The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-03-10
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (17,932 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Governance Committee convened on March 10, 2025, with roll call establishing member presence. The session centered on a presentation from the Government Transition Advisory Committee (GTAC), whose term was concluding, covering community engagement findings and recommendations on legislative policy movement, committee structure, and city budget development. Presenters described GTAC's extensive public engagement process, including numerous public meetings, community presentations, surveys, and peer-city research, though some figures describing the scope of this work were stated inconsistently. Topics discussed included recommendations for a common legislative model, a strong committee system, committee composition and district representation, improved constituent communication tools, website and centralized tracking system improvements, and expanded avenues for public testimony beyond committee meetings. Discussion also addressed budget-related recommendations, including earlier budget engagement, district budget town halls, dissolving bureau-specific budget advisory committees in favor of service-area advisory committees, and centralizing community engagement responsibility within the City Administrator's Office. Committee members and GTAC members discussed definitions of "special interest" and "community," concerns about advisory body effectiveness, and challenges balancing accessibility with committee capacity. The meeting concluded with committee members sharing takeaways and confirmation that GTAC would present a final report to the full Council on March 19, with the next Governance Committee meeting rescheduled to March 31.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 It's not like outside, inside, outside, outside of the government.
1 So you must.
2 Good afternoon everyone. I call the meeting of the governance committee to order. It is Monday, March 10th, 2025 at 2:30 p.m. Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
3 Dunphy.
4 Here.
5 Pirtle-guiney. Here. Ryan. Clark. Koyama Lane.
6 Here. Lori, would you please read the statement of conduct?
7 Absolutely. Chair. Welcome to the meeting of the governance committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at. Portland gov slash council slash agenda, slash governance dash committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at the link noted. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals must may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you. Chair.
8 Thank you so much. Today we are incredibly pleased to have members of gtac, the government transition advisory committee, with us here today. They have prepared a presentation about their important work, and we've asked them to share with us their insight, particularly in some specific areas of legislative policy, movement through committees and council structure, as well as the area of city budget development and consideration. Would you please, rebecca, would you please read the first item?
9 Item one government transition advisory committee.
10 Thank you. So, colleagues, we're very pleased to have the gtac members here with us today. We know that you all have been working tirelessly, tirelessly for literally years, bringing extensive wisdom, hard work, experience to the implementation of the city's new government structure. Thank you so much, gtac members. You. We know you have spent countless hours individually, collectively. We know you've been engaging with community members throughout the city, as well as conducting research into other legislative entities throughout the country. So you all are here to present to us today, focused on a few specific areas that we've asked you to speak on, and then you'll also present your final report to the full council at the March 19th council meeting. And before I introduce the co-chairs, one of my colleagues is in dc right now, councilor Clerk, and asked me to convey to you all on the record that she appreciates you all so much. She appreciates your in-depth work and has been pleasantly surprised at the degree to which the new council has implemented your recommendations. She said she's interested in learning your views regarding our progress. This includes our plans for citizen participation in the budget process. She regrets missing this meeting as she's in Washington, dc attending a meeting of the national league of cities. So that's from councilor Clerk all right, without further ado, I would like to introduce jose gamero jordan and fred neil, the current co-chairs of gtac, who will begin our presentation.
11 Thank you. Chair Koyama Lane and committee members, and thank you for this opportunity to share with you our experience and to have this colloquy with you on some of our recommendations. My name is fred neil, and I serve as a current co-chair of the government advisory transition committee, or gtac, along with jose guerrero georgeson. The sitting next to me, the dac was appointed by the previous mayor and council in March 2023 and our term concludes this month. Our task was to ensure effective and efficient implementation of charter reform, to engage the public, to provide strategic and to provide strategic research, informed advice to the city. Jose and I are joined today by a handful of gtac members. We hope that our work and our advice provides crucial city and community insight into your elected positions and new form of government. Next slide pleas. Gtac will be before the full council next Wednesday, March 19th. At that time, we will provide an overview of all of our work. At today's meeting, we were asked by committee leadership to focus on two areas policy movement and the budget, including how portlanders engage in both. We will begin with a brief introduction to gtac and what we've heard portlanders want out of the new legislative council. Then, for each topic area, we will review specific community input and the gtcs relevant recommendations. We will pause after each topic for discussion and q&a. Throughout the presentation, we referenced several community engagement reports and recommendation reports. Links to all these documents can be found on the final slide of the deck. If people online want to do more research or your staff does, are you to. The planned agenda is about 80 minutes. If there are other items you want to discuss with us and you have time on your agenda, some of us can stick around. Next slide please. In over 75 public meetings, we debated and deliberated how to ensure the city's transition is effective and efficient. We researched 20 peer cities to identify promising practices of good government elsewhere, from which Portland might learn. And most importantly, we served as the public engagement body for the transition. We provided more than 140 presentations to community groups on the city's transition, including more than 50 neighborhood and business associations. 39% of our community presentations were in partnership with communities historically left out of city hall. Decision making. Over almost two years of work, we've collectively contributed more than 4000 hours to the transition. Next slide please. To inform initial recommendations, gtac and the transition team hosted three listening sessions, two employee town halls and employee briefing and online survey and received public comments. What we heard is that recommendation that respondents desire a council's new legislative process to have more accessibility. Portlanders found council session inaccessible, including the physical location of city hall and time of day, and people didn't understand the decision making processes. Communication portlanders found the city's website and council agendas difficult to use, and expressed a need for clearer communication, transparency and accountability. Many portlanders didn't believe that public input impacted council's decisions, and that council prioritized special interest groups over broader community. Folks also expressed frustration at late changes to council agenda items, district engagement in citywide collaboration, people want to see councilors spend time outside city hall, and of those that commented on district offices, district one residents expressed their desire for a district office more than residents from other districts. Community members also want to see coordination among councilors to improve citywide outcomes. More community informed, accountable council committees. Community members want community voices included early in decision making process, feeling that council decisions are largely baked by the time they are discussed in council meetings, public input should be tracked and reported on as part of decision making. Council committees should have measurable outcomes and clear timelines to increase committees awareness and access to decision making. Next slide please, and I'll turn it over to josie.
12 Thanks, fred. As as you all know, for us, community input has been the cornerstone of our work and early community input informed the gtex draft recommendations, which we released in June of 2020 four for several summer of civic engagement. Next slide please. Gtac released draft recommendations for internal and external feedback over the ten week engagement period. We received 403 survey responses, held two community listening sessions. Sessions with 70 attendees, had five policy recommendations with community based organizations representing communities historically left out of city hall decision making, and held 16 internal city briefings. Next slide please. Here is the distribution of survey respondents by each district. As you can see, district one east Portland had the fewest numbers at 16%. District two north and northeast represented the largest margin at 33%. Racial demographics. Here are also noteworthy. Survey respondents were reportedly 76% white, 10% more than the general Portland population. The racial makeup of the next largest category prefer, not to say is unfortunately unclear, but is definitely that 13% of survey respondents were people of color. Next slide please. We asked portlanders how likely would the following the recommendations, if implemented, improve how you access city services and elected officials? Most confidence was found in the recommendation for an online hub for all city council and council committee activities. Many expressed the hope that the proposed hub would be simple, up to date, robust and easy to navigate. The second most popular recommendation was for a united public input tool, where Portland portlanders can find all opportunities to provide input and through which they can provide additional information. Beliefs varied, but folks noted posting public comment would aid in decision making. Respondents felt least favorably about the tracking system for all city questions or requests. Concerns were raised about how responses would happen and how requests would be triaged. Next slide please. We also asked portlanders to rate the importance of the following recommendations for your city councilor to effectively represent your district's interests or needs. Councilors providing regular, predictable communication received the most robust support request for district newsletter, especially when timely issues arise. Were important, and I'm glad to see that those are actually already coming out because I received a few myself. The recommendation for councilors to hold regular office hours and town halls received the second highest level of support. Portlanders want these primarily held in places where folks usually gather, like community centers and public spaces, and available outside of regular business hours. Folks also cautioned that these should not be usurped by special interests. Response. Respondents supported councilors attending community events. This can help councilors better gauge community needs. And again, there is also caution that went into this. Folks cautioned that they should be a venue for engagement, but not for campaigning. In district offices. Didn't receive as high of a support as others, and folks expressed concerns about the cost. Survey comments noted that district offices would improve accessibility, but many encourage that the recommendation to focus on specific assessments of what each district needs, rather than a uniform approach across all districts. And finally, funds for district engagement has strong support for some question, but some really question whether setting aside funds are needed versus including it in an existing engagement budget. Others supported setting actually setting aside funds for engagement to ensure things are provided like multiple languages, asl, interpreters, etc. At meetings. Next slide please. We asked portlanders how likely it would be for the following recommendations to improve community members ability to meaningfully participate in city council decision making. In that process, the recommendation for committees as the primary input tool received mixed feedback. Some expressed concerns about having council committees serve as the primary tool for public input, because they really wanted to know how public facing these committees would actually be, and how councilors on different committees would communicate with each other. Robust support for soliciting input outside of council meetings was observed in the survey. Social media and surveys were among the recommended mediums for solicitation, but respondents also indicated that follow up response on the feedback was required. They don't want to just give the feedback, they actually want to hear a response. The recommendation for public comment on non-agenda items during council meetings received the lowest levels of support. There was a bit of concern regarding time, as well as the risk of this space being taken over by special interests. Some optimism was expressed about its ability to bring new issues to the attention of the council in this way, considering diverse perspectives received some support. Respondents expressed that councils should aim to connect with the same proportion of demographics as those in their district, especially populations who typically don't engage in local politics, and we've seen them not take part. Next slide please. Feedback on setting up city council committees was largely grouped into topics around committee structure and focus, operating rules and procedures, and community engagement. Listening session participants suggested defining the legislative responsibilities versus administrative role for each committee topic. Listening session attendees and internal city groups expressed a desire to see committees topics align with the strategic plans. Action items for rules and procedures. Respondents discussed how many members committees really needed that chair should be appointed based on experience, skill and interest. That folks discuss how much power chairs have to really prioritize or block certain agenda items and listening. Session participants also brought up topics regarding the committee structure and community engagement, and how that would need consideration. For example, how the community contributes to the committee. Participants suggested that committees have unelected community members, while others advocated for more public involvement in testimony, but ultimately leaving councilors accountable for the meaningful, meaningful participation. If the public is involved, then the committees may need options for them to attend remotely or in the evenings other than just in the middle of the day. Consideration for councilor Schedules was also discussed. Committees should be structured and consolidated in such a way that councilors are not spending all of their time in meetings or the bureaucratic, bureaucratic structures that that would entail. There's a lot more than you guys need to be doing than just sitting in meetings all day. Next slide please. With community input, piercey research and our own deliberations, gtec has the following recommendations related to the policy movement. Next slide please. First, utilize a common legislative model. Second, establish a relatively strong committee system. Third, compose council committees. Fourth, improve constituent information and experience with elected leaders. Fifth, improve community participation in council decision making. Six encourage public participation and seventh, appropriately resource the council committees. I'll describe each recommendation, and then we'll pause for questions and discussion. Next slide please. Thank you. Gtex first recommendation is to utilize a common legislative model to go into that. In a common legislative model, bills, ordinances, resolutions. They're introduced referred to committee. There's a public comment. Work sessions are held by the committees on those topics. The committee then reports back to the council. And the council acts on the reported legislation, with or without more public input, and then ultimately, council acts on final passage, again with or without additional public input. This flow can be altered by a majority or a supermajority, and you can maintain separate procedures for ceremonial or emergency actions. Next slide please. Gtex second recommendation is to establish a relatively strong committee system. All council items go to the relevant committee committees. There's always some rare exceptions. Many cities have strong committee systems in which legislation referral to committees either automatic or mandatory committees, are the primary venue for agency and expert involvement. Detailed amendments, deliberation, and most, if not all, of the public processes that go along with those pieces. And we do appreciate this. Committee postponed voting on committee rules so we can have this discussion together. Next slide please. Gtex third recommendation is to compose council committees. We appreciate that the council acted so quickly to set up these committees. Some elements align right with gtex work. The number of councilors per committee aligns with the peer cities average, and the topical areas really align with gtex recommendations. That standing committees reflect legislative priorities as distinct from the executive functions. So we appreciate that. The number of committees is a little bit on the high end of the peer cities average of 5 to 8 council committees, and maybe more than current staffing can support. But the current composition is one thing we're concerned about is completely in line with the recommendations from gtac to distribute power and workload as equally as possible across the council districts, and I know we've expressed that three committees don't include councilors from each. Districts and districts vary in leadership roles, from a low of three council committee leadership roles for district one to a high of five, council committee leaderships, plus the council vice president for district three. Next slide please. Gtex fourth recommendation is to improve constituent information and experience. Council should create or strive to create a blend of unified, regularly scheduled, city wide council level and district level communications, plus the opportunities and encouragement of individual councilors to communicate. We appreciate that a new citywide newsletter has been created and encourage additional, regularly scheduled council level and district level communications. And I, I know even within the last couple of weeks, I've seen those come out from different councilors, at least in district one for sure. I've seen that. We do also need to improve the city council website. And to that, really make it so that community can easily follow council activities, such as identifying where council is in the legislative process, upcoming decisions and constituent issues and relations. We can also improve the public's experience with council materials. Residents should be able to easily skim council agendas, meeting summaries, packet materials. It shouldn't need. You should need a million clicks to get to everything. We should try to minimize that task of downloading all the documents needed. We need to utilize tools to identify and simplify watching sections of council meetings on agenda items. That are of interest to constituents. Sometimes it's hard to watch a five hour meeting to see the section you want you're interested in. Also, to set up elected offices with a centralized tracking system for questions, requests, or issues that are set into the offices. An ideal system would assign each request a tracking number, capture a problem description directed to the right staff or elected official, and help ensure issues are addressed through a reporting of opened or resolved issues. This is in addition for the citywide need to really expand the 301 system. It's more to assist and track portland's contact with bureaus, and it would assist the 301 system as well. Work in tandem. It's our understanding that 301 is working with both the executive and legislative sides of government to adopt more consistent processes and tools to effectively and efficiently respond to constituents seeking information. Council offices are now using a centralized tracking system for constituent inquiries submitted online and by email. Next slide please. Gtex fifth recommendation is to improve community participation in council decision making. Include in a proactive and organized fashion community voices including communities. Like we've said historically left out of city hall decision making. Really to inform and advise on legislation discussed in council committees and how committees internal policies are being developed. We to implement, you need to implement rules, outreach and engagement to educate, encourage and guide public legislative involvement in the new committee system. Solicit community input outside of council and council committee meetings. While there really must be opportunities for portlanders to provide input during the meetings, many community members still want additional opportunities to provide feedback, such as through a neighborhood meeting, a town hall, the office hours, surveys, social media platforms. And I will say there's all the known ways we do things, but there are some districts you're going to have to be creative to actually get the input. I'm looking at you, district one report we need to report on explicitly address public input to council. Court to council during decision making. A frequent refrain from Portland portlanders was concerned that public input doesn't influence council decisions. Input on policy should be publicly reported on before decisions are made, primarily receive formal public input on policies and council committee meetings, versus full council meetings. This shouldn't prevent council from holding policy related town halls or other full council events on policy areas. Permit recorded audio and video testimony to increase the public access to and to meet accommodation needs. There's also maintain the general non agenda item public comment in full council sessions. However, this should be combined with the creation of more routes of non-agenda communications to council such as we've been mentioning, the town halls explore alternatives to first come, first serve public communications and exercise discretion to allow individual speakers to speak beyond the time allotted to truly to accommodate their needs. I mean, it all boils down to giving as many options to get as many people to have access to council as possible. Next slide please. And this was still the same recommendation. We need to regularly schedule some council committee meetings in the evenings and in the council districts to increase constituent attendance. I've been big on that one. Afford early and sufficient notice to public a formal opportunities to provide input to city council. Current practices often afford less than a week in advance notice should be unacceptable except in extreme or emergency circumstances, and disfavor council practices and procedures that limit or eliminate public comment. Next slide please. Our seventh and final recommendation is in the in this topic area is to appropriately resource council committees. Resources are needed to for each one of you individually for all the individual councilors, for a shared public council, for shared council operations, for the council committees and for community input, including any of the technology needs for that input. We appreciate that council quickly increased resources for the individual offices, but we remain concerned about the overall support for the council and all the pieces that go along with your work. And next slide please, and I'll turn it back over to chair Koyama Lane to facilitate discussion and to ask any questions we might have on what we've covered so far. Thank you.
13 Thank you. Thank you so, so much. This is really helpful. Again, so excited to have you all here today and in general as a resource to lean on. You better believe I've been sending lots of texts and emails of little questions, and it's so great to be able to have you all as a resource to tap into. Something that I noticed. I noticed a few things and appreciated many things about what you just shared. See some of the same holes and concerns that I think a lot of us have identified also as things that we'd like to improve or do differently. When I heard some when I heard you say improve the city council website, I heard I heard some noise over here of someone like, yeah, we got to work on that. And knowing that, you know, it would be a great goal to be able to have district representation on every single committee. I see that as something that we could hopefully strive towards. And also I was encouraged to see quite a few places that mirror the leadership that I see. Councilor and council president pirtle-guiney doing a lot of what you shared about the committee system and really trying to get community engagement. A lot of the work to happen in committees. These are things that I am seeing in her leadership and seeing her pushing even when there's pushback. And so that was encouraging to see how those there are quite a few areas in here that line up. So this is helpful. And part of what we were hoping is that we could hear from you and then also have a time for us to ask some questions and maybe like really get in the weeds together and, and talk about what we might, might want to draft as a resolution and ask some questions of you all if you're willing. As we're thinking through some of these questions, this first general question is how do we move policy, which as we're just doing it, we're also we've also answered some of those questions. So this general question is what is the path for moving policy. How does something go from a resolution or ordinance to from a councilor or from the community, even, or the executive side, then to a committee, then to the full council? And so we're seeing we're seeing resolutions go through right now. And we already have clarified here in governance that and through president pirtle-guiney leadership that ordinances and resolutions go to committees first, unless there's an emergency. That's the hope and the bulk of the work is done there. Public testimony is taken there. Technically, it just has to be there. It can be voted out after it is talked about once, but committees might need to spend a few meetings to workshop things, but there is an option to vote it out. Once it goes to the full council. Then you have a first reading and second reading. What are some of the questions that we've brought up are? Should there be limits on public testimony? I hear, I hear pretty clearly. It's so important that we have opportunities for public input and that that's not something that's limited. We've had the question of if there are folks that have already testified in committee, should other folks be testified in front of full council, should we ask, should we let people come back twice? Or are people going to feel like they have to come back twice to something that in addition to working on this, we're also thinking about our volunteers and advisory bodies and making sure that time, your time is valued and respected and that we're not asking too much, and that if we are calling on you that that we really are using your time well. So those are a few things that have popped up. And does anyone want to respond to what I just shared to that question about public testimony? And then I'd love to hear from my colleagues what else they're wondering?
14 Great. We'd like to also welcome any gtac members that want to help respond to your questions, any of your questions today to come up and join us if they're so inclined. We feel very strongly that the policy process has really got to be focused on committees. And as you're cranking them up and starting to assign work to them, you'll learn, I think, through experience, how to best channel and distribute the workload amongst the committees and then filter nascent policies up through through the committees to the full council. As far as testimony. If somebody had their full opportunity to speak at. Committee, I think probably they don't need to be. It doesn't need to be repeated. I know that the legislative model, that miss brocker is quite familiar with is, is that there's no testimony once it gets to the floor of the house or the floor of the senate, it's just full debate. And all of the legislators have had the opportunity to hear from the interests of their constituents, the general public, as they debate and make a decision. And that might be a model that you might want to look at, especially if you feel that you can assure the public that their voices have been heard in the committee, in the committee system.
15 Yeah. For me, the question is that not do we need to limit testimony, but are we getting the right testimony? Are we getting all the voices in the room that we need to have in the room? Which is why we've suggested if everything's going to come through committee, then every single committee shouldn't be on a weekday in the middle of the day. And I know that's horrible. And you guys also have a life, so there's got to be some balance there. But you are going to limit the people that will be in front of you. If that's the only time you're soliciting public input, are you going to weigh input that's given to you on a topic at committee heavier, or are you also going to make it equal and reported or record town halls? There are certain districts that are notorious for not attending town halls or attending. And I say this as a proud member of district one who is notorious for not having the engagement. But if you go to a community meeting for one of the nonprofits or groups that are doing stuff in our community, there's no problem with attendance in those places. It's the relationship with the city. So we're going to have to get creative. And if we're doing that and getting creative with with an outlying district or a community that normally doesn't show up at committee meetings, how are we making sure that those testimonies are weighed just as heavily as someone who has the privilege of being able to show up at 230 in the afternoon on a Wednesday?
16 All right.
17 Excuse me, terry harris, for the record, apologies. I've got this cold and my ears are just foggy. So I'm listening to most of it, but I'm not hearing a lot of it. I know you're struggling with the testimony thing right now, and I think that is difficult. I think the more common legislative model tries to direct the input to committees, where you have the time and the space and the and the capacity to dive deeper and think longer and do better work. So I think that's the idea. And you want to favor that as much as you can. Different jurisdictions do that differently. So and again a common legislative model will get referred immediately to a committee so that that process can get started. And then when it comes back from committee testimony will again, different jurisdictions do it differently, but typically doesn't happen at the full council meeting. I think it is worth considering that if something comes back from committee and then gets amended by the full council, that there'd be some opportunity for the public to weigh in on those amendments, that they didn't get a chance to weigh in at the committee meeting. But that's one consideration. But I think, you know, portland's not used to committees, but they'll get used to them. And I think once you guys get used to them, it'll become second nature. And you'll understand how that those committees can get you to better policy.
18 I will say one more thing. Terry reminded me in our research. One thing we found that the common thread between cities on how they do things is that every city does it differently. You know, that's the I remember when we were trying to pass the charter, people were like, why do we want to do this? No one does it this way. And in our research, we found that no one does it the same way as anyone else. And you have a perfect opportunity with all this change to find the way that's good for us. And it doesn't mean following any one model. It might mean being like, this is a different way than anyone does it, but this seems to work because of how we are. You guys have the luxury to be able to do that, you know? Because no matter what you do, there's going to be blowback from somewhere. So you might as well try to do what you think is best, even if no one's done it before.
19 One of the policy drivers that you kind of broached, and I think is important to consider, is your relationship with the mayor and the city administrator and how obviously, the bureaucracy and administration has issues that need council to address and resolve. We hope. But then it takes really a strong rapport between the council president and the mayor to make sure that those bureau needs are filtered up through the committee system rather than dropped on the full council. And I don't know, have you developed a procedure for that yet, or understanding with the administration. But but it's something to think about how how the, the overall flow of policy deliberations and decisions that are generated by the administration are filtered up through, we hope, a robust, strong committee system. Destiny.
20 Hi.
21 This might throw the conversation a little bit more sideways. For the record, destiny pablo, proud homeowner and portlander in district one. One thing that I did want to include about bringing, you know, testimony or public comment to full council, I think we haven't talked about this, but I think it would be interesting if in your rules that you start, you know, tinkering with and, you know, practicing before solidifying is if committee really wants to invite testimony to the full council, let's say for one policy area, it's really contentious, you know, introducing a number to the record is just not humanizing enough. I think this is a perfect opportunity for committee members, councilors, to invite a testimony to full council. This is not something we've discussed, but if we're talking out loud here and something else that I heard from a community member was, and something that terry harris here alluded to, the last meeting was, a lot of things that are introduced already have a preconceived notion of how the vote's going to go and how the council will be swayed, and we really want a strong committee space. And from the drafted language of the resolution of how things are pushed forward into committees, there wasn't really any language about how does a person introduce a policy area or a discussion to committees. And so I think that's something that also should be humanized and acknowledged. I know there was amendments to the city auditor, but what about the regular portlander? How do they bring in something that is, you know, be it, be it resolved, be it, then, you know, very humanized language and clearly identifiable. So two little pieces.
22 Thank you. Destiny. That's I think inviting testimony is a great way to include the people that are traditionally not showing up, because people will show up if you ask them to show up. And it takes extra effort. But there are groups that just won't come downtown unless you start asking them to. And then you'll find that some people will.
23 Other questions concerns. We're here for you.
24 Councilor Dunphy.
25 Thank you. Chair Koyama Lane. I have a couple of questions. I've been debating this issue also in my head and externally at this committee about the primary place versus the only place for testimony. My one of my big concerns was if we don't allow testimony at full council hearings, that the communication slots will then get taken up by people who are actually just trying to sneakily testify on issues. And I also have concerns about the time bound nature of committees, being that committees only have two hours every other week. Part of that may also be that we just have too many committees, which I would like you guys to comment on as well. But I'm wondering, you know, is there is there programmatically? I guess if we're thinking about the structure of committees versus the full council, are there were there concerns about or are there examples from other parts of the other cities where they've successfully limited testimony to only the committee hearings? Are there ways that that could be abused that we're not thinking about right now? And I guess also more specifically, do you guys have concerns about the length of time that that turns from the moment of policy is introduced until it's adopted?
26 Okay, a couple questions there. Yeah. Most of the cities that we looked at did have strong committee systems and limited testimony in the full council. Some strictly. I'm more I'm familiar with baltimore where everything is in committee. Nothing is at the full council. But you should also consider you have sort of two different kinds of legislation. One is brought to you from the administration. It's fully baked. They want to move. And then there's others that you're introducing. You need to develop. You need to gather support. They can be on two different timelines. And I think what what baltimore has done is put them all on the same timeline. That that things go to committee and they get considered from bills get introduced, and then they get a committee hearing at least 30 days out. And that 30 days is when departments bureaus would provide input on the legislation and have a report, and they would gather their wits about them so that when you get to a committee hearing in in 30 days, you can have a really good discussion because everybody's prepared. Again, it's that's not how we've been doing things, but it's something to consider.
27 But then there's emergency ordinances that are and then consent agenda items that probably don't need to bake for two months or even 30 days in a committee. I think that this is where the council staff, the clerk staff and the council president, in concert with the administration, can decide, you know, okay, this is a simple right of way issue or a condemnation that's not controversial. Maybe if it's located in a particular district, confer with those councilors on the side and say, we'll just run this through on a consent agenda. It does not need to go to committee, does not need to be. It does not need to fester for weeks therein, but to councilor Dunphy's concern about or a too many committees and every other week sort of thing. That's something I think you're all going to have to get a feel for, and how much load you can put into a committee. Are you fully and adequately staffed in order that you've got policy analysis on your end, as well as the bureau's expertise coming at you with with their proposals?
28 And I hear your concerns, and I think also just to preface, we all speak for what we've researched and what gtec has discussed, but we also speak a little bit from our own personal backgrounds. And you probably know that I'm from district one. So the communities that are in my backyard and I represent interact very differently with the city as other places. So for me, I share the same concern with a two hour committee for public testimony, which is why I tend to push our recommendation to have as many avenues for feedback as possible. We have to stop looking at the two hour public testimony window at a committee, as the only window for public testimony. When we get away from thinking this is public testimony, everything else is different, then I think we'll realize that we really could have a lot of different ways, because when you're proposing legislation, you don't only take into consideration the two hours worth of testimony you've talked about the your issues with people in your community, with leaders, with other council members. There's lots of ways to get input, and we need to start treating all those ways on a balanced playing field to maybe having a structure where we have a moment to report on that. Like I said, mentioned before, like maybe recording some of those so they can be played it, pick out good ones and play them back. We have to just start thinking more creatively. I will say the one concern you mentioned, do people take advantage of things? People take advantage of whatever system you put in place. There's always someone that will find a way to take advantage of the system. So it's just being cognizant of those things. You're never going to be able to plan for every little problem as long as you're going at it from a good place of trying to get the most feedback, the most engagement. I'm very much of the public leaders are only as good as how they engage with their community. I'm not of the of the school of thought that you elect them now. They're like, make all the decisions because you've anointed them. No, I, I, I elect a representative. And I've been so happy that in the last two months I've seen my city councilors everywhere in my community, all over. I bump into them when I didn't think they were going to be there. This is exactly. And I've heard from other people who are not that they love that, that the change, they've already seen it. So we should keep that going. It shouldn't be now. It should be always destiny.
29 For the record, again, when we're thinking about as time goes on, if there's too many council committees or policy areas, I think you'll start to realize maybe there's redundancies or overlap with other councilors who aren't at, you know, formal members of said committee wish to join and have ongoing conversations between, let's say, housing and climate or arts and economy with like infrastructure, like if there's just natural, like if you need to rethink the areas to consolidate it. And there's a lot of councilors in one area and very few in the other, but there's overlap. I think that's a clear indication that maybe we need to look at what the responsibility of said committee is, and maybe join them together, because they just make sense. And I mean, we spent a lot of time about what should it be tied, what should the responsibilities be. But I think as you're flowing and you see that dialogs mesh between two, because one of the things that could happen is that like something is introduced to one committee, but we really during the planning and the public comment, we realize it should go through climate, it should go through infrastructure. Like I don't even know if we've gotten to that point. And so again, being very flexible right now is, I think, the best thing you can do, it's going to be awkward. It's going to be like, oh, what are we doing? But that's the I think, leaning into we need to think innovative. We need to think creatively. And like jose, soliciting public engagement outside of just these sessions because it is hard for people to come during the middle of the workday, especially for low income families and families and teachers and educators. Lik, you're just not going to get it. Thank you.
30 Thanks. My name is amy randall, for the record. And I don't know if this is necessarily to do with committee structure, but I just wanted to highlight some one of our recommendations. And just that we what we heard overwhelmingly during our community engagement was that it was hard to talk to city hall and get city hall to talk back to you. And I want to just highlight our recommendations about the website and centralized communications as not accessory things, but as fundamental to reforming the system of the way the city engages with community. Because the way this the current experience of engaging with the city of Portland, for most people, and especially people on the deep east side of the city, is bad. And that that is a central function of a more responsive government. And the committee systems and every other system of this new government would tremendously benefit from a more user friendly interface and a better experience dealing with the city. Another one of our recommendations regarding this was the centralized communication system. So 311, some kind of zendesk or some sort of situation where if you're interfacing with the government, you have a file that somebody can pull up. And that's something that I know has been floated and talked about. But in our engagement work, we heard over and over again that every time I interfaced with the city, nobody has any idea what the left hand has, no idea what the right hand is doing. And all of this engagement would be better served by somebody having a central place for their engagement information. It would help the entirety of the council be able to know what others are doing, and also help the commission or the bureaus be able to be in communication. So yeah, just mainly fix the website, please.
31 Thank you so much. I we have you guys have so much great information and input. I know councilor Pirtle-guiney has a few questions. And then we still have another section where we want to be able to talk about the budget. And so did you want to ask your question before the budget conversation after okay.
32 Yeah. Thank you all so much for being here today. And I just want to say, amy, thank you for that plug on the website. I have had a number of conversations with folks about making sure that we have a web system where portlanders can see what is coming and track it through a process, and I don't think we can get there until we've really finalized what our processes look like. But please know that that is a recommendation that was heard, and that I am personally at least hoping that we get to probably 3 to 4 months from now, but without too much delay, I am going to ask my top two questions together because I know we're short on time. With just a short preamble, I was really interested in what you said about recorded testimony, and as we think about the committees and the limitations that we have in terms of time, but also wanting to reach as many portlanders as possible, and also our own limitations, right? When we have meetings every evening that starts to affect who can run for these positions, too. And we need to be cognizant of the balance of accessibility to serving in this body and also accessibility to speaking to the body. So that idea of recorded testimony was really interesting to me. And also the idea of uplifting written testimony and maybe having a more formal way of reporting in from staff to the committee about written testimony that we've received on issues. And I'd love your thoughts on those things. I also would love your thoughts on how we bring testimony into full council. You've talked a lot about limiting testimony that comes into full council, and I think that in order to prioritize work in committees, that's a good idea. It signals this is where that work is done. But have you seen anywhere cities that had the committee report in on testimony that they heard? What did that look like? Did they invite representative testifiers to come in, or was it more of a written report that the committee chair delivered? I'm interested in how we might use other processes that tell full council what was heard without having that repeat of testimony. So two things more thoughts on recorded or written testimony and how we use that in committee to make input more accessible. And then second thing, any examples you've seen on how we pull kind of a formal representation of testimony to full council from committee when items move to full council.
33 One important factor to remember is that the public record is critical, especially after you've the full council has made a decision that the public is confident that it was based on the testimony they heard and the facts that were evident through the entire process, especially in the committees. And so committee reports are important now. Are you fully staffed to have the committee staff that can do the analysis and do a summary, say of both written and oral recorded testimony? But as long as there's a record, I think at least there's some assurance that there's transparency and accountability thereby. So other thoughts.
34 I actually came up for this during the last session, terry provided a written testimony. I still can't find it two years into volunteering. I don't know where to find public written comments. It's so hard on the website. Like I click on it and it says agenda and like, I don't know where I'm going. I keep going to the same page or different page. So I think we really need to figure out where we're housing, public comments, even the filter of public comments. It's hard to actually read what people said. And again, I think time stamping your two hour long sessions with where is the discussion? Where was the public comment? Like, let's say another councilor was like, what happened in that infrastructure? I keep hearing about it. What section? You're busy. What section was it in? I just want to click at 215 and there it is. So I think that would be great. And I think again, when we were serving, we would get public engagement reports from the transition team. Again, I don't know if your staff enough. I don't think you are. I think that needs to be figured out. But seeing so many comments come in unfiltered by anonymous portlanders was really critical in informing how we then adjusted our recommendations to provide you what we have. There's common sentiments that are able to be pushed out, and common themes that are being that could be expressed during council session. That is very powerful and very compelling. And again, it's that rehumanizing this process.
35 And I will say, first of all, much appreciation for even acknowledging that we need more and to open the avenues to maybe have this as a disabled person. I know there are numerous people that can't be here, even if they want to be, and being able to open more avenues for them to be able to give testimony to all is going to be amazing. For reaching people that normally couldn't be reached. I will say a lot of the software that we're talking about exists. It's not like inventing the wheel like we it's already out there. And now with new ai software like this, you can easily make a transcript of the meeting with a minute exactly what's happening. So some of these things are not difficult to implement. It's just doing the thing and actually doing.
36 President pirtle-guiney, you had a second question was that did we answer? I'm not sure.
37 Whether you saw. So first of all, yes. Thank you. I love, love, love when places have the timestamps and you can actually look through the agenda, click on the link. It takes you to that part of the recording. I don't know if that's something our current technology can do, but it's a question that I have written down before and rewrote down today. As you were talking on my things, we should follow up on list with our staff. So I don't know how much that would take, but I love the ask to do that. The second part of my question was whether you had seen examples as you were looking at other cities about ways to bring in that representative overview of the testimony from committee to council. Obviously, councilors can go look at the public record, but I think it's sometimes helpful to repeat that on the record in a council meeting. And if you had seen best practices on how whether it was in a report from staff, whether it was a chair reporting in, whether it was inviting a few representative individuals who had testified to the full council meeting, if there were any best practices that stood out to you.
38 I'll take a stab at it. It sort of depends on what you prefer. I mean, because I testified your last meeting and you hadn't seen my written testimony, and I don't know why, you know. And so what is it that you want? You know, how does how do you get that written testimony into your eyeballs is sort of your preference. But I think it's really important that that testimony means something and that you don't miss a good idea or, or understand what the bad ideas are. So, so some of it is up to you. The other thing I'd say is, you know, we have a we're pushing a legislative model. And what you are organizing around are meetings. You have a meeting agenda. And that's where all the stuff is, where in a legislature you're going to have a bill and a bill file. So that bill file will have all of the stuff in it. That takes some getting used to. It takes some software, it takes some. Coordination. But if you shift your thinking that way, I think it helps.
39 Chair Koyama Lane I just want to say out loud how heartened I am to hear some of this advice. I know we have had conversations about moving in a lot of these directions.
40 And I'll say the time stamp thing. Austin, texas has a great they are they time stamp their whole video. You can go to section by section. It's awesome.
41 Bill, did you have something.
42 I could offer? A couple comments, if I may. I'm bill kinsey and a member of gtac. I was going to draw a couple analogies to the federal government. I would tend to favor committee reports. A committee report can provide a synopsis of the testimony received. Another analogy is environmental impact statements. A section of them will contain a synopsis of the public comments and testimony, and organize it or organize it under different issues that are raised. That, of course, does take time, and there's probably associated cost, but it really helps to organize the information.
43 So there's no best practice. Yes.
44 Thank you. Any other questions?
45 Councilor councilor Ryan.
46 Thank you, madam chair. And thank you, jose and fred and the rest of the committee that keeps popping up. It's great to have you here. I'm not surprised committee meetings have been the main topic. That's what we're building. So thanks for building it with us. And I thought it was very honest. And I wasn't surprised that you found each city to do it differently. That's always been what I've noticed as well. And so that's been really helpful to be in dialog about that. I'll have some questions later when you do part two, which is around budget and such. Right. So we're finishing this part. There was some language that I just was going to ask questions about, but some was handled earlier. You the word regular communication. I thought you all did a fascinating job of doing the best you could to say what that might look like for different people. So there's that. We're building that as well. And relatively strong committee system. I thought it was a fascinating choice of words relatively was put in there. So I think you want a strong committee system. Correct. All right. I did hear the word special interest used quite a bit. And anytime I hear the word community used a lot without someone defining what community that is because we do a pretty bad job on the word inclusion in the dei work, and then also with the word special interest. It seems to always have different definitions based on whom you're talking to. So I always ask for clarification when I hear those words on what you mean by that. So when I heard special interest several times, tell me what you mean by special interest community.
47 The members of the community that are most directly impacted by the issue at hand that makes them special, that's all. Maybe they have a financial interest. And that's where I think that term often is. You know. In community diminished to but but then not every member of the community has is affected by each and every policy issue. That's before you.
48 And many of the items that come before the council in the past were always coming through the administration. So through the bureaucracy that we're connecting with those special interests. And so that's that's an example of why you would mention that.
49 And I'm going to disagree with fred a little bit.
50 It's okay. I actually think that would be healthy if you would all give your definition. So welcome to my world.
51 When I'm in community, special interest has a different connotation. It's not just the group that's been affected because there are groups that are affected, that are not considered a special interest in the community, like people look at those more like lobbying groups that only have one interest in mind and aren't thinking about the community as a whole, that it's like, this is the only thing that matters, no matter who else gets hurt by it. So we so sometimes it's hard because when you're in in community, special interest has a different connotation, even if it just means it could mean something, a good group, it doesn't always have a good connotation. And a lot of times when we say when we've heard, oh, people are afraid it's going to be taken over by interest groups, they don't mean like, oh, we're talking about disability issues, and there's this disability rights group, they're going to take it over. No, they mean there's a construction company that doesn't want to put in sidewalks, and they're going to take it over so that they overpower the least of them.
52 And if I can also comment, when we started our committee, we were asked to kind of build our own work plan our own scope, because we kept hitting roadblocks. And one of the things is like, we need to engage the stakeholders of this transition. And I think at one point I asked, who does the city consider stakeholders in this transition? And there was no list. No one can provide me who the city values as having a stake in this transition. All of the lists of who we engage with was done by the gtac committee and transition staff. The city says. We have contracts, we have our own relations, but they didn't provide any of that information. So when you ask special interest again, I will I will ask, who are your stakeholders in the city government? What are your relationships that you hold? Where is that going to happen long term? And these are things that we have battled throughout this transition of really solidifying. Who does the city value here? Because it's easy for us to come in as volunteers and public servants to the city and being asked, what do we define special interest? But again, we have never been given a clear list of who your stakeholders even are. We made we made our view up of who we're engaging publicly.
53 Destiny's hit a hot button for me on stakeholders. When you look at the change management contract and how the transition team and then mayor wheeler and all decided how the proposed structure for service areas and the like would be, they talked mostly within the bureaus themselves and directors. There's a leadership team. They said they were including councilors and councils, executive assistants. I heard that that was not the case. And in their written testimony, written material, they said they included stakeholders outside of that and they never talked. They told us specifically that we couldn't be involved, that we couldn't ask questions. It was not part of our business. It wasn't even part of the charter reform. And so who were those stakeholders and how did they influence this current array of bureau distribution? Was it just the bureaus themselves? In which case, where have we where are we going to find the efficiencies which gets us to the next subject area, which is budgeting?
54 I think.
55 The.
56 Biggest part of those phrasing, though, shouldn't be the special interest part, but it should be the taken over part. We shouldn't allow any of these committee meetings to be taken over by one group. You should always hear the other side, even if you want to. You should be able to have an avenue for all the sides to in Portland to describe what they want their city to be like on any given topic. It should never be one group only that gets a chance to speak.
57 That was helpful. Thank you. I thought there might have been different definitions and that's why I wanted that on the public record. The other question that I had was on page 11, you talked about advisory bodies, and we're in an exercise right now. Again, we didn't have committees until now. So what we did have was advisory bodies and commissions within bureaus. Correct. And you saw how many of those there were. And we haven't done the hard work, which is to look at perhaps we have too many. There are some that are active, some that aren't, some that have influence, some that don't. I think there's been a theme that will come up later again, which is about how to staff all of this. And so we need to do some efficiency work when it comes to that. In general, I think everyone that cares about efficiency in general could agree with that. When you look at how many we have. And so I have a little indigestion to think, then you're saying to add more advisory groups with each committee, or you weren't insinuating that in this comment?
58 No, it wasn't necessarily advisory groups for each committee, but that say in the. Certification there's something like 80. There are 80 some advisory committees on record. If you go to the city's general and do a search committee on advisory committees, they all pop up and many of them are actually moribund, if not obsolete, then there are some budget advisory committees, and we'll get into that in the next section. That should maybe be less of people keeping track of the dollars per say and budget proposals of the bureaus, but also on on the service efficiencies that could be effectuated and getting more experts on the actual substance of that particular service area.
59 I don't think we weighed in like every committee should have an advisory group. You might decide that that's something you would find positive after you've gone through all the advisory committees and gotten rid of things that are, and all of a sudden you have a lot less, and then you think that would be a better use. The important thing is having advisory committees actually doing good work that helps the city, and not just there to rubber stamp something, or we just want committees where the people in the committee feels valued for what the work they're doing, that they're actually doing something for the city. We so I don't have a stake on this committee versus that one. This group should not have one.
60 Or thank you for your clarification. You you agreed with each other. Yeah. I just for the record. Yeah. Thanks, amy.
61 Amy randall, for the record, I just wanted to thank this body, this committee I brought up that you guys will be taking up our our audit of committees and advisory bodies. And I also heard from this body that we also heard from this body that you all value volunteer time and expertise and really getting that right on the part of the city. Like my colleague said when we started, they asked us to engage with our communities and they said, okay, what are your communities? And we said, what are the city of portland's communities? And the fact that that list didn't exist still to this day is a foundational thing I'll take away from this committee. I think it is incumbent on this new council and this new form of government to develop that list and develop those relationships and sincere and authentic and ongoing ways. There's a community engagement officer at the city now, and we have a lot of recommendations in our materials around that consistent community engagement. But what it comes down to is genuine relationships on the part of the city. And then also highlighting our last recommendation was about creating this committee on committees. And we are very much in support, and it very much supports the things we heard from community. Thank you.
62 I will add one thing that we did discuss early on that didn't make it into our recommendations. Destiny. Pablo for the record. And it was if we're concerned about advisory bodies and we have, as a committee said we should review which ones are working, which ones are worthwhile, what are the responsibilities, what are the scopes? You know, the commitments being very clear what the city is asking of portlanders and volunteers of their time. But aside from that, when we were talking about committees, there was an ongoing conversation about who is going to sit on these committees. Is it only councilors? Are they going to be, you know, public civic leaders on these committees regularly who have a voting or a non-voting? So if we're getting really creative, if we don't want advisory committees to add extra staffing, think creatively of how you want your committees to be discussed. How are we going to invite expert leaders to ongoing committee sessions and like topics and policies? Again, these were early on conversations that were contentious, clearly about how that works. But I just want to put that in there. That that was something that we talked about for a little bit.
63 Thank you.
64 Thank you. I just want to end with that was my question. You all had a response. Thank you. Is there anyone else from the committee that wants to come? I will just say this for the record, I think that you could have asked that. I'll just finish this thought then, if you were to ask that question to any bureau, they would have given you who those who those committees are. I think it was a sad statement in the centralized place that you asked the question. They couldn't provide that. But as we're moving from silos to more integrated efficiencies, we have to answer that question. So again, I was here. I didn't know about that question. We could have offered a lot of suggestions on where those communities are within the areas and the portfolio that has focused in. But the fact that you didn't get that just said something about the disconnect between the centralized body that was working with you at that time and some actual work that was going on across the city. Yeah.
65 Yes. Thank you. My name is juanita santana, for the record, and I would like to add that during the conversations and discussions that we held regarding community engagement, one of the visions was to have community engagement as an infrastructure that is established throughout the whole administrative part of the city, and that includes the community advisory board groups for each of the bureaus, the way they're operating before. The reason for that is because one of the most effective ways that the city does community engagement is by involving those community members into advising those departments, because they're giving their input and their feedback and their concerns, as well as their ideas for improvement. So one of the ways that we thought it would be a good way to consolidate that was through the community engagement office, where instead of having every department or every group, every department or bureau hold have their own community advisory bodies, bodies and providing each of them their own training and their own guidance and their own, you know, direction that the department of community engagement should be the group that was responsible, that is responsible for the recruitment, the training and the establishing those guidelines that what what the city considers community engagement for those advisory groups. So everybody follows the same track, the same form, formal approach to the recruitment and training of those committees, the group, the department would be responsible to work with the group, the advisory committee, in terms of what is the function of that specific department or bureau, but in terms of the training, you know, it has to be consistent throughout the city because right now it's a patchwork. And everybody, you know, every department trains their committees or their advisory groups and the way that they think is most effective. So I just want to bring that to your attention, because in some point when we're talking about consolidating and avoiding having all of these different approaches within the city departments, it has to be some standardization. And that's the only way also, that the city can hold accountable the city staff or, you know, all of the groups, all of the departments for what is really community engagement and how it is community engagement being implemented. Thank you.
66 We understand that the city administrator and his staff is working on a overview of advisory committees. What they what what they should represent under the new form of government and how they can be most effectively appointed and staffed and that there expertise can be heard and accounted for. Thank you.
67 Thank you so much. I do want to make sure we have enough time to talk about community input on budget. Councilor Dunphy has been waiting patiently. Do you think you could answer your question quickly? Can we keep this to about five ish minutes?
68 Very quick, very quick.
69 Yeah. Thank you. Chair, I'm trying to take our conversation here to its logical end. And if the committee becomes the primary place where the public is able to give input, does that not negate the effect of having a first and second reading and does that not also make the evening hearings more performative at that point? If there's not a way for people to meaningfully give input?
70 Well, first, second and third readings are just a format for channeling, channeling, and you can decide how you want to, how you want to pose it. If the administration, say, the mayor or the administrator propose something, then perhaps council president can enunciate it to through some announcement to the public that we've received, this is going I'm referring it to such such committee for their deliberation. They will take it up at such and such time so that people know what the content is of the substance of that proposal is. And then that would be first reading in the legislative process. Then it's when the committee comes back with a report, you know, then there's a second reading, just so that everyone knows it's on the legislative agenda, the house or senate. You don't have to limit yourself to that. You can just go straight to a deliberation. So I don't know that a third reading is necessary.
71 I think for us, that's why our recommendation says that the questions about where you give public testimony only work if they're paired with new, alternative ways to give public testimony through town halls, through different things like that. And we have said that, and I've said that over and over, because that's a big thing for me. I just want more places. And I agree with you. If these meetings are only going to be in the day and then you have a city council meeting at night, but then you say you can't give public testimony to city council at night. You can't you can't say, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but if you say committees is where we're going to take public testimony and it's just this two hour period on a weekday in the middle of the day, and you don't do town halls, you don't do anything else. That is not a recommendation.
72 That.
73 Yeah. Zach crowell, and thanks for the question, councilor. I think the main thing to me is when you're talking about the transition from a committee to the full body, that's where it's really important that you have either invited testimony or some kind of collated synopsis of what was heard at the committee. And I would strongly recommend that that not be a council member providing that. So if it's, you know, evening or something to try to encourage inviting invited testimony from the community so that they can speak from their own experience. So that would be my contribution. Thanks.
74 Thank you so much. I think we have some some more things to think about and appreciate your support. All right. Let's head into the second part okay.
75 So budget recommendations. Slide there okay. Did I miss something. I did. Thank you. How am I missing that. I've lost my coalition I'll go with jose's. The collected community input on the city's budget process, both through our summer of civic engagement and a targeted survey to members and staff of city budget advisory committees. Next slide please. We asked survey respondents to rate how effective they believe each of the following actions would be in increasing community participation in the city's budget decisions, earlier engagement in the budget process and releasing a trial budget were popular. There was particular interest in initiating ongoing budget education and participatory budgeting, partnering with community based organizations was also supported, but there was a question of how engagement with communities historically left out of city hall decision making would be realistically achievable. There was also concern about legal or policy heavy language in district budget. Town halls also received support. These venues may be appropriate for explaining how much of the budget is locked in and relevant timelines. A consistent process would be needed for reporting feedback. The recommendation for having executive level office oversee community engagement in the budget process was less popular. Participants noted that the city administrator must commit to engagement and not just efficient administration of public agencies. Finally, dissolving budget bureau budget committees received the highest rate of uncertainty. Respondents lacked clarity on the role and authority of advisory bodies. Next slide with community input, peer city research and our own deliberations, gtac has the following recommendations related to budget. Next slide. First, find savings in the new form of government. Second, develop an action plan to implement findings and recommendations in the budget and finance, staffing and budget process transition report into the upcoming budget cycle, and I hope you are all familiar with that report. By now, we certainly acquainted ourselves with it. Third, start budget engagement earlier and diversify the methods for input. Fourth, communicate openly and honestly with the public and ensure feedback loops. Fifth, develop communication tools to help portlanders understand the city's budget process. Sixth host district budget. Town halls. Seventh, build and maintain relationships with community based organizations, with an additional focus on communities traditionally left out of city hall and city decision making. Eighth dissolve bureau specific budget advisory committees create service area advisory committees and assess and revisit the citywide community budget advisory board. Ninth, centralize primary responsibility for design, coordination, and implementation of community engagement in the budget process in the city administrator's office. I'll describe each recommendation and then we will pause for questions and answers. Gtex first recommendation is to find savings in the new form of government. It is important to recognize that the transition to a de siloed city administration provides opportunities to identify redundant services that can be consolidated, thereby eliminating unnecessary costs. The mayor, city administrator, and council should actively and publicly, through public meetings and public involvement, identify efficiencies and how they can be incorporated into the budget process. Gtac appreciates that the city has already begun this endeavor, as evidenced by the January 17th, 2025, memo from michael jordan and jonas berry to Portland city councilors and emphasize we emphasize its importance. The city's fiscal health necessitates finding and implementing efficiencies now and over time. Next slide please. The second recommendation is to develop an action plan to implement the findings and recommendations in the budget and finance, staffing and budget process transition report. This was a report commissioned by the city. In earlier recommendations, the gtac endorsed generally the report, its recommendations and its suggested implementation timeline. Immediate, concrete and coordinated steps need to be taken in both the executive and legislative branches of government to move the implementation along. Needed steps include, but are not limited to commit to a city wide strategic planning process and schedule and begin work. Commit to early and meaningful community engagement during the strategic planning process, and develop detailed work plans and timelines for engagement. Commit to the specific process reforms in the report and implement them in the current cycle. Develop the capacity and methodology to track and report consolidated metrics relevant to goals and priorities to be identified in the strategic plan. Prioritize city council leadership and attention to the strategic planning process, and to passing a budget consistent with the plan. Next slide please. Gtex third recommendation is to start budget engagement earlier and diversify the methods for input. We believe that the new form of government offers new and expanded opportunities for portlanders to engage in the budget. We appreciate that the city budget office already hosted introduction to budget process sessions in each district. The city should also release a trial budget in the fall as a baseline for early public engagement. I know we'll be talking about that's referring to the next fiscal year. The trial budget should clarify the financial position of the city and highlight any trade offs to inform public input. We appreciate the city administrator releasing budget recommendations in late February as an earlier venue for community input. Next slide. Gtex fourth recommendation is to communicate openly and honestly with the public and ensure feedback loops use the economic forecast performance reports from the previous year for each service area and bureau. The strategic planning goals and mayor's budget guidance as opportunities to honestly communicate with the public and jump start community engagement. Frame the budget as a reflection of our shared values. Be honest about budget cuts and constraints. Be specific about what the city will act on and how it will close feedback loops with the community. Provide written and verbal summaries of community input on the budget process, on the budget, throughout the budgeting process. Ask for and report feedback on the community engagement opportunities in the budget process. Next slide please. Gtex fifth recommendation is to develop communication tools to help portlanders understand the city budget process. The listed tools are presented in the order that community feedback suggests are most effective at improving portlanders understanding of the budget. With limited resources, the city should prioritize the first few tools. First, ensure budget information is available in languages other than english and written for an eighth grade reading level. Enhance the budget website shared data on a timely, updated and public friendly way, highlighting key information and summarizing areas for public input. Produce a one page overview of the budget process with all engagement opportunities listed in a set schedule. For lisa community or readers. Guide to the budget. Introduce the city budget process to community and staff through presentations, videos, conversations in person provided year round during community gatherings and events. Use gamified interactive tools like balancing act trademark, I think, to educate the public and gather public prioritization input. These tools are particularly useful in guiding group conversations, such as in community meetings and focus groups. Provide a central, timely public blog like feed for all city entities working on the budget, or just generally to distribute communications. Next slide please. G tech six recommendation is to host district budget town halls host at least one budget town hall per district early in the budget process to inform councilor Priorities for their districts. We understand that the city budget office, the office of community and civic life and council are working together to set up a round of community listening sessions in each district on the budget in March, and we applaud that community input received during the town halls should be documented, and council should demonstrate how the input informs its decision making. Place based outreach should be conducted for the in-district events, such as fliers and yard signs, and events should be communicated through multicultural channels. Release a community or reader's guide to the budget. Introduce the city budget process to community and staff. Sorry council should return to the districts after the proposed budget to collect more detailed feedback and rotate where town halls are are held within districts. So geographically within a district and I'm looking forward to councilor Pirtle-guiney session next next week, next slide. Gtex seventh recommendation is to build and maintain relationships with community based organizations, with an additional focus on communities traditionally left out of city hall. Decision making support community based organizations who understand and represent the communities they serve. To act as liaisons between the city and community members. House responsibility for building and maintaining these relationships in the city administrator's office to ensure a coherent city approach that doesn't overwhelm the under-resourced groups. Hold community specific budget meetings in partnership with community based organizations and, if appropriate, city advisory bodies conduct focus groups with community based organizations so that the council, city budget office and deputy city administrators understand their interests and suggestions for how the city allocates its resources. We understand that the city budget process plans to partner with community based organizations for the Portland insight survey, and the office plans to discuss our recommendation with the new engagement officer. Next slide please. Gtex eighth recommendation is to dissolve bureau specific budget advisory committees, create service area advisory committees, and revisit the citywide community budget advisory board, conclude bureau specific budget advisory committees. To our knowledge, in fall 2024, only five bureau specific budget advisory committees still operated, and our early stakeholder engagement with members and staff of these committees consistently found the committees ineffective due to lack of training information, time to do their work and authority granted them. Create service area advisory committees that aren't strictly budget specific, but rather include budget and performance monitoring and program oversight. Consider standardization of proven effective practices for advisory bodies, including, but not limited to, clarity of purpose for each advisory body. That meetings are open to the public. Public input is taken, meetings are recorded and posted, agendas and minutes are posted. Bodies provide written recommendations to the city and receive written responses. Assess and revise. Revisit the citywide community budget advisory board. This body is currently required by city resolution, and while the resolution creating the board needs to be revisited, the board's work can be improved. In the meantime, it's our understanding that the city has dissolved bureau based advisory committees and is exploring the concept of service area and city budget advisory committee models for the next fiscal year. We believe that the engagement officer and advisory body program staff have met with this committee's leadership to discuss next steps in developing citywide standards and processes for advisory bodies. While not included in this presentation, the gtec has a recommendation to review and reform the city's overall approach to advisory bodies in the context of the new form of government, district representation, and a renewed emphasis on system wide community engagement. Next slide. Cheetahs ninth and final recommendation is to centralize primary responsibility for design, coordination and implementation of community engagement in the budget process in the city administrator's office, a centralized resource can create and establish best practices for engagement and coordinate training for staff and community responsibility to listen to and integrate public input should be in the city administrator's office, working closely with the city budget office as the party responsible for preparing for preparing the budget. We appreciate that the engagement officer has only recently been hired, and they should be integrated into this work as soon as possible to support centralized community engagement. There is also some interest in exploring the potential of increasing community engagement via via participatory budgeting. Next slide please, and I'll turn it back to chair Koyama Lane to facilitate our discussion. Thank you.
76 Thank you so much. So one question that I had, this is all very helpful. And as we are taking in all of this and setting up our new budget town halls and working with our new engagement officer who is doing great and is also being thrown into things. I think it's a bit fast and furious. I think something that comes up that's coming up is we have to be responsive and nimble and change things because different districts are going to need different things, and we have to make sure that we adapt. All of all of this input about community engagement is really important. I'm wondering if anyone can speak specifically to some thoughts around standardizing how the committees all engage in the budget process. I know that we will, as a whole, all be the budget committee, and then we have the finance committee. But wanting to make sure that the committees, all of them, are engaged in a certain manner. And vice chair Ryan has met with chair zimmermann of the finance committee. But if you have any thoughts about direction that could possibly be given to each each of the all the committees about ways to engage in this. So there is I'm thinking this is the first time for committees our first budget cycle together. Are there some best practices or thoughts you have that we can be sharing with chairs and co-chairs of the committees?
77 I'm sure teri has thoughts, but before he says something, one thing I will say is our recommendation to keep the committees not tied to an area was to avoid anything like this. Like I'm glad the committees would have a say in the budget, but I'm also glad that each one doesn't have a stake. Like this is my one area which happened before, so I want to point that out to for everyone's listening, that I think it's really great that the committees are not specifically to a service area. Right.
78 What what josie said, I again, it goes back to, you know, being a strong committee system. You're going to have you're going to build expertise in the committees. Some of the briefings are going to make more sense in committees where that expertise exists. So there's a way to maybe consider your policy committees as kind of subcommittees of the budget committee, which is the committee of the whole. And that doesn't have to be in a formal way. But the mindset I think is one way of thinking about it. But the purpose should be that the deeper dives happen there. And, you know, the line item examinations of the bureau of environmental services is not a full committee sort of thing. That's that's in a sub committee sort of study, but also the committees can invite testimony, invite. Stakeholders, community input on those sorts of studies that you can do, again, that the full budget committee is not going to have the time or bandwidth. So I think it's a good idea to consider those policy committees as key elements to the budget process.
79 Well, especially when it comes to policy development. And the policy should guide the budget process to a great extent, you reach a policy. I think there's a great advantage to not having all of your council committees by service, area specific and so where we're recommending service area budget advisory committees is maybe that's where the efficiencies and desired outcomes can be enunciated through them through the bureaus. But then you all have a responsibility to have a very broad view of what the impact is of the overall budget on the overall community. And I think you're going to get that through these policy subcommittees. Now, they may bite off budget specific activities as they hear from particular bureaus or the public. But again, I think that it's more important that you all, each of you, have some concept of what the budget impacts are on the community, not through a narrow council committee structure.
80 I would like to comment on this. I attended the district one budget town hall. I found out day of. So my workday was really long that day. But I will say and the location was posted. So again, I think earlier notice on when these town halls are going to be and we're at and what accommodations will be provided is key. Like if there's going to be childcare, if there's food, the time, place, languages, interpretation if needed, that's great. Secondly, it was a great presentation of like a one on one. But one thing that I think was missing was guided questions. And I think once you start working in these subcommittees more and councilors like councilor Dunphy, you were there have a little bit more agency and, you know, you're in the work. I think it could be more productive if there's guiding questions, because when the public hears of the deficit of the budget and cuts, what are they going to provide of insightful, meaningful contributions? I know when we met with the last council, they said that we're we're not spring chickens when it comes to budgeting, but we are constantly surprised of what the public wants and demands and organizes across. And so that means other things got to get cut. So I want to reference that that has been public comment of public engagement. And I think we should move away from that. And finally, councilor Dunphy, during that town hall, you were made like you were introduced yourself towards the end after the one on one when, you know, public comment was on news information and you were like, this is why we invested here. This is why we adjusted. And you also made the comment of, I sit on the committee of houselessness and homelessness, and in district one we have two councilors. When you frame it like that, that's powerful. And I think the last ten minutes just really didn't have enough time for the communication and conversation that could be had. So I think as we learn with this new government, as we start working in these subcommittees, those town halls can become incredibly robust. And so I think that's a great starting place. And again, just really as we look at the budget crisis that we're in, really working together in your committees to be prepared to how do we get public input on that chair?
81 We have 16 minutes left.
82 So we do. Yeah. So little time check. I wish we had more time. We have about 15 minutes. And my colleagues each wanted to ask a question. I was hoping at the end, and we might just have to save this for another meeting, but that each councilor Could spend a couple minutes sharing a bit about their key takeaways from this, these presentations, and what our priorities are for each of us, and how our council's ultimate processes look like. So if we want to take a couple questions and then if folks if we have time for that, a couple minutes for each of us to share. Councilor Ryan. What did.
83 You everyone else put your.
84 They'll put their hands down.
85 I didn't mean for my. Anyway, here I go. The second they were all great and they were easy to follow. Recommendations. The last two are the most compelling right now because they're so urgent. The streamlining, the dissolved bureau specific budget committees. I think that we really need that oversight somewhere, and we have failed to provide the streamlining of what we could benefit from the work areas being formed from last year, and we have to look at that duplication. Some even call it clutter, where you have duplicate positions now in the same work area. And clearly, since we're in a place where we have to make smart decisions to make the city run more efficiently with the budget deficit, we'll have to lean pretty quickly into that. So it's helpful to see that you recommend moving towards that. Okay. And then I'll just say in the last one, centralizing primary responsibility. Do you do you see this as a good idea. Now how is this working so far? I think that's where we're in this last suggestion that you mentioned of community engagement, the budget process, city administrator's office. Yeah. Well.
86 The obviously.
87 The budget, the plane while we're flying it on that one.
88 The budget bureau is so important to all of the formulation of it and understanding what the resources are and what the demands are. But we think that the communication should be through the engagement office and central centralized through the city administrator's office for public information.
89 The problem is that when things are centralized and there isn't one person that's in charge of it, you notice there are holes that happen and it's no one's fault. But it happened before with one bureau thought the other one was taking care of it. And then so that's we've voted to move away from that. So let's move away from that as much as possible. And it also lowers the amount of duplication. We don't have like ten different groups coming up with the same plan. We have one person coming up with a plan. Hopefully that serves to streamline everything and lower costs. I will say, as you are looking at all these things to and we in the last question, we talked about doing a lot of these budget things in committee. I will I know you know this, but every committee does not have every district. So you mentioned having oversight when you start talking about the budget. Those committees that do not do not have the district representation in them from every single person need to be looked at in a different way, because not every district is having a say in that piece of the budget.
90 Thanks. Perhaps that's connected to the fact that we have eight, not six. But I just had to say that, madam chair.
91 All right. Did we each want to take a couple minutes as councilors and share key takeaways? Our own priorities.
92 You know, first and foremost, I thank you all for the incredible amount of work that you all have put into getting us to this point here. I as was mentioned, I've said it repeatedly in this meeting. I take the volunteer time and feedback so seriously that I think anytime we are deviating away from recommendations that you all have spent time coming up with, we have to have a damn good reason not to do exactly that. That said, I'm struggling a little bit with the last part of the presentation about the budget because having been involved in this work for as long as I have, the budget continues to be the most complicated issue that any of us ever have to deal with and to be able to explain it at an eighth grade reading level, I come to the question of wondering why, and that seems perhaps a little bit cold, and maybe not the way I'm trying to mean it to say, but it comes around sort of a similar issue of informed consent in the medical facility. You know, if a doctor comes to you and says, you have this type of cancer and you have these two treatment options before you, well, you know, I'm not necessarily equipped as a patient to understand the implications of all of that. And so I struggle a little bit, especially understanding that the way we do the budget right now does not work well, that every time a bureau is told you have to go put up, you know, an 8% cut package, the parks bureau comes back and says, fine, we're going to close all the pools. I dare you to take it. And that's obviously not a helpful situation. So to be able to explain this, you know, we run into we're running into challenges right now with this within the city council alone, where the budget office will offer us a overview of a very pretty document that actually tells us no information. And then they'll say, okay, here's the information. It's a 1600 page excel spreadsheet. Like neither of those are actually helpful or approachable. And I don't know how you do the work with either of them. And my historical experience in this building has been that 90% of the budget conversation comes down to half the people screaming, cut the police and the other half screaming, don't you dare cut the police! Which again, does not actually help us balance the budget. So I'm I'm struggling to understand, I guess, how we take these this really good advice and materialize that into something that ultimately doesn't waste people's time because, you know, there are things like compression on land, on on property taxes that I cannot explain to any eighth grader in the world. I can barely explain it to myself. So I'm I absolutely am with you all on the spirit of where we're trying to go to make sure that the we're governing with the consent of the governed and that community priorities are reflected. I just think we may need an entirely different kind of process for budgeting. And I don't know what that looks like, but I thank you guys for helping us sort of get to this point so far. So thanks.
93 Thank you all for being here. I really appreciate it. I know that you put a lot of work in, and being able to have an in-depth conversation today, and I know we'll then get a final report from you at our council meeting later this month is really helpful as a review. I think almost as we're a few months in, we heard from you during our onboarding, but now that we've started to do this and have a bit of a different perspective on it all, it's nice to hear it again. Sure, I had a couple of takeaways I mentioned already, being really thrilled to hear your recommendations on website and the navigability of our work. I've been thinking a lot about how portlanders who have never engaged with city council but want to understand what's happening with an issue, can just go online and do that research and figure it out and figure out how to engage. And many of the things that you talked about today resonated with me in terms of boxes. We need to make sure we check as we ask that question, and thinking about how we make sure that somebody in any of our districts who cares about an issue finds out that we're talking about that issue before it's too late to weigh in and can, on their own, figure out where it is in the process and how to weigh in. You mentioned that in the past, it felt like things were baked already by the time they were public. And what I have seen in, in our current process and system is that sometimes, even if it's not baked before it comes forward, it's baked by the time people hear about it. And I really appreciate the recommendations that you gave that will help us back up when people hear about things so that they can be a part of the work that we are doing now, that we have a more public process, and that, I think, crossed a number of your recommendations. So those are the things, chair, that I think I'll be really focused on as we move forward.
94 Thank you. And I am hoping that we will be able to ask you more questions. And that while I know that this committee is formally ending, that you will still be a resource for us, at least some of you looking, seeing some nods. Okay, good. I know it's been helpful for me to have a point person that will then funnel me to different folks, because we have more questions than we have time for. A lot of different things stuck out to me. I took literally pages of notes and.
95 Great.
96 You know, just like the a lot of the pieces about how does a regular portlander engage? How does a regular portlander even bring a resolution forward? Some of the smaller, smaller, but very important specific things about is it easy enough to find public testimony? I had a hard time finding it. I was actually glad that destiny said that. It made me feel like I wasn't the only one. And some of these bigger questions about who are our stakeholders? Let's like define some of these questions. Let's make sure we're we're working with the same definitions and co-creating them together. All of these things are really important in what we're trying to do, which is create strong committee systems that can the community can engage in. So I feel really excited about this. And my honestly, my first reaction when I hear a lot of your recommendations and read them, it's really simple. It's like, yeah, that makes sense. And so it's great that you all are doing the work to do the research and bring back, you know, stuff that that makes sense. But it's great to have you all as resources doing the research. So we can also say it's backed up with looking at other cities and seeing what works. Thank you.
97 Thank you, madam chair. A couple takeaways. First of all, you kind of mirror what we're experiencing. So I think having this report today, as opposed to hearing some versions of it a few months ago, it just makes more sense now because we're actually doing it. And so it's affirming. And there's a couple on there check, check that when you mentioned the community budget hearings and districts, I haven't experienced that yet. I mean, I think that was a odd little meeting that we were at in January where the budget office said some things, and you and I were like a half hour into our job, and we were sitting there and then everyone wanted us to respond and we're like, oh, we just kind of got this information as well. And so I think the real ones are coming up, if you will. And thank you, council president, for knowing that we needed those on the calendar. So there's been a lot of great calendar work. I'll, I'll say that I think we're challenged with having eight committees with 12 members, and we do have to really rethink that in my opinion. And I know how hard that is. I look at the two of you because you were doing the puzzle, but I'm on four committees, and yet we still don't have north Portland on, say, transportation. And that's kind of a fact. Like there's only so many bodies and so many items. So we have to, I think, get real Portland on is what's sweet about our city's ethos is we want to keep adding and adding, but sometimes that means we become less efficient as we keep adding. So I think that was also a theme that I got out of this. I'll end with this. I meet with people constantly that say they don't feel included, and there are people that are both working. They have kids. They are. Some of them are high earners, but they're still both working. They have kids. And so when do they find out about things? So one, for example, calls me like, so I guess you all decided to make lombard one Lane. When did that happen? I didn't get the I didn't see that story. And so in the bureau form of government, we did have special interest stakeholders, many from the nonprofit community that are lobbying as well, that push legislation. And your average person that's at home just trying to enjoy trying to take care of their kids and get to and manage their business, don't know what's going on until they experience it literally in their car. So I think we have to just be mindful that there's a lot of people, big picture, that are sometimes surprised about what lands eventually into action. And so we have to keep figuring out a better way on how to communicate with people. So it's a reminder of that. I just heard that one of those stories this weekend. That's why it's fresh. Thank you. Thank you for all your work.
98 Again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Presenters. Participating members want to thank lori, juliet, zach, destiny, fred, amy, juanita, leah, jane. Josie. Terry. Brian. William. Julia. Guillermo. Did I get you all. Okay. Thank you to gtac. Thank you to the governance committee members for a great discussion. We have we know we didn't get to ask all our questions, so we will email them to you. Hopefully. That's okay. We look forward to hearing your final report with our other colleagues at our council meeting on March 19th. And colleagues, as a reminder, we've rescheduled the Monday, March 24th meeting to just a week later, Monday, March 31st at 2:30 p.m. Due to pps's spring break and at the rescheduled meeting on March 31st, we plan to consider the resolution and accompanying exhibit establishing our rules and procedures for consideration of appointments and their confirmation, which we discussed in a February committee meeting. We also plan to have an ordinance before us to consider code changes connected with the sustainability and climate commission. The fcc, reflecting necessary updates to title three, which would align scc city code to recommendations and standards for this new form of government. And with that, the meeting of the governance committee is adjourned.
99 Thank you.
100 For.