The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-06-04
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (4,674 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
On June 4, 2025, the Portland City Council held a budget work session, described as the final such session before scheduled budget committee meetings the following week, intended for discussing and withdrawing or revising proposed amendments rather than voting or taking public testimony. Topics raised included corrections to language directing transportation network company fee revenue toward vision zero work, withdrawal of a small business licensure amendment pending cost identification, and a proposal to fund planning and emergency-preparedness positions by reducing council office budgets, with comparisons made to council office spending in Seattle and Denver, though some related figures were stated inconsistently. Discussion also covered concerns about reallocating transportation-related fee revenue given uncertainty over anticipated state transportation funding. Additional topics included a proposed budget note and amendment concerning the Office of Civic Life, engagement programs, neighborhood and district coalitions, and a community partnership framework, alongside proposals on storefront vacancy data collection and business safety coordination. Several other amendments were withdrawn, narrowed, or flagged for revision, including one previously voted on, with a procedural question raised about reviving it. The session was paused for a brief recess after a captioning accessibility issue was identified.
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 [music] okay, let's find [music] hey. Hey, hey, hey. [music] good afternoon. Today is June 4th. It is 2:33 p.m. I'm opening today's final work session on the budget. Councilors, as a reminder, budget work sessions are where we have a chance to discuss proposed amendments, but not move, vote, or receive public testimony. Today's work session is not organized around a specific topic, but rather is intended to be an opportunity to daylight any final budget amendments prior to our budget committee meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. I anticipate that this will be a shorter work session. My hope is that we can complete our work by 4 or 4:30 today. We have a variety of staff from the administration to help us with any questions on these items, including of course our budget team. And I'd like to share many thanks to our budget team and their continued work on this process as we work through our first city budget in this new form of government. So with that I will open the discussion for this work session and I am looking to the queue for any counselors who would like to share. Councelor canal. Thank you madam vice president. Can I ask a question? Uh last time we did this process, um one of the purposes of bringing these up verbally in the work session was so was so that the council or the sorry the finance committee could evaluate and discuss that. Is that process anticipated again or is this mostly for broad transparency with colleagues and the public prior to the meeting next to next week next week and next week? I think this is more about broad transparency with each other and with the public. Great. So just to clarify that means finance is not predising these. Okay. I'll I'll maybe direct that back to councelor Zimmerman in a minute. But there's nothing on the finance agenda related to the current budget. Thank you. This is also a time if any council would like to share with their amendments that they're pulling back and retracting, you can do that at this time. Also, councelor duny. Great. Thank you. Um to get our conversation started. First, I just wanted to note that uh I will be bringing a new amendment uh that is actually a revision of amendment we passed from the deis uh two weeks ago um related to using the tnc fees that we have increased um to direct those towards the work that we approved towards vision zero. Uh we got some of the language I got I got some of the language incorrect and I'll be bringing something forward specifically to try and uh correct that functionally just directing which pot of money the bureau will be drawing from for that um additionally um I will be pulling back my amendments related to the small business lensure um haven't identified a cost but I would like to bring that forward as a policy in the near future and sec uh addition so it's done fee six will be pulled back and duny 5 additionally for now will be pulled back as I have not identified funding for that. Thank you councelor councelor canel. Thank you madam vice president. I will talk about the ones I'm keeping later on but I just wanted to note canel 7 and 8 were already voted on as was one. I'm withdrawing 2 6 9 and 11 and I'm going to get some new information and may also withdraw the note 14 based on that or not. Um, and I'll come back with a couple new ones later on in this conversation. Just making sure I have my notes together. Thank you. And just to reiterate, this is a work session. We can discuss proposed amendments, but we cannot move, vote, or receive public testimony. And we're not organizing around any specific topic, but this is an opportunity to daylight any final budget amendments prior to our two meetings, our two budget committee meetings next week. Councelor novik. U thank you, madam vice president. Uh it will surprise absolutely no one that I will be withdrawing my proposed amendment to u close the belovea arts center and the community music center. I thought I'd put that on the record. Um also uh councelor Clark and I plan to bring a proposal to fund some of the pebm positions that I previously proposed funding with a larger cut in council budgets. Um we I'd like to add uh two planner positions. Um of course in the mayor's budget eliminated the one planning position and a training and exercise position. That's about 625,000. And I'm proposing to fund that by reducing our council office budgets by $52,833.33 a piece. I will note that I did something recently that I have not had not inexcusably hadn't done before, which was look to see um what other cities spend on their council office budgets. In seattle, it's about a million dollars per office. In denver, it's about 750,000 per office. So, I hope that people's concern for being prepared for emergencies, particularly the ci hub, the potential ci hub emergency, will uh compel people to cut back our budget to only d to still dramatically higher than seattle's or denvers. And we're also going to propose to add a position to address cihub issues in the bureau planning and sustainability and to fund that with 170,000 of the 300,000 that we're currently in excess in discretionary funds. Um that's because um council office budgets can't be directly used uh dollar fordoll for bps because bps is an operational bureau. The reason it's particularly efficient to use council budgets for pbam is pbm is an overhead bureau. So, councelor Clark, do you want to add anything to that? No, thank you. Thank you, councelor modio. Um, I just have a question first for my colleagues. Uh, so obviously we passed the $2 tnc fee. I'm supportive of it. Um, and it sounds like there has been push back on that. Uh, I'm not in favor of reducing it, but I was wondering if someone's bringing something forward to reduce it just so we can plan because if that's the case, we're going to have to adjust a lot of our revenue discussions. Councelor Clark, I'm not bringing forward anything to reduce it, but I do want to make a point that um you know, we're all anticipating $11 million coming from the state transportation package, which is still up in the air. So, I'm going to make sure that um any of any funds from tnc or anywhere else that we're putting into peabot stays there. Um, I don't want anybody to get sticky fingers here because um, we we could end up with a shortfall depending on what the legislature does. Don't worry, councelor Clark. I only moved golf to parks because they're part of the same entity. I won't do that with your tnc fees. Councelor novc, add on to councelor clark's point. Um, in addition to not wanting to shift that money outside of peot, it would be it would be prudent now to not designate it for specific purposes within peot because we might just need it to backfill the state money we might not be getting. Um, it's it may be that if we could just sort of leave the money, if we do get the state money, we could leave the tnc money for with peod for them to use their discretion. Alternatively, um if we've got the state money, we could look at it in the fall bump and see if we want to specifically allocate it. Seeing no one else in the queue meeting adjourned. I'm not funny. Councelor quayama Lane. All right, colleagues. I plan to bring a budget note and an amendment to you all in service to building a shared somewhat shared action plan and finding a common path forward between city council and um the executive side related to civic life engagement, equity, sustainability, and communications. I've spoken with many of my colleagues and um folks on the executive side, city staff over the past week or so. While everyone has their own unique perspective on what needs to happen with civic life, I've also heard consistent awareness and interest from everyone in a few areas such as improving the functions and the programs currently under civic life. Maintaining current funding levels for many of those programs, ensuring that the vital programs now h housed in the office of civic life have an opportunity to be supportive and to achieve their visions. Um avoiding potential actions that might lead to adversarial relationships between uh the legislative and executive branch and co-creating a unified strategic vision for what things like engagement, equity, neighborhood communications, what that will look like in this new form of government. So we all understand that civic life has gone through a lot had different iterations, challenges, ideas brought to them and there has been work to create recommendations for change most of which have not yet been implemented. So some of which are now only being used to um define needed changes in structure and reporting assignments. So, I've had the opportunity to see a preview of some of these changes. It feels important to allow our professional staff to bring them forward to council for presentation and consideration before taking significant action through the budget process. So, it is my hope to find somewhat of a common ground where priorities for programs are honored through funding and also give time to allow changes to be presented and considered. Um, I'm happy to share any of this with you. I know some of you have said, "can I get a peek at it?" and I am happy to show you. So, I'm looking at a budget note to uh direct the city administrator, office of civic life, um and any related programming to work collaboratively with the council in developing in developing a single unified plan that addresses the structural and programmatic challenges within the office office of civic life and how that relates to the office of engagement, office of equity and human rights, office of sustainability. Um that there's collaboration and that council gets a full briefing no later than August 1st of this year to tell us what are the current structures and staffing changes, what are key recommendations for change from previous processes, any proposed changes to structures and staffing. So, we're included in that. Um, also an amendment to restore funding for the diversity and civic leadership program, neighborhood associations, district coalition offices, including small grants, and specifying that that funding is expected to be found through administration and operations in uh, civic life and engagement. That is what I'm planning to be bring forward. Councelor Clark, you have a question on yeah, madam chair. Thank you. Um, councelor coyama Lane, is this it sounds like noah's ark. Um, you're building noah's ark. Can I are my animals in there as well? Yeah. Okay. I I was just realizing I was like that this part wasn't in there. Your animals are in there. Okay. There's also going to be a budget note about community partnership, the community partnership framework that you brought forward. As I was speaking to different district coalitions, they were talking about how supportive they were of the language you were using. And so having uh it part of the budget note is to also say that we're addressing structural budget deficits through development of a community partnership support framework um and asking that this also be applied to our relationships with district neighborhood coalitions. And this is not fully baked and so I will get this to you today and I would love to make sure you have your eyes on it. Super. Thanks. Thanks. Council, do you have a question for councelor quayama? Yeah, it's the the same question. Uh are are my animals in there too? And I think that I think uh the I think councelor Zimmerman and councelor Avalos may also have some potential animals for this one. Uh but yeah, the um I feel bad. Uh the the the question around ensuring the council itself has some capacity for engagement. Question. There was conversation about seeing if one fte could be pulled from the neighborhood program and put under council operations. Um I don't have to have a final decision yet on that. Right. I I'm supportive of if that makes sense for there to be one position. After hearing a lot of perspectives about how moving all of engagement under uh council operations would not be best, I can see it making sense for one position to move over. So that's the possibility still on the table. Councel Zimmerman, would you like to describe your animals? No. Um, so I'll just re-emphasize that this is kind of a repackaging of amendment I've already made. And um I'll remind you that the neighborhood coalitions took a pretty significant defunding in the proposed package of grants of their operating funds that they defunded part of the diversity and leadership program and my amendment to scrap the administrative positions that exist in in civic life. Uh refunded all those programs and expanded the immigrant and refugee programs. Um this sounds like a a a polishing of a way to preserve civic life. And I I'm not sure that preserving civic life should be the thing that drives here when they they they promoted their own folks over these programs, right? And I think these programs are what I'm trying to speak to in terms of the the neighborhood coalitions are are our in in so many ways when it comes to engagement. I'll also remind you just that uh earlier this spring just how uh troubling it was to go through an experience where civic life leadership completely pulled a 180 on the council president and I as we started trying to set up the um budget listening sessions. And so if I feel a little burned about that I do. If I sound a little burned about that I do. And but who didn't burn me was the diversity and leadership program, the immigrant and refugee program, the neighborhood coalition program. And my amendment that I read into much earlier in this process still preserves all that without sugar coating what is a bureau who I think for the last almost 10 years has been clearly on life support for a variety of reasons. But I'm also really looking forward to a new era with a new city administrator who gets to articulate what civic excuse me community engagement can actually look like in this community. But I don't know that we're going to be successful at that if we keep the old shadows cast on the way we do it in this city. So part of my effort in making sure we fund the things that help us was also giving us a fresh start. And I am a little bit concerned that we won't be able to get that fresh start with this newest proposal from from you counselor uh coain. And so I really respect the work I'm putting in because I think a number of us have some related type of package here, but it also costs us something if we accept yours. It costs us the new chapter because it keeps us in the old one. And so from that perspective, I'm going to give it a full vetting when you when you get the language together and see. But uh I'm pretty concerned that the same old habits will still exist in this new version of what you're talking about and that civic life will be limping along with even fewer and still holding on to some old habits that should die. So thank you for the the discussion on it. Um, I think most of all be looking at how do we restore the neighborhood and district coalitions and associations because they have been just tremendous in this in this new uh form of government for for me as a district representative. Thank you. Councelor kyomain, did you have something you wanted to say? Yeah, my response is I hear all of that and I appreciate that you've been willing to meet with me and speak about this, counselor Zimmerman, and I see your um the way I folded in what you care about, which really is uh the cuts of resources from these programs is something that I have also prioritized. We have found we have gotten there in different ways. And my hope is that um that you you bring forward yours, but if you don't have full support that maybe you could you would consider looking at this and seeing it as at least a way to make sure that those programs are made whole. Um based on just having a lot of conversations what I was told and I'm not I don't this is just what I was told was that many what many city employees heard from us on the dis is that we wanted we didn't want to see a lot of layoffs we didn't want to see positions cut and so that was why some of those the programming was cut that that folks were felt like they received um that information from us and that is why the jobs the positions were preserved. Um I hear all of the different ideas and understand that there are many places where there seem to be a disconnect and um I will say doing having all these conversations I helped me learn a lot about engagement and what I did see is that this really goes back decades. There are um some budding plans that would be rolling out uh soon for where engagement's going. I would like to see where those go and how they unfold. Um but we can also talk more about this next week at the meeting. I councelor Ryan, I had skipped over you because I thought you were not in the queue to ask a question here, but did you want to ask a question of councelor quomain? Okay, councelor coalain, did you have other proposals? Okay, councilors, I'm in the queue to flag that pleginey 2, which was half of the pp&d program reserve, which would have um set money aside specifically for hiring up pp&d staff. Um is I'm going to withdraw that amendment and bring forward a budget note which would direct pp&d to bring us the report that is listed in that amendment on what the economic outlook is and whether they expect to need more staffing or not in the fall. At that time, we can decide if we have funds available to move forward with supporting staff if their report shows a need for it, but we wouldn't be pre um presetting aside funding for that purpose. I wanted to flag for you all that I'd be making that change. Councelor Ryan, so we're in a work session to once again shop and and repeat and talk about where how our amendments are evolving. Is that what's happening today? You have new amendments. I was told that many of our colleagues had new amendments or significant changes. Oh, okay. And in order to save time at the council meeting and devote time there to debate and voting. Okay. Um if you some folks I think have proposals they're still working on that they're not bringing forward today, but if you have new things we haven't heard about that you'd like to bring forward. Well, some haven't sounded new, but I've actually appreciated it cuz there's been a lot of amendments floating around. So, it's been helpful to see how they're comingling. So, um I I real quick, I have one, this is probably good news. Um pulling off an amendment. Um I have the fewest now. I have even fewer. Um brian amendment four for temporary employee furlows that's been pulled back. And that's because we have new information we've received that made it clear this is not an equal swap with the mayor's proposed budget capping cola and merit for non-reps as we originally thought. So, that one's being pulled back. I have Ryan 4 listed as city and prosper Portland grants inventory. Is that you're saying something different? But okay, we'll double check that. Six. I'm hearing maybe it's Ryan six. I'll get the number. We don't have the same thing in front of me. Can we take advantage of sitting next to each other? We can. And I see haley from the from chair there saying it's Ryan six. I trust you. All right. Okay. We're going with Ryan six is being pulled back. Thank you, counselor. Thank you. Um, I I'm going to have one for the Portland parks tennis partnership. I mentioned that last week. It'll be a way to save money and improve conditions for our children and families. Um, I do have a couple more that um relate to the saving and supporting our storefronts. Probably the constituency that's received the least amount of attention over the last 5 years and they're quite angry. And one thing we don't have is we don't have very good data on how many storefrs we have. We um don't have an inventory. Um this just really works with the small business office at prosper on storefront vacancy vacancy surveying x interviews to why people um are leaving their empty storefronts. Um businesses in Portland have reasons in the to close their businesses and leave, but it's better to hear directly from them like an exit interview if you will. So we just want to get to the bottom of that information. And so I'll have more details on that for all your offices. Um and then the third one is supporting our storefronts with business safety and livability. This is a very comprehensive um hurting the cats if you will formalizing initiative to build upon existing efforts across the city bureaus to offer the business storefronts consistent and managed approach to related problems. This will focus resources on significant challenges faced by them with crime, vandalism and livability issues. The core of the proposal involves formalizing enhancing the coordination between the city work units including the police bureau, the bike patrol, the neighborhood response teams with Portland solutions, pimo and impact reduction teams and sscc. I think with the mayor's um overnight shelters, the day shelters that are kind of coming in from the county, it's now more important than ever to make sure we have a system in place to manage the challenges on the streets when we keep adding these services. Um so we'll provide deliverables like consistency of response, centralized tracking system, information sharing protocols, um proactive approaches in general. So um we will be sending those details to all your offices as well. Thank you, councelor. Counselor canal. Thank you, madam president. Um, so I mentioned some that I'm withdrawing just I may also withdraw three based on after I review the work of the council vice president. I may come at it from a different starting point, but I think I ended up where councelor zimmerman's at on it, which is I'll read it and then make a a detailed assessment of if my uh proposal is captured in or not. Um, canel four I'm going to be altering to just focus on the recreation hours, alternative community service, parks, park ranger service dispatchers, and home sharing pilot portions related to golf fees, tnc fees, and sunderland will be removed. I'm having an additional revenue source scored for this, but I don't have the numbers yet. Um, so I know cbo is working hard and not trying to shame you there. Uh, 10, 12, and 13 are notes. I won't spend time on it, but I'm going to be amending the text of 10 to just make it clearer. And then I wanted to flag uh three other things. I'm planning to scale down the ongoing to one-time switch proposal in canel 5. It's currently $2.5 million. I'm going to focus it on chat and obp ceasefire given feedback I've received from boe and uh its director, our new interim dca. I may submit a new canal 15 based on conversations with uh councelor novik and based on his uh novik 3 to use some of the banked contingency funding for the the overhead portion of that. We were up at the end on may 21st for pebm. And finally, I'm going to be proposing, and I'm still workshopping this one um with at least one colleague, a revised version of the uh canal one, the robin hood amendment that this originally proposed reducing over the course of the year the spending on non-public safety general fund bureau deputy directors through position reductions or reclassifications to the manager series, which reflected the comments we've received about management bloat and that money would have been used to refle to replenish the office of equity and human rights, bring back the entire team of one uh for racial equity, one of the two people on the lgbtqia2s+ team, and one of the four people on the ADA team along with an administrative assistant. And I'm working to try to adjust this one to focus it more tightly on both ends, more clearly defining which deputy director positions are not included in this and therefore safe and also more tightly choosing which positions would be retained, focusing on the programmatic uh roles. And this one uh was proposed in its original version and it it tied. So I am uh working to see if conceptually if this is something that there is uh interest in as well. Uh and I'll leave it there. Thanks. Can I ask can I ask councelor kal a question? Yes. Council click. Go ahead. So are you talking about canal one? You're going to revive that? Uh not asis uh with more tightly revised uh where the money would go. Okay. And then you were talking about kennel five. Yeah. That was not proposed that we didn't talk about it was. Yeah. So, that was two and a half million and I'm going to amend it to a significantly smaller amount on both ends. Okay. Can we talk about that offline later? I'd love to. Yeah. Thank you. Councelor, just a flag on canal one because that was voted on and failed. I'm not sure that you can bring it back up. You may need to put that language in a new amendment to bring forward or have somebody who voted no bring it up for you to offer further amendments to it. I'm not positive on an amendment if that's the case. I just suggest that you consult with our attorneys before you take that approach. Yeah, I'm I'm making sure that it makes sense the way I've revised it before going to that part. But I I hear you, councelor Zimmerman. I hope that everything that you just said, counselor, you'll put in writing because trying to track you as quickly as you read through things. It's not like it was a useful time. Counselor, before you get into I apologize. I just got a note from the clerk that the youtube streaming is not showing the captions, which is an accessibility issue. I'm wondering if we can take a 5m minute recess and come right back to you before you launch into your amendments. [music] you can get up and move around for five minutes. Yes, kelen. That'll give you what you need. Thank you.