The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-04-23

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (22,586 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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I am now calling back to order the world's longest meeting of the Portland city council on to day three. Keelan. Can we please call the roll? Kanal. Here.

Pirtle-guiney. Here. Ryan. Koyama Lane still here? Aye, Morillo here. Novick here. Clark Green here. Zimmerman. Avalos. Smith.

Dunphy here. And can we please read the rules of decorum?

Thank you, council president. 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 on 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 today 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 their name. Thank you.

Thank you very much, colleagues. We have three items today. We are starting with a land use appeal. Can we please read item 11?

Item 11, document 2026-144. Consider appeal by pleasant valley neighborhood association against the hearings. Officers decision to approve with conditions a plan development, land division and environmental review for the creation of 12 single dwelling lots and one multi dwelling lot in the pleasant valley neighborhood. Lu23-003731ldsenpd.

Thank you keelan. So colleagues, first the city attorney will make some announcement about announcements about today's hearing.

Thank you. This is an evidentiary hearing. This means you may submit new evidence to counsel in support of your arguments. Today. We will begin with a staff report by pa d for approximately ten minutes following staff report. City council will hear from interested persons in the following order. The appellant will go first and have ten minutes to present their case following the appellant. Persons who support the appeal will go next. Each person will have three minutes to speak to counsel. Then the principal opponent in this case the applicant will have will have 15 minutes to address, counsel and rebut the appellant's presentation. After the principal opponent, the applicant, the council will hear from persons who oppose the appeal and support the applicant. Again, each person will have three minutes. Finally, the appellant will have five minutes to rebut the presentation of the opponents of the appeal. Counsel may then close the hearing, deliberate and take a tentative vote on the appeal. Council will set a future date for the adoption of findings and a final vote on the appeal. I would like to announce several guidelines for those who will be addressing council today. One any letters or documents you wish to become part of? The record should be given to the council clerk after you testify. Similarly, the original or a copy of any slides, photographs, drawings, maps, videos or other items you show to counsel during your testimony, including powerpoint. Presentations should be given to the council clerk to make sure they become part of the record. Two your testimony must be directed to the approval criteria. Any testimony, arguments, and evidence you present must be directed toward applicable approval criteria for this land use review or other criteria in the city's comprehensive plan or zoning code that you believe applied to the decision. Pb and staff will identify the applicable approval criteria as part of their staff report to council. Three issues must be raised with specificity. You must raise an issue clearly enough to give council and the parties an opportunity to respond to the issue. If you don't, you will be precluded from appealing the issue to the land use board of appeals based on that issue. Fourth, the applicant must identify constitutional challenges to conditions of approval. If the applicant fails to raise constitutional or other issues relating to proposed conditions of approval, with enough specificity to allow council to respond, the applicant will be precluded from bringing an action for damages in circuit court. That concludes our procedural announcements. Thank you.

Thank you very much, colleagues. First, do any members of the council wish to declare a conflict of interest? Pausing and looking around. No. Councilors have declared conflicts of interest. Do any members of the council have ex parte contacts to declare or information gathered outside of this hearing to disclose? I will go ahead and disclose that I attended a pleasant valley neighborhood association happy hour about a month and a half ago or so, at which point I was told that this appeal was happening, but was not told any specific information about it. I did not ask details. We didn't get into the into the specifics of the objection, just simply that the appeal had been filed. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thanks. Some of you know that previously I was a property appraiser for Multnomah county's tax department in a previous life at different times. Some of this area, none of the properties that are in question, but some of this area fell within territory I was regularly a part of. Barbara welch road is not something I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't know of any other connections here, just familiarity with the area. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Any other colleagues have ex parte contact to declare or information gathered outside of this hearing to disclose? Do any council, anyone present in the council chambers wish to ask either councilor Zimmerman or myself about the ex parte contacts or information that has been disclosed? Okay. Have any members of the council made any visits to the site involved in this matter? No. Councilors have visited the site. Okay, now I will call. When we move into testimony. I will be calling for testimony in this following order. First, the staff report which will take about ten minutes. Then the presentation of the appellant about ten minutes. Then the supporters of the appellants three minutes each. Then the presentation from the applicant 15 minutes. Then the supporters of the applicant for three minutes each. And finally, rebuttal from the appellants. Five minutes. Let me go ahead and call up staff report. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. My name is diane. I'm the staff planner for Portland permitting and development as diane hale. For the record assigned to this case, I'm going to do a brief overview of the site and use review proposal and appeal. Next slide. The site is a 10.3 acre vacant parcel in the pleasant valley neighborhood near the southeast border of the city. It is shown in red in the center of this aerial photo. Next slide please. The site is zoned for single dwelling residential development r ten and has environmental conservation and protection overlays and a constrained sites overlay. The site is also in the south sub district of the johnson creek basin plan district. Next slide please. Here are a couple other photos to get you a little more oriented to the site. The blue, Green, and orange colors that you see in this photo are representing environmental overlays. The specific natural resources identified at this site are six and a half acres of forest and contiguous tree canopy, a 1500 square foot wetland, and three headwater tributaries that you can see going off of the image to the left. The proposed development is staying out of these areas for the most part. Next slide please. This photo is taken from southeast 152nd avenue, looking southwest. As you can see here, 152nd is on the east side of the site. And as you can see here, the eastern portion of the site is relatively flat and mostly grass, as you can see there. Next slide please. This photo is looking pretty much directly west, also from 152nd on the east side of the site, you can see the tree line in the distance there. That is about where the environmental zone starts. And again, the proposed development is staying largely on this eastern portion of the site. That's relatively flat and mostly grass and is not encroaching into the zones much at all. Environmental zones. Next slide please. The basic land use development proposal is a land division plan, development review and environmental review. The land division proposal is for 13 lots and four tracks, which are simply separate units of land that are not intended for development. A new public street, bobby drive, is required with the proposal. It will connect the two existing streets abutting the site, and you can see it in the center of the image there, a new private street, ogden court will also be installed to support the development. It abuts 152nd. Next slide please. This image plan shows the entire site. You can see barbara welch road abutting the site at the left side of the image west left. You can also see tract c, which takes up most of the western portion of the site. Track c is an environmental resource tract which will permanently protect that part of the site. No development will be allowed there now or in the future. In terms of the proposed lots, there are 12 single dwelling lots proposed, with up to two dwelling units allowed on each lot. One oversize lot is proposed. That's lot three kind of in the middle of the image we have. That oversize lot is proposed for multi dwelling development that will consist of nine detached units with a shared driveway and a common open area. We have conditions in place through the planned development review to ensure that this multi dwelling development looks like a typical single family neighborhood. It's just technically called multi dwelling development because there will be nine dwelling units on one lot, rather than each unit being on its own lot. The total proposed development site, excluding tract c, is 3.6 acres, with a maximum of 33 total new dwelling units. Part of the basic approach to development on this site is to have lots that are slightly smaller than you would normally see in the r ten zone, and to have development that's a little more closer together than normal, so that the development can be clustered outside of the environmental zones to better protect the resources within those zones. This is a typical approach that we take on sites like this with environmental zoning. The plan development review gives us the flexibility to take this approach so that we can balance development and the housing that we need, with the desire to protect the environmental resources. Next slide please. Moving on to the environmental review. Again, the specific natural resources identified here are six and a half acres of forest and contiguous tree canopy, 1500 square foot wetland, which is in that little bubble at the bottom of the site, and three headwater tributaries. Next slide please. The environmental review was relatively minor. In this case, it was required for five stormwater outfalls that do not meet standards. Removal of 16 trees that are dead or dying, and removing them off of the site, and development that exceeds the maximum setback for lot three, which is that oversize multi dwelling lot. The total proposed permanent disturbance in the environmental zones is 185ft■!s. And the hearings officer approved the proposal with conditions. Next slide please. Moving on to the appeal, the pleasant valley neighborhood association appealed the hearings officer decision based on transportation related concerns. Zoning code, chapter 33641, which is shown here, requires that the city evaluate the proposed development impacts with respect to a number of different factors related to the transportation system. Although developments can fail in one or more area and still be recommended for approval. Safety is one of these evaluation factors. The city requires that applicants include an analysis of crash history and site distance at study intersections through their transportation impact study. Next slide please. The applicant was required to prepare a professional transportation impact study, which I'm going to call a tis. The neighborhood appeal raised concerns about the tis that the tis should have included additional intersections and locations along barbara welch road or other in the close vicinity, and that the city did not adequately consider documented neighborhood safety concerns along southeast barbara welch road and its safety evaluation. Next slide please. This image is from the tis. The site is shown in the hatching and those numbers represent the intersections that were studied. Pbot traffic engineering group approved the scope of the applicant's tis, which analyzed these three intersections. 152nd avenue at evergreen drive, at bybee boulevard and at the south end at barbara welch road. These intersections were chosen because they capture the points at which new streets from the proposed development will intersect the existing streets, as well as the neighborhood's primary connection to the arterial street network at barbara welch road and 152nd. The city did not identify the need to study additional intersections in their review of the tis scope. This is a fairly typical scope for development of this scale, which is expected to generate a modest volume of new trips in terms of traffic impacts. Pbot vehicle trip data from 2022 indicates that there are approximately 1600 to 1700 daily trips on barbara welch road at 152nd, the tis looked at added trips anticipated to be generated by the proposed development, and found that it is expected to add up to 256 weekday trips to barbara welch road. The existing trip volumes are relatively low compared to other similarly classified streets, and the new trips added by the proposed development represents a relatively minor increase over existing traffic volumes. Those trips will spread out over the day across multiple streets and in different directions. So, for example, the peak hour anticipated trip count would be 20 trips heading to and from the development. The tis concluded that there is adequate capacity for new trips without significantly increasing congestion or travel delays. Next slide please. This is an image of barbara welch road. As you can see here, barbara welch road is narrow with minimal pedestrian facilities. There are no sidewalks. While the proposed development has a small amount of frontage on barbara welch road, that frontage is the tract. See environmental resource tract. No development will abut barbara welch road, and a vehicle connection will not connect to barbara welch and it will not be considered in the future because, again, the track c is a permanently protected area. Pbot has received numerous reports regarding safety conditions on barbara welch road through their traffic operations division, and while there were no crashes at the study intersections for this development, ODOT data for the surrounding area shows some collisions further north on barbara welch road. In response to neighborhood input, PBOT undertook a speed and traffic study in 2022 and reduced the speed limit, change signage and made other minor improvements in 2024. Crash data since those improvements were made is not yet available, but PBOT will continue to monitor both ODOT crash data and public comments. Next slide please. The development is making standard required transportation improvements to the site, including connecting to existing public streets with a new roadway and sidewalks. As I mentioned previously, the shared driveway on lot three and the private street will also have sidewalks to support pedestrian movement in the area. The transportation zoning code criteria can require mitigation, but only for impacts that are directly caused by the proposed development itself. With respect to the proposed development, the expected traffic is not expected to alter the existing conditions. I'm barbara welch road in such a way that mitigation would be required. The portions of the road with a history of collisions are nearly a mile from the proposed housing. So to conclude, staff feels that the applicant stis was sufficient in terms of intersection selection and that the site does satisfy the transportation approval criteria for this land use review. While we understand the safety concerns along barbara welch road, those are largely preexisting conditions, which PBOT will continue to try and improve. You could show the next slide if you want. I'm concluding the staff presentation, but these are the three options that are before council. So that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much. We're now going to move to presentation from the appellant.

Good afternoon, council members. My name is jeremy georges. I'm a resident and landowner of on southeast barbara welch road. And I've lived in this corridor for some 36 years. And I'm here today on behalf of the pleasant valley neighborhood association. The appellant in this matter. This appeals about. One question did the city adequately evaluate transportation safety as is required under city code 33.641.020? And what I want to be direct about with this appeal is not it's not about opposition to housing. It's not opposition to development. We're not asking you to deny this project. We are asking, though, whether the required safety analysis was actually performed and whether the findings adequately explain what was evaluated. Now, according to the Portland city code 33.641.020, it requires the city to find that the transportation system is capable of supporting the proposed development. In addition to the existing use. Now, the code lists specific evaluation factors safety, capacity, level of service, connectivity, and neighborhood impacts. The safety is listed as a required and an independent factor. It's not a synonym for level of service, it's its own required element. Now, to meet the transportation approval criteria, the city relied on a transportation impact study, a tis, that was prepared by lancaster mobley, and that study evaluated level of service a key intersections. It found they operate at level of service e or better. It also reviewed the ODOT crash data over a five year period, January 2016 through December 2020, limited to subject intersections as was already discussed. But the crash conclusion was this no reported crashes at the subject intersections during the review period, and on that basis, no mitigation was recommended. Now here's the problem. The tis study. It studied intersections southeast. Barbara welch road the corridor that the majority of the vehicles for this development must use to access the broader transportation system was not a subject intersection. It was not studied. The corridor was not studied. It was not included in the crash analysis at all. And these two things are not the same. A crash study of the site's access intersections is not equal to the safety evaluation of the primary corridor that those intersections feed into. And the findings, they don't explain why the corridor was excluded. They don't explain why intersection only data is sufficient to evaluate the corridor safety. There's simply no discussion of southeast. Barbara welch road in the safety analysis outside that minor intersection. Now, this argument was not raised for the first time today. It is on the record. In fact, in written testimony submitted before February 4th, the hearing, exhibit 25, I stated directly and I quote, by limiting crash analysis to the internal or upper access streets, the transportation impact study and staff report failed to account for real world traffic behavior, where residents service vehicles and emergency responders will necessarily travel along southeast. Barbara welch road and I corresponded with PBOT staff about this corridor crash history. Now for almost 25 years, and multiple residents testified to the corridor safety concerning this at the hearing itself. So how did the decision respond to the argument? Well, the findings state that barbara welch currently operates within the city performance standards. Approximately 1700 average daily trips, improvements or mitigation to barbara welch road is not warranted. Quite candidly, that answer is about capacity, not safety. The testimony raised questions about crash study scope. Those are two different questions and telling us that the road meets adt average daily trip thresholds. That doesn't really explain why the corridor was excluded from the crash analysis. Not the public meeting. At the public hearing, the PBOT representative responded to every safety concern that residents had raised during that meeting with the same answer. It meets loss level of service, a level of service measures vehicle delay. It measures congestion. It evaluates intersection throughput capacity. It does not measure crash risk. It does not evaluate road geometry. It does not examine corridor level conditions. A meeting loss means the intersection won't get gridlock. It does not mean that the corridor is safe. These are different engineering questions, and the code requires that both be addressed. Now, the transportation findings do not explain why southeast barbara welch road was excluded from the crash study, or why intersection only data is sufficient when the project traffic has to take that corridor to ingress and egress out of the developed area. They also do not address how the corridor safety testimony was evaluated or how the November 9th, 2020 crash, which falls within that tis window that was reported to PBOT, including video footage that was shared with them the following day. And yet it would never appear in the ODOT intersection data because it didn't occur at the intersection. The tis had a structural blind spot within its own defined time period. So the legal issue before you is this the city's findings under 33.641.02 are inadequate because they rely on intersection level crash data and level of service capacity metrics, and they do not address the specific written argument in the record that the crash study excluded southeast. Barbara welch road, the primary corridor serving this development. Responding to crash scope argument with a capacity answer is not an adequate finding. The city did not prove the corridor is safe. They proved the intersections are not congested and those are not the same conclusion. So we're asking council for three things and none of them require denying this project. The first is to remand the decision for a corridor level crash and safety analysis of southeast. Barbara welch road. Second, to require findings that explain why the crash study scope is not or is sufficient to satisfy the safety factors being evaluated under 33.641.020, and then third, require that safety be evaluated separately from capacity, not substituted by level of service metrics. This is about. It's about ensuring that the code was properly applied, nothing more. So the hearings officers decision states that the transportation system is capable of safely supporting the proposed development. That conclusion cannot rest on a crash study that never examined the corridor where this project traffic has to travel. The findings do not demonstrate that safety was evaluated, only the capacity was evaluated, and for that reason, we respectfully ask that the council remand this decision and require the city to complete the analysis that the code requires. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We'll next hear from supporters of the appellant. Welcome.

Hi. Thank you for taking time to listen to this today. My name is melanie moon. I'm the chair of the pleasant valley neighborhood association, and I didn't really expect to speak today. So this is just going to come from the heart. In my time as chair of the neighborhood association, I've yet to have anything come up that brought so much comment from neighbors as this, which got my attention. And so I actually went out to the road because I don't live on barbara welch road. I live just down on the on the next dangerous road, which I won't bring up today. So I drove it. I actually drove, driven it twice. Now I went, I went at night, I went in the day I wanted to see, I was appalled, I was appalled at the condition of this road. It is. It is eroding on the banks. Its narrow, it's steep, it's dark, it's twisting. It's a very dangerous road. And because it's steep, often people coming downhill are going faster than what the speed signs say. So. And I think that's human. I mean, I think that's common. So I was quite, quite shocked at the condition of that road. And that's what propelled me to appeal, because I do care about the safety of my neighbors. And I think this is a huge issue of safety. Jeremy didn't mention it, but I think it's in the council packet. There's a lot of photographs of crashes that have happened, including one of our members, son in a motorcycle. And they were not any part of the development approval because that barbara walsh wasn't studied. The corridor wasn't studied, the intersections that were studied. I drove up there too, and it's very quiet. It's there level flat. You saw the grassy area. There's no danger there. It's coming down. Barbara welch road is the issue here. So we're not against the development in any way, shape or form. We need housing. The city must consider the traffic that's coming down this road and the danger to the people on it. So that's that's my piece. And thank you again.

Thank you very much.

That completes testimony for the supporters.

Excellent. Thank you. We'll now hear from a presentation from the applicant. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is sarah. I'm a land use planner with strata land use planning. I'm representing the property owner. I'm here today to present also we have in the council chambers the property owners here as well as our civil engineer and our traffic engineering team. So we're available for any questions that may arise after the presentation. So this site is located at southeast 1/52 and southeast bybee. This is a photo showing looking over the meadow area that's abutting southeast. 1/52 as you've heard previously, the tree line is really where the environmental zoning starts. So the the proposed development is really focused in this meadow area. The site is 10.3 acres. It, which translates to 449,515ft■!. It's a large site. City of Portland, undeveloped lots. It's located in the ten zone. The r ten zone typically averages one unit per 10,000ft■s after subtracting for roads. So it's a it's a fairly low density zone. It has the constrained sites. The overlay, which doesn't impact this site so much, it just limits larger plexes and other development types that might be otherwise allowed in other parts of the city. The environmental conservation zone. I think you can see my my cursor. This is kind of the boundary here of the environmental conservation zone. It starts where the tree line starts. That's the lower level of protection in the environmental zone. And then the environmental or environmental zones, I should say. And then the environmental protection zone covers the higher value resources like the wetland, which is this oval here is the wetland. And then these drainage ways or streams that are here elsewhere on the site. And those have a higher level of protection. The site's also located in the johnson creek basin plan district. That plan district limits density based on the slope of the site. In this case, the calculations turned out to be a maximum of 25 units or 25 lots, I should say, with if duplexes were proposed, that's a total of 50 units. So as you've heard, we are proposing significantly less than that. We are expecting between 21 and 33 units. So definitely not maxing out the density that could be allowed here. I want to talk a little bit about the topography of the site. So the site, as we've heard, is up on 1/52. Has most of the frontage up here on 1/52 there's a small existing stub of southeast 1/51 here that anticipated some kind of continuation of public streets through the site. And then the site does have frontage down here on southeast barbara welch road. The site slopes down from 1/52, pretty much down towards barbara welch road. And from those other maps, you can see that the tributaries kind of run through here of the, the, the stormwater and the drainage ways that run down towards barbara welch. This photo on the left is showing, looking from this red arrow area approximately at the site. And you can see that the site sloped pretty significantly in that area. And as noted, you know, no access is proposed from there, that this is all the environmental tract that's going to be preserved in perpetuity. This light Green shading shows the tract area that will be preserved. And then this this map also shows the the number of trees that are on the site. And the white area is the is the meadow area where we are proposing the development. So in laying out this site and putting together the site plans, it has been a challenging process. There's a lot of constraints on this site and wanting to get the housing in this area and working with the constraints has, has, has been a little bit challenging. So we wanted to talk a little bit about some of those factors that influenced how we ended up with this design. So primarily starting with work, protecting the environmental resource areas, which includes the drainage ways, the wetlands and the forested areas. Again, that's this light Green shaded area here. The result is that 6.77 acres of the site is being preserved in environmental resource tract, not to be developed, not to be disturbed. That's 65% of the site. So it's a it's a huge area. It's a large part of the site. And it kind of squeezes the development, as it were, into the more eastern portion of the site. Also, as we were working out the site layout, we we really wanted to limit the environmental impacts. So some of the, the intrusions into the environmental zone include these five stormwater outfalls and three riprap pads, and then a very, very small 185ft■!s of environmental resource disturbance. Considering the size of the site, 10.7 or 10.3 acres, and the amount of permanent disturbance in the resource area of 185ft■!s is is, I think is very commendable for our team and that we've worked really, really hard to allow development while also protecting environmental resources that have a lot of value to everyone in the city and in the neighborhood. So as we were laying out the site again, we had this public street connection that we had to put in here. So that kind of loops from 1/51 out to 1/52. You know, once you start putting in these wider public streets, then where you're going to carve up the lots kind of around those can be challenging. And so, you know, that was another one of the constraints that we worked with. We also had issues with sewer. The site slopes down from where the sewer lines are. And so we had originally proposed a sewer line running down to barbara welch road, which would have resulted in a lot of disturbance and tree removal in the environmental zone. And so we were discouraged from that path by city staff and and encouraged to keep our development up on the top of the hill and not run, run development down, even if it was just utilities down towards barbara welch. So we ended up being able to, for the most part, send sewer to the public sewer system extension from 1/51 down into this public road, as well as the sewer and 1/52. And then we do have some private private pump systems that pump up to those public lines on lot three and on a couple of these other lots. So that was a success for us to problem solve that problem, still allow development on the site, respect the environmental zone, and then of course, get sewer to to everybody. We also worked very hard to limit the tree removal. There are 374 living trees on the site, and we are removing 12 trees. That's 12 trees that are outside of the environmental zone. Those trees are located here in the white area, the development area. So that's where we're moving 3% of the total trees on the site, again for a 10.3 acre site and removing 12 trees. And none of those trees are like super great trees. They're they're moderate to poor trees. I think it was really a success for our design team and our development team. Stormwater disposal. Originally, we had proposed to send stormwater to these these drainage ways here in the. Again, in the environmental resource area. Again, staff encouraged us to take another look and see if we can limit disturbance into that area. We were able to do that and we ended up resulting in the stormwater outfalls over here by the wetland. So the the stormwater outfalls are consolidated, the disturbance area is limited. And again then we have the 185ft■!s of permanet disturbance in the resource area. And then finally just the topography, you know, working with the topography as it influences sewer and stormwater roads, access, all of these things, you know, just just makes it a little more challenging. So the proposal again, is for 13 lots. The 12 of those lots are for detached homes. And each of those detached home lots could have a duplex on it as allowed by the zoning code. And then this multi dwelling development lot, lot three, which has nine detached homes on it. So the total is between 21 and 33 units. The the average home per gross square footage if we do duplexes is one home per 13,620ft■!s of gross site area. And if we do single family homes, it's one home per 21,405ft■!s of gross site area. So that's looking at the entire site, you know, all of this tract area and kind of averaging out what does that look like? And again, it's a very low density development. We aren't pushing the density as much as we could. In this case. It's very modest development given the size of the site. And again, preserving 65% of the site in environmental resource tract. So the hearings officer decision was to approve the 13 lot subdivision with 21 to 33 units. The plan, development and environmental review, with the conditions of approval to ensure that all requirements were met. And we're here today because that was subsequently appealed based on the safety issues on southeast barbara welch road. So I just wanted to again provide an orientation of what's happening up on this area. So here's the site up here. We've got 1/52 1 or 1 51st is stubbing in here to the north and 1/52 to the east. The intersection that we've talked about is this intersection here, southeast barbara welch road. And that is almost a quarter of a mile from the subject site down 1/52. And then as we go further, the intersection with southeast foster and along this length is another 0.86 miles. So the the area of concern, although it abuts the project site here in this area, is actually quite far from where the development is located and where the vehicles will be coming from. So this photo shows the looking at that intersection that we're talking about. So this is looking up the hill on southeast 1/52 avenue. The development site is up up there, just beyond what you can see here, up towards the top of the hill, and then back behind these trees. Here is where the site continues down to southeast barbara welch road, which kind of loops around here a little bit. This is the signalized intersection where many of the cars would come from, from the development site. So per the land division, there are specific approval criteria that measure everything that allows the development to occur. And the section that has to do with traffic is 33.64, 1.200. And then also referencing the the transportation administrative rule tr n 10.27. As part of that, we have to show that the transportation system is capable of supporting the proposed development. In addition to existing uses, in this case, southeast. Barbara welch road is a neighborhood collector. Neighborhood collectors accommodate 2000 to more than 4000 vehicles per day. Is kind of a more of a standard or guideline for the number of vehicles that can use or use a specific neighborhood collector. Currently, there are 1600 to 1700 vehicles per day on barbara welch road. And so this just shows that there is capacity on this road, and maybe there's too much capacity in that encourages speeding. But the the point for our purposes is that our development is not making the situation go beyond capacity. The addition of 170 to 256 vehicle trips is would still allow this intersection to operate at a service level of a, which is the highest best service level. The. It currently operates at a level a, and even with our development, it will continue to operate at a level a. The corridor crashes are not typically evaluated. It's. The crash rates are measured at intersections. So that's an industry standard. There were no crashes reported at the intersections under the most recent five years of data available when the traffic study was completed. So in summary of this, the system is capable of supporting the proposed development in addition to the existing uses. The. This is looking closer to southeast foster going up barbara welch road. So looking to the south you can see the speed limit sign 30 here. Pbot conducted a speed study along barbara welch road in 2022, which resulted in a speed reduction from 35mph to 30mph in 2024. And as has been discussed, we don't have that data yet to see how successful that was. But that has occurred. You know, in the fairly recent past. Mitigation. So per the zoning code, 336 41.210 10.27 if the additional vehicles increase the level of service to below a level service of ee, then mitigation could be required. In this case, the intersection is at level of service a and it's retained after the new development, and so therefore mitigation can't be required even if the threshold of level of service were met. So say our development had so much traffic on that intersection that it reduced it to level e, the mitigation would have to be proportional to the impacts of the proposed use, not to mitigate for the existing system. So it would be looking at what is the mitigation for our impacts on that use, not the not the existing problems that are existing in that situation. So in summary, the traffic impact study shows and city staff review confirms that there will be minimal impacts to the existing transportation system, and the proposed development will not make the existing system less safe. The intersection studied, including southeast barbara welch road and southeast 1/52 avenue, are operating at the highest level of service level a and will continue to operate at that level after the proposed development. Mitigation cannot be imposed to mitigate existing situations. Mitigation can only be required for additional impacts to the system if the level of service drops below e, therefore, mitigation cannot be imposed. So our request to city council is that city council affirm the staff hearing, the staff recommendation and the hearings officers decision of approval with conditions to allow the proposed development so that we can create housing on this residentially zoned property that is 10.3 acres sized, while respecting the environmental zones and meeting all the other requirements of the zoning code and other city codes. So my team and I are available if any questions arise.

Thank you very much. Next, we have time for supporters of the applicant.

We didn't have anyone sign up for this.

And then finally we have rebuttal from the appellants council.

Council president Dunphy, just a quick note because the applicant went over by about 20s. If the rebuttal goes over about 20s, that'll be just fine.

Sounds good.

Well, we appreciate that the applicant focused much on the environmental impact and we feel in representing the pleasant valley neighborhood association that they've done a great job in mitigating impact. There's no disagreement there, but we go back to safety. That's really what this appeal is about. And the scope of the safety, real world, real application versus having this narrow study that really focuses in on an area that does not really provide real world data. The real world data shows that capability or capacity does not equal safety. That level of service, which is referred to significantly in in the applicant's presentation, that does not equal safety. So the concern is and this is in behalf of the neighborhood association and the residents in this area of pleasant valley. Is safety really a concern, and should it be evaluated? We feel that the fact that the corridor crashes are not typically evaluated response and that crash rates are measured at intersections only, and that that's a concession that the corridor was not evaluated. Our appeal argument still stands. We also feel that regarding mitigation, the staff argues that. That only they require mitigation for impacts caused by the development, not preexisting conditions. Now, we agree with the legal principle there, but that's a different question. The code requires evaluation of whether the system is capable, whether it is capable of supporting the development. Well, you can't determine capability without studying the corridor. If cars don't just appear at the intersection, they have to get there. Right? But see, they skip that step that was negated or completely removed from the scope. But vehicles still have to travel through that corridor on the it's not our problem argument from the applicant. We agree the applicant didn't cause the existing conditions on barbara welch road, but the code doesn't ask who caused the problem. It asks whether the transportation system is capable of supporting the development. A fault is one question. Capability is a completely different one. The code requires the second one, and the findings don't provide that. And finally, the staff's memo mentions or acknowledges crashes existed outside the study intersection. Over the past ten years. I don't know if you if the council had an opportunity to see this. I did submit documented pictures with time date stamp of various accidents over the course of many years, including many that were sent to PBOT that they acknowledged, which is what caused them over the years to reduce the speed from 40 miles an hour. If we go back to 35 and now 30 miles an hour, because they recognize that there is a safety issue in this corridor. But yet the tis study showed no concern, you see. So we have an issue of incongruity here between the data and the scope of the tis. And so we suggest that remand is still appropriate for this appeal. And we appreciate the council's time.

Thank you very much. Okay. So colleagues. That concludes our evidentiary record. Is that right? And then folks who are signed up to testify. So the evidentiary record in this hearing is now closed. That means the council will accept no more oral or written testimony on the land use appeal. This concludes the public participation participation portion of this evidentiary hearing. City attorney, do we have anything to discuss before we begin deliberations?

We do not.

Okay, colleagues, we are now moving into discussion. Anybody wants to jump into the queue. You are welcome to start with councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. As I'm listening to this, these arguments and the evidentiary hearing, it's clear that the the critical piece is the safety issue on this collector road. I wonder, are there any traffic engineers in the in the room from the city who. And maybe from the other parties. But it would be preferable from the city who might be able to come up to the dais and ask answer some questions for for me. Is it appropriate? Absolutely.

I think. It oh, maybe not.

It is. I do want to make sure that staff understands that because the evidentiary record is closed, that any information being provided in response is based on evidence already in the record.

Okay. How do I ask this question then? I'm going to ask you linly. And that will determine whether I ask the question. Sorry for the dramatic pause, but I just need to know how to proceed in this case. So my question is. Is there any evidence in the record that discusses the relationship between speed and congestion throughput on this collector road and some sort of functional relationship to how likely a crash is? That's what I'd like to understand.

My name is brianna lovell. I'm with Portland permitting and development, and I am not a traffic engineer, but I am. We do the land use reviews on behalf of PBOT, and we do have our traffic engineer online if needed for any other additional questions. In terms of your question as to what's on the record, I believe that what I heard in the applicant's presentation included a comment that lower traffic volumes, low, lower usage of the road may allow for speeding, but I don't believe that our city response is on the record. Have said anything about that relationship.

Okay, so that's just a sort of suggestion. Not necessarily. There's nothing in the hearing officer's record that evaluates any kind of a relationship between throughput and congestion, and whether or not that reduced that increases safety.

I don't believe that we put anything on the record to that effect.

Okay. I think that's all I have for now.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. Looking to our attorney, I have some questions that I'd like to ask our staff to understand. What is typical in an evaluation process are those questions that are inbounds at this point?

Yes, because I believe they'd be reflected in the scope of the tis and in the administrative rules. So if they're responding to questions about those rules and and what PBOT required, I think that would be fine if.

I crossed the line. Please just cut me off. Council president. I'd love to have our permitting staff come up to ask a couple of questions about what is typical in a review like this.

Absolutely.

So as I understand it, the question here that has been raised is really about whether safety on the court or should have been evaluated. And we heard that corridors don't need to be evaluated. We heard that maybe at times they are evaluated. And so I'm wondering if you can give us a sense of whether corridors are ever evaluated or if the evaluations that are required are in fact, just limited to intersections. And if corridor evaluation is at times required when that is and what what turns whether or not a project needs to evaluate a corridor or just the related nearby intersections.

So and I might invite our city traffic engineer to add to this if he's able to. But the the traffic transportation impact study scoping form that the city has has a couple of different elements that we use to help applicants shape their, their study and, and we review that scope before they go ahead and conduct the study. And the scoping form indicates whether or not the applicant should study crash history at the study intersections. So that is essentially the, the standard approach for these. There are sometimes projects where ODOT is a stakeholder and has specific things that they ask us to study as part of the tis, but I, I don't believe that we typically ask for a study of the corridor.

So unless ODOT is involved, we don't ask anywhere on the forms for the study to go farther than the intersections that the development would attach to.

The intersections aren't always limited to the ones that the development would attach to the intersections that are selected vary on the nature of the development in terms of scale and transportation impact, as well as the nature of the surrounding streets. So in this case, where there's a relatively limited street grid and a relatively modest development proposed, it sort of was happenstance that those intersections that were most proximate and most relevant to the development happen to be all the points where the development intersects the road system.

I guess I'll ask that a little more broadly than I apologize. There's nowhere on the form where we ask people in the usual course of business, unless ODOT is involved to study corridors, we only ask for intersection studies.

That's how the form is set up. Yes.

Okay. Are there projects where corridors are evaluated voluntarily by the applicant or where are our staff? You or your coworkers ask for that to be added, or is that not something that you've seen? Precedented.

Councilor. I'm going to interrupt for just a quick second. It feels like my colleagues may want to actually ask additional information that has not actually been shared, so I may have been premature in closing the evidentiary record. So I'm going to actually reopen the oral testimony evidentiary record for the purposes of our our questions. So.

Okay, I apologize if I was going too close to the line.

But I can see that there may be a need and I was a little premature. So I'm going to go ahead and make it so that if folks have additional questions that have not been answered, we can ask our staff.

Okay, so are there times where

An applicant voluntarily asks for, or where an applicant voluntarily includes a court or study, or where you or your coworkers ask for that to be added beyond what's on the form. Or is that not something that you have seen done? And I understand that you are two people within the bureau. There are other people, and we're limiting it to what you as the two people before us.

Well, we do have our PBOT traffic engineer who does the reviews of tis for development online. So I'm going to ask if he's able to jump in online and answer this question because he's seen all the all the tis.

Hello. For the record, my name is matthew machado. I'm with PBOT traffic engineering. Also, for the record, I'm not the city traffic engineer. I'm just one of the traffic engineers. So we have. So typically the applicant would submit their traffic study scoping form and then we review it. And if we feel like we need to review additional locations, we can add it. Regarding the corridor. We don't have anything specifically on the scoping form that calls out corridors, but we do have a section for additional comments, and we have used that in the past. If we need to add any additional items that might not be called out on the form, but in terms of an actual corridor in the year, year and a half that I've been doing this, I don't recall having one where we've reviewed a corridor itself. But I imagine if we needed to, if it was the right situation, that might be one we could look at. I can't really speak to the scope and the on this one because it was scoped before I took this role. But yeah, we don't have anywhere that specifically calls out a corridor, but we do have a spot where we could theoretically add it if we needed to. Just in a section that's basically just additional comments.

Okay. Council president, I think that's all I need for now. I may have some additional questions after my colleagues ask their questions.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney colleagues, I put myself in the queue here. You know, I think it's interesting. I think this item is really particularly interesting for this body to be considering right now. On the one hand, we have all repeatedly affirmed the desperate need for housing and density, and we've demonstrated that we're willing to overlook some of the things that historically have been nice to haves, but don't necessarily add value in order to, because they definitely add cost and time. And on the other hand, this body has also rededicated ourselves to vision zero with dedicated resources and staffing and structures to improve failing or lacking infrastructure and to prevent injury and death. So first, I just want to say to the developers, you know, this development looks fantastic. I think that the developers have done a really good job of trying to respond to what they were asked to minimize environmental impacts, to maximize housing where appropriate, and to contribute to the neighborhood. It really looks like a thoughtful design. I worry that the tools that we have given to PBOT and to the hearings officer are insufficient. I think that they we may not be asking the right questions. If this project ended up affirmatively approved the the transportation system plan approval process is insufficient. I think that this is a problem that has occurred in many different sections of town, including when the previous city council approved building a 4000 or 4000 person music venue 200ft away from unprotected train tracks with no sidewalks or lights, and 200 yards away from a freeway off ramp. But the transportation system plan was approved to form. As the appellant said, capacity is not safety. Level of service is not safety. This section of road is dangerous and as is the intersection at foster road, where that is functionally a rural highway. In fact, this neighborhood really is the transition point between a relatively suburban neighborhood and a truly rural farmland. Looking only at the immediately adjacent intersections makes sense in the inner parts of the city, where you only have a city block that is only so wide. But in this far east, the traffic system is defined by more than the most adjacent intersections. So currently I am inclined to support the appeal and support remanding this decision for additional work on safety requirements. At and councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. Interesting arguments. Now that the record is back open, I think I'm okay to ask questions. Okay. So the question I really want to ask if we still have traffic safety engineers, and I don't care if you work for the city or if you're part of either party, I'd like you to check my intuition. My, my intuition says that if you have a road that is facing more congestion along the collector, and there's not really any intersections from point a to point b, and it's really just a mile throughput that the more congestion there is, the slower cars move and the slower cars move, the less likely there is to be crashes, particularly on a two Lane highway, which is kind of what this is. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's borne by any sort of evidence or engineering understanding. So I'm curious if anyone can either confirm or or say councilor Green, stay in your Lane. This is not economic. So let me know. I think. Was it mr. Machado, are you prepared to answer that question?

I can do some of it. I haven't studied too much of it related to a corridor like this, but I can see where the argument is that as it fills up, the speeds typically get lower. Now, on a rural road, you might still you might still have a situation where traffic is still moving at a, at a, whatever the speed limit is. And then as they hit like the curve, for example, maybe they have to kind of abruptly stop. But yeah, we do eventually hit a something called saturation flow, where once you get over a certain amount of vehicles per Lane, that the speeds do tend to come down, but congestion builds up.

Okay. Thank you. And my other intuition tells me that that's probably not a satisfactory substitute for a crash analysis along a corridor either. I'm just trying to sort of give a hint to where I think we might need to go as a city. I don't want to dismiss the very real safety concerns that these neighbors have. It's it feels similar to a lot of my constituents in district four. Those who live in southwest Portland. Shattuck road is a good example. It's a big feeder between the Beaverton hillsdale highway and another major connector in vermont, and people ripping. They go fast because they're trying to get from point a to point b, and it's very scary place to try to walk on the side of the road. And so I feel like that might be some of what I'm hearing. So if we were to go councilor President's route, I think what I'd be interested is not to make this a much more difficult or expensive and lengthy thing to develop, but to maybe sort of put some conditions in place for the city to prioritize some traffic safety improvements along this corridor. I don't know if that's inbounds for a land use hearing or not, but the record is open. I'm sharing my own thoughts on it, and so I leave that on the table.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. My question, I think, is for the appellant, which is that my impression is that what you're saying is this road is already inherently dangerous, and I don't hear that it might become more dangerous because of this development or could be made less dangerous by anything the developer could do. So if that's true and left the impression that the argument is basically we should not have any more development on this road just because it's already an inherently dangerous road until the road is fixed. Is that more or less the argument? Yes, please, please come back.

Get my steps in here.

No, no, we again, we realize the housing requirements for the city. There's no argument there. It's that the scope of work should include a full view of the safety, the the real data versus being very surgical and only looking at an intersection. Quite candidly, that intersection is the only upgrade that road has had in 30 years. Of course, there's no accidents there. There's a beacon. The roads widen, there's plenty of lights, there's stops, there's a four way stop there. Sure. That's that's beautiful. But the corridor to get to that intersection has had zero development over the last 35 years as far as building the infrastructure. And so and I don't want to get into the weeds of the history, but that's what the study should include. It should look at that data to see.

If the.

Scope, whether or not the safety or does it need any mitigation to support additional housing that wasn't in scope. That's all we're saying is that they need to investigate the entire view of and look at it from a holistic perspective versus looking at it strictly at that intersection.

That's is that an argument that you would make even if there were no development proposed? Because again, it kind of sounds to me like you're saying this is already a dangerous road, so somebody should be looking at that and does the the possibility of a new development make that any different than it was before?

I think that's where we would say that a study that took a took the data and looked at it holistically, would then make a determination on whether mitigation is required or not. But the fact that that corridor was left out, we're just guessing.

But can you imagine any mitigation other than restructuring the whole road? Any mitigation at this particular project would change the problems that you have with the road to begin with.

That's not for me to determine. That would be the traffic study. That would include the corridor as scope to make that determination.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Novick councilor Ryan.

Steve Novick: Thank you, council president. This would be for you, diana. Hi. Thanks for being here. And thanks for the neighbors of pleasant valley to be here as well. It's I appreciate the last questions that came from councilor Novick. So I could be getting out of bounds. But I've been obsessing lately over the fact that we don't have a lot of snowpack. And so I keep thinking about fire season. And this is an area that obviously is like a beautiful forest. And when we do traffic studies, I sometimes get disturbed that I can't tell if PBOT and fire got together and looked at with and how emergency vehicles can go in and out. So I may be getting out of the scope of the development based on the last questioning. But now that we're here and we listen to all of this, and we looked at that narrow road, and we know that it's there's a lot of trees there. I just wanted to hear what you went through in terms of emergency vehicle analysis, in terms of the traffic study.

Right. Diane hale, Portland permitting and development. Again, I, I, I don't work for the fire bureau. I can tell you kind of in summary, what occurred. The fire bureau does review proposals.

And part of the permitting system.

What's that?

Fire is part of the permitting system.

Yes. And they reviewed this proposal. They are part of the land use review process as well. And so they review conceptual development. And they did in this case. And a fire code appeal was actually approved for this development. So the fire bureau did evaluate. And they look at a variety of different factors. I'll miss some of them. But fire access, they look at whether or not the roads are wide enough and steep enough. And can the fire personnel access the site safely. And so in this case they said yes, it can with conditions. I could dig into the materials and find more specifics on that if you'd like. But they did review and they did look at detailed conceptual plans, and there are conditions of approval that will continue to allow them in a, you know, pretty strict regulatory way to monitor what's going to happen in the future. The approval allows for a little discretion in where the homes are placed, etc. But the fire bureau will continue to review that to make sure it's safe.

Specific to the building area.

Yes.

And then what we're discussing, of course, is the it's barbara welch road, right? Yeah. And so when you're digging in, you're going to confirm that it connected to barbara welch road.

That their review. Yeah. Well, I'll see if I can find that. I'm not sure if I can find that information. Councilor. Because I'm.

Not allowed me to made me want to ask that question.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know how far out from the site that they look like. Do they look at an entire route of service from a fire station to the site, and do they look at all the way? I am not sure I will look at the specifics, but I don't think I have that specific information. I'm sure we could get that for you if you.

Yeah, it was good to daylight this. I think it was good to daylight this this issue. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Ryan councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president.

During our review process, when there are safety concerns that are daylighted which there were not here, but when there are what is considered, are there mitigations that are required? What do those mitigations look like? What types of what types of offsets, mitigations or changes are required when safety concerns are discovered? I promise I'm going somewhere related here.

So one thing I want to highlight in the transportation approval criteria is that safety is one of several factors, and the code states that a proposal can fail one or more of those evaluation factors and still satisfy the approval criteria. With that said, we do look at safety, and we do look specifically at the impact a development will have. And when we find that there may be concerns, not so much with the underlying conditions, but with the development that's proposed. If we believe it will create or exacerbate issues related to safety, we could consider mitigation, but that mitigation needs to be in proportion to the impact that the development has, and I'm sure the city attorneys can can speak to that in further detail, if desired. We can look at things such as traffic control or for large scale developments. We can look at the design of the street or speed bumps, or things that might address concerns with adding large amounts of vehicles to a road that may not be equipped for it, but large scale sort of redevelopment of roadways or adding sidewalks off off site of where development is occurring, I'd say is relatively rare, and it does require a certain scale of development for that to be sort of proportionate.

Thank you. And when safety concerns are found, again, they're not here and understood that that in and of itself doesn't necessarily lead to mitigation. But when safety concerns are discovered, are those generally related to there is a safety concern here. We are adding more cars that exacerbates the safety concern. For example, there's x number of crashes per 1000 trips. We're adding more trips. We expect crashes to go up, or our safety concerns. Generally, things that arise because sight lines change with the development, or you have cars turning in a direction that they weren't previously, or there is something new being added to the equation different from just additional volume.

Either could be relevant. So for this development, we did have our analysis of the sight line for vehicles at that point, where southeast 152nd meets barbara welch road. So we we do look at particularly where development might change sight lines or circulation patterns. We do look at things that are sort of wholly new, but we do also look at the first part of what you mentioned about. Will we be sort of adding to something that's that's already adding that already exists.

Adding volume to an area that already is of concern.

Councilor would an example from the past be helpful to you, where council found that there was a safety issue or not? I'm not sure if you're asking.

You know.

I wasn't, but I saw one of my colleagues nodding. Yes, so I'll take the opportunity.

I'll make it very brief. There was a development uphill from broadway, southwest broadway. That development had a pedestrian connection down to broadway, and there's not adequate pedestrian facilities in the vicinity of that vicinity of that site. And so it clearly was adding some pedestrian, not a great deal, but some pedestrian trips. Council found that it was not safe for pedestrian mode on that, but it then found that the mitigation that would be required, which was a sidewalk all the way down, was not proportionate to the impact, which was, you know, some a fairly nominal number of, of trips. So, I mean, it's just an example. It's one that was appealed to luba. So I felt like it might be a useful situation.

So in that case, we found that there was a new risk or maybe a risk due to increased volume. That might be both. But that we couldn't ask for the mitigation.

Right. I mean, the answer was it's the the development itself did not create. Noticeable new traffic on broadway in terms of vehicle trips. So you already have a situation where you have a certain amount of traffic on broadway that is not necessarily conducive to pedestrian travel in that segment. And so.

Okay.

And when we talk about volume increase, I think that the information we have was that this is something like a 10 to 15% increase in volume that seemed high compared to what I expected. Looking at the development in that area and the size of this development, is that accurate that it was a 10 to 15% increase in volume?

That's the number I remember.

Okay. And for a development like this, is that considered a lot of increased volume? Is that considered not a lot of increased volume? How should we be thinking about that compared to other applications that we get at the city?

I think, and we tend to not we do look at the percent increase, but also just the number of daily trips, partly because, as noted previously, barbara welch already carries a lower traffic volume than many streets of that classification do. So we know that there's a fair amount of capacity available on the roadway. When we look at the maximum build out for the development, it would be adding 256 trips per day. And I just want to note that that's coming to the development and from the development and traveling north and traveling south. So that's not 256 vehicles all in the same part of the road at the same time. And then that's spread over the entire day. So I think in the scheme of development that we see, I mean, it's more than small scale residential infill, but it's modest sort of in the scheme of the the types of developments that usually do have more significant traffic impacts.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, council president.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. Thanks, everyone for being here. Were you both among the authors of the council briefing? Summary memo that we're looking at? It's the six pager.

Yes.

Okay. So in the response to appeal section that talks about. 641, I had two questions for clarification here. One is under the three listed intersections, it said this is fairly typical for a tis scope. And so I wanted to understand for for development of this scale, which is not expected to generate a significant volume of new trips and will not impact state highway operations. So within that context, what makes it fairly typical and not typical? What was the. There's an adverb here that implies there's some exceptions. So I just was curious if we could explain that a little bit more.

I think that's partly because each development is unique. It's it's hard to say that there is a typical there's a, a wide variety of roadway conditions and development types. And so it's hard to find something that's exactly the same to compare to. And this is this development is proposed in a lower density part of the city. So it is different from some of the developments we see that are just on a full street grid where there's any, you know, a large number of intersections that might be affected by the development. Whereas in this case, there's really one that one intersection through which all of the traffic is expected to travel. So I think that was mostly just to say that there it's hard to say precisely what would be typical, but that this, this is a, an appropriate and kind of standard approach.

Thanks. The other it's the next paragraph down. It. The last sentence is, if anything, increased traffic volume could help to reduce the number of vehicles exceeding the speed limit along the barbara welch corridor. And I'm curious if that's based off of a general understanding or anything specific that to the barbara welch corridor. I think this relates to councilor Greene's question earlier. I think it makes sense. It's plausible. I'm just curious if it was based off of something specific to this corridor that happened after the initial conversation or the evaluation.

I think it's more general, sort of in alignment with what our traffic engineer referenced, but it is relevant to barbara welch, particularly because the current volumes are low relative to sort of similar street types.

Okay, thanks. I wanted to ask a couple more legal questions, but I think the scope of this, I saw that all the transportation things were under trn 1.09 and then city code 33.641.200. And when I looked at trn 1.09, it seemed like that was sort of not relevant to what the appeal is about here. But the city code part was that's how I'm framing the question here. I'm reading the transportation system. This is part a of the code. Transportation system must be capable of supporting the proposed development in addition to the existing uses of the area. And I'm not reading that as two distinct criteria for each, but as saying the system must be able must be capable of supporting the change. Is that an accurate way? That is that how it's been historically interpreted?

I think one of the challenges with this criterion, I mean, it has been interpreted. It's been around for a very long time, and then it's had some additions put in, and I think those additions were put in, especially related to evaluation factors. Balancing those evaluation factors is in recognition of evolving takings law. And so I think the expectation is that the findings would address. The evaluation factors that are listed. But there might be findings that say, you know, based on what we have, this this one is better met than these ones. And we're balancing and determining one way or the other, whether the system as a whole is capable in addition to the existing uses. So I don't really see those as separate. I think it's capable with development plus existing uses. And I think that's come up in some recent cases that we've we've defended.

Well, let me put it another way.

Are we evaluating in this through these different factors, whether or not the change has made the transportation less capable of supporting the proposed development? Or are we evaluating whether or not it's incapable at the end of the process, regardless of the starting point?

So that is up to council to interpret it. In the past, in past cases, council has interpreted it in such a way because of the context of the law, to mean that you're evaluating it based on the impacts from the development.

Okay.

I know I'm not.

No, no, no, that that's.

Totally straight, but that's that is how it has been interpreted.

That's more than sufficient for.

Right. And council gets because council, when you are interpreting your own code that you have adopted in a land use context, you have a great deal of discretion. There is the ability the courts will defer to your interpretation as long as it is a plausible interpretation. And so the interpretation has been to try to make sure we're meshing both the requirements of takings law with the language of that code.

Thanks. That's how I read it at first to as a non-lawyer. So I appreciate the clarification there. And in not just the context of the rest of a, but actually the fact that it's immediately followed by b, where it talks about the impacts of the proposed use being what's subject to mitigation. So I'm interpreting for me, myself. I'm interpreting it that way for the rest of these comments, at least in looking at the evaluation factors, it seems to make sense that these would each be evaluated separately and that to some degree, they were, as it relates to. Safety and versus all the other ones, at least in the context of the intersections. So I for me, the remaining questions are effectively whether or not the safety evaluation requires looking at the corridor independently, as well as whether that is relevant, given that a finding of failure in one or more factors may be acceptable. Anyway. That's kind of how I'm framing it, and I'd love to know from colleagues if I'm missing something on that. As far as how you're evaluating it and whether or not that that opens up any other lines of questioning. Because for me, I tend to agree with hal councilor Novick framed the questions. That's that's the lens through which I'm seeking some guidance on right here or some some input. I'll also add, I'm not sure if we're able to. When we've done quasi judicial conversations in the past, we've talked about being unable to judge based off of what we think it should be, but apply what it is to the context. And that's to me, interesting. I am curious. The one other question I'll ask is if, hypothetically, the the choice was made to remand it by council, what would be the length of time that that would take? And my, my reason for asking that is because I note that we're applying the law from January 2023 in here, which implies to me that is the, the, the most that this has been in the works for a while, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And I would like to be able to, to help build a city where people have certainty more rapidly around their, their proposed projects, whether that's a yes or no. So I'm curious what the timeline would look like in that hypothetical. I don't know if anyone can answer that.

I think that's back to me. So the code provides that council, like your code that you've adopted. Council may adopt the review body's decision report, modify it or reject it, and it doesn't provide for a remand option. I am not going to tell you that council in the past has never done it that before, but it was not upon advice of council.

Okay, I'm going to sit on that for a second and contemplate that, but I will pass off to the next person in the queue.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal you know, actually that was I'm next in the queue. And that was going to be largely. My question is, as I understand it, the council has three options before us, right. We can deny the appeal and accept the hearings officer decision with the findings as is. We can deny the appeal, accept the hearings officer decision with altered findings on the hearing, or we can accept the appeal and come back with additional findings. Is that correct?

That's correct. I will say, I mean, I don't intend to direct how this goes at all. So just I'm offering up possible options from past hearings because this is an evidentiary hearing. If council members feel that they cannot make a decision based on the evidence that they do not have it, you do have the opportunity to continue the hearing and request additional information. However, I'm going to caveat that and say if the information is you didn't do the traffic study, right? Based on what we think this criterion requires, that's probably not necessarily a reasonable thing to ask. But again, I'm not going to presuppose.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilor Kanal can you can you just expand a little on that last statement? Is it not a reasonable thing to ask? Because we'd be keeping the hearing open for an extended period of time while a new study was conducted? Or is the the actual question itself inherently not reasonable?

Well, typically in a land use situation, we're subject to 120 day review. And it. Which means that we have some time constraints. I don't believe we have those time constraints here. I don't how do you put this? I have concern about council being the body to review a traffic, a revised scope of traffic study as the initial review body. And that. But again, I'm not saying it can't happen, but that's why it typically goes through staff review and a hearings officer before it ends up here just from a that's a from a policy that is the the system that council has created through its code.

Got it. Okay. I'll defer to councilor Green on this. I see next in the queue and I might have something later.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Kanal councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Colleagues, I think based upon the discussion and the evidence in the record and sort of new evidence based upon my ability to ask questions, I think I'm at a place where I want to deny the appeal and uphold the hearings, officer's decisions and conditions of the approval with revised findings. As the quasi judicial body. And then I'm going to suggest that when we move into our city council roles, we provide very clear legislative intent for PBOT to use some of the newly found vision zero money that we've identified that we've appropriated to make some traffic safety improvements on this corridor. That's a distinct action. I don't think I can put those conditions in these findings, and I agree with linly that we should not review traffic safety stuff. So so I think I'm I'm prepared to vote and uphold the hearings officer's findings.

Okay. Is that a formal motion?

We can do that today.

We we can do that today.

As as a tentative motion. Yes.

As a tentative.

Yes, as a tentative motion. I move that we wait.

Hold on. Before you make a motion. I think I need to close the evidentiary record on it. So the evidentiary record is now closed again. Okay. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: As tentative motion, I move, we deny the appeal and uphold the hearings. Officer's decision, the conditions of approval with revised findings.

Second.

Councilor Green moves to deny the appeal and uphold the hearings. Officer's findings with revised and councilor Ryan seconds. Colleagues in the queue to the motion. Is that how we do this? Yeah. Okay. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: To the motion.

Okay. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.

I will be supporting this motion and not because I don't hear the concerns from folks in the neighborhood who are worried about safety, but because I don't see an opening for us to require that the traffic evaluation include the corridor. And I think that that needs to be a point of discussion. Council president, you brought up other cases where a traffic safety study was perhaps more limited than it should be. That, to me is a policy question. And unfortunately, in the. Consistent application of our laws, we have to apply the law at hand. And I believe that from what I have heard, with the law at hand, I am compelled to support the motion on the table, changing that law in the future does not help. Council president, your constituents who are here today asking for a change, and I recognize that. But I do think that they have brought forward, and you have brought up some important considerations for us to bring back up when we are meeting as the city council another time.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thanks. I'm not 100% sure if this is germane to the motion, because I'm not sure if the the other part of your conversation, councilor Green, was part of the motion or not in terms of the vision zero component. But I guess my question is that we're also talking about what councilor Pirtle-guiney brought up, which is the idea of, you know, land use law is predicated on the time of the application as the the law that you apply. So we could change the law today, hypothetically, and it wouldn't necessarily do anything about this application, but there is a conversation about whether or not corridor analysis is a good practice, I think, for the city to ask for, not simply about southwest or southeast. Barbara walsh corridor, but but actually as a general practice. And so I'm curious if there's a space to at least hear out where people are thinking about that side of it, that might be helpful for me in determining where I'm at on this motion. And just a process question, because it's tentative. Is that because we don't vote today on.

It, come back with findings for us to formally vote on it the next.

Right. Okay. And so the motion is really, at this moment, we we did ask them to prepare the findings for us to vote on the next time we do this. Okay. But we'd love to hear any thoughts on that other piece of it as well.

Okay. Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: To council, can you please clarify what it would mean with that language of with revised findings? Was the actual implication to that part of the statement counsel?

Me okay, I want to make sure I'm right. Council.

Council.

Council. What does it with revised findings. Well, after council takes a tentative vote, we would then take the information that and update the findings to address the testimony that was made today. So we would be addressing, you know, if should councilor Green's motion pass, we would be addressing how the how the evidence and how the criteria are met in more detail.

So is it let me try and restate so I can differentiate the difference between denying the appeal and denying the appeal with with revised findings. So is denying the appeal kind of saying like today didn't happen because none of that none of that testimony would be in the record then.

No, no, I mean, all three of the options include with revised findings. There isn't an option without revised findings. So really your options are. The hearings. Officer got it right. Applicant and city attorney, please come back with findings that address all the stuff we heard today. So that's one option. Option two is hearings. Officer mostly got it right. But we wanted to one of the conditions and this wasn't even discussed. So I don't think that's really something that happened today. One of the conditions wasn't quite right. And we're tweaking it like we wanted blue shutters instead of pink shutters something like that. And you still get still do revise findings. The other is hearings. Officer got it wrong. We're going to uphold the appeal. And then we really, really need revised findings because we're turning it upside down. So that's they're all revised findings. Does that help.

So to support councilor Green's motion, then it's not that we're putting in a new set of standards, new change. It is just acknowledging that today happened and that the hearings officer got it correct.

The hearings officer got it correct. The hearings officer got it correct. And we will make, you know, make sure the findings are legally sufficient.

Okay. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, can we please take a tentative vote on councilor Green's motion?

Mitch Green: Kanal the the risk of.

Closing off our ability to make the shutters blue or pink in the future?

I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan I. Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo. I Novick. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Dunphy no. The motion is approved with a vote of eight eyes, one no and three absent.

The motion to deny the appeal has passed 8 to 1. The appeal is tentatively denied. The council clerk and city attorney. Do we have a date and time, certain for this matter, to return to council for a final vote and adoption of findings?

We do. May 13th at 945 times certain.

This matter will return to council on may 19th or 13th,

13.

13th for adoption of findings and I'm sorry, what time was it? 930. Thank you. 945945 gosh, guys. 9:45 a.m. On the 13th for adoption of findings and a final vote. Thank you very much. Can we we now move. Actually, we're going to take a brief ten minute break. Please be back at 355. Thank you. And we are back. Can we please move to item number 12 keelan.

Item 12. Document 2026-131 amend franchise granted to comcast of Oregon to incorporated to reflect the dissolution of the mount hood cable regulatory commission. Amend ordinance 192084.

We have with us from council operations. We have christhopher herr to give us a staff summary report of what we're talking about here.

Good afternoon, council president, councilors, for the record, christhopher herr council operations policy analyst and I serve as staff to the city life committee. The emergency ordinance before you document number 2026-131 was considered in the city life committee on April 14th. It was referred to council with the recommendation to be passed. The ordinance adopts amendments to the comcast franchise agreement as outlined in exhibit a in advance of the dissolution of the mount hood cable regulatory commission, or mh crc, on June 30th, 2026. The ordinance removes all references to and authority delegated to the mh crc, eliminates references to the mh, crc and their intergovernmental agreements that establish. The commission clarifies that any shared jurisdictional agreements must be explicitly identified and mutually agreed upon, and adds language to ensure compliance with the mayor's diversity, equity and inclusion requirements and city contracts. The ordinance includes an emergency clause to allow these changes to take effect prior to the mh crc dissolution, ensuring a seamless transition and avoiding any disruption to cable services or community media funding. No verbal or written testimony was provided prior to the committee action, and this concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.

Thank you, christopher councilor Pirtle-guiney. This came out of your committee.

This sure did, colleagues. Just a couple of other pieces.

Of context here. The mount. Hood cable regulatory commission we learned about last year is the group that has taken in funds revenue that we get through taxation of our cable network, through cable subscribers, and allocates it generally to three places in the past. The running of the commission itself grants for content producers and the operation of our cable access channels. That revenue has been decreasing as we have fewer and fewer people in our community who subscribe to cable. And as that revenue has been reaching kind of a critical point in its decrease, the commission decided to set up a way to preserve our cable access channels. They essentially said of those three places that the funding goes to, this is the most important. So we will phase everything else out so we can continue the running of those channels. This is the first step there, which is the removal of the regulatory commission from our code. The commission has actually dissolved itself already. They have set up a final round of grants to content producers that I believe are going out this year, and then that should allow the channels long enough for us to have broader conversations, which I believe the which I believe staff will be having and bringing us recommendations on, on how we continue those cable access channels as long as possible. There are a few more things coming through the city life committee later this spring related to our cable regulation. And I think my understanding from staff is that things are in a bit of a funky order, because we needed to take this action quickly. This is an emergency ordinance, but I just wanted to flag that. You should expect to hear more about this over the coming month or so.

Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Very quickly, I'm going to check keelan. Has anyone signed up for testimony on this item?

No one signed up.

Okay, colleagues, we're going to move to both council discussion and technical or clarifying questions, so feel free to jump into the queue. Councilor greene, start us off.

Thank you, mr. President. In advance of this item, I reviewed the item. I reviewed the committee staff summary. I remember this discussion last year, and I've sort of been paying attention to how this conversation has been evolved. As far as I can see, this is this doesn't fundamentally change our approach to franchises at large. This just says we have to do this technical fix in order to keep this franchise going and be able to legally run in this city. I want to support this today. I got in the queue early because I wanted to say I wanted to support this today, and I don't want to spend too much time on it today. I would hope to move to a vote right now as soon as possible, so we can get to the other item, which is going to take us a long time. So that's my appeal.

Thank you. Councilor greene councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks.

I'm unclear as to why this is an emergency ordinance, and I'd like to understand that a little bit better. I'm seeing that it's going to dissolve by June 2026. And if this were voted on next week and took effect 30 days later, it would still take effect by the end of may.

Good afternoon, councilors nancy thornton, city attorney's office. So the reason for it is because there's a specific provision in the code that requires 60 days between the time of passage and the time it takes effect. So 60 days from now, the mh crc will have been dissolved or pretty close. It's within a few days. That's about as close as we could cut it. It's different from other ordinances. In other words, per the city code.

Okay.

I'm not sure what you mean by it's within a few days. Can you speak a little more to that?

So when you when you take the 60 days, when you count from, you know, the first reading, well, actually the passage today and you got 60 days, then it will be close to the time when the mh crc will dissolve and the, you know, this needs to be in effect.

So it's somewhere between 60 and 67 days from now that the that this takes effect. Okay.

Exactly.

And then why is it only coming to us now then is my other question. If this was foreseen.

I can speak to that. Yeah. And we may look to director engstrom as well. This was heard at the first meeting of the new city life committee. And so I believe what we have is just a timing issue, because we had a month between committees, right. We heard it as quickly as we could at city life, knowing that there was a rush and moved it immediately to council. But that still puts us within this window where because of the timeline on which mh crc dissolved themselves, if we don't pass this on emergency, we will have a period of our time of time where our code refers to an entity which does not exist and does not give the authority to our city staff to do the work that mh crc has previously done. We literally could not have moved it sooner out of committee.

That makes sense to me. It was only filed on March 24th, though, so I'm trying to understand that a little bit better. I there's nobody who signed up for public testimony on this. I don't know that there would have been had there been more advance notice. I have no way of knowing that. But I'm trying to understand from as a matter of course, because I keep bringing this up for emergency ordinances. I'm not sure why these things aren't filed in in advance. If there's advance notice, if it's emergency ordinances should be something that there was no way to foresee.

So this is Eric engstrom, director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. Councilor pirtle-guiney is correct. Essentially, we were waiting on this for a little bit because of the gap between committees. And we didn't we were waiting to file it, to be clear, because we didn't know what the committee structure was going to be.

Okay, I'm not going to withhold. There's nine of us here. I want to acknowledge that. I don't want to be the holdup on this item, but I'm going to just put on the record and implore the city administrator that that's not that's not what an emergency ordinance is for.

There was also councilor. There was we had to wait until the mh crc voted on whether to dissolve. And that was part of the timeline.

And when was that?

I think that was February. Late February.

Not sure.

I'd have to look. I think it was late February when they when they made that decision. And then we had to, you know, go through the code and figure out what needed to be changed.

Okay. I guess what I'm what I'm imploring is that things are filed when they're when they're appropriate to be filed as opposed to waiting for some because this has come up for the committee the whole time that things are being waited to be filed until there's a date certain already, which makes no sense, because the thing can't be given a date until it's filed. And I just want to make sure that that's something that that is part of the, the adjustments that are being made on the administrative side so that we're not doing this over and over again because I, I really, if this, if the 10th person was here, I'd be voting no on it for that reason. And I want to be clear on that. But I don't want to hold this up because it is something that should be done. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues seeing no one else in the queue, can we please move to a vote?

Kanal aye, Morillo.

Pirtle-guiney.

Hi, Ryan.

Hi, Koyama Lane.

I Morillo. I Novick. I Green. I Zimmerman I. Councilor Avalos Avalos. Absent.

Dunphy I.

The ordinance passes with a vote of nine ayes and three absent.

Excellent. Thank you. Can we please call item number 13.

Item 13. Document 2026-056. Amend council organization and procedure code. Amend code. Chapter 3.02.

Colleagues. This is a continuation of the item from yesterday. This is our 300th time hearing this item. We have a number of amendments on the table still. Or not on the table, but to be proposed and not actually on the table, let's dive into starting discussion of those councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Item.

Didn't she just read it? Didn't we just read the item? Yeah. We're good.

We're talking about the code thing. Yeah, there we go. Cool.

All right.

Colleague colleagues, first, I want to take a moment to thank the current and former council presidents for working together to strengthen and refine Portland city code, chapter 3.02. I shared with you via email and it is posted. And I also have some paper copies for you. All of Koyama Lane one as a refinement to the 24 hour filing deadline that we adopted yesterday. So this doesn't undo that policy. This is meant to make that deadline more workable and clearer. Instead of a single blanket deadline, it sets clear meeting specific cutoffs, meeting specific cutoffs. So 1 p.m. The day before 9:30 a.m. Meetings, 5 p.m. The day before 6 p.m. Meetings and 24 hour standard for special or continued sessions. So here we go. It keeps the intent timely notice while giving staff, council offices and the public more predictability about when amendments will be posted. And it also brings in some of the intent of Novick one, which provides flexibility where the presiding officer can still allow amendments from the dais subject to appeal. And I would also welcome additional language that clarifies that allowing a floor amendment last minute should be in order to move an item forward without unnecessary delay. So these what you see before you are small practical adjustments to make sure that what we passed yesterday works cleanly from day one, and I would like to move. Koyama Lane one.

Councilor Koyama Lane moves Koyama Lane one. Is there a second? Second councilor Novick seconds. Colleagues to the amendment. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I'm going to request to divide and separate out three and four for their own vote, separate from one and two. I'm indifferent as to the order of them and defer. I think it's not my call anyway, but to the the amendment sponsor.

Okay. Councilor Kanal has moved to divide the question and we are still in debate on this. Councilor Koyama Lane would you prefer we discuss sections one and two first or sections three and four first?

It doesn't matter.

To me. Okay. Thank you. We will address them separately.

In that case, if it's no concern, I'd say three and four because I support them and I think we can vote on them very quickly.

Okay. Councilor Green, wait. I'm sorry. The motion to divide. Is that a debatable motion or is that a separate thing, or do we continue with the queue before we move? Okay, okay I think okay, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane so are we to are we to three and four right now then? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you for your intervention here. I think it shows a little compromise and maybe helping us kind of get past a little bit of an impasse. Can you just say a little bit more about the subject to appeal how that works? I'm sorry. I haven't had time to really kind of read this as much as as you have.

So no, that's fine. Thank you for that question. So that is under robert's rules of order, the the presiding officer may allow an amendment to me from the dais and. By a majority vote, you can overturn the chair's ruling.

Okay.

So that's just acknowledging.

That it's a simple majority. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to support three four.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: I have a.

Process question on the division. Councilor Kanal the amendment before us deletes a portion and adds portions. Would you be adding three and four to what is currently in code, or are you proposing the deletion and the addition of three and four?

That's a great question. My understanding is that one and two in the new tcl one replaces the one and two that's being struck. And so the motion before us is to add three and four.

To the current one and two.

Right. And then separately we'll vote on replacing the old one and two with the new one and two.

Thank you. I just needed to understand your intent there.

Yeah. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney. Seeing no one else in the queue. Linly. Yes.

Can I just say a quick clarification? Councilor. Koyama Lane. In number three, it says additive to the requirements of subsection I two, and three above is that I just want to make sure that's a correct reference.

That's a scrivener's error, I'm sure. Okay. Pretty sure it's supposed to be one and two.

Yes.

I know that because I helped work on this. So is that right? Okay. Yeah. So that should be it should read subsections I one and two above.

I think we'll treat that as a scribner's error, but just it's good to have the legislative intent.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Eric Zimmerman: Okay. Can we please call the roll? I'm sorry, councilor Zimmerman. People jumped in the queue with them. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: So number three, additive to the requirements. The auditor may adopt lines by administrative rule for submissions of amendments on the basis of necessary processing time for legal code, conflict and budgetary review. I'm sorry, councilor, can you just help us out a little bit more in terms of your intent on this part?

Yeah, that's basically the auditor can set administrative deadlines when review is needed.

So what does that mean.

Can I bring the clerk into this? The clerk's office has spent some time looking at it as well.

Sure.

Okay. Councilor Zimmerman, you're asking about the authority of the auditor to set deadlines in administrative rule.

Yeah. I don't know what it means when it says it needs when it on the basis of necessary processing time for legal code conflict or budgetary review. Right. This is another elected official who now gets to assert administrative timelines on another elected body. And I'll just tell you, we're starting to bump up against some things in my head. So I'm trying to understand what we're trying to solve with number three here.

So I think in code and charter, and I would want to be able to grab those references for you. But the auditor is granted the authority to set rules around. Agendas and. Kind of the procedures for that. I think with this, the budgetary review section are that specific call out. I, I think that that maybe is outside of the scope of what our what that authority is. So I think that if that's where you're having some question.

So as I take the rest of tcl1. So this entire I section is about establishing a 24 hour period on amendments. Okay. Now the new proposed number two paragraph sets out some different timelines, but essentially is getting at some level of not from the dais. Right. But then number three adds a whole nother, like I said, elected office into what seems like an amendment discussion. So what good are. The timelines written out either in the new number two that's being proposed or even the old number two, if the auditor's office and the clerk by by default here is actually the one who sets timelines for amendments. That's what I'm trying to understand here, please.

Well, I'm going to point to at the end where specifically it says only for necessary processing time for legal code conflict or budgetary review.

That's what I'm asking. What is necessary time? Because some people will say everything has to go through legal review, everything has to go through budgetary review, and everything has to go through code conflict to make sure it doesn't have any code conflicts and others would not. And so that's what I'm trying to say is who determines what is necessary. And I think the answer is that we're putting that onus into the clerk's office. And that bumps up against, for me, it's another elected office who gets to say how we do or don't do our business in this body, and that that's creating some conflict in my head and trying to understand. What do you mean? I think we were about to kind of move quickly on a thing of like, this seems normal, but actually we're inserting multiple elected bodies into this one. And that's where I think we should be very cautious here.

It is already current law that the auditor and attorney can already ensure things have been can already ensure things have been reviewed or are administratively complete before filing.

Right. That's for when we file ordinances, resolution, budget modifications. But now we're applying that same thing to the amendments. So maybe that's the intent is that all amendments go through the same review prior to being posted. If that's the case, I just want to understand it because we're basically repeating language that exists in other places. And, and I couldn't quite tell because the majority of I was really about a timeline for amendments. And now we're putting on, I think, a couple more gates onto what makes a due amendment. Let me put it another way. So if we were to pass this, I think that the council presiding officer, being able to allow amendments on the floor, in essence, would mean all amendments on the floor are not due amendments because they haven't gone through the processing. If you apply it that way. Right. We're adding we're adding a, a, a layer, if you will, that I think might might make the amendment process more complicated than the intent here. And I'm just trying to understand it a little bit because I think it's well meaning, but I'm trying to think through the second and third order effects here.

Okay. If I respond, please.

Yeah, I, I'm wondering if this has come up before at times where we've been doing some workshopping on the dais and some amendments are smaller ones that help us kind of get the item pushed along and then some, we might have a halt and then we're told, oh, we actually need to have that go under review or see if there's something around the budget that that would change. So this is how that's how I read that.

Okay. So. Colleagues, if you if you think that your amendments need to go through the same gates to be published, the way that you think that our regular ordinances should go, then you should vote yes for this. But I don't think that that's generally how our amendments have gone. And I think that would be a significant change. And so I would I think for me, I'll be a no here because I I'm not interested in changing this part of our amendment process, but I appreciate kind of hearing where this is coming from. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor pirtle-guiney to the amendment.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president.

I actually had questions along the same line as councilor Zimmerman. I am wondering if this is a change or if this is authority that the auditor already has, though it is not written out quite so explicitly. Linly are you able to help us with that? Do you know?

I'm sorry. I guess my face gave me away. Councilor Dunphy no, I do not know. I'm looking as as we speak. I don't off the top of my head.

Because if this is a significant shift in power from council to the auditor, that would be concerning to me. If this is putting in writing authority that already exists, I'm less concerned. Concern, just for the record, for our clerk has nothing to do with our wonderful clerk. It has to do with trying to set things up that can outlast any of us and our good, sustainable rules.

Hi, my name is robert taylor. I'm the city attorney under 3.02070, which is part of the council rules you have in front of you that provides. The auditor is authorized to adopt rules, procedures and forms to implement the provisions of chapter 3.02. So what that means is that the auditor already has code authority to adopt rules and procedures to implement this part of the code. The auditor, anything the auditor does to implement it and make those procedures has to be consistent with the code. And the way the auditor does that now is there's an administrative rule that has a manual that is is prepared and that's available to all of you. So that's how it works right now. I don't know that the language we've been talking about in this amendment is, is necessary, given that we already have that authority here. But I just wanted to let everybody know that's how it works right now.

Thank you, mr. Taylor.

In that case, colleagues, this doesn't appear to actually change anything in the balance of power between the branches of government. So I don't have concerns, though I would say that our code is cluttered with things that are repetitive and not necessary. And that is frustrating to me. And I don't love that we're going to do that again, but I don't see any policy concerns.

Thank you, counselor pirtle-guiney counselor Green.

Thank you. I actually appreciate that you flagged this counselor Zimmerman, because it's important for us to talk about the way that I interpret it is the way that I interpret. Anytime council adopts a code that then sort of says, I'm only going to go so far as providing the framework of the law. We leave it to the city administrator to adopt rules to implement that law. The detention facility impact fee is a good example of that. What I'm seeing here is legislative intent to recognize that we've got a on the dais problem that we're trying to fix. We're trying to get closer to sort of like a is there a calendar of amendments that we can have? And I do I can imagine some edge cases where an amendment might introduce a wildly a wild departure from the underlying filed item. And in that case, it makes sense to signal clearly that we're recognizing that the auditor may adopt specific rules. And I would say that if the auditor adopts specific rules that implement this, the council can always come back and clarify the code. Again, say, we think we've given the auditor a little too much leeway. So I'm going to be comfortable with this, and I but I just really want to recognize that this is an important discussion and I'm glad we had it.

Thank you, councilor Green colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, may we please move to a roll call vote of Koyama Lane one. The latter half of Koyama Lane one.

Kanal I.

Pirtle-guiney I.

Ryan no.

Koyama Lane I.

Morillo I.

Novick I.

Green I.

Zimmerman no. Avalos I.

Dunphy I.

The amendment is approved with a vote of eight eyes, two noes and two absent.

Colleagues. Debate to the first half of Koyama Lane one councilor Kanal to the amendment.

Sameer Kanal: Yeah. I, I have concerns around the idea of allowing amendments to be permitted by the presiding officer, subject to appeal. I think it creates a a gateway of appealing the president and makes that role a little bit more politicized in a way that I find problematic. As for the the remaining parts of it, I'm concerned that, I mean, we should just be cutting one and two altogether, in my opinion, and I'm not sure how this helps in that particular way. And I'm I'm open to that conversation. But that's a concerns that I'm I'm trying to to understand here. And I think this is a debate worth having.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Novick.

So I'm a bit of a procedural puzzle. I have an amendment that I want to introduce to amend tkl to, or rather rather one. And but I don't know if I can offer an amendment to something that's amendment that's been proposed. So okay. In that case, I'd like to distribute this. And I'm sorry, it's a bit of a mess because I originally was written up as an amendment to the prior version of the amendment. So I scribbled on it that it's intended as an amendment to the language in red would come after. Tcl's new item two a through c, so instead of the council president may allow amends from the dais by ruling of the presiding officer subject to appeal, it would have this language in red. And I would note that includes. Although I don't know how exactly we would enforce this, but it sort of signals that we want the presiding officer to have some sideboards and say that the presiding officer may allow a simple, readily understandable amendment to be made if the presiding officer has reason to believe that the amendment will enable the council to move the item forward without unnecessary delay, and that it adds the language that the presiding officer may be appealed. So I guess the presiding officer could always decide, well, I think this is simple and understandable, and it'll move things forward, but it's meant to signal that we do. We want this to be used judiciously, just in cases where it's something that everybody understands. And it's the kind of situation where the presiding officer looks around and says, we could take care of this issue today if we allow a couple of simple amendments to be made, whereas otherwise we might wind up going to next week for no reason.

And. Councilor Novick, just to clarify this, would this replace the the the last sentence that is below the sub two sub c?

Yes, exactly.

Replace that. And this would the red text would insert there.

Right.

Okay. Thank you very much. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney to the amendment.

Did we get a second on Novick one? And are we debating Novick one to tcl one or are we debating tcl one one and two?

Do we have a we have an open motion. We're in the middle of half of an amendment. Do we have to make a roll call vote?

I haven't heard a second yet.

Also is not a second yet on this either. Second councilor Koyama Lane seconds. So are we able to now move to Novick one and then back to tcl one at the first part, or do we have to do the.

So we're right now doing. I don't know what we're calling it, but it is. Councilor Novick amendment to tcl one okay, which is an amendment to paragraph two to add language after c and remove the current language after c. So that's what you're doing. Once that layer of the onion is dealt with, then you can deal with the remainder of tcl one and two.

I love.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Procedural stuff. It's great and I'm very good at it. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you council president. Councilor. Novick. I want to readily admit that this language creates some risk. It creates some risk that the presiding officer could politicize a debate. Play favorites, allow amendments on the dais from some and not others. And I appreciate that your language has some limiting factors as compared to the language proposed in tcl one. And if this language came as a standalone, I would be willing to take that risk and include it, knowing that we could change it later. If we had a president who was abusing that power. Because I do think that there are times where we can all agree that there's a simple change that needs to be made. There was an error. There needs to be an update. There's something that clearly brings everybody together and moves something from maybe six, 6 to 10 zero. And we want to allow those opportunities to move forward. I can't support this as an amendment to tcl one, because I have concerns with one and two of t on tcl one that I can speak to when we get to that point. But I just want to be clear that my no vote here is not because I oppose this language, and if it were brought to the original, I would be happy to take that risk with you. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Okay, I was part of the group who didn't like putting the restriction yesterday on amendments, but at this point now, I think that we are making it more messy. So. Councilor Novick, your wikipedia says that you go or a graduate of harvard university. I am just a lowly graduate of the university of Portland. That's why I just mumbled that word. And in my quick five minutes of looking, harvard is in the top three of all colleges listings everywhere. Meaning when you use subjective language of simple, readily understandable, etc. I just want to say, for all the references that you've made to pop culture and pop is a broad term. Now, given your advanced age, that I have almost never understood what it was you were referencing in terms of music or pop culture, or shows or actors or other famous individuals. And so whose standard of readily understandable is it harvard's or is it just my little catholic school on the hill, on the bluff? And so I use this humor just to say, I think this is almost unworkable. I know your intent was well meaning here, but to, to both of these, I, I am quite cold to, to your aspect of it. I'm quite cold to the part that councilor Kanal brought up in the larger underlying tcl number two thereabout, subject to appeal and I'm luke warm luke cold to the other timeline, so I just wanted to offer that up. I think I think you have provided a compromise that is largely unworkable because of your advanced advanced education and knowledge.

May I direct respond?

Absolutely.

First of all, I did not attend harvard university. I attended the university of Oregon and went to the law school, harvard law school, which which is a which is a terrible place. And I'm, I'm offering I'm offering this amendment as a graduate of the university of Oregon, not as a graduate of harvard law school.

See, I was I am so ill educated, I didn't even know the difference. And I think I thank you for making it readily understandable for me.

See.

Thank you, counselor Zimmerman. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Well, I agree with.

The underlying argument that counselor Zimmerman made about the amendment. I have to on behalf of the residents of district two and university of Portland alums everywhere defend this institution that is in our district at this moment, but I will I do agree on the the the actual proposal, and we'll be voting the same way. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call the roll on Novick one?

Kanal no. Pirtle-guiney no.

Ryan.

No.

Koyama Lane. Aye, Morillo Morillo. I Novick. I Green. I Zimmerman no. Avalos.

I think no for now. Thanks.

Smith. Oh, no. Sorry.

Dunphy I.

The amendment fails with a vote of five a's five no's into absent.

Councilor Kanal legacy hand. Great. Seeing no one else in the queue. Can we please call the. Oh, wow. All right. Cool. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Well, maybe being so, it's at some point I think that it would be appropriate to make a motion to table this whole matter indefinitely. Because we're divided. There's only nine of us here, and I think that I don't want to push this over to next week because we have a busy calendar. I shouldn't have to remind everybody that foie gras is coming. So I just want to say that as we approach 5:00, at some point, I don't know what the appropriate motion is, but I will make a motion to table this whole discussion indefinitely.

You're doing that right now.

Would you like me to do it right now?

Yes.

All right. I make that motion. Now.

Second.

Well, I was in line a second.

Oh, I'm sorry, I just got excited.

I'm just kidding. Candice.

So councilor Novick has motioned to table the item. Are you tabling it indefinitely or tabling this to a future date indefinitely? Okay.

May I be heard, please?

Please, city attorney.

Because it's an important distinction. If there's a motion to table and you can lay something on the table, and then at a future meeting, you can take it off the table. Okay, there's a separate motion to postpone indefinitely. Sounds innocuous. It is not if you pass, if you if you adopt a motion to postpone indefinitely, it procedurally extinguishes the item. So I think what you want to do is just lay it on the table today.

Thank you, city attorney. The motion is revised to lay it on the table.

Okay. Councilor Novick has.

Steve Novick: You're laying the whole thing on the table, right? The whole item on the table.

Okay. Councilor Novick has motioned to lay the entire item on the table. We were in a motion on an amendment.

When you when you when you. The motion to lay on the table applies to the. The main item and any adhering amendments or motions.

Okay. Is this a debatable motion?

It's not.

Okay. So we move to a roll call. Wait, we had a second right from councilor. Great. Let's please call the roll on the motion to table Kanal.

I pirtle-guiney. No Ryan,

No.

Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.

Novick I.

Green no.

Zimmerman.

No.

Avalos.

I Dunphy no. The motion to table the item fails with a vote of five ayes, five no's, and two absent.

Okay.

Back to the discussion on the first half of tcl1. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: I would like to move to refer to the committee of the whole.

Second. Second.

Okay. Councilor Green has moved to move this item to refer this item to the committee of the whole councilor Kanal I guess had second on that. Is this a debatable motion?

It is.

Yes. Okay. Colleagues to the motion. Councilor Green did you want to debate that? Okay.

Yeah. I would just like to say why I did that and why I voted no on the previous item. I didn't want to lay this on the table to only then postpone the same difficult conversation that we're having now, and that gumming up our normal council business. I think that we created the committee the whole, because it is a place where you can actually have more frank conversations with colleagues without violating quorum and public meetings law. And so if there's a world in which we can not kill this item by basically because I actually think it practically does postpone it indefinitely, it's already been postponed quite a long time, where we can send it to a different committee to keep this work going and not gum up our other business. I think we might be able to get some fruitful outcomes. In the same way. We got some fruitful outcomes with the transportation utility fee. So that's why I'm doing this today and I hope to have your support.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Colleagues, there are some controversial pieces within this proposal. There are also the rules for how our committees operate, which currently don't have rules. There are also some technical changes to update the code to how we do things that our professional staff have requested we had when we started these motions around procedure. Almost 25, almost 25 minutes left to get through a few more amendments and try to get somewhere with this. This had extensive debate, not just amongst the committee members who are on our previous governance committee, who we collectively tasked with doing this work, but also from some of our colleagues who came and presented ideas and responded to questions during that debate. So I appreciate councilor Green not letting this die today, because I think it is very important that at least some of the pieces in here get passed eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later. But we have to stop saying that things didn't get work just because they were in previous committees. And we have to stop saying that just because it was in the previous governance committee, it did not have the opportunity to get heard by many members because, frankly, councilor Kanal and councilor Avalos came repeatedly to that committee to weigh in on a variety of different items. So if we want to take more time as a whole group outside of council, fine. But we are wasting time on procedure right now when we could be getting through amendments and actually moving towards some resolution so that we can move forward on getting some rules in place.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney, councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Thank you. I think urgency is less important right now than getting it right. And we are standing up a new form of government, and it has been really challenging. There's been a lot of things that have been evolving, and even from when this was first introduced, I guess now in the fall, maybe I can't even remember. Now I get that it has taken some time. It has understandably taken some time and it has needed to be worked through. You know, as I've said before, yes, I did go to the governance committee many times because I care about this work, but it's also why I fought so hard for committee of the whole. And now that we have it, this is a perfect opportunity to test out this theory or this governance belief that we need time as a council to really suss out all of these governance issues, especially because some of the decisions that were made in amendments yesterday, I guess it was revert back really hard fought compromises. That four person rule was a hard fought compromise that we worked through, and I was actually really proud that we came to that. And I and we've only used it twice. And, you know, another councilors using it, but is also voting against doing it again, which I think is not cool. Right. So I think like, we need to have a further discussion with the entire council. This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the purpose of the committee of the whole. And thank you for changing the motion. You know, it's not when I seconded the first one, it wasn't because I'm trying to kill this bill. It's because I'm trying to put it in a place where we can have further discussion. It's really important to not just us as a body, but to the public that we get this right. So I really do urge folks to send this to committee of the whole. And I truly look forward to having this debate, because I think everybody's making excellent points, and I want to have that debate in a place that is designed for this kind of thorough discussion and policy making. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. Colleagues, I'm next in the queue. I am really glad we did not table this. There are some updates in this policy that I am desperate to see enacted. There are policies on the books right now that are making my job unreasonably hard, and many of these that will, in theory, improve our work. I'm glad I don't mind having additional debate on it, and it's clear to me we were never going to finish this today anyway, so I look forward to everyone coming to the committee of the whole with all of their good ideas, and we get it done. And then when we're done with that, we put it on the consent agenda and we get this done as fast as possible, because the longer we are delaying, the harder this job is in ways that it does not need to be. So I urge us all to not use this as a as a reason to delay or push back, and not to let the perfect be the enemy of good. So thank you.

Councilor Kanal thank you, council president. I'm going to speak on this in my capacity as chair of the committee of the whole, and say that this has always been a priority for me as to why I wanted it to be created in the first place. Now that you know, in the same way that council president did not seek the role, I didn't ask to be chair of it. But now I was very excited to get a chance to work on these issues in that that structure. And now that I am able to set agendas for it, I want to just pledge that if this motion passes, this will not be delayed. This is a high priority. I do think there are things that we I want to we've spent so much time talking about the amendments that we haven't noticed that maybe two thirds of the actual raw text, maybe more than that, have had no amendments proposed because they are probably consensus items. And unfortunately, the choice to bundle that has caused this to happen. And so we can look at how we fix that and ensure that those things that are making your job harder and probably made our former council president's job harder as well, can be resolved, and also how we can work our way through these things. So if that's what passes, then I'm happy to to ensure that it's a priority for us in the agenda setting. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: I just wanted to say that I understand councilor Pirtle-guiney frustration, and I was acting out of frustration, thinking that we are not going to get anywhere today and god knows we're getting anywhere next week. I think sending a committee of a whole is better than tabling it. I wish there was some way that we could just have a vote on the consensus items without ending up spending forever on the non consensus items, and there I look to people with more procedural chops to see how we can we can do that. But I just did not. I mean, I just saw before me the prospect that we would continue this debate on this item for weeks and weeks and wouldn't get anything else. So that's why I made the motion. I did.

Thank you, councilor Novick. Thank you, colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call roll on the motion to refer this item to the committee of the whole.

Kanal I.

Pirtle-guiney no.

Ryan.

No.

Koyama Lane.

Yes.

Morillo. I Novick.

Green I. Zimmerman I. Avalos I.

Dunphy. I motion to refer this item to committee of the whole is approved with a vote of eight eyes, two noes and two absent.

Okay, colleagues, that concludes our work today. We are adjourned.