a couple of just acknowledgments. The county still took they took significant action last week, which we really appreciate. They're going to have to come back to finalize their financing plan. So they're asking for similar timelines. So everybody's asking, which I think is reasonable enough time to review these documents before taking final votes. I will just also acknowledge that something we've been thinking about independent of of this, is the timeline to go from today to definitive documents is, is really challenging. And that's assuming, by the way, that we have an active partner working with us to get things to the finish line. If we have a lot of resistance still, we're just going to be pushing up against it. But to your point and to your your request, it would be to the benefit of everybody to have definitive documents in your, you know, even if they're 80%, I mean, something to you. So you can start reviewing because it's going to be a lot of documentation, multiple agreements, everything from the lease agreement to the relocation agreement. We're talking about development rights, a lot of a lot to review. So yes, the sooner we can get in front of your eyes that you can start reading to get up to speed, the better for everybody.
502 And I will say that I will not rush anything to this council, that if we do not have adequate information in a timely manner, I will not even recognizing that we are running out of council sessions between the end of the calendar year. I will not rush something simply because the deadline. I will not be coming to you with a request for a 9/12 item. I will not be doing that. I will do what we can for regular order and process.
503 But we have limits for the state bonding. So the idea that there isn't a deadline is not true, which is why the amendment should have passed.
504 So because I do respect the work that has gone into improving this term sheet, it's a much better place than it was when I first saw it. And because I respect council president's leadership throughout this very hard process, I do feel like I owe the process and my constituents my honesty and a clear explanation about where I stand. My colleagues won't be surprised. I've been very consistent about what I need to see in this deal. I don't think it's fair to the people who elected me or to this process to move away from that now. And so at this point, I cannot support this term sheet without a firm commitment of funds from mr. Dundon and his team as part of the capital stack. As it stands, we don't know if ownership will contribute, if so, how much? And so voting on a term sheet with that kind of open question isn't something that I can do in good faith. And at the same time, I see the hours and hours that have gone into this, the late nights, the back and forth, the arguments, the uncomfortable conversations. And there's been a lot of effort to look for places where there has been some common ground. And I do respect that work full stop. So to be very clear, this sheet has improved greatly, and I suspect that many of my colleagues who I have respect for will vote for this. I don't think that their yes vote today, if that happens, means that they care about their constituents any less than I do. I hold the belief that I can vote differently from some of my colleagues on this topic. And honestly, in other topics, we can debate things and disagree, and I can still hold respect for you. My vote is about where the term sheet is right now, what it actually commits to on paper, it's a starting point. If a version of this agreement returns to the body at least 30 days in advance of the final vote, and there's a clear commitment from the owners side to add to the capital stack. I would be interested in reconsidering my support, but I want to explain why I'm voting no today. Thank you.
505 Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Ryan.
506 Thank you, council president. I said a lot earlier, so I'll be brief. And it's well past lunchtime. That was funny earlier when you did councilor Koyama Lane scared me. You know, the Portland trail blazers, I think you all know, have been our only major league franchise. Let me define major league by google, nba, nfl, mlb, nhl. That was football, baseball, hockey since 1970. That's 56 years. In a private conversation, I'll have a dialog with councilor Novick about the vast differences between seattle and Portland. They have. They have three. And they're going to get a fourth. They have ten fortune 500 companies. We have one, but we are in the middle of the pack, like you said. Why? Because of our passionate fan base, that same fan base that keeps stopping me everywhere I'm walking. Unless I'm in city hall, of course. But when I'm walking around town, they're just coming out of the woodwork like, you got to get this done. Today we are guiding the negotiating team with guidelines that allows us to win the state. The county and the city are aligned with passing this today. It's really time for these negotiations to begin. Tom dundon you bought a team. It's located in Portland, Oregon. It's time to take that seriously and show up because we need jobs, jobs, jobs. We need to take macroeconomics 101 seriously. If we want revenue in our general fund, there's not one scenario we're having. The blazers leave will help that. So we'll be seeing bigger deficits. And it's for you fans, the most loyal and passionate in the nba. I'm really proud that we're going to vote. I'm gonna vote yes on this today. And I think we have a majority to do that. So the negotiations can begin. Thanks.
507 Thank you. Councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.
508 Thank you, council president. This is a hard vote. Do I like the way that this process has gone? No. Do I like the way the engagement has occurred between the team and the city? No. Or the city and the public? No. Am I happy with the information I've received leading up to this vote? Absolutely not. On the other hand, there's been good language in this proposal for a while around labor peace, around activation, around relocation penalties, and around long term commitments to stay. I've been told not by colleagues who are engaging with this from their own perspectives, and I believe that, but by a handful of folks outside of the building that we should vote no on this essentially out of spite for the team owner. I don't build public policy around spite. I base it on goals. I've also been told outside that we should vote yes on this, because it will send a message about Portland being open for business, even if the deal isn't good. I don't build public policy like that either. We've all been told hyperbolic things. I don't think this term sheet is the best deal in sports arena history. I don't think it's the worst in the history of the world either. I was told by elected officials in other cities, as has been pointed out, that our deal was way better than theirs. But that doesn't mean it's good. It just means that it might be less bad. Perhaps most hyperbolic was the comment earlier today that portland's negotiated terms stand out as an incredible deal, incredibly responsible and protective document of the public trust, end quote. No part of that is true. It's not an incredible deal. It's not responsible and protective. I don't think anyone here thinks it's good for public trust. Most of all, it's not even negotiated terms, at least not yet. So I've been going back and forth on this. This has gone forward as the amendments have gone forward last week and today, because of the amendments that came forward with council president Dunphy councilor Ryan councilor, pirtle-guiney and I, based on last week's amendments proposed by councilors Avalos, Morillo Green, Novick and I, I'm comfortable on a non-binding proposal with voting yes today. That's in spite of the problems that we must solve between now and December and what ultimately lead me 5149 towards a yes vote has been the knowledge that this is a step on a long process, not the final vote. And that a vote, yes is not to lock in anything but to continue this conversation. My vote today is a vote to not shut a door on negotiations just to get to a place where there is a proposal for a legally binding deal that we can consider. I believe that if council doesn't pass a term sheet today, negotiations are done. And I want to explain why. If council doesn't pass a term sheet today, I don't believe that the executive branch is going to start this whole process over and initiate a better process that will get us a better deal than what is in the term sheet before us right now. I don't see a way to get seven votes to initiate a better deal process should this fail. And so as a result, I've approached this to try and pursue making the term sheet better and ideally not just better, but good. And I think that that we've achieved a lot in the amendments so far with some yet to do. And I appreciate everyone's points on that. Now, that doesn't mean that passing this guarantees success. We obviously still need a negotiating partner. The moda center is in my district. It's critical to the vibrancy of district two and to the plans of community groups with a vision for this area like ave. I've mentioned several times its proximity to other notable locations in the district, like lloyd center, like the convention center, like the louisa flowers building. And I've noted that in the testimony and in the other data we have, my district has consistently shown a higher level of support than some other districts have for this proposal. The city owns the moda center. As a democratic socialist, I believe in having and maintaining public assets, but doing it in a way that has public benefit. The moda center needs to be renovated, and it's the city's responsibility to do so in a way that has public benefit. And our duty as council is not just to exercise fiscal responsibility, but to exercise fiscal stewardship. And sometimes fiscal stewardship does mean spending and investing money. I believe this term sheet can start a process that theoretically can get portlanders more than what we put in through parking and rent and tax offset payments and ticket user fees and community benefits. Now, having said all of that, I do want to get a couple forward looking things on the record. The nba has had a home here for 56 years. We've been a good market for the nba with unparalleled support for a market our size, a 24 year long sellout streak, high interest and ratings, everything that comprises blazer mania. I think it's clear that each member of the council has our own priorities and that collectively we have some differences around the city, but we are all committed to maintaining and continuing blazer mania indefinitely. And I believe that the nba and the commissioner Have always had and continue to have a strong partner in the city of Portland. And all we ask is your support for a fair process. The Portland trail blazers are hopefully going to be our primary tenant in a business partner with councilor, Novick said earlier. Is true. It's reasonable to say that nobody would sign a lease if it would make them lose money, whether landlord or tenant. But as many of the longtime staff know, there's no crowd in the nba like this one when it's packed. There's a reason that former blazers of all stripes live here after their careers end. There's a reason that players like maurice lucas and Steve blake and damian lillard come back, even during their playing careers. This is a unique market and it's a unique city, and those are good things. Obviously, every city's got work to do, but the city of Portland is an amazing place to be, and I hope that we can build a future together. And to the city's executive branch, the next time we vote on this as a council, our vote will not be non-binding. And so the standard will be higher. It will be legally binding. I ask you not to count me out, nor to count me in, but to understand, like my colleagues, my vote is available if there's a good deal and is not available if there is a bad one. And what you provide to us is what determines what it will be. It needs to be a complete proposal. No more blank exhibits, no more. Trust us. No more renderings without spreadsheets. Negotiate for us, not against us. I remain committed to doing a renovation of this public asset that has strong community benefits, has a strong return on investment, and does not violate the will of the voters around PCEF. I don't want to cut money in the general fund. If we can't find another funding source. I don't want to cut money from the fire bureau or break our promises around the parks levy to pay for this. And I think that. Dewayne hankins response to my last question in the work session indicates that they don't want us to do so either. So my vote next time will be based on nothing other than the proposal you bring to us. So bring us a deal that meets those needs and I'll vote for it. And if not, I'll vote no. I am really tired of being asked to apologize for Portland. Every city has room for improvement, but we all ran for office because we love the city and it's a great place to be. I've lived other places. They're fine, I guess, but it's a privilege to be here, and I expect that everyone involved in this, from every side remembers that from now until December. Because if you do, we'll be on our way to a deal that renovates a civic asset in district two, locks in our oldest professional sports team for a generation to come. Creates opportunities for community redevelopment greater than what we already have. Protects the public dollar, gets a strong return on investment, honors the will of the voters, and rebuilds the public trust. And I remain optimistic about getting all of that because we can't have nice things and Portland deserves them. Thank you.
509 Thank you, councilor Kanal colleagues, thank you for your work today. Thank you for considering and approving the packages and for carefully discussing the amendments that were all brought before us as well. Thank you for the guy outside for occasionally quieting down so that we could hear each other. And indeed, the way that thank you for everybody, the way that you contributed in your own way. As I said at the top of this meeting, this is the city's opening proposal. A very dense three months are ahead for our team. And if our partners choose to engage, things will move quickly. I look forward to continuing regular updates with council members, engaging in executive sessions, and updating the public with the best information available. I believe that there were folks who were counting on us to fail today, but this council and this new form of government can do hard things. This work is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be messy. This is the process of fighting for our city. Because Portland is an incredible city. We are culturally vibrant. We have the best audiences in the country, not just at the blazers games, but in every every venue in town. Our incredible natural beauty provides the backdrop for the best quality of life in the nation, and we are serious about getting things done. This city is a value proposition. It's also a place with values both. We move forward from both. I am certain that our greatest chapter is ahead of us, and I hope that the blazers are a part of that future if they choose not to be. I have no question that our incredible city will still bloom, thrive, and make great places for cool stuff to happen. This process has been unprecedented,
510 I'm so grateful to all of our staff that have helped to keep. It helped us to get to this place. We're counting on you to keep going, to bring back a long term lease agreement that this body can support. And to my council colleagues, again, thank you for bringing your passion and your determination more than anything else. Thank you for staying engaged and at the table with each other, even when it would have been far easier to walk away. We have many challenges ahead of us, and today I'm just a little bit more hopeful that this group has what it takes to get there together. Keelan, can you please call the roll?
511 This is the vote for document 2026-280, as amended. Koyama Lane. No. Morillo.
512 No.
513 Novick.
514 It's been a great game. Both teams played hard.
515 I mark.
516 Wallace I.
517 Green no.
518 Zimmerman.
519 Yes.
520 Avalos.
521 No.
522 Smith.
523 Yes.
524 Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I. Ryan.
525 I.
526 Dunphy I.
527 The resolution, as amended, is adopted with a vote of eight eyes and four nays.
528 Congratulations, colleagues. This concludes all of our business before this body. As such, the 2:00 scheduled meeting of the Portland city council is canceled. We are adjourned.