The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-07-22
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (16,168 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
At the July 22, 2025 session of the Portland City Council's Community and Public Safety Committee, discussion opened with an extended review of the executive hiring process for the recent Fire Chief recruitment, covering questions about candidate stability, prior employment history, reference-checking practices, background checks, negotiation norms around offers, and the handling of a union-facilitated poll of fire union members whose results were reportedly withheld. Human Resources staff described a multi-stage recruitment process involving stakeholder input, interview panels, and reference checks, and discussed pay equity analysis methods used in setting offers. The conversation extended to upcoming hires for OVP Director and Portland Street Response Director, including a proposed hiring-committee structure, recruitment timelines, and a potential public town hall with finalist candidates, plus concerns about staffing capacity within the Division of Community Safety. The committee then received a legislative update on the 2025 state session, covering outcomes on shelter and housing funding, HB 4002 deflection funding, behavioral health reforms, police training academy capacity, gun violence prevention measures, livability issues, and a failed drone-surveillance bill, with extended discussion of concerns about surveillance tools, due process, and alignment between city priorities and legislative advocacy. Votes, if any occurred, are recorded in the vote ledger.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Process.
1 Thank you. Mr. Jordan. Mr. Bob cozzie, would you mind approaching and hanging out with us?
2 Mr. Oh.
3 Thank you very much for joining us. I should note that we asked the mayor here as well, but the mayor politely declined. So I had some questions about the recent hiring process that led to offering the fire chief job to reginald freeman, which may be extremely naive questions. And maybe I should. There's I could have just asked these questions behind closed doors, but because the hiring got a lot of press, I thought it'd be worthwhile to have it the conversation in person. And we've got a number of other big hirings in public safety coming up. So I thought it's worth having a conversation about what the criteria are, what people will be looking for, for those positions. And I'll just start off with my, you know, naive thoughts about the fire chief hiring process. I mean, from my perspective as an outsider who's never gone through the process of hiring a high level person like this, my reaction was like, well, my god, this guy freeman, you know, he was with the with oakland fire for two years. Then he went to work for an insurance company. Then he went to work for the saudi government. So he's been three places in the last four years. Do we are we looking for somebody with stability or not? Or maybe we weren't looking for somebody with stability. Maybe we're looking for a change agent to come in and blow things up. We weren't that worried about how long people would hang out. So that's one question. Is it for you? A, you know, a warning sign that somebody moved around that much? Another question I had is, I mean, to me, working for the saudi government is about as close as you can come in today's world of working for nazi germany. I mean, when I met freeman, I restrained myself from asking him, do you approve of chopping up journalists with bone saws? But he was he was also working in a project that's gotten a fair amount of human rights scrutiny. He was working on creating a new city in the desert, the sort of futuristic enterprise where, among other things, there's credible reports that people who lived in the place where the city currently is were when they didn't want to be evicted. They were shot. So to me, it raises some questions about, do we want to hire somebody who's comfortable working for that kind of employer? But maybe that's an inappropriate question to ask. I mean, maybe just going into some of the morals of people's private prior employers is something that would be silly to consider. And maybe at this point, everybody has worked for some unsavory employer at some point. And then another question I had was he takes the job. And then a few days later says, well, I discussed this with my wife, and she pointed out, we'll be having two households and need more money. So I need some sort of housing allowance. Now, to me, asking for the housing allowance allowance in itself had been part of the initial negotiation. Seems perfectly reasonable, but it's sort of an eyebrow raiser for me that the guy accepts the job and then says, well, I just discussed this with my wife for the first time and now I need more money. That seemed like something that I wouldn't do. But again, maybe that's pretty common in terms of negotiations for these high level positions. So that's one three part question I have is whether the why the things that I would have seen as red flags really I shouldn't. And by the way, I talked to a former hr lawyer for a big organization recently, and she kind of thought it was making mountains out of molehills. So I'm ready to be convinced of that. But then there's other questions, sort of generally. Oh, and then another specific thing is the and I don't know who in the room is familiar with this, but isaac mcclymont, the president of the fire union, was asked to facilitate a poll of fire union members, which was done. And then he asked for the results and wasn't given them. So I wanted to know if that was an oversight or whether that's just kind of information that people think should be confidential. And then I was sort of more general questions about, once you get to a couple of a couple of applicants, you know, the finalists, what's the what's the background check process, what sort of references do you check? Do you check not only people that the person listed? Or do you find people who worked with them before they didn't list? Do you emphasize checking with people who worked for them as opposed to people they worked for? So those are just a I'm just throwing out a smorgasbord of questions to answer at your leisure. And colleagues, do you have anything you want to sort of throw into the discussion initially?
4 I have several.
5 Questions that are less limited to the fire chief. I am curious about just a status update on the dca, the permanent dca hiring from administrator jordan, and then I have questions about the hiring of permanent managers at ovp and Portland street response, and I can get to those when we get to them. I think it might make sense to go position by position just structurally, because there are four that we're talking about here. But I'm happy to go in whatever structure you'd like to do that chair Novick.
6 Thank you.
7 I should have started by saying, we recognize, of course, that hiring for executive positions is the province of the executive. We know that that's not our job, but I think it's worth our knowing sort of what criteria you have in mind, how the process works. So again, we're not suggesting that we should get to get to approve any hiring, but we're just asking questions about the process.
8 Are you ready for us. Yes okay. Thank you. Chairman and members of the committee. I think it might be valuable if I allow ron zito, who's here with us from hr, to go over the structure of the process first. And he will probably say a few things I would expect about things like the key factors that we use to meet minimum qualifications in these. It's a little bit more nebulous when you're hiring for very high level positions. But there are there are indicators that have to be met before a candidate can move beyond kind of the minimum requirement scheme. But I'm going to let ron talk about the process we went through that we mostly go through with these high level positions.
9 Thank you, city administrator jordan, and good afternoon, councilors. For the record, ron zito, deputy director for the bureau of human resources. Part of my role is to oversee our workforce and recruitment manager, who oversees our recruitment team. That team processes approximately 2000 recruitments a year and a heavy year of executive recruitments. There's probably a dozen executive recruitments, but in typical years it's more like six or so. And of those six to 12, some of those we go external and use search firms that are professional organizations that do this sort of work. And then for some we conduct those internally. And that's usually just a matter of. Capacity, expertise and the desires of the hiring manager. And so I would just say high level sort of process wise, we would start with sort of meeting with the hiring authority. In this case, it would be the city administrator. We would really look to explore the need and develop a strategy for the recruitment plan. You know, that would be a comprehensive recruitment plan in terms of who are the appropriate stakeholders, what are the appropriate minimum qualifications? Many of those the starting place for that is a classification description or even a position description. There's also input that could be gathered by pertinent stakeholders. We do that usually either by listening sessions or surveys that we conduct to gather that. And then we create a strategic recruitment plan. And we move forward with with the parts of that process. And in this particular case, we talk about the fire chief recruitment. That process included a recruitment survey that was sent out. And there's feedback gathered that included three rounds of interviews with a variety of stakeholders, interview panels of some of those included interim fire chief, the boec director, a number of other roles. The union president, you know, and as well as panels of interview participants throughout some of the later rounds. And so it also includes, generally, as we get into those later rounds, tours of facilities, you know, sort of a visit and meeting with certain individuals that might be important for the success of this, this role. So that's generally the process just at a high level. I can go deeper on any of those if it's interesting to you all. But then in the later stages, as we think about extending an offer, what we typically would do is we have a few finalists out of that process, and then there's a decision made of who we'd like to move forward with to extend an offer. And for that offer, we generally reach out and walk through the offer high level with the individual first to make sure that this feels like something that would be a good fit for them. Typically that's followed by, you know, an email or written letter that confirms those details, and we look for their their signature on that. And that offers usually contingent on things like a background check on things like a criminal history check. And I should mention that probably preceding that offer we would go through a reference check. And so maybe that was one of the questions you asked councilor. And maybe I'll hit that. So generally as we look to reference checks we ask for from the candidate about 3 to 5 references. And those references are typically in the form of those who are direct supervisors of that individual and past roles. We've reached out to those individuals in this case, you know, that would be, you know, past, you know, city mayors, business owners, executive positions and prior companies. Those are some of the folks. For a role like this, we'd be reaching out to for references. And then after gathering that information, as long as there's nothing that would give us pause, we'd move forward with the offer. So.
10 So I think you've implicitly answered this, but you check with the references the person gives you. Don't they go searching for other people that have worked with them, including people who've worked for them, as opposed to who they worked for?
11 That's correct. Generally, we go with a request to the actual candidate of, again, 3 to 5 references. We looking for people that actually supervise them. Sometimes we do get references of colleagues or people that they've supervised. Those generally aren't sufficient references because they can't speak, you know, without some level of concern that maybe they're badmouthing their prior boss, whereas someone that supervises them generally is a good reference. But if we reach out to one of those references and we find that there's, you know, something, a bit of hesitation, any concern that's raised, then we would ask for additional references and even maybe some of those references. We would go deeper to talk to other people.
12 I realize that, you know, maybe some people are uncomfortable badmouthing a prior boss, but it seems to me that for these high level positions, the experience of people who worked for them is at least as significant as that of the people they worked for. And so I'm just curious if that's something that, you know, has been the subject of discussion, whether we should try to expand the reference check to people who are not referenced, but who work for the person.
13 Yeah, it's fair feedback. Councilor. Thank you.
14 I might add that there are times when you'll get either. You'll get a response that gives you some pause, which causes you to dig deeper, or there are organizations out there that won't respond to reference checks at all. And so that means you have to go dig and find some extra information. We also made a couple of outside phone calls regarding the fire chief, particularly to the city of oakland, and got some very good feedback from there. So sometimes you go down other rabbit holes a bit, but your suggestion about people who work for these folks, sometimes those are a little hard to get reference responses from, but it's a good suggestion.
15 Thank you.
16 I also wanted to make one clarifying remark to ron's statements in this particular case. I was not the hiring manager, but we were in transition of the dca. It was right at the end of mike myers time and bob had just come on. We were kind of in the handoff period. And so I thought it was important for myself to be involved in that so that that's a bit unique and not that I wouldn't be involved, but technically I wouldn't be the hiring manager for the fire chief in the future.
17 What about when you're talking to stakeholders? Did the question of sort of whether you want somebody who's going to be here a long time, whose background indicates that? Was that a priority somebody raised, or people saying, we want somebody to get here and shake things up, and we're not particularly worried about somebody who's going to be here for ten years.
18 Well, I would I would say you might not be surprised to expect that you get different responses from different audiences. Typically, when asking the staff in an organization about what they would look for in a in a new leader, often they are looking for status quo. They're looking for somebody to keep the wheels on the bus and take care of the bureau and defend the bureau against all comers and take care of take care of their business. If you ask outside stakeholders, you may get a different response about the need for change in an organization. So it the audience. Sometimes it's predictable what you what you will get in responses. But we do tend to ask multiple stakeholder groups about what they would like to see in a candidate profile. Often those are characteristics in the candidate, not necessarily what their intention is to come and do in the organization. It's more about what kind of people. What kind of experience would you be looking for in the ideal candidate? Those are the kinds of things we ask in advance.
19 I mean, the question of whether somebody is status quo or not is slightly different from how long they expect you might expect them to say, because somebody could be here to disrupt the status quo and then stay a while. But I mean, the. I kind of assume the default is you want somebody who's been in a job for a while, but I also think that it's quite possible that in these high level jobs, actually, the tenure doesn't tend to be that long anyway. So I just wanted to ask for you to sort of pontificate on that, whether length of previous services, various jobs is something that should generally be a consideration or it might depend on the job.
20 It's definitely a consideration in in every hire. Every hire is a little different. You know, I think if you're the hiring manager, you make judgments about what the organization needs at the time, and you try to look for that a bit. When it comes to longevity, I share your general concern that you don't. I'm not necessarily looking for somebody who job hops pretty fast. On the other hand, I have looked at resumes and have gone and asked a few questions and have had understandable answers about why someone moved from one place to another. And, and I will say, the higher up you go in larger municipal public organizations, not just municipalities, but public organizations, the influence of the political realm in those organizations is greater at the higher levels. And you sometimes see people leaving for what might be hard to describe reasons on a resume or in a background. But I can I can just speak for kind of the world I live in. The average city manager in the united states last three and a half years, and it is, I will say, pretty well accepted in the industry that people sometimes leave, are asked to leave for political reasons, and that isn't necessarily something wrong with them. And so I'm not saying that's the case every time, but it but it's accepted that the higher you get in these organizations, the politics of the organization begin to play more of a more of a role in where people come and go. So again, I say all of that to say that it's each job is fairly unique, and you try to look for if in fact, somebody leaves multiple times after staying a couple of years in place after place, you ask questions about that. And I often ask questions of applicants about, you know, what your five year plan for your career, what your ten year plan for your career and how does this job fit into that plan? And, you know, it's a way to ask people what they're thinking about their role and how long they plan to stay and their commitment and those kinds of things.
21 If I may councilor in the spirit of pontification, I mean, I would just say that I agree with mike. It's really from an hr perspective. It's specific to the role. I think we've seen it come full circle over the past 30 years, where stability and long term service and the gold watch at the end of a career was sort of the standard bearer of someone who's going to provide good support to an organization. Whereas more recently, in the early 2000, it was, you know, a focus on the gig economy, and people wanted to do a tour of duty at one place and get a project accomplished and jump to another one. And, and I think now we're finding, you know, with the uncertainty of, of the world, we see more stability, longer term employment for people as something that's a reflection of just the culture as opposed to the needs or how well they might do in the role they're applying for councilor Kanal.
22 Thank you. I have two questions. But before I get to the first one, I just wanted to note I did a 24 hour ride along with Portland fire and rescue in the last few days, excited to continue supporting them and their bureau and union leadership, and specifically supporting them, having both supportive and effective leadership in that chief's role. My first question is more process oriented on the topic of a of a poll, and I don't know if that is 100% accurate way to describe that, but I remember when I was the project manager for the police accountability commission, I was told I could not do a poll of police officers about accountability because polling represented workers would be a problem as a matter of principle. It was not specific to ppa, and I'm concerned if fhfa was not a part of the process of what might be described as polling firefighters, can you confirm if, in fact that would be considered a poll survey, whatever. And as it relates to what happened with PFA, if you can just give more insight on what happened with that side of it.
23 Yeah, I could only presume councilor the concern with maybe a poll in the past was just that of direct dealing under picpa. There's the provision that we can't direct deal with that is correct staff and work through their union representative on that as it relates to the recruitment process and surveys with with some of the union hall support we had in this fire chief hiring that was coordinated with the PFA to make sure that there was appropriate and there was no direct dealing occurring.
24 Okay. Did they get access to the results of those or was that intended to happen? Was that agreed in advance that that wouldn't happen?
25 You know.
26 In full transparency, our recruitment manager is ill today. And so I'm operating off of some crib notes of the process that they employed for this recruitment. I'd have to follow up with him to just confirm what the process was with results back.
27 Okay. I'll.
28 Yeah, we can we can get back to you with that.
29 And then my second question and just before I ask it, I want to point out, like others who are consulted, I happen to have a preference for now incoming chief johnson, I didn't have strong concerns with the other candidate, but I did prefer johnson. So take it with that grain of sand or grain of salt. Sorry, but I'm excited. I we got to the eventual better outcome, in my view, while wishing we could have avoided the public steps that led to that. My question is, Portland fire and rescue has done a better job than a lot of comparable fire departments around the country in promoting women to leadership roles. I understand the idea that relocation is person specific and based on the needs of a person's family, etc. But as it relates to salaries, it's been widely reported that our incoming fire chief is being offered 3% less than the original offer extended to the other candidate. And as we work to achieve 30 by 30, as we work to continue on that pathway of promoting women in public safety roles in general. And I know you've talked about this in the context of psa as well, and the job that we've been doing there. But what what message do you think that's sending and what we can do about it now, in this moment to help resolve that? Because I want to make sure that we're creating the most conducive atmosphere for, regardless of gender, firefighters to have a career path.
30 Well, I appreciate the question. I'm I'm not sure that I'm prepared to opine on the messaging, but I think it might be good for ron to just talk a little bit about what we do with candidates regarding establishing an offer and trying to think about internal equity and those kinds of things among leadership when we're and actually at any level, when we're hiring non-represented employees, there's an equity analysis done to try and think about, based on the experience of the candidate and how they compare to other leaders within that classification. What is an equitable amount of pay for them? So an offer anyway? So I don't know ron, if you want.
31 Yeah. Yeah, I can.
32 Expand on that at all.
33 So pay equity and the analysis we use is relatively a new process for the city. In the past it was a little bit of the wild west in terms of salaries. We offered individuals, as long as they were within the pay range. Then we there was a bit of a discussion between the hiring manager and hr, and we extended a salary, whereas today we're in a place where there is just a much more robust analysis done on every offer. We extend pay equity in the city. We have to look at bona fide factors for differentiating pay and for the city. We look at three factors. We look at internal experience. That's equivalent to the role they're being hired for. We look at internal experience that's indirect but could be used in the role. And then we look at external experience that's directly, you know, the same or similar or comparable work. And so those factors are considered. And then we look internally at others performing similar work to come up with a pay rate. So that's sort of the process. We do have positions that are single incumbent positions, meaning that there's one individual, one role. And so we do have to look to people that previously held the role, individuals in positions that aren't an exact match but are comparable to make that assessment. So that's that's sort of the process wise.
34 I might also add. You know, particularly in leadership roles, every one of these is a negotiation, right? You make an offer, the person can accept the offer. They can respond to the offer and, and give you something back that they want to have. You then have to deal with, okay, what do we do? Because they've countered on the offer. And every one of those discussions is an individual lies discussion depending on the needs of the organization at the time, the candidate and what their needs are. And within the context of the equity analysis you're trying to figure out, you know, basically how do you land this person and get them into the organization? If you've made an offer, you've already made a decision that you want them. And I can tell you, having gone through this a few times in my career, there's only one time when you have leverage as a candidate, and that's when they want you and don't have you. And so you'll see candidates exercise that leverage to the degree they can. They'll try, you know. And so again I only say that to say every one of these is a little bit of an individual discussion with the candidate.
35 I recognize that I'll just offer as a comment and then pass it along here. I don't know if there is data on this, but I would love to know when we offer make offers to female candidates citywide versus male candidates, how often the female candidates negotiate, because in the private sector, there is a lot of documentation that there is a lesser degree of negotiation, and not only for women, but also for non-binary candidates, also for candidates of color. I have personally gone through pay equity three times at the city. I did not negotiate the first time because the way that pay equity was explained to me implied there was not room for negotiation. And after I had that experience the second and third time, I definitely did talk about it. And, you know, I was able to in that situation because I then became a manager and I was hiring other people and having to ask, can they do this? And learned, oh, wait, I'm the one who missed the boat, right? And so I agree with you completely that that the frankly, I would have had more leverage that first time when I wasn't yet a city employee. I got it the other two times when my role changed. But I also think it's worth assessing that and feel free to disaggregate that to the degree that your capacity allows for higher level positions versus lower level non rep non-management positions, though I know there's not as many of those right now, but I will say that the job because you mentioned categories or factors that are different between different jobs. In this particular case it was the same job. If anything the job got harder because we had to convey to somebody they weren't the first choice. But even if we assume it's the same job, then what we're I think then we're back to councilor Novick question, which is there was an evaluation of these two candidates experience, and that was the part that wasn't the same. So I would I would be asking this question in a general sense of. How we evaluated the experience. And I don't want to do that in public necessarily, but I will say 18 years at the at a comparably sized fire department consecutively does appear to me to be a very good level of experience. And so I'd love to kind of dig into that. But also I would suggest for future reference, having a fail safe, which is if it necessary to avoid this, the ability to bump the 3% back up and make it an equal, equal offer. And I think that might require an administrative rule change for future reference. I don't know if that's possible for this one, but I would suggest that going forward as a as a fail safe. Thanks.
36 Was it jordan? I totally understand that you've got the best leverage when you know that they want you. And so I can certainly expect people to negotiate at that point. Is it unusual for somebody to accept a job and then come back afterwards and ask for more, or is that fairly common? I mean, I personally maybe it's just my medieval code of honor, but I can't imagine accepting a job and then coming back a few days later and saying, you know what, I need another $12,000. But maybe that's just me.
37 I share your code, but it's not, I would say unusual, but not unheard of for someone to come back and say, well, I didn't consider an issue that I need to consider or I didn't know about something and now I do. That's that's unusual. But again, not unheard of that someone would say my circumstance either has changed or I didn't understand completely my circumstance. I think that's what happened in this case. And so again, yes, unusual, not not unheard of.
38 You might not feel comfortable talking about in detail about this situation, but. To me, the fact that he was going to be maintaining two households was something that he already knew and presumably discussed with his wife before. So just the way it came across in the paper is like, oh, by the way, I suddenly realized we're maintaining two households that just.
39 I think my understanding in this situation. And you're right, I don't feel comfortable talking about it in great detail, but I think there was a time element there that made a difference.
40 Okay. And what about the saudi government thing? Is that something we just I mean, we, we don't think about? I mean, it might be a rather unique circumstance, but does it make any sense to think about who people have worked for before and how that fits into Portland values?
41 That's a good question. Councilor. You know, I think it does make a difference. I think it's an extreme. I have not run into a situation that I can recall where the employee, the previous employer, was somebody who, you know, it was it was so egregious that that you said you you disqualified a candidate out of hand. I think there's a discussion about previous employers and employment, and you can ask questions about their resume and those kinds of things are legitimate. We are, you know, kind of constrained to the job and what the job is and the nature of the job to ask too many questions about you can't go too far astray in your questioning of candidates. But I do think you make a fair point that that if you're trying to consider the candidate as a whole and their whole body of work, I think those are fair things to look at.
42 On this more general question on the three positions that we either are or might be looking at in the near future. Psr, ovp or and depending on where mr. Casey lands, either dca or boec. Would you feel comfortable just sort of sharing? What are some of the specific considerations that you might have for each of those jobs, like where? Where the approach might vary from one to the other?
43 I might let bob talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I'm happy to. Psr yeah, jump into the jobs. I won't be the hiring manager for those, but I can make some philosophical statements. But I think bob is probably closer to those. For the record, I'm.
44 Bob cozzie I interim dca for public safety and this is a great conversation. I'm enjoying it. You know, backing up a little bit, I was on the first panel for the fire chief interviews and I, you know, I signed a non-disclosure statement. I'm not going to talk about that. But when I think about the process early on, it was an honor to be on that panel and to be able to see the caliber of all of the candidates that were invited. Now, fast forward to my position now, and my responsibility is to make sure that we conduct a solid recruitment process for the ovp director and the psr director before director howard took. She's on vacation right now, but she sent me a memo before she left with kind of an outline of how she's envisioning this. And really, there's a multi-stage process that she has outlined that I'd like to go over with you right now. The first is, of course, starting the process with hr, which has begun. We're hoping to get a position posted by the end of this month for the ovp director position. In director howard's mind, she'd like to focus on that first, get through that, and then focus on the psr director. So the first step is getting that recruitment posted. And her desire is to keep it open for about six weeks so that we have plenty of time to bring in as many candidates as possible. She wants to establish a hiring committee, and included in that committee would be two representatives from ovp, a representative from ceasefire to community representatives, representative from our and a representative from the public safety service area enterprise services team, in addition to director howard being on that panel, she also recommends a representative from Portland police bureau. And then before even bringing candidates into a conversation, she wants to the hiring committee to establish a criteria for what we're really looking for in an ovp director. Following that, then the committee would run recruitment, review all the applications, pare it down, and then conduct interviews as as a committee, basically a panel interview. Now, I'm not sure if we want to split, because that's a lot of people in a panel and that's really intimidating. Do we want to look at that? And I haven't had this conversation with her. These are just questions that are going through my mind as I read through the memo is, do we want to split that group up into two different groups, maybe have one side of it, create the criteria, the other side, review the applications, and then the first side conduct the interviews. There's a lot of different ways to make that happen. But then at that point with the finalists, after the interviews, conduct a town hall or a public forum type event. And that's really where we would welcome your insights. Councilors, because the concept that she has is perhaps the community and public safety committee could co-host that event and bring in people to interact with the final 2 or 3 candidates and then provide input to me. Now, you know, when I look at the types of input that I'm looking for, I want to listen to the leadership within the service area, and I want to listen to the community voices. And sometimes they are conflicting, perhaps even so. Then, you know, it's up to me at that point to make a decision on how much does each of these weigh and what are we really looking for? I'm going to be relying a lot on the criteria that's established by that hiring committee, knowing that there's a lot of expertise within that group, and then taking that criteria to make a final determination. Similarly, then so, you know, the idea best laid plans sometimes, but hopefully this will pan out where we're able to get this position filled maybe by the end of September, October time frame and then begin the recruitment process for psr director, same kind of time frame. So we're looking at a similar process and then hopefully onboarding the psr director December January time frame.
45 When you say a town hall, are you thinking about something that will be open to the general public or just invited folks?
46 Yeah. What she had written here is hosting a public forum or town hall to introduce the top 2 or 3 candidates to the community and observe their ability to engage with the community. The committee would score candidates on their performance in that environment. And again, based on the predetermined objective criteria that has been established.
47 That strikes me as both a good thing and b something that might be scary to prospective applicants. I mean, is that something that happens fairly often for positions like this?
48 We're trying to scare them? No, it's a fair question. I just I would say a forum open to the general public is rare. I don't think I've seen one open to the general public. Usually it's an invited group of stakeholders that you want to be able to give input, and you actually are trying to create an environment where a person has to perform in a stressful environment and be kind of fast on their feet and be able to react to questions. And in these leadership roles, I think that's a fair thing for people to have to be able to do. You know the rote answer that you get quite often when you give a standard set of interview questions, you know, quite frankly, can be pretty boring, actually. And it's hard to differentiate candidates. And depending on what you're looking for, creating these kinds of environments where people have to first of all, they are a bit stressful and these jobs are a bit stressful. And then secondly, we want people who can think on in real time and synthesize answers in real time and understand the dynamics in the community. So I think it's a it'll be a very interesting environment for people.
49 Councilor Kanal first, thanks for bearing with me as I shifted seats here. I was in the wrong seat. Secondly, yeah, I that actually seems like a very good process as it relates to ovp specifically when the city was in the process of, jointly with the federal government choosing a independent monitor under the settlement agreement, they did a public town hall co-hosted by pccep with the three top candidates, which I think was a really successful process and pretty clearly established a top two. I think there was probably a soft preference for the person that that did end up getting chosen over the number two as well, but there was a pretty big gap between the top two and number three, and it was basically that reason as who could who could, you know, handle it. And with a little experience as it relates to ovp, I can say that's that's maybe even more important in the broader public for that particular agency and role. So I'm I'm broadly supportive of it, my concern around it, and I'll have different questions on psr is the timing, because on January 9th, I was told in this chamber by leadership of the division of community safety that we'd have a recruitment started by March 31st. In April. I asked again in this chamber in public, and I was told it was it was in progress and that it would get posted soon. It's now nearing the end of July and the there is no program manager, there's not a posting going up. And, you know, I've been told before, this is going to happen in the future. So I have to, you know, follow up here and say, and I know it's with hr now that the posting is there, I have heard that. So I'm excited about it. But my question is effectively and I'm adapting based on the information you just gave us, which I appreciate greatly. What should we be doing to follow up with the division of community safety to ensure that this position, which I believe has been vacant for a year and a half at this point, a year at least. Yeah, is filled because I can say there are multiple communities that I speak to who are. This is one of the most important parts of the city to them, and one of the most visible parts of the city to them. And I also think for those who believe that prevention is a really important thing to do for violence prevention, as I know all of us here today do, including yourselves, I want to make that very clear. I'm just curious, how should we be following up to ensure that that timeline is met? I recognize that that started before you were interim dca, and I've. I know you're a very timely person, so yeah.
50 Yeah. You know I track you know, for anyone who wants to geek out on my systems, I meet weekly with all of my direct reports and they all have their project work. And we go through the list every week, and I ask for a weekly update. And, you know, this recruitment, if it really is open for six weeks, I'm not going to require an update unless they happen to have numbers, because we do get updates from time to time from bhr, you know, how many applicants do we have at this point? Is there something do we need to pivot in this moment? And I'm speaking from my experience at boec primarily. But in that particular case, I would track it and want some kind of an update on how many candidates we're getting. If there's anywhere that we need to focus on outreach. And through that six week recruitment period, then get the final numbers. And I'm more than happy to share that with anyone. You know, I meet with with all of the councilors and certainly all of you on a regular basis. All of you have me on your calendar and I'm more than happy to provide any updates that you have and answer any questions in the moment.
51 And then I guess the follow up is, does the division of community safety have the capacity it needs to be successful? I know we have a person who is splitting time there with other parts of a role that is not in the division. We have an interim in Portland street response. We have two folks splitting the role on an interim basis. As far as I'm aware, that's the last I heard in ovp. So I'm is there a capacity issues that we can help with at city council, either through clarifying, you know, direction and roles or through budgeting authority?
52 Yeah, I appreciate that. One of the first tasks that I have planned, I'm going to be on vacation for a little bit next week and into this week and early next week. And when I come back, all of my executive team's going to be back, and we're going to be taking a look at the overall structure for the service area and where all of these, these pieces land and determine where the gaps really are, because I believe there are gaps. I just don't know what to ask for at this point.
53 That's that's perfectly fair. And I appreciate that.
54 Councilor, you can ask almost any division in this entire city and you will they will tell you they have a capacity problem.
55 So yeah, I guess.
56 It varies from place to place, but you'll get that answer no matter where you ask.
57 And I would love to hear that. There's a at some point, 100% of fte devoted to leading that division, that that would be my goal. Agreed. I have questions related to psr, but I want to I don't want to take up too much time. So. Okay, no hands up. So I will go. I think you've answered the first question, which is does it remain a priority to fill the ovp position first? So I'm going to instead react to the second thing you mentioned about dca, about the process. That timeline makes sense. You said it would be very similar on timeline and process. The only thing I'd say two things on this the remainder the committee. I would encourage you to lean on the in the process of being formed. Portland street response committee for that side of it. And I would also caution on the optics as it relates to having it. I think it makes sense to have PPB involved in the ovp selection, but on the psr side of it, it might pose a slightly different optics issue with the community to have that direct involvement. And again, I want to be supportive of their involvement for ovp. And I guess that's more of a comment than a question, but I want to give you the chance to react to that if you wanted to.
58 I honestly can appreciate that I wouldn't vision this hiring committee to be identical for the psr committee, that it would be massaged into something that's more specific to what psr needs would be.
59 Thank you.
60 Councilor Morillo do you have any questions?
61 I don't have a lot of questions here. I think overall, what I've heard, I think the community engagement process for these positions is going to be really critical, and I'm glad that we're doing that, even if it's new and we're doing it for the first time. These are positions that require so much community trust that it's okay for us to have some public engagement and conflict, and I'm glad that we're doing that and that we can see how people react to those positions. I would say that those of us up here kind of went through a sort of public engagement interview process of sorts to have this job. So it's okay for some of our higher level folks at the city to do the same. And I would echo councilor Nils statements as well, that I think that for Portland street response, especially, making sure that we have an interview process for someone who obviously will be able to coordinate with police when necessary, but that is distinctly separate, so that the community knows that when psr is being created and who's at the helm of that is going to be a non-armed, non-police response that will be really critical, I think, from an optics perspective, but also just from a material perspective of what type of person we hire into that position. So, yeah, I, I don't have much more to add on this. I appreciate your patience and time here as we go through this and answer some of those questions.
62 And I really appreciate your willingness to come here and engage in this discussion. And even though one could argue that we're sort of intervening in the province of the executive. So thank you very much just for being here and for your answers. And we look forward to working you as we fill these other important positions. So thank you very much.
63 Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you.
64 Diego, could you read the next item.
65 Item two legislative updates for public safety service area. Thank you.
66 All right.
67 So we have mr. Chase and miss mitchell here to tell us what terrible things the legislature did in public safety.
68 Pulling up a presentation. I'll kick things off again. For the record, bob cozzie interim deputy city administrator. And we had this legislative update provided to the public safety service area and thought that this was really good information to share across the board. Most of this obviously focuses on public safety legislation, but. You know, just with that disclaimer, I think that my colleagues can take it from here. Director chase.
69 Well, thank you so much for giving us some time to share results from the legislative session around community and public safety work, and want to just share with you that, you know, while the 2025 session was overshadowed by the last minute collapse of the transportation package package, progress was made in a few key areas, especially related to shelter capacity, housing, and behavioral health. Today, we will focus on items from the city legislative agenda that impact community safety directly. These include housing, shelter, behavioral health, law enforcement, and livability. And due to the disappointing may revenue forecast, many of the ambitious proposals that we were hoping to achieve more on were scaled back or left on the table. These we have these were the city's top priorities. We saw positive movement on most the water filtration bill. We withdrew and that was in light of the luba process and the timing of that process. And we have good news that that was application was approved. And as a reminder, here are the items that were included in our community safety agenda. And we will share more about how those tie in to some of the other issues that we've worked on. And I'm going to turn it over to evan to really walk through some of the achievements. But I guess I just want to just re-emphasize again, we got some unfortunate news in this legislative session, but there really were some significant wins. And if we weren't at the table and this council wasn't really active in being engaged in that work, if we weren't working as a unified team as well as we were, and we really did a great job on that as a city, I, you know, would, would, would grade that. And, and folks from around the state say, how did you get all this? And so, you know, there's, there's there is a lot that did not happen. And there are some really, really critical needs that is not to take away from those things that didn't happen. But I just want to recognize the work of this council and the work of the state team and getting a lot of achievements under our belt.
70 Thank you. Thanks for having us today. Evan mitchell. For the record, my name is evan mitchell. I'm the state relations manager. Our next slide. We really felt like we couldn't talk about community safety without talking about some of the housing and homelessness related work that we were doing. So we wanted to start with that. And really, I think the shelter space was where we saw our biggest win this session. We went into session working with a coalition from around the state to secure a new program that would create a funding framework for how to fund shelter statewide. We were successful in getting that framework set up, and we were successful in getting about 96% of our request funded. So they ultimately put 204 million in that fund. Of the 218 that we requested, we will be working with from here on out, the state housing agency to ensure that that that we draw down 26 million for the biennium for the tasb sites or temporary alternative shelter sites and safe rest villages. We feel very good that that money is coming. That's going to help sustain those beds that we've set up over the last handful of years. On the flip side, you know, they did end up reducing some of the short and long term rent assistance that has come in in recent years and have allocated about 135 million total statewide. That is going to be a loss for our community. It's going to hurt us. But ultimately, the governor and the legislature were asked to make a choice about where they put these dollars, and they allocated them towards shelter, which will benefit the city. On the housing front, there was a ton of progress made. I think the most significant one is they continued to put about a half $1 billion towards the lift, affordable rental housing and homeownership programs statewide, those that revenue is crucial to getting new housing developed. We also were successful in getting a new housing infrastructure fund set up for particularly local governments. That fund was ultimately only given about $10 million, which won't go very far with housing projects. But at least the fund is in place and we can go continue to advocate for more funding to be put in it. We saw local investments in omsi 5 million was allocated to their infrastructure, work for their development there. And then we've also received land from ODOT to continue their redevelopment work. And then the tenant protection. I could have given like a whole 20 minute presentation on the tenant protection work. There was a tremendous amount that got done this session that the city was very supportive of, and this session was also a big one around utility affordability. And the legislature made quite a few improvements to the process to try to hold utility companies more accountable for how they're tracking the tracking energy uses, and then making sure that data centers and big users are the ones that are paying for it, not the regular consumer. Next we will go to. 4002. So I think you all probably remember hb 4002 was was passed in 2024 as a reform to ballot measure 110. The city was very involved in that effort and had a lot of conversations as that work was taking place going forward. What was really important to us was that they maintain the funding for the deflection program. And while that funding doesn't come directly to the city, it goes to the county. It's really important so that our police officers have a resource in order to support, as they're engaging with people who are using drugs in public to be able to offer them deflection services. Really happy to report that the full amount that was requested was funded statewide. So the county will be receiving that money. And then there were other things that got passed the session. One I'd highlight is sb 236, which separates the possession and delivery and manufacture of fentanyl into different statutes, which will sort of clarify, clarify some of the legal framework around those laws. I also wanted to highlight that there were some pretty big reforms within cjc. The around their grant programs. They have dozens of grant programs and they ended up consolidating them under just two big programs. And they're going to be establishing eligibility and criteria for those. And then rules around those, which will obviously be watching as we have benefited from some of these funds over time. Next up, we've got behavioral health. Behavioral health has long been an agenda item for the city. Even though we don't deliver behavioral health services. It's an it's an item that is really important to a number of our community safety related programs. We did not directly work on hb 2005. It was a behavioral health omnibus that really focused in on aid and assist and civil commitment reforms. But we did monitor it because of the importance of understanding its implications for the city. Ultimately, the bill, I think ultimately the bill did a lot of things, but one of the big ones was in the civil commitment process. It removed the imminent danger standard, which the proponents for this said was one of the biggest barriers to getting help for people if they aren't imminently, as in right now, immediately at risk to themselves or others. And so it should help judges be able to start the civil commitment process a little bit easier. They also put a number of changes in the bill. Procedural changes around voluntary pre-hearing treatment diversion, so that counselors and others can try to divert folks from the civil commitment process on a voluntary basis. And then there was also work done around the length of stay of defendants who were involved in the criminal justice system. We also and this was an area where the city advocated, was we're constantly advocating for more money for behavioral health facilities. And we saw some this session as inasmuch as they've done in years past. But the economic reality, you know, they had to decide where to allocate funding. So statewide, we'll see 65 million for new residential treatment facilities. And there's also an ongoing effort to try to figure out how we deal with workforce capacity, because that is such a challenge. In the behavioral health space, 5 million is not a lot, but it's a start to get a grant program set up and moving things forward. Next up.
71 Can I just ask a question about the connection between the imminent danger standard and the capacity we have? I mean, sort of the cynical reaction might be, okay, we can now it's now easier to do civil commitments, but is there any place for people to go? Do we think that there will actually be instances where there's civil commitments that are made under the new rules, where there will be places for people to go?
72 You hit on the legislative debate that's been happening for the last decade, you know, do we change? Do we wait until we have the capacity to change these laws? Do we change the laws first? One item within that bill that I didn't point out was that the city has been active in is super sighting for residential treatment facilities. Right? Right. Now there's a number of barriers to getting residential treatment facilities set up in residential areas. And essentially what the legislature said was local governments, you need to do this. You need to set up more residential treatment facilities. And so that's not going to magically overnight open a bunch of treatment facilities that don't have the, you know, money to get constructed or staff, but it will help ease some of the barrier to, to increasing capacity is going to be an issue that folks are are managing and talking about for a long time. So I don't have a great answer for that. Yep. Next slide. This was an issue c.e.hubb was something we know this council cares a great deal about, and our community does our. I would say our community did an amazing job coming to Salem showing up for this issue. Council president pirtle-guiney came down and testified with legislators, with community members, and we got all the bills that we wanted passed out of committee. And they all went to ways and means, and then they all never emerged. So and, you know, this was part of the we don't have enough money. There is also sort of this, this ongoing conversation in the legislature about how could we possibly solve a problem this extreme. I think this is an area where we will continue to have an opportunity to provide leadership and tell them what we need done, how we need it done. The bill that I was particularly impressed with, that I thought would be important to highlight for you all was hb 2949, which started out as just a study. But over the course of session, representative tony tran and several other legislators were able to negotiate so that that would have actually establish wristband requirements for fuel terminal operators, which would have set a standard statewide for fuel terminal fuel terminal operators to carry insurance or risk bonds so that they could actually cover the environmental and other damages if there was an emergency. That took a lot of work, that was a lot of negotiation, and I hope that that's a starting place for the discussion going forward. As the legislature continues to work on this. Moving on to another set of agenda items. Over the last couple of years, we've been working really closely with dps, the department of public safety standards, and training around their capacity for the their police academy. And in 2023, they had a massive backlog which was keeping folks recruits from getting into the field quickly. And so in pbb and others worked with dps to come up with a plan to reduce the backlog. We all advocated for $13 million to help support that new kind of reformed way of delivering the police academy, and it worked. Within the biennium, the backlog was completely eliminated. So going back to going in this session, what was really important to us was not losing that progress. Don't go back to the way it used to be, even though it was cheaper, because then we'd end up with the backlog all over again. So we were able to maintain that additional funding and structure so that hopefully the police training academy doesn't experience that backlog. Another item that the city supported was around the recognition of previous experience. When people are seeking certification. And then the third item I wanted to bring up here was not something that was on our agenda, but was one of the bills that kind of came up as we were dealing with a large set of bills that we were reviewing, and that one was around the use of drones by law enforcement. That bill ultimately passed. The senate failed in the house. And I would flag that this one came up and sort of the usual way that we manage bills, we send all of our bills out to the various bureaus. They review them and tell us what they think the priority level should be. So sometimes there are bills that they think are very, very low priority. This was identified as both from locke and from the police bureau as something that would enhance capacity. This is definitely one that I think we'll all need to talk about more to understand kind of your direction as a council and how you all want us to proceed, because this is, I think, one of the few bills where we didn't actually achieve alignment with with the entirety of council. And so we'll need to continue to discuss that going on to the next issue. Gun violence prevention. I think we saw some really positive progress and some really sad, you know, kind of defeats in this space. On the positive side, we've been working for about ten years to get the local authority to regulate whether or not people can carry firearms in public buildings. And after ten years, we were finally able to mostly get that. The legislature changed the text a little bit. So it's a places where official meetings take place. But, you know, that's this building. That's the Portland building. We could probably say that that's community centers, you know. So I think it gives us a lot of latitude. The one thing about this bill that I will flag is that it does require an act by council. So you would need to establish an ordinance in order to have this take effect. And then the only requirement is that we'd have to post signage somewhere near the front of the building to tell to communicate that firearms are not allowed. The other bill I wanted to bring up that we were very supportive of. Oregon is one of the few states that doesn't currently do gun dealer licensing, and stakeholders have been working on this for years. It always comes down to money. It came down to money this time around as well. The legislature didn't allocate the funds that were necessary to set up and run a new program. We made the most progress I've seen in a long time on this particular bill. We made it all the way to the last week of session, where there was a hearing on this bill in ways and means. We thought that that meant that it was actually going to make it, but ultimately they just couldn't figure out how to fund the program. And then my last slide is focused on livability in a broad sort of way. This is an item that historically our our mayor's office has been really keen on and asked us to really highlight. We've been working for the last several years with ODOT to make sure that they're really investing in graffiti, litter and managing encampments in really dangerous places and their right of ways on on the state highways. We seem to have convinced them that they should double their funding in region one for managing the right of ways, but it was dependent on the transportation package. And so when the transportation package fell apart, so did the funding for that maintenance. So they will still be doing some cleanup of their right of ways, but it will be significantly limited until some sort of new funding is adopted. The same thing happened with our abandoned rv fund. We've been working for a couple of years to get a new registration fee for rv purchases set up to help fund the cleanup of abandoned rvs, and this bill was ultimately combined into the transportation package because they didn't want to ask the legislature to make a number of new revenue votes. And so when the transportation package failed, this one failed. And then the last one that I wanted to point out that, you know, I think is a really nice example of partnership. When mayor wheeler was in office, he was very keen on seeking some kind of bottle bill moratorium for the city because of constituent and retailer concerns about people congregating in and around grocery stores, convenience stores and redemption centers throughout the community. It was a very clear the legislature had absolutely no appetite for that. And so we worked with the grocers, the beverage cooperative, to try to find some other kind of pathway forward. And with the help of the people's depot, which operates under the morrison bridge, we came up with a new model that hopefully will help sort of divert some of the folks that the retailers are complaining about and neighbors are complaining about to the people's depot. They would have their own sort of alternative redemption center. It's not it doesn't have to be as large as the traditional traditional redemption center. And so they could take on some of that capacity and help alleviate some of the constituent complaints that we've gotten around this issue that is being implemented now. So we will see how successful it is. It's one, you know, organization setting up one facility. So it's not going to solve every problem throughout the community. But it felt like a positive way that we could benefit the people's depot, which is ready to expand and ready to operate in a brick and mortar and try to find some positive relief for retailers without trying to hurt the bottle bill, because that having access to recycling is still really important for our community. So with that, I think we want to leave time for questions and discussion and happy to take it from there.
73 I thank you and write one last note that wasn't in our talking points here, but I just want to emphasize the process that we went through this year, which was really kind of an unusual one, which is transferring sort of from working with one council to a very, you know, different structure and different council, and having our team go into a session where there was more than 3000 bills introduced, and looking at those and identifying those and identifying where they align with the city values and priorities. And, and so I, I said to our team, we are not going to get into the process of how we're going to go about doing this in the future until after July 1st, because we want you to just really focus on the session and getting it right. Of course, here we are July 1st. And so recognizing that, you know, we're really looking forward to working with council and the city to really take lessons learned during this session from past processes and, and finding that balance around how do we get clarity around city priorities that we can go tell our team, hey, get this done. And as bills are coming up, we have a filter. We have a very strong understanding of those priorities. And so that's just continued work that we look forward to. Also noting that the governor declared a special session for August 29th. So that's fresh news. And we will, of course, have a short session a few months after that.
74 Councilor Morillo.
75 Thank you, chair. Thank you all so much for all the hard work you do. I certainly do not envy the position that you are in, with all of us coming in in January and then having zero time before the legislative session started to get a wide variety of perspectives, as we now have on council. So just acknowledging that you are in a very difficult position, don't envy it at all. And I think that you did an incredible job given all of the pressure and timing of that. So thank you for all of your hard work. I had a few questions and then some comments on some of the bills that came up. I had a question on the increased law enforcement capacity. If you could clarify a little bit about what that means, and then if you could highlight, like, I don't know, three of the top renter protection things that came up during the legislative session?
76 Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the question. So you law enforcement capacity, I think what I meant by that on the slide was really around the police training and ensuring that we could keep that process flowing. Also allowing people with certification from other places to come in and have their their experience recognized will help us from a capacity standpoint. Beyond that, we really didn't engage other than supporting sort of broader budget. And then chief day also came down and supported the Oregon state police budget and talked about that partnership and how it benefited Portland with the governor's, you know, allocation of resources to help with missions in the downtown area, particularly after the Portland central city task force that she convened. So beyond that, there not any specific bills I would point to other than also the drone bill, which I imagine we all want to discuss more.
77 Okay. No worries. Sorry, I know I had strong feelings about it, so I promise I'm not going to rake you across the coals here. I had strong feelings about the bill, not about you. Renter protections. Were there any big highlights that you want to?
78 Yeah, I know that. I'm going to forget some of them, but I have a whole slide that I can send you that has about 20 listed on them, a handful of them that immediately come to mind. There was a bill that made sure that landlords can't require people to have electronic devices, cell phones, in order to access their their buildings. We also extended some of the tax credits that are used to build affordable housing, and more will come to me when I'm not on the spot, but happy to follow up with the full list of items that we were tracking.
79 Yeah, no worries.
80 One one was a 90 day. If you're given a 90 day notice as a tenant, you are able to move out of that property sooner. You don't have to stay committed to those 90 days.
81 Gotcha. So you can within 30 days give notice and move out. If a landlord is saying that you have 90 day notice.
82 Okay, awesome. Thank you. I just I am always interested in tenant law. So yeah look forward to getting that slide. But sorry to put you on the spot. That's okay. Last minute. And then as far as some comments I have, I think I really appreciate how you guys worked with the people's depot to come up with some creative solutions there. I think that's a true testament to the work that your team is doing. And so I just appreciate that very much. And just to have it on the record, I got to make a comment about the drone bill. And again, not reflective of anything you guys have done at all. I just think that at this time, I hope that in the coming legislative sessions and, you know, if me and Steve are still here after reelection next year and we have these discussions, I have a lot of wariness around any expansion of the surveillance tools of the state, especially at this time. Right now, I think overall, in general, the state shouldn't be able to surveil people to this degree. But we know that law enforcement is not always compliant of the regulations that are set with the surveillance tools that they have, even if they're well intentioned. Like, I know they were meant for natural disasters and things like that, but there were a lot of questions around the data storage, how long they get to keep the footage, who's actually seeing the footage, all of those types of things. And especially at a time where our federal government looks the way that it does and immigrants are being surveilled at such a heavy level where we know ice is tracking people's license plates using their own surveillance tools, we want to make sure that that's being kept at a minimum. And I think that as legislators overall, I would caution against us expanding the government surveillance state as a tools, as a means towards public safety. I think that public safety means that we're going to have to actually address people's community needs first and foremost, and that we can't just get our way out of this by continuing to surveil each other more and more. So I'm sure you got a variety of comments about that bill from different councilors, and I hope that in the future we'll be in more alignment on this. But I know for a lot of community advocates who were fighting some of that government overreach and expansion, it was frustrating that they they felt like they had to fight their progressive allies as well on some of that, when they really needed their efforts to be directed towards other, frankly, more heinous bills. And so I want to make sure that we're. Keeping our agitation of those community advocates to a minimum in the future, but just stating out my values for future reference when we go into the next session. Thanks.
83 Councilor Kanal.
84 Thank you chair Novick. Thank you all for being here. Director chase evan. Thank you. You are also one of the unsung heroes of our local government and your team in Salem as well, and deserve that recognition. I'm grateful that you're here. I have three, four questions, and I'll keep the drone thing until the end. So under wins in the shelter and housing list includes getting $204 million in shelter funding. This is statewide, but losing $135 million in rent assistance, which is measurably more effective dollar for dollar. And I'm concerned that the evictions that will result from less rent assistance will be more than the $204 million in shelter funding can deal with, not to mention the trauma associated with eviction and all that. This is something that was mirrored in our local budget. We had a 66 amendment that failed with 66 to try and restore 400 something thousand dollars of rent assistance that was otherwise going to go into the impact reduction program. How was the city's prioritization of shelter funding over rent assistance decided upon? And I'm making an assumption there, and I know that. But it was described as a win, and that's my basis for making the assumption.
85 I'll I'll start with that one, which is that I think there has been a lot of effort around creating shelter. And so we have been that is associated with really a direct line of business for the city. And so shelter has been a priority in terms of keeping the temporary alternative shelter sites up and operating. If they weren't to get funded, there would be shutting down and evictions there. It was not. It was not a choice for us. But picking between the two, we think, as you know, we just continued. We did stay very focused on that shelter. It was listed in our in our top priorities in our documentation. And so, you know, we felt compelled to really continue to make that case with the governor, with the legislature. You know, I think that the governor was in a and so then there were these these buckets with the evictions and shelter. And so decisions were made within the legislature to cut back. And they went through their own process about determining which of those buckets got funded or not. And I think the governor was heavily involved in those conversations.
86 I would also add that on the, you know, this is always a challenge for us. And we did try to advocate in whenever there was the opportunity, including in the budget and later in session, that it can't be an either or. It should be a yes and but ultimately resource allocation decisions had to be made. And that is how the governor and legislative leadership decided to come down.
87 And I would also say we it's really important for us to be working hand in hand with the county because, as I said, this is the city's business is making sure that we're keeping those fundamental programs in place for shelter. But we do work really closely and carefully with the county to collaborate and identify how can we put forward these needs together. And so that is something that we will continue to look for, you know, how do we partner, how do we how do we have joint messaging that we need this package collectively?
88 Okay. Yeah, I think if we're.
89 If we're losing the money that prevents the eviction of 100 people and those 100 people get evicted, and we use that money instead to build 80 more spaces in a shelter, we're going backwards. Those are obviously random numbers, but I just I want to kind of see if we can avoid the legislature linking those two, even if we didn't. And I appreciate the focus on trying to get state funding to alleviate one of the most rapidly growing parts of the city budget, which leads me to increased law enforcement capacity. That phrase also caught my eye. I have no concern with us seeking dollars that we can use to defray the other largest growing part of our city budget, which is the police budget, as well as to ensure support from the state police and other partners like the county 3069. The rest of the 4002 implementation list, 5032 and 2183. All those were great. And I in particular want to congratulate you on house bill 243 and I'm, I know I was involved in this process last year. I remember that, and I would be happy. My office would be happy to work with you on an implementing ordinance. I'd like to volunteer that, but I also know other councilors are interested as well. However, I would love to see more specificity on that phrasing because when I heard it, I thought it could mean money or it could mean empowerments. I didn't even conceive of the dpsst interpretation of that phrase. So just a little bit more for our own heart rates. If not, other folks would be appreciated. And I'll pause after this third one. Can you speak to house bill 2749 about the columbia boulevard bridge that wasn't on the cei slide, but it's particularly important in that context and for my district. So I testified in support of it. Would love to hear more on that one.
90 Yeah. Thank you for the question. So that was there were a handful of bills that one included, and one around powell boulevard that we as a city didn't take a direct position on, but we elevated for councilors that represented those areas. Our concern and whether we were right or wrong, you know, not sure, but our concern was we didn't want to in advocating for the transportation package. We didn't want to go down the route of the city pushing for specific projects, because we were trying to get this transportation package focused on operations and maintenance, safety improvements, kind of the suite of things that need regular funding, that particular budget. You know, the sponsor who brought that had a number of funding, asks and was successful in some not successful in others. It would. I'd love to have more conversation with you all about how we tie that to better tie that to the cei hub story that we're telling, because it was brought to us as an item from the transportation world and not elevated in the kind of conversations that we were having about cei. So we didn't tie them together in our messaging. As much as it sounds like we probably could have, I think the other challenge we had with that particular funding ask was it was 5 million to match a federal grant that no one had any confidence would stay in place. And so when the legislature was making decisions about what to fund, we had a this was not the only one that it was an ask and associated with federal matches. And we didn't see any of those funded.
91 Thank you for clarifying that. And I would be happy to work on with you on on how to tell that story, because I think district two folks are, especially those on the north peninsula, are very aware of their own vulnerability in the context of cei, hub and cascadia and all those different things, and have worked on it long enough to be able to say it in two sentences now, which I think for someone like who's maybe not as well versed in the legislature on the issues in north Portland might need a novel, but they can get it down now. So I'll.
92 Pause here chatgpt for that.
93 Now they fair. They didn't need it. But yeah, I can pause here if there's anything you wanted to ask.
94 No.
95 Okay, well then I will go to the drones.
96 I let's go to the drones.
97 Yeah I think. So. I'm grateful it failed. I testified in a personal capacity against it. And I think it's pretty clear to me both that it is a it would be antithetical to the city's core values, which are now no longer in a nonbinding resolution but in our charter and also did not, in fact, protect, did not maintain the protections in ses. 1818.2 50 we have seen the use. I'm waiting for confirmation, but I did ask in public and I think dc, because you were not at the at the dais, but you were in the audience about the use during the April 5th protests of the police planes, pbb planes to surveil the protests downtown, that that was the hands off protest or s1818250 talks about not based on the political beliefs of the people who are being surveilled. I was told by multiple parts of the public safety employee base here that the reason that a plane could not follow a person who is evading police and thus reduce the need for a high speed chase that could endanger law enforcement, the driver, third parties, etc. Is because its flight hours had been used on that protest. So we have seen and this is on April 5th, we have seen that. And this is one of many examples of the use of our surveillance tools in a way that already. So I guess in the sense of maintaining the already not protections, there's that concern. So maybe we're we are maintaining the level of noncompliance with that. But I am concerned about this particular thing and I don't I don't want to see it get mischaracterized here. I also think it's really important that we stand for due process right now. And the use of warrantless use of drones is deeply concerning to me. At a time when we have ice here trying to pass off paper, you know, administrative warrants. Quote unquote, as actual warrants. So I think it's a it was a particularly damaging thing for us. And I want to learn more when we get into the process for how we're not only looking at what is the political situation among the 14 elected officials of the city, but also having an analysis that takes into account the core values of our city, because we know how surveillance is used. It's used on everybody, but not equally on everybody. And I want to just make sure that that enters this space before we circle back to it at a later time. I'll leave it at that. Thanks.
98 If I if I may, co-chair councilor Canal the I think that's a really good example of where, you know, we try to evaluate the and work within the city to evaluate and bring forward the city's policy interests in any given piece of legislation. That is one where, you know, I wish we would have identified that we weren't in alignment earlier and that and we want to look and let's look and see and find places where we can identify things. Earlier, when we did learn that, we pulled back and said, look, we're not in alignment here. And I think that was the right, the right place to land on that. I think that it is an important issue and you make important points. We are, to be super clear, we really hold a principle that we are not policymakers in the office of government relations, and we're depending on the folks who are represented to be the policymakers, and we depend on the service areas and the bureaus to be interpreting that, that policy guidance that that that is coming from the elected bodies. And so and so what I would say is, you know, I think it would be, you know, very valuable for us if there was some vetting and, and a, a what I, what I look for is what do I tell staff to go get done in the legislature. And that's where we really want to push and keep folks doing the hard work internally before we ever go external with a policy position, because and we have to make calls on, on some of those things. Right. That's kind of another element. But when we know there's an issue that would benefit from being vetted and work through, you know, we would absolutely welcome that. And we welcome all the perspectives of council and all your engagement.
99 Thanks. I appreciate the point about not being policymakers. And depending on the folks who are represented to be policymakers. And you mentioned the bureaus as well. I think there's a concern here where there's separation of powers because the bureaus ultimately, as well as yourself, all report to the mayor and the council might have a different view. Obviously, individual councilors will have different views from each other as well. So I think that's a process. Note that should be circled back to, because I don't think that's fully resolved by that response. I also want to recognize that you do a very good job and your team in once you have established what we're going to go do, trying to get it done. The city has a fairly effective, you know, comparably to other cities and counties at at the legislature. And I appreciate that. I will say we were consulted in the training period when we didn't officially have, you know, we weren't in office, but it was in the Portland building during the post-election pre swearing in. And when we were asked if, you know, we were told there was going to be a consensus based structure for determining this. And so it was known because I personally said if there is anything related to surveillance, there will not be consensus. That is, I think, a verbatim quote from that. And I just unless we talk about it. Right. And so I, I had identified that as a particular concern, largely because we already knew the outcome of the federal election, the presidential election at that point. And that was an issue in the previous administration as well. So I think it is a little bit incomplete to say we there wasn't an awareness that that was going to be an issue. Obviously, this bill was not a specific point of conversation, but I do think that's that's something that we should talk about because, you know, and I think the move to service areas is a strong one. I think that's the right approach. I was involved in that last year with with both of you. And I think that is the right call. And I think the policy work being done at the psa in particular, is, is among the stronger ones at the city in terms of getting that togetherness. I think where we have a challenge is where increasing our capacity in the sense of abilities and empowerments might run afoul of our values, especially in light of the fact that there is a smart city report. Owuor has worked on surveillance in the past, and so this was already documented from the bureaucratic side as well, that there was a concern around surveillance. We have banned facial recognition as a city. We have there is not that's not the exact same thing. And I don't want to, you know, but in terms of if you're looking for sources to extrapolate from those exist. And so I do think it's worth, you know, recognizing that. And I want to bring that up because this shouldn't happen again. And if we're if we vote on it, if council votes to say we're, you know, put a drone in everyone's bedroom, put a drone in everyone's bathroom, put a drone in everyone's house, you know, then I understand it because I totally get your point about not wanting to make policy. I certainly hope that doesn't happen and we'll work against it. Thanks.
100 Well.
101 I just want to make sure that I. I want hector and all of his good work to be recognized. They they did flag those reports for us. Unfortunately, it happened after the hearings on the bill and after pb had already acted. And you're right, those reports are documented. I think we have an opportunity with you all now in these areas where we know there is an alignment to figure out, because we do have sort of bring all those different pieces together and say, there's this document, there's this document, there's this policy, there's this chief telling me something, there's this mayor telling me something. And so the way that you all could help us with that is in these areas where there's where there isn't clear alignment is to help us understand what what the vision and hope for council is so that we have a better, better shot at getting it right going forward.
102 Yeah.
103 And since you mentioned it, I want to be very clear. I'm not blaming pb for any of this. That's their job to ask. And then when asked to go by you to testify. And there's no concern on my end on that particular piece of it. But since you mentioned it, did the mayor ask for this to be lobbied on for a yes? For or did were you instructed.
104 To lobby as we when, when we after the testimony from the chief, we flagged that I flagged that at the briefing with council. That was the first communication I had with anybody at the city on it. And then I think that's when your staff identified that you had concerns about this issue. That's when you and I spoke and kind of we said, we'll back off if I want to just say that it's on me, that if I did not track your comments coming into office around the surveillance and really flagging the importance of flagging those surveillance issues to you, I do want to say that in terms of how we're operating right now, and this is up for, you know, review, but I, I, we operate in that. What I say is we try to achieve consensus. We try as hard as we can. We want to do that vetting to get as close to consensus as we can. We do not have consensus on all of the issues necessarily, and I want to just be really clear about that. And we're not we are not trying to hold a standard that there is full consensus on, on our issues.
105 Yeah. I think it's also fair to say that it would probably have been easier to achieve consensus among five people than among 13 now. So I recognize that I'm just going off of what I had, and I just wanted to clarify that. So thank you for clarifying that point. I wasn't earlier concerned about it, but since it was mentioned, I also look forward to working with with you and your team on the process, because I think there are really good parts of the process. The issue sheets process, the service area that I mentioned earlier, and I think we can get to a place where if with time consensus is possible and so may not be achieved, but at least we can talk it through and hopefully get close. Thanks.
106 We love it when we have it. Yeah. Thank you so much.
107 Thank you.
108 I think just I just wanted to add that I think that if we think there's going to be a drone bill next time, personally, I can imagine situations where it would be worthwhile for law enforcement to be able to use drones, but I didn't engage in 238 and I don't know what that discussion was. I cannot resist saying before you go, sam, partly because I like to remind councilor Morillo of all the people I've known since before she was born, I cannot resist saying that. It's amusing to me that the first committee I see you before is the public safety committee, because the first thing I remember, you specifically remember you saying to me in 1994 was, yeah, let's go do some crimes. Which was not that literally.
109 Just for the record.
110 But repo man. That's a nice one to have on the record. Thank you, councilor.
111 That was, by the way, director, sponsored by suggesting that we go get sushi and not pay, which was a reversal of the way the lines appear in the movie. Thank you all very, very much. I'm pleased to be able to give, unless either of my colleagues have anything more to say, and pleased to be able to give everybody back 15 minutes. And this meeting of the community and public safety committee. Well, our next meeting is Tuesday, August 12th. And this meeting, the community public safety committee is adjourned.