The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-01-23
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (27,133 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
A Portland City Council work session convened January 23, 2025, focused on the Public Works service area, encompassing the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), Portland Water Bureau, and Bureau of Environmental Services (BES). Presenters described bureau operations, infrastructure scale, regulatory obligations, and emergency-preparedness roles, followed by a budget overview covering utility rate structures, restricted versus discretionary funding, and a "One Water" integration initiative explored in 2024. Accomplishments cited included grant awards, pothole and signage work, leaf collection, the Washington Park Reservoir and filtration/pipelines projects, the STEP wastewater treatment expansion, and a rate-structure study. Challenges discussed included aging infrastructure, deferred-maintenance backlogs, funding constraints tied to system development charges, and proposed budget reductions to PBOT. During the question period, council members raised topics including sidewalk and street maintenance responsibility, daylighting and crosswalk safety, street sweeping cuts, customer service responsiveness, e-bike policy, permitting coordination across bureaus, utility rate-setting authority, the Montgomery Park streetcar extension, and system development charge flexibility. Figures presented for costs, backlogs, and funding gaps were stated inconsistently across speakers. Some votes or motions may have occurred; any outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The session ended when quorum was lost.
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 I am calling this work session of the Portland city council January 23rd, 932. We have a couple of folks who are running a little late, but a few people who are out this morning. We apologize. It's been a busy week. We have a work session with our public works service area of the city. We've been having these work sessions with different service areas to give councilors an overview of the work of our city, so that as we then go into committees to do the work of council, we have a common baseline of understanding of what's happening around the city already. So we'll be hearing from a number of different bureaus within the public works service area this morning. I believe we are going to run through the whole presentation today before we take questions, which is a little different than how we've done some of these. So, councilors, please hold the questions. We'll get to them all at the end. And I'm expecting the presentation to be about half of our time together. So we will turn it over to all of you. Go ahead and introduce yourselves. And thank you for being here with us.
1 Thank you. Good morning, madam president. Council, I'm priya paul and I use she her pronouns. And I'm honored to serve as the interim deputy city administrator for public works service area for Portland. First, I wanted to recognize the significant responsibilities you carry as city councilors. Your leadership is no small task, and the decisions you make will help shape the future of Portland in profound ways. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today about public works. Public works is a foundational backbone of Portland, and providing essential services that portlanders rely on every hour of every day. We manage the roads we travel, the water we drink, and the systems that keep our city clean and our environment protected. And while we may get noticed only when things don't go smoothly, our work is critical to public health, the economy, and the quality of life we all enjoy. I am proud to represent the service area and to introduce you to the dedicated people and the innovative programs that keep Portland running smoothly today, all while preparing for the challenges of tomorrow. It's my pleasure to introduce you to my team. Next slide please. Millicent williams, director of the Portland bureau of transportation, also known as the person you silently thank when your commute is easier than expected. And edward campbell, director of the Portland water bureau, the person you can count on for clean drinking water that will fuel your coffee, that you're going to need to get to these work sessions. And dawn uchiyama director of bureau of environmental services, our environmental guardian who ensures Portland stays beautiful and sustainable. And if there's anyone who knows how to handle stormwater and wastewater, it's dawn. Each of these leaders will take you on a closer journey into the respective public works bureaus and the incredible work they do. Next slide please, john. Now onto the agenda which is outlined here on the slide. We'll start with an overview of the public works service area and each of its bureaus. And after that we'll deep dive into the budget overview, celebrate some wins, and discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead. We'll do our best to wrap up the presentation in the first half of the session, leaving ample time for questions and discussion. To give you a better sense of the impact of our work, we've prepared a short video. We hope this video underscores just how vital public works is in supporting the quality of life of every portlander. And with that, let's roll it, john. Fingers crossed the tech gods are with us today.
2 From the first splash of water on your face to that rich aroma of brewing coffee, your morning begins with the unseen rhythm of portland's infrastructure, a connection that powers every moment of your day, every step down at Portland sidewalk tells a story of innovation on the surface, a vibrant city beneath it, a masterpiece of engineering that keeps us moving forward. On the streets of Portland, decades of dedication and billions of dollars have built a dynamic network of roads, bike lanes and crosswalks that keep our city alive and moving. Beneath your feet lies an unseen lifeline 2300 miles of pipes bringing clean water from deep within the cascades to over a million customers in the Portland metro area to homes, businesses and neighborhoods. Even further below. Thousands of miles of sewer pipes and pump stations operate in unison, transporting wastewater to treatment plants capable of processing millions of gallons every day. When rain falls, portland's Green streets, storm drains, and natural areas leap into action, managing stormwater, preventing floods, and safeguarding our waterways. This intricate choreography is the work of the city of portland's public works service area, delivering innovation and resilience to keep our city thriving. Above and below. This work connects every part of Portland, every street, every home, every life, every hour of every day. You interact with the city's public works infrastructure. We pave the roads you drive on with precision and design, the crosswalks you use for safety. We keep the taps in your kitchen flowing and make sure every drop of water is safe. We carry wastewater away through the pipes beneath our city, protecting public health and preserving our rivers and streams. When storms roll in, our crews respond, keeping streets clear, storm drains flowing, and neighborhoods protected from flooding. Whether it's a daily emergency or a once in a lifetime natural disaster, the public works service area is always there, ensuring that the lifelines of our city never stop running. But our work doesn't stop here. We're building for the future to meet the challenges of tomorrow. We're investing thoughtfully and strategically, laying the foundation for a resilient and thriving Portland to fortify portland's water supply. A new filtration plant and pipelines are under development, acting to shield our water from disease and securing it against fires, earthquakes and the unexpected. Expanding our wastewater system strengthens portland's ability to protect both public health and the environment today and for the future. We're improving city livability and mobility everywhere by making our streets safer, enhancing the multimodal transportation network, and expanding electric vehicle infrastructure to support our clean energy goals. Today and tomorrow across Portland, from goose hollow to gateway, and every minute of every day, 365 days a year, the city of portland's public works service area is building portland's future beautiful, safe and thriving for generations to come.
3 Thank you. I want to acknowledge the work of the staff that went into making this video and the powerpoint slides for you all, and they are behind us today, and a big thank you to everybody who contributed to this one. Next slide please, john. So what is public works. Public works service area is made up of three essential infrastructure bureaus. The Portland bureau of transportation or more commonly referred to as PBOT, the Portland water bureau and the bureau of environmental services, or bs. Pbot keeps Portland moving and ensures safe, accessible, efficient mobility for all portlanders. Water bureau ensures clean, reliable drinking water for over 650,000 people every day and be as manages wastewater and stormwater and safeguards public health and the environment. Together, these systems are the bedrock of our city, and you can't build a thriving city without the strong foundation. And for Portland, that foundation is reliable roads, clean water and functional wastewater systems. Think of these as portland's civic circulatory system. Just like the arteries and veins in our body, these systems are vital, complex and reach into every corner of every district of the city. I'm sure we're going to get each other. I'm sure we're going to get to know each other very well. And I look forward to collaborating with you to ensure these systems remain strong, strong and effective for every portlander. Next slide please. So public works operates at an extraordinary scale. We employ about a third of the city's workforce and is responsible for 90% of the portland's built assets, everything from roads and bridges to water and sewer systems. And we also account for about half the city's budget. Yet we rely on less than 1% of the city's general fund. Instead, most of our funding comes from dedicated revenue sources like utilities utility rates, which is a water and sewer bill, and gas taxes, which don't always grow fast enough to keep up with the rising demands for our infrastructure needs. And that's why it's critical to find creative funding solutions to sustain and modernize our infrastructure systems, ensuring they continue to serve every portlander reliably now and into the future. Next slide please. This slide shows another snapshot of the scale and impact of public works bureaus, and together, the public works bureaus oversee and maintain over 60 over $60 billion in infrastructure assets. And these assets represent decades of investment and effort, forming the foundation of portland's daily life. And with a combined budget of over $2 billion per year, we sustain portland's critical infrastructure while meeting strict regulatory requirements. We trust that when we turn on the tap, the best drinking water will flow. When we flush, it goes down. And when we step outside, the roads and pathways are ready for us. These aren't things that portlanders need to think about, because all 3300 of us in public works think about them every single day. And I'm truly proud of our talented teams who go all in to serve our community with tireless dedication and around the clock. It's also worth noting that over 70% of our workforce is union represented, reflecting the strong collaboration between labor and management that drive our success, and by working together as a unified service area, our infrastructure bureaus ensure great efficiency, resilience and strategic coordination in building and maintaining portland's foundation. One water main, one sewer line and one street at a time. Next slide. John. So this slide highlights some of the key features that define public works. But before I deep dive into these into these features, I want to share the most important feature of our service area, which is we don't work in isolation. We regularly collaborate within our bureaus and also with with other service areas in our city, and we work closely with regional, state and federal agencies as regulators, funders and partners. We also engage with community organizations and advocacy groups, and these partnerships help and shape enhance the work that we do. And these connections are central to our success. Next slide. I want to highlight that public works operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, because Portland depends on it. Every hour of every day we have crews available day and night to address issues as they arise, whether it's a water main break, a road closure or severe weather. And this 24 over seven commitment adds complexity to our operations. But the alternate, which is letting systems fail, is not an option. A city cannot function without sanitation, clear water and safe roads. And that's why public works is always on duty. Next slide. Public works also operates under a complex set of permits and regulations at both state and federal level. We have to meet drinking water standards, comply with our clean river permits, and meet state and federal transportation standards. Our funding includes state and federal funds that carry their own rules, and we are the subject of legal decisions like the Portland harbor superfund that bind us all to conduct specific activities and meet specific standards. And these commitments aren't just obligations. They help ensure we are delivering the reliable, high quality services portlanders expect. Next slide. Climate equity and resilience are an important but interconnected focus areas for public works, and working on these topics. Using a once a day approach is going to be important for citywide success in these areas. Public works specifically is key to reducing portland's carbon footprint. Transportation emissions make up to 40% of the city's total emissions, so investments in active transportation, Green infrastructure and fleet electrification lowers the emissions while improving safety, affordability and mobility. And climate change is already impacting Portland. If you are seeing it in the news recently, in the past few years, we have fires in the boulder watershed, increased flooding and aging bridges vulnerable to earthquakes that threaten our infrastructure. We are aiming to build a stronger, more adaptable, more resilient system that benefits the entire city. And it's critical that we make equitable investments to support our most vulnerable communities. Next slide. I had the privilege of meeting with some of you prior to this presentation, and I specifically want to mention councilor Clark, who's the chair of the infrastructure, transportation and infrastructure committee. She has specific interests in emergency preparedness, and our directors will be speaking to it. But I wanted to mention that public works plans and prepares for year round for natural and man made disasters, including earthquakes, floods, dam and levee failures, volcanic eruptions and winter weather storms. We ensure rapid and effective responses in emergencies, and we are often the first on the scene, and we work to assess the damage and restore the service. We also play a vital role in supporting other emergencies, and when disaster strikes, our teams work tirelessly to keep critical services operational, restoring roads, water and sewer services to protect public health and safety. Next slide please. Public works contributes to portland's livability and economic vitality. Water, sewer and roads are essential building blocks of any city, and by focusing on clean rivers, restoring natural areas and creating a safe, active transportation options, we make Portland greener, healthier and more connected. Our investments also fueled the local economy, creating living wage jobs, supporting key industries like brewing and manufacturing, and prioritizing underserved communities. Infrastructure also directly impacts housing and business development, and creative uses of right of ways and vitality. Add vitality to our neighborhoods and business districts. Parking management also supports local businesses by improving accessibility and turnover. Ultimately, public works is more than just pipes and pavement. It's about creating a Portland where people and businesses can prosper for generations to come. And with that, I'd like to welcome the directors of the three public works bureaus to provide a closer look at their work, starting with millicent williams, director of Portland bureau of transportation.
4 Thank you, deputy city administrator donna powell. Good morning, president pirtle-guiney and members of the Portland city council. I'm pleased to be with you this morning. My name is millicent williams, and I use she her pronouns, and I proudly serve as the director of the Portland bureau of transportation. From the moment that you leave your home, when you drop off your children at school, stop to pick up a cup of coffee or tea or your favorite kombucha. Take time to run errands or as you walk, roll, cycle, take transit, or drive to the places where you work, worship, or play. You are interfacing with PBOT assets. Each city's transportation system is unique, and ours might even be a little weird, but it's shaped by its size, geography, population density, and economic needs. A good system aims to balance efficiency, accessibility, sustainability, and affordability to meet the needs of all users. The Portland bureau of transportation is responsible for planning, building, operating, and maintaining the city's transportation system, a system that includes over 5000 Lane miles of pavement across 145mi■. Next slide please. I guess I need to do that, too. The city's $21 billion in transportation assets tells a fascinating story. In addition to the network of streets, we are also responsible for 170,000 street signs, close to 1000 traffic signals, and over 60,000 street lights. We maintain more than 450 miles of bikeways and thousands of public bike racks, and our 159 bridges connect neighborhoods all over the city. We also operate two separate but complementary transit systems. First, Portland streetcar, which serves over 10,000 riders daily circulating its 20 streetcars between south waterfront, the central eastside, downtown, and northwest Portland, and that acts as a hub for transit oriented development. Since the system was revitalized in 2001, 39% of the city's total affordable housing units are built with adjacency or in close proximity to the streetcar system, and a second, the aerial tram, the country's only public gondola system that provides essential transportation for patients, visitors and staff at OHSU, as well as for tourists looking for the best views of the city. Next slide please. At PBOT, we are guided by our policies. Formerly the transportation system plan, or tsp. The tsp serves as our guide for transportation planning decisions and investments, helping communities achieve their mobility, safety and sustainability goals while balancing resources. Areas considered include existing conditions, transportation demand, project prioritization, implementation strategies, public involvement, environmental considerations, technology integration, and street type and viability. We have a variety of street types throughout the city, but for today's discussion, we'll focus on two designations local and busy streets. As the illustration demonstrates, local streets carry less traffic, are primarily residential, have speed limits of 20mph or less, and are home to neighborhood greenways, safe routes to schools, projects, and community gatherings. Alternatively, busy streets have adjacency to more varied land uses, carry larger volumes of traffic, and are designed to accommodate the movement of people and goods using various modes. As I'm sure many of you are aware, some of these streets are also on our high crash network. The network of 30 streets and intersections with the most consequential crashes in the city. While they make up only 8% of portland's streets, the high crash network accounted for 62% of traffic deaths from 2018 to 2022. These are the streets we prioritize for safety investments and reduce crashes to reduce crashes and fatalities, centering safe systems and vision zero the goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries. After many years of hard and as our team often refers to it, heart work and tragic record breaking number of fatalities which increased dramatically during the pandemic, we are heartened to see a drop of 16% of fatalities in 2024. Next slide please. Pbot works to provide essential services year round, adjusting and adapting depending on the season. In the spring and summer months, you'll see increased construction activity as maintenance and contracted. Contracted construction crews say that ten times fast to build ADA ramps, pave streets, fill potholes and construct capital improvement projects. We perform a public stairway and tunnel maintenance, provide vegetation management and sign stormwater system signals and street light maintenance, as well as traffic control for special events in the fall. Among a host of critical activities, we collect leaves and debris in 52 leaf districts during everyone's favorite holiday leaf day. This year, we collected a record 8000 708,700 tons of leaves, the equivalent of almost 1424 foot dump truck loads this winter. Paving crews are, among other duties, grading and graveling streets in southeast Portland. While we actively monitor forecasts to ensure our readiness for a winter weather event, preparation takes many forms and includes mitigation and contingency planning and initiating preventive measures as needed. As an example of such effort, given the persistence of below freezing temperatures for the past several days and for the next several days, by week's end we will have dispensed 15,000 gallons of deicer across the city. In a winter storm, our team members quickly pivot from replacing signage, striping, pavement, clearing sewers, cleaning graffiti, sweeping and paving streets, and filling potholes to their secondary jobs. As inclement weather responders. In fact, I often refer to our team as the first responders, first responders. 56 trucks from our fleet are outfitted with snow plows and spreaders, and the entire operation moves into 24 hour emergency response, with everyone working 12 hour shifts to keep our 1750 Lane miles of emergency routes clear for snow and ice for emergency responders and TriMet busses. These routes are the most critical for our city's police, fire, police and fire stations, hospitals, schools, frequent bus lines, the downtown core, and major business districts, while winter weather preparedness is important, PBOT takes an all hazards approach to responding to emergencies, from snowstorms and sewer releases to landslides, riverine flooding and earthquakes. The bureau recognizes its responsibility and is ready to respond during emergent or catastrophic events. The transportation bureau is the lead entity responsible for keeping rights of way and roads passable. We must support resilience, response and recovery and the safe movement of people and goods, and have continuity of operations plans in place to ensure that we meet our objectives. Next slide please. Our broad vision at the Portland bureau of transportation is to plan, build, operate and maintain the transportation system for the city of Portland as we manage a range of programs and services in service to that goal for PBOT planning translates to the implementation of mobility and micromobility services like biketown and e-scooters, and safety and encouragement programs like safe routes to schools and Sunday parkways, focusing on major projects and partnerships like the rose quarter and interstate bridge replacement program. Long range regional and strategic transportation planning grant writing, which we are excellent at organizing for the utilization of public spaces with community and business partners, and delivery of projects within the bureau's five year, $500 million capital improvement program portfolio, or cip building encompasses a suite of engineering services, and the teams are responsible for utility management, permitting and compliance. Real property services, civil engineering design, ADA ramp delivery, and construction services, which includes surveying services, civil engineering, construction and bridge structure and pavement management. Transportation operations is responsible for the design and oversight of how people move about in the right of way, and without their contributions, the city would grind to a halt. Programs in this category include signals and street lighting, traffic design, traffic operations, parking, and regulatory services, which includes coordination with private for hire transportation, including uber and lyft, and everyone's favorite stewards of the right of way parking enforcement, who do so much more than simply write citations. And while we're talking about maintenance, while we've already talked about maintenance operations and some of their specific functions each day, staff also work to support environmental systems. In partnership with the bureau of environmental services, logistics management, maintenance, construction operations, which include signs and markings and, among other things, graffiti removal and street systems, paving, repairing potholes, striping, sweeping and cleaning streets, and more. These four areas of strategic focus are supported by our internal enterprise services teams, who are committed to budget and financial management and resource development, data governance, analytics and financial controls, technology services and asset management, communications, administrative services, community engagement and community engagement and dei work, emergency management and environmental policy, employee services and employee safety and facilities management, including smart park. Over 900 employees committed to excellence in service provision. Thousands of years of collective experience, dozens of plans, 1500 pieces of equipment, 365 days a year, one PBOT with one goal. Serving the city of Portland with excellenc. And now director campbell from the Portland water bureau.
5 Thank you, director williams. Good morning, madam president and councilors, I'm edward campbell. I use he him pronouns and I serve as the interim director for the Portland water bureau. It's a pleasure to be here today. I'm sorry. You can't hear me. Okay. How's this? Okay. Thank you, director williams. And good morning, madam president and councilors. I'm edward campbell. I use he him pronouns, and I'm the interim director for the Portland water bureau. It's a pleasure to be here today to talk about our amazing drinking water system in Portland. So we can go to the next slide. So the Portland water bureau has provided water to Portland in this region for more than a century, and it's the largest water supplier in the state of Oregon. We serve about a million people in the metro area through direct sales inside of the city boundaries. And then also through 19 wholesale agreements with surrounding communities. We have two very high quality drinking water sources the bull run watershed, located east of the city in the mount hood national forest in the columbia south shore well field, stretches from mid county out to east county, just on the other side of the Portland airport. Water from each of these sources moves through a complex network of treatment facilities, reservoirs, pipes, and valves before it reaches our taps. And we have specialized, highly trained operation staff, managing the flow and maintaining its excellent quality every step of the way. The visionary city leaders, who originally created portland's drinking water system in the late 1800s, recognized that a reliable and safe drinking water system was essential to the public health, community safety and economic vitality of this region. We at the water bureau regard ourselves as the stewards of this amazing gift from our predecessors keeping the drinking water continuously functioning, keeping the drinking water system continuously functioning and strong is a 100 year business. This is why we prioritize the critical improvements necessary to increase the longevity, reliability and overall resilience of our system. We know our community loves Portland drinking water. I've heard it regularly when I go to the airport, and I'm standing in line to fill my water bottle before I leave the city, I invariably hear somebody talk about how important it is to get their drinking water filled before they end up in some other community that doesn't have water as good as ours. So we know that our organizational vision is that that same delicious, high quality water that we enjoy today will be available for generations to come. Next slide please. So by the numbers, our $25 billion assets, which are the drinking water system, help us deliver over 30 billion gallons of water each year. That translates roughly to 95 million gallons per day on average. Serving that much water requires a large and complex system of infrastructure that stretches from the forest to the bull run watershed to literally every home building, park, and business in our city. We operate and maintain a vast array of facilities and assets, including two major dams and large reservoirs in the bull run watershed, 25 active groundwater wells, 60 miles of large diameter conduits, more than 2000 miles of pipes, over 15,000 fire hydrants, and 193,000 water meters. And that's just a sampling of our infrastructure. Most of that infrastructure is underground and out of sight, but each of us rely on it every single day. And that's why the water bureau conducts thousands of maintenance projects each year to keep our aging system running reliably. We turn the valves, we flush the hydrants, we clean the tanks, and we install over 30,000ft of new water main each year. This daily work by our maintenance crews and our operators is how we continuously provide drinking water to our community every minute of every day. Next slide please. So protecting our water sources and the ecosystems that surround them is essential to our business and our purpose. Our primary drinking water source, the bull run watershed. As I mentioned in the mount hood national forest, it's closed to public entry and protected by robust water quality protections that are enshrined both in federal law and in city charter and code. We have a century long partnership with the us forest service to co-manage that landscape, 95% of which is under federal ownership. The bull run provides the vast majority of our drinking water over 95% or more every year, and due to its location and elevation, that water comes to us almost exclusively by gravity flow, requiring no energy or pumping. It's amazing. Marvelous engineering feat. The bureau's operations in the bull run are strictly governed by the safe drinking water act, and a compliance agreement with the Oregon health authority. That compliance agreement requires a routine testing and communications about how to keep water users safe from potential contaminants and in particular, the pathogen cryptosporidium. The compliance agreement will remain in effect until the bureau completes a new filtration facility, which will remove these contaminants from our source water starting in 2027. Our groundwater source, the columbia south shore well field, is drawn from a deep series of aquifers along the columbia river. Groundwater provides critical resilience for the water system as a replacement source for the bull run when it's not available due to emergencies or other purposes, and is a supplemental source during every summer dry season as needed. The cities of Portland, Gresham, and fairview have implemented an integrated groundwater protection program across the entire well field to help prevent and protect against chemical spills or other contaminants. Sources from entering our drinking water. Pollution prevention is the most cost effective way for us to protect the water we pump from the well field, and we work directly with our jurisdictional partners and the businesses and residents in the groundwater protection area to achieve that. Next slide. We are focused on making sure our water system is reliable and resilient. The investments we are making in our system today ensure access to clean and safe water for the entire region now and into the future. Major construction projects like the seismically resilient Washington park reservoir and the upcoming filtration and pipelines project increase our system's ability to withstand earthquakes and many of the risks and challenges posed by a changing climate. We are also making routine upgrades to other, more hidden infrastructure, including the large pipes that transmit water from our storage facilities to neighborhoods, the groundwater pumps that draw water from our deep aquifers, the meters that monitor water usage, and the valves and regulators that help us control the direction and pressure of water throughout the system. Next slide. Our customer service team. It serves not just the water bureau, but the bureau of environmental services as well. And we provide billing and account assistance services to more than 200,000 residential and commercial accounts for sewer, stormwater and drinking water services. The team reads and maintains water meters, oversees billing and payment for the combined bill, and administers the bureau's financial assistance programs. The scale of work by our customer service staff is mind boggling. They address over 13,000 customer inquiries each month on average, and I will note that the vast majority, vast majority of these customer inquiries are resolved routinely. The small percentage of the more challenging issues that come up. And those are the ones, frankly, that you and your staff will be hearing about are referred to our most experienced staff and managers to problem solve. So we're always ready to help when those issues come up. And I with that, will turn it over to director uchiyama.
6 Great. Thank you, director campbell. Good morning, madam president and members of Portland city council. Can you hear me? Okay, great. My name is dawn uchiyama and I use she her pronouns. And I'm the director of the bureau of environmental services. I'm honored to be here with all of my team today and with all of you. Bts is portland's sewer and stormwater utility. We're responsible for managing wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to protect public health and the environment. We serve close to 660,000 customers, including 170,000 residential accounts and 14,000 commercial and industrial accounts. Our customers, like waters, pay directly for our work as most of our funding comes from the sewer and stormwater rates we collect via the combined bill and combined bts and water bill. Next slide Portland started building our sewer and storm systems back in the 1860s, and we've been evolving ever since. Different parts of the city have different systems dependent on the local conditions. For much of central Portland, roughly from mount tabor to the river, and then from the west hills to downtown. Bhs manages a combined sewer system. This was built more than 100 years ago, collecting both sanitary sewage and stormwater, also known as rain, that was carried to nearby rivers and streams in east Portland. Bhs built thousands of miles of separated sanitary pipe to connect communities east of 82nd to public sewers. We rely heavily on sumps to manage stormwater in this area. Sumps are basically storm drains that collect rain and direct it underground, where it can recharge groundwater. In much of southwest, the sanitary and stormwater is separated, and the stormwater collection system relies on creeks and streams. Bhs was created in the 1980s as a traditional sewer utility. In the late 1990s and early 2000, we reimagined ourselves, creating a service oriented bureau that protects our rivers and streams via innovative, cost effective Green solutions like planting trees, building Green streets, and restoring natural areas. Bhs is now an internationally recognized leader in Green solutions, with over 700 employees who manage our systems from eight locations citywide. Next slide please. Like our partners, our public work partners, we rely on a wide range of assets, including treatment plants, pump station pipes of every size, pressurized force mains, Green streets, sumps, culverts and acres and acres of wetlands, floodplains and natural areas. We also have a materials testing lab and a water pollution control lab, where critical state of the art analysis is conducted. We have a small treatment plant near lake oswego and another that is much larger, called the columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant. You saw a picture of the sign in the video this morning. This is the largest treatment plant in the state of Oregon. Water enters our system from a combined sewer or sanitary only pipes that flow downhill to the low points, where in the past it went into our rivers and streams. Today it goes into our big pipes. Our big pipes capture that flow before it reaches the rivers and streams. We then pump the wastewater through nearly 100 pump stations and a network of pressurized force mains to our plants for treatment of our 2500 miles of pipes, more than one third are over 80 years old and are reaching the end of their useful life. Many of our pump stations also need to be replaced as well. The replacement value, again like water is for our entire system, is estimated at $25 billion and we have an estimated and growing backlog of deferred asset replacement valued at 6.7 billion. And I want to be really clear with you today that this is not a maintenance backlog. This is a reinvestment backlog, and it's something that we take very seriously and are working closely with our partners to address. Next slide please. I'd like to highlight the regulatory environment we work with. Priya and eddie mentioned a little bit about this, but I would like to just call out the bs is responsible for managing several environmental permits for the city of Portland, including clean water act, the endangered species act, and we also have a part in the safe drinking water act. These regulations define our wastewater and stormwater requirements and the risks that we face in this regard. Bs is both regulated by state and federal requirements, and we serve as a regulator as we establish policies and programs that help the city stay in compliance. Every day. We work with Portland businesses and industry to prevent spills and protect public health and portland's watersheds. Programs like the spill protection and community response are non-conforming and mandatory sewer connection. Fats, oils and grease, industrial pretreatment and industrial stormwater are all important ways we ensure that the city stays in compliance with our regulations and related to compliance is our role in Portland harbor. The Portland harbor superfund is a ten mile stretch of the lower Willamette river between the broadway bridge and the southern tip of sauvie island. Bs is the city's agent for this effort, and we collect funds from our utility ratepayers to help pay for the planning and eventual restoration of Portland harbor. It's a really big responsibility. Okay, now for the fun stuff. Let's talk sewag. Well, out of sight and out of mind for most every Portland resident, every Portland resident, visitor and business depends on our reliable wastewater services. As you've heard over and over again, every hour of every day when you flush your toilet, wash your clothes, or shower, how often do you think, where does this water go? If we're doing our job well, that means you don't have to think about it at all. Central to our services and reliability is this wastewater treatment plant that I mentioned earlier on columbia boulevard in north Portland. It was opened in the 1950s, and we had a major renovation in the in the 70s. Major expansion in the 70s, the columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant recovers resources from an average of 70 million gallons a day and up to 40, I'm sorry, 450 million gallons a day on a rainy day. So really wide range of flow that we manage. This facility is the heart of bps's operations, and one of our most important responsibilities. We're currently making a major improvements at the plant with something we call our secondary treatment expansion program, or step. This program added two new clarifiers that just went online in December, meeting a big deadline that we set in 2014 with the department of environmental quality and a big shout out to our step team for this accomplishment. It's a major a major milestone for us. This project also added a new solids processing facility and is increasing our ability, increasing our plant's resiliency to protect water quality and provide a healthier environment for our employees. Next slide. Okay, so moving on to stormwater management. Despite the weather the last few days, we all know it rains in Portland. Portland receives an average of 37in of rain each year. Most of that rain falls October, October through April. Figuring out what to do with that rain is as important as treating wastewater. And remember, it gets especially complicated because our systems are combined in some parts of the city where we have wastewater and stormwater together in one system. So like wastewater, how often do you wonder where does all that rain go? Rainwater flows over hard surfaces like rooftops, parking lots, streets and sidewalks, and it picks up pollution along the way, like oil from cars on the street. Left unmanaged stormwater can pollute our waterways and cause flooding, erosion, landslides and when combined with wastewater, it can cause sewer backups into homes and businesses and sewer sewage overflows into our rivers and streams. This can harm people, wildlife, property and the environment. So whenever possible, we work with nature to manage stormwater. Stormwater facilities like eco roofs and Green streets and constructed wetlands provide multiple benefits to Portland, and this can be especially important in historically underserved areas that lack trees, have a history of flooding, or have little to no Green spaces. Next slide okay, in the bottom right hand corner, you can see a baby coho salmon that was caught and released, of course, in johnson creek at the cedar crossing restoration project. And although everyone in the city is responsible for meeting the requirements of the endangered species and species act, salmon recovery is especially important to bees. In addition to our wastewater treatment and stormwater management responsibilities, we help protect and restore thousands of acres of natural areas and hundreds of miles of urban waterways, which provide critical habitat for endangered salmon and trout. Many of our restoration projects in are in areas of Portland where there has been historically high risk flood, including many vulnerable areas around johnson creek in southeast. Ideally, I'm sorry, the really rewarding part of this work is that we work closely with community organizations and our other partners to restore wetlands and floodplains, and to remove culverts that block fish passage and raise public awareness for our work. The partnership work in the community work is some of the best work that we do. At the end of the day, all of the work bees does is captured in our interest in watershed health. This watershed perspective leads to cleaner water, builds community resiliency, and makes Portland a healthier, more livable place for people. Fish and wildlife like our multimodal transportation partners and our clean drinking water partners. Our watershed work is a much cherished, cherished part of portland's identity. Thank you, priya, back to you.
7 Thank you don, now that we've explored public works and the core services each bureaus provide, let's turn our focus to our favorite topic budget. Today's discussion is not a deep dive into public works budget, but rather an overview of how a service area is funded and the financial challenges we face. As you know, portland's budget outlook is challenging, and this extends to public works as well. All three of our bureaus are grappling with significant budgetary pressures, especially transportation, which faces unique funding hurdles. And on top of that, our bureaus are tasked with managing aging infrastructure. After decades of underinvestment, while also planning and building for systems that meet modern demands for community and environmental health, climate resilience, equity and affordability. We understand that council will soon begin planning its budget work sessions, and we are eager to engage in deeper conversations to help shape the city's priorities. For now, I'll provide a high level overview of the revenue sources and budget situations for each bureau. Next slide please. So unlike many other city services, portland's water, sewer and stormwater systems are primarily funded through utility rates and charges other charges, but not the general fund. What you see here is the rates and revenues for rbs on the left in Green, and for the Portland water bureau on the right in blue. Approximately 90% of the revenues for the water bureau and the environmental services come from customer billings, which is your water source sewer storm bill with additional income from system development charges, permits and infrastructure improvements associated with new development. These fees are carefully designed to recover the actual costs of providing services, with most set at full cost recovery. However, when certain fees fall short, the difference must be covered by utility rates, adding to the burden on ratepayers. So ensuring sufficient revenue is essential to maintaining 24 over seven operations. The cost of operating, maintaining and modernizing these systems are continually changing and require careful financial planning to keep portland's infrastructure reliable and sustainable. Any rate increase reflected in the long term financial plans are necessary to fund planned capital investments over the next 5 to 10 years, and to cover projected operations and maintenance costs over the past years. So year over year billing revenues must increase to account for inflation, system maintenance, system improvements to meet new development needs, and regulatory compliance costs. These investments ensure our systems remain safe, compliant and reliable for portlanders today and for future generations. Next slide please. So this slide is Portland water and sewer rates. So this graph illustrates the historical annual rate increases starting in fiscal year 2019 and projects future increases through fiscal year 2030. The blue line at the top shows the water rate increases over the years. The Green line is for the environmental services, and the black line is a combined impact on a typical single family residential monthly bill. I want to recognize that the rate increases are never easy for any household, especially during challenging economic times. That's why both bureaus use long term financial planning to carefully balance affordability with the need to maintain and modernize the systems. By smoothing out the costs increase over time. We keep we strive to keep rate adjustments modest, predictable, and sufficient to meet financial obligations without creating sudden spikes for customers. Each year, we present a five year rate profile to city council, outlining the revenue need to sustain our systems. Council reviews and approves utility rates annually and in some cases has approved lower than projected rate increases to provide short term relief for customers. While we understand the importance of easing financial burdens, underfunding also comes with significant trade offs, including reduced service levels, delayed maintenance and increased risk of system failures that could threaten public health, safety and environmental quality, and not to mention environmental compliance. Underfunding today also creates long term financial risks. It can lead to financial stability and instability and weaken credit ratings, leading to higher borrowing costs for both bureaus and the cities. By maintaining strong bond ratings, we secure lower interest rates, which ultimately will save ratepayers millions of dollars in the long run. That said, we are committed to supporting customers who face financial challenges. We've implemented robust financial assistance programs to help those in need and if council would like, we are happy to provide more details on these programs at an in-depth briefing. At its core, rate stability is about ensuring safe, reliable, sustainable water and sewer systems not just for today, but for generations to come. We are committed to making sure portland's infrastructure continues to serve our city, while recognizing financial realities that face that our customers face. Next slide. So we understand that utility rates are a concern, and there's a common perception that Portland has some of the highest rates in the region or even the country. In reality, when we compare Portland to peer cities with similar water sewer storm systems, we find that we are in the middle of the pack. The chart on this slide highlights two types of utilities neighboring utilities within, near, or within neighboring jurisdictions around us, which are geographically close to Portland, and peer utilities, which share comparable system characteristics such as a combined sewer overflow infrastructure like what director uchiyama mentioned, and drinking water filtration requirements like what Portland water bureau has. Utility costs also vary widely based on geography, the age of the infrastructure and regulatory demands. But this comparison offers important context. Portland's rates reflect the actual cost of maintaining a safe, reliable, modern system that serve our community every day. Next slide please. So we know that water and sewer bills can sometimes be confusing. And portlanders often ask, what exactly does my payment fund? So portlanders receive one combined utility bill, but it funds multiple essential services. About two thirds of the bill supports the sewer and storm systems, and roughly a quarter funds the drinking water system. 15% of our bill covers the administrative costs such as metering, billing and customer service to keep operations running smoothly. And about half percent of the bill is allocated to Portland harbor. Superfund. That director uchiyama mentioned, and it contributes to the cleanup of the Willamette river at Portland harbor area. It's important to note that every dollar collected is carefully allocated. These revenues can only be used by the water bureau and environmental services to cover operational costs, capital construction, and debt repayment associated with delivering water, sewer and storm water services. Next slide please. A b is in the water bureau. Have large budgets and considering the large scale of our public works system, most of the money is already spoken for. It pays for things that we can't cut, like loan repayments on past projects, required fees, and legally mandated upgrades to keep our systems safe and working. A large part of our budget goes to the major projects we are required to complete, like the water filtration plant and bas base treatment facility upgrades. These projects are not aren't optional. They are needed to meet state and federal federal regulations and keep portland's water clean and safe. Only about 20% of our budget can be adjusted, and that money covers our employees maintenance and essential supplies like chemicals for water treatment and materials to repair pipes. Since we can only make cuts from this small part of the budget, even small reductions have big consequences. In short, utilities don't have the flexibility to absorb big budget cuts, and reductions can have a profound and disruptive impact to the levels of service we provide our community today, and poses greater risks to increase system failure. Next slide please. So the rates keep portland's water, sewer and stormwater systems safe and reliable. And when portlanders pay their bill, the investing in the essential service infrastructure that serves them every day. These funds cover daily operations, required upgrades and regulatory compliance, and the current rate increase is largely driven by the two critical projects that I mentioned previously, which is the filtration plant to meet the federal drinking water standards, and the step the secondary treatment plant expansion, which expands the wastewater treatment project. Beyond these projects, aging infrastructure, which includes pipes over 100 years old, we like to say we're in the 100 year business. These require ongoing maintenance to protect public health, safety and long term stability. These past investments gave us clean water and safe rivers, and now it is our turn to ensure these systems remain strong for future generations. Next slide please. And with that, we're moving on to the PBOT. Budget. About two thirds about I'm sorry, about three quarters of the PBOT budget comes from restricted funds, which are federal and state grants, development charges and permitting fees, all tied to specific projects. The remaining general transportation revenues are commonly referred to as gtr fund, basic maintenance and daily operations. Gtr relies on state highway funds, which is about 60%, and parking revenues, which is about 40%, both of which have shrunk due to the fuel efficiency improvements and post pandemic level travel shifts. Even within the gtr, $79 million is already committed to debt payment for the Sellwood bridge, milwaukie max and the ADA ramp upgrades, leaving just $70 million for core services. Next slide please. Among the three public works bureaus, PBOT has the smallest budget and the bureau's actual discretionary funding that I mentioned before, the $70 million is even smaller. It is only 6,016% of the bureau's total budget. As of last week. We are proposing $25 million in cuts to PBOT, per the city's budget guidance for this fiscal year, which is a 35% cut to the bureau's discretionary sources. Next slide please. So prior to the pandemic in 2020, PBOT had already begun making reductions in implementing hiring freezes as a financial forecast started to become more concerning, these increases increased significantly during the first couple of years of the pandemic. While both state fuel taxes and parking revenues were significantly impacted. While there have been some revenue recovery in the last couple of years, expenses have continued to far outpace revenues and we have had to continue with significant reductions over the last six fiscal years. The bureau had to cut a total of $42 million in general transportation revenue investments, and we had completely drawn down our $63 million in reserve. These ongoing budget cuts have impacted every facet of pbot's work, and the impacts can be seen throughout the community and felt throughout the bureau. Portlanders are increasingly frustrated by the slowness or lack of services entirely, and so are our staff. We have the skills and talent within our within our workforce to do great things, but we are limited by the realities of our funding situation. Next slide please. This brings us back to a key point. Investment creates opportunity from thousands of conversations with portlanders. Two key themes emerge. First, affordability is a major concern. Families are feeling the strain of rising costs housing, health care, childcare and utility rates are increasing across the board. Second, people want basic services to work. They expect the money to fund a system that delivers real value, efficient, reliable and fair. It's important to note that the property and income taxes do not do not fund our work. These services that we provide are supported by rates and fees. Balancing affordability with infrastructure investment is not just a challenge, but also an opportunity. We feel that by prioritizing smart strategic investments, we can address the immediate needs of a community while laying the groundwork for a sustainable future. Our collective responsibility is to ensure that every dollar we manage delivers value through reliable services, equitable access, and a city that thrives. Next slide please. Despite the budget challenges, public works has made real progress and improving and improving services and infrastructure. Before we look ahead, I want to highlight some key accomplishments which we've achieved with the resources that we do have. Then we'll turn to the challenges and opportunities which will shape our work moving forward. Next slide please. Public works service area as a whole, despite our short history, which is about 6 or 7 months now, we've already achieved some several important initiatives. One notable success was the public works procurement day, which brought together cobid certified contractors, city staff and community partners to explore nearly $1 billion of investment in 2025 infrastructure bid opportunities. The event emphasized equitable contracting, empowering small, minority owned and women owned businesses to contribute to portland's growth through networking, education and resources. And we plan to continue this year after year. Public works service area structure builds upon strong foundation of collaboration that exists between our bureaus, which includes decades long partnership between the water bureau and bids on customer services, and between wps and PBOT on sewer system maintenance. In 2025, we will continue to build and strengthen our systems and controls at a service area level to ensure we are closely integrating our planning and capital budgets. Our goal is to seize the opportunity for cost savings and improve project outcomes wherever possible. Next slide please. Another service area accomplishment was a successful exploration of the one water initiative. In August of 2024, Portland launched the one water initiative to explore integrating its water, sewer and storm water services into a unified, sustainable system. A six week review, directed by former mayor ted wheeler, assessed merging the Portland water bureau and bureau of environmental services following models used in cities like seattle and san francisco. One water is more than an operational shift and emphasizes collaboration efficiency, ensuring safe, affordable, reliable water services, and it also aligns with the city's broader reorganization efforts. Our review last year brought together water and environmental services, PBOT, and also parks and planning and sustainability bureau, leading to several recommendations. A few of them include stronger collaboration across public works infrastructure bureaus, a unified strategic plan in public works to improve service delivery, and an integrated capital improvement plan, or cip, for smarter investments. Over the next five years, the city will implement these recommendations while preserving each bureau's expertise, ensuring a more connected and efficient water system for portland's future, and integrated public works infrastructure as well. Next slide please. This slide highlights the overall challenges that we face. Some of the most pressing include aging infrastructure under investment funding constraints, and the growing need for climate and seismic resilience. Decades of deferred maintenance have weakened a system requiring requiring greater investment to maintain reliability and the limited resources that we have impact staffing and also service levels. Additionally, preparing for extreme weather, wildfires and earthquakes demands proactive long term planning to ensure that the systems remain resilient and adaptable. But despite these challenges, there are also significant opportunities by working as a unified service area rather than three individual separate bureaus, we can increase efficiencies, reduce costs and improve project delivery. Portland has continued to support climate forward investments, positioning public works to play a key role in building a sustainable and resilient future. We have an opportunity to engage deeply with the community, fostering conversations about infrastructure, investments and service expectations that will help shape the city's future. Next slide please. And now I would like to invite the directors of the three bureaus to share bureau specific accomplishment, challenges and opportunities. And to begin, I'll pass it on to PBOT director millicent williams.
8 Thank you, donna paul, I am going to leave script for just a moment. I recognize we've been sharing a lot of information with you, and I will hasten through the next couple of slides that I have, but I cannot fail to highlight the amazing work of the dedicated employees of the Portland bureau of transportation, and I will take at least this moment to share a few of the accomplishments that we've had over the course of the past year. You've heard repeatedly today that PBOT has faced significant budgetary challenges in recent years, but despite these challenges, over the course of the past year, the team has been able to celebrate meaningful accomplishments, and I'm going to rattle off quite a few really quickly, and I hope the teleprompter is able to pick it up. In 2024 alone, we secured over $100 million in state and federal grants for transportation capital improvements, including major safety and streetscape investments. Highlights include $38 million in grants to remake northeast broadway into a main street. $20 million to build a safer 122nd avenue. $10 million for safer crossings at 82nd avenue. $2 million to pilot the nation's first zero emissions delivery zone and curbside ev charging, and $14 million to replace and improve the burgard bridge in north Portland, a key freight connection. We had pothole March madness proactively filling 1800 potholes in two weeks, covering all streets east of 82nd avenue. A total of 1008 Lane miles. We replaced 20,000 street name and other signs in east Portland, east of 82nd, south of Burnside, in phase one of a seven year program to replace all street name signs in the city with a small but mighty graffiti abatement team. If we had more, we could do more. We cleaned 16,400 parking and traffic signs, painted or restored over 65,000ft■!s of retaining walls, 231 bike racks, 5000 sign mounts and posts, and closed over 575 service ticket requests. We also supported the I-84 cleanup project with 40 staff who, over seven operational hours, worked to clear 70,000ft■!s of assets. The equivalent of four single storey homes, and it should be noted that the overpasses over over 84 are not odot's to tend to. Those are things that PBOT is responsible for, and so we had to work in close coordination to do that. And if in fact, you see challenges with that, it's because of the coordination that we would have to have. Ongoing parking enforcement officers wrote over 150,000 citations in 2024, and our vehicle inspection team were commonly referred to as the v8, helped to house or find shelter for at least 300 people over the course of one year. We reduced the backlog of damaged street lights by 20% and processed 223,332 temporary street use permit applications or notifications for work or events in the right of way. The traffic safety team reviewed and responded 589 safety requests from the community. The team also reduced posted speeds on 11 miles of streets, completed intersections, daylighting on the high crash network, and designed 15 miles of speed bump projects. We reopened the smart park garage at third and alder and saw a 175% reduction in security related incidents across five garages and are installing security gates and new payment systems throughout the system. We completed multiple neighborhood mobility and corridor plans. We built and certified the one, the 1988 ramps required by the civil rights education and enforcement center. You'll get used to hearing about creek identified through a settlement agreement with the city. We actually completed 1721, but who's counting? Completed 29 large capital projects representing $88 million in mostly external investment. We saw 550,000 bike town trips, and this year, over 50,000 people participated in one of our signature activation events, Sunday Sunday parkways, in may of 2020 for fixing our streets. Portland's ten cent local gas tax was renewed, with nearly 71% of portlanders saying yes. The strong voter support showed us that portlanders care deeply about the maintenance and safety of our transportation system, and are willing to make investments in support of making it better. Finally, the historic, just finally, the historic jurisdiction, finally, the historic jurisdictional transfer of 82nd avenue from the state to the city in 2022 was the state of was the start of a once in a generation opportunity to transform the state highway into a city street, and work is going on in earnest. The corridor serves some of the most ethnically and racially diverse neighborhoods in Oregon, and we've already begun to make significant investments in street lighting, ADA ramps, safer crossings, and more. And we're looking forward to continuing the safety investments and working with TriMet and other partners towards a major bus rapid transit project. Final fund note several weeks ago, PBOT launched a snowplow naming contest. We had over 4000 respondents with 3000 unique submissions, over 16,000 people ranked choice voted for their five favorite names. Voting closed yesterday and winners will be announced next week, so please stay tuned. I am going to. I do want to speak to our challenges. They've been highlighted multiple times, but I also want to make sure that we're leaving the opportunity for questions. And I would imagine that some of your questions would speak specifically to our challenges. So we can skip that, because I think we kind of know what some of those are, and then we'll move on to our opportunities. My final comments are that we have an historic opportunity at this moment with the transportation budget, to identify sustainable revenue options that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and that can fund our work into the future, we have the opportunity to change people's impressions of us and swing the pendulum in our favor. Beyond that critical effort, we are looking forward to meeting the legal obligation to update our 20 year plan, the tsp, to guide our transportation efforts. We'll also be undergoing a transportation system development charge update to evaluate and set the charges required to cover the costs of transportation infrastructure needs generated by new development. As always, we will be tracking and engaging on innovations in transportation, technology and mobility. As the disruption of the industry continues at a rapid pace. And finally, we will continue to have the backs of portlanders as we plan to prepare, plan, build, operate and maintain the system and ready ourselves for emergencies, large and small. Director campbell.
9 Thank you, director williams. For time's sake, I will go quickly through some of and reduce some of the things that we're going to mention as part of our challenges and opportunities and what's coming up. We've already mentioned the seismic investments that we've been able to accomplish recently in the system. Washington park reservoir, that's a 120 year old facility that's now going to be replaced with a seismically resilient facility to serve 360,000 people on the west side. That facility as well, will be replaced by a reflecting pool. That's going to happen later this year. And we're very excited about the restoration of an iconic spot in Washington park. And we think that can be a really iconic destination again in the city. In June, we were able to break ground on the filtration and pipelines project. We've made amazing progress in the short time frame since we started that project. A major accomplishment accomplishment there is that we've secured two extremely low interest loans through the wifia program. With the assistance of senator jeff merkley. We're going to save the ratepayers $387 million over the 30 year repayment of those loans to support that project. The last thing I want to mention in terms of accomplishments is we completed our improved corrosion control facility. Our source water and infrastructure do not have lead in them, but this project will adjust the chemistry of our water so that some of the high risk homes and buildings that do have lead are less likely to leach that lead into the water in those areas. And the Oregon health authority's now confirmed that we are treatment for lead is optimized. Next slide. Related to challenges. This is where we want to talk a little bit about how we're approaching some of those questions that came from councilor Clark. We're as we've talked about, trying to manage that balance between how do we support our current system and invest in the resilience that we need to keep it moving forward. Basically, we seek to be strategic and efficient in addressing that challenge of how do we balance those investments? And we utilize adaptive planning and asset management tools to help us make the best decisions. We know that there isn't just one particular approach that gets us to how we how we do this work. And so what we do instead is we seek to achieve a portfolio of approaches. And those that portfolio can augment each other and the community in terms of our overall resilience. The results are that we do a variety of things to prepare for emergency threats to our water system. We invest in major system upgrades, like we've mentioned, to create built in resilience. We build redundancy throughout our entire system so that we have multiple avenues to move water through the system. If a particular asset fails. Groundwater is a particularly potent example of that. We partner and plan with emergency response organizations like our neighboring water agencies, through the regional water providers consortium and our auburn. Organization throughout the state to create mutual aid agreements and also create contingency supply options. If there are outages. We message and help educate our community regarding emergency preparation steps they can take to store and treat their own emergency water for emergencies. And we regularly train and prepare our staff for worst case scenarios that may require a long term effort to restore our system. Next slide. Opportunities. Moving forward, we've got critical change efforts underway that will bring efficiencies, upgraded customer experiences, and increased support to our most vulnerable users. And we're also making a firm commitment to respond to and help address the impacts of climate change. We're in the process of working with environmental services to install advanced metering infrastructure ami. This is an adaptation that's going to allow us to stop having to read meters manually on a quarterly basis and allow us to instead read every meter in the city wirelessly, and to have real time information available to both the utility and customers, creating efficiency and opportunities for people to manage their own usage and bills. That project is planned. Completion date of 2030. Secondly, we're working closely with our partners in bts to develop a comprehensive affordability strategy that's going to help the two utilities remove barriers to our financial assistance programs, identify more equitable fee structures, and focus on things that will have a positive, long term effect on customers in our financial stability. And then finally, the water bureau is responding to climate change by taking actions to mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions and then invest in a climate and seismically resilient water system. In 2024, water bureau published its first net zero strategy. And this is how we're going to get to cutting our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. And with a goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050. That work is aligned with the city's climate emergency declaration and our overall city climate goals. In responding to climate impacts, the bureau has developed sophisticated climate and planning tools to assess climate risks and the water system, and we were among the first in the region to develop and implement measures to protect our field staff from extreme heat filtration pipelines. Project, as we've mentioned, will further enhance our water systems resilience and help protect our bull run source against the impacts of large storms, landslides and wildfires that we expect to increase with a changing climate. So that's a quick run through. We will be glad to share more about all of these challenges and opportunities with you, the council, in the year ahead, but that's just a quick sharing and I'll turn it over now to director uchiyama.
10 Thank you, director campbell. I again will also make my comments short, and I expect that we're going to be doing some site visits and we'll have opportunities to interact and get into more of these details in the future. I'd like to highlight three accomplishments in 2024. First, if you didn't see it. In November, Willamette week celebrated its 50th anniversary with 50 places, people, and things of the past 50 years that made Portland better. And our big pipe project was was noted. If we make it through the end of January this year, 2025, without a combined sewer overflow will have gone the entire year of 2024 without an overflow. It's a huge accomplishment. Two I want to highlight that we successfully completed a major policy accomplishment in 2024. We completed a rate study that identified how several how we how we charge our customers. And on July 1st, the water bureau implemented those changes in close partnership with the water bureau and customer service. It was a really complicated and very sensitive process that included substantial financial analysis and a really robust public engagement effort. The result is that we've updated our rate structure that's fair for ratepayers, and it brings us in line with national best practices for our rate methodology. Another big accomplishment. We were 15 years overdue in completing that. And the last thing I want to mention as an accomplishment, I've already talked a little bit about the step project, but one thing that I did not say we not only delivered this project safely and on time, but we exceeded our hiring and workforce diversity goals. We've paid over $24 million to certified cobid firms on this project so far, and we now know that we can bring these successes to future projects and future efforts across public works. And I really look forward to getting into the detail of that conversation with all of you. Next slide. In terms of challenges, I think a lot of the challenges have really already been mentioned by my partners here. But, you know, it is true that the greatest challenges we face are the financial constraints and climate change. We've got two treatment plants. I mentioned the $6.7 billion of backlog and large scale reinvestment. We've we've seen increased costs with inflation, supply chain, labor shortages, and there have been a number of other factors that have significantly increased our capital projects. So right now we say this over and over again. This is our mantra. We're prioritizing our financial and employee resources in the three areas of highest risk. The first is the columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant, the second is our pump stations, and the third is our employee safety and security. Our priorities are really centered around those three things. I'll mention quickly that in 2019, we created a seismic and climate resiliency plan to address the vulnerabilities of the. Bs. Bs faces with potential potential cascadia event. This plan plan identified critical assets and service vulnerability vulnerabilities, allowing us to prioritize resilient investments and to know where to inspect and restore services after a catastrophic event. So again, I'm just going to fast forward here. Opportunities. We have invested billions of dollars in infrastructure to protect public health and our rivers and streams. We've we've talked about our big projects, and we've demonstrated that bs clearly has the expertise and track record of successfully building and managing our sanitary and stormwater system. We our investments in habitat and Green infrastructure are also paying off. Because of all of this good work, we can draw on community support for the next generation of projects, and I would like to highlight the fact that bs has an integrated planning team that's working very closely with PBOT and water, and we're looking at several transformational planning efforts, whether it's engaging in albina vision trust or working with the omsi blocks, redevelopment or planning for the future of the lloyd district, we're really committed to being a key partner in the future efforts of our city and these types of district scale planning efforts provide a really exciting opportunity for integrating more sustainable infrastructure investment into our urban fabric, so we'll be paying close attention to that. And I think all of my partners here have mentioned already, but what is really near and dear to our hearts is the opportunity to engage deeply with our community. We know that we have big and meaningful projects to do in the next 100 years, and we want to make decisions that are rooted in meaningful engagement with our community. So thank you for letting us power through those those last parts of our presentation. But I'll turn it back over to priya.
11 Thank you don. So looking ahead, although this is going to be the end of the presentation, I think this is the beginning of our work together to keep our city moving. Literally. Public works is looking forward to working with you on several key priorities, and one of the most critical discussions ahead will be the budget cuts and rates. We look forward to working with you on balancing both financial sustainability for the needs of the portlanders with affordability, and then another item that will be a significant, significant focus is labor management, particularly with the upcoming collective bargaining agreements impacting our service area with a majority of our public works employees being represented by unions, we'll also be aligning our efforts into a unified service area strategic plan that will allow for better collaboration and clearer performance metrics across across the public works bureaus and at the state and legislative levels. The city's legislative agenda will require strong coordination and advocacy. We will be working with the government relations to advance priorities such as low income utility billing, bill assistance funding, pfas liability protection, support for the water filtration, land use, and critical infrastructure funding for PBOT and bts for PBOT. We will be coming to you on projects like 82nd avenue locally approved alternative, which will require ongoing engagement and support. And finally, you know, when you look at the rich history of the city's public works infrastructure, our roadways or sewer system, our drinking water and so on are past leaders had the foresight to plan for the future for us and our generation, and now we have that responsibility. I know that each of you elected in this historic moment share that vision and commitment as well, and together we look forward to supporting that foundation, not just for this current generation, but for our kids and their kids. And next slide please. This truly is a this presentation was the tip of the iceberg when it comes to public works. There's so much more. I'm sure you all have more questions and we will be able to answer in the next hour. But if you if you're not able to address all of your questions, feel free to email me directly by reaching out to my office or using the public works at Portland Oregon.gov, which is a inbox staffed by multiple people, and we're happy to assist you here to support you and happy to work with you. Thank you again for your time. We appreciate your leadership, and we look forward to continuing this discussions with you throughout the year. And with that, I'd like to open the floor for questions, please.
12 Thank you all. It's a lot of information about how our city runs, and we know that there are a lot of themes in the challenges and the opportunities that you present that I'm sure our committee will be digging into. Also, councilor Clark, do you want to start us off with questions?
13 Thank you, madam president, and thank you so much to the panel. I appreciate the comprehensive approach that you've taken. It's a tremendous amount of information for us to absorb. All of us, and five of us up here are going to spend a lot more time with you and be able to dig deep, but I want to leave time for those that are not on the committee. Also to ask questions today. But I especially appreciate the challenges and particularly as director donna paul understands, I'm very concerned about asset management and our backlog in every bureau and other bureaus as well. And I really appreciate your comparison on how our rates stack up against other communities across the country. That's really valuable information for us, but I'm sure we'll be taking much deeper dives in the committee. But just a couple of questions from me. I from the 50 zero zero zero foot level that you presented to us down to the 5000 foot level. What I hear on the street is where's when are you filling my pothole? You know, that is the most basic thing I heard. And secondly, what if there is a climate emergency and the water gets cut off to my neighborhood? Is there a plan to restore it? Those are the kinds of things that I hear on the street, and that you're going to hear a lot more from the community when you come to our committee, particularly from the southwest. I think where there's a lot of misunderstanding about what goes on in district four, we have the least number of sidewalks. I think we have the probably I think you called it a collection system. I'm not sure we have a stormwater collection system in the southwest, and those are issues that I heard repeatedly. But I don't want to take a lot of time here because I know other councilors who are not going to be on the committee will have questions, but can you just address that? What is your pothole strategy and how how do you make those decisions? How do you prioritize where the dollars get invested in PBOT? And I'll just leave it at that, madam chair. Thank you.
14 Thank you. I'm going to let director williams talk about the pothole, but I we did hear your overall concerns about the asset management when we have billions of millions of dollars in backlog of for the three infrastructure bureaus, and we definitely can deep dive into that later. But to answer specifically for the pothole, I will let director williams talk about that.
15 Thank you. Thank you, councilor Clarke, for your question and looking forward to working with you in the committee as we work to solve problems together for portlanders regarding the potholes strategy. That's an interesting question. First of all, I'd like to mention that the notion that potholing is a strategy is a challenge for us. If we are filling potholes, that means that we're not maintaining the base levels of our pavement across the city. And right now, more than half of the pavement in our city is at poor or worse condition, which contributes to the frequency and the severity of the pothole frequency that we see. So regarding the strategy, we do two things. We receive calls from people who have reported the potholes in their areas, but also while our crews are out there doing assessments along the routes that they're working and identifying the opportunities for us to be intentional about filling the potholes. I did mention that in March of last year, we did pothole palooza because we knew that based on the pavement condition index information, that we have most of the streets that had most of the most severe potholes were east of 82nd avenue. And so we did an intentional effort to make sure that we were filling those holes there. And in some cases, we were even doing, what's it called, jody base repair. So that jody is our maintenance operations group director. I mean, excuse me, maintenance operations deputy director, and can provide greater detail, but we're intentional about how we were addressing the needs to address your concern about the equity or parity or choice architecture around when and where we select to do the work. It is a combination of things that we use. Yes, we use our equity matrix, but we are looking at the overall condition of the different parts of town and making determinations about where we will invest time and dollars to ensure that we bring the assets up to a place of at least navigability, if not good repair. So it's a multi-tiered, multifaceted strategy. Sometimes it's we see a problem and we solve the problem as we see it, but other times we are working to be strategic about how we align those resources and respond appropriately.
16 Thank you for that. I think we need a greater understanding of the relationship between the pothole and the overall condition of the street, because my impression was that if we have potholes and we don't fix them, the streets are going to deteriorate faster. So we need to talk.
17 About that. It's a intricate network of cracks and fissures and contributing factors that, yes, make the conditions worse. But in some instances the pothole is because of the neglect of decades. In some instances, that brings the pothole about. So it's the ideal scenario is for us to be able to, instead of pothole, actually do that two inch grind and pave, do the base repair so that we don't have that.
18 I'm sure we'll learn a lot more about that. And to director campbell, I just want to say that I do the same thing at the airport. I fill up my water. There's just no water like it. But my question to you is, really, if the water does get cut off to my neighborhood, do you have a plan for restoring it?
19 Yeah. So we have a plan for maintaining water service to the entire service area. So it's not there's not a specific plan per district or per neighborhood per street. And as I mentioned, the approach that we take is to have a portfolio response to resilience. So we try to build systems that are resilient to the types of emergencies that could take water service out. But then we also have built a system with lots of redundancy and lots of opportunities to work around any particular failure of a single asset. And that's really the two biggest infrastructure investment approaches that we take in terms of trying to make sure we have opportunities to restore service when they're impacted. Beyond that, for more drastic emergencies. As I mentioned, we try to work to educate the community on ways that they can extend their own opportunities to have emergency water on hand that they can use. And then we work with community partners, emergency response agencies, the state federal agencies to really look at those big, hard scale events that could have a deep impact on the region, to recognize that it may be other agencies or other partners that might be providing drinking water and under dire circumstances. And so we have those kinds of plans, arrangements, agreements in place to address those kinds of scenarios. So it really depends on the scenario. But we have a range of different approaches that we use to make sure we have water availability to everyone.
20 Well thank you. I'll look forward to learning more about that in committee. A deeper dive in all these areas in committee. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here.
21 I'm going to use this opportunity to plug if with respect to emergency preparedness on the public side, what is recommended is one gallon per person per day for 14 days. So the public should be having that water along with food for 14 days before we can, before they can expect support. For example, during a cascadia subduction zone earthquake or something like that. So all right.
22 Councilor Zimmerman.
23 Thank you. I just want to start out this in terms of a service area. You know, in another community. I had your role with a few other service areas connected to it. I think this is the right move. All public works should be under the same hood. So thank you for that. I think yours makes the most sense out of our change, and I'm really looking forward to what we can do. Moving moving the city into, you know, maybe just the 20th century. In that sense. I want to start with director williams. Right now, I'm going to ask this question just because it's given me a little bit of pause. There's a senator in the state legislature who has introduced a bill that would ban e-bikes in bike lanes. And I'll tell you, as somebody who is, over the last few months, been trying to figure out which type of e-bike I'm going to buy and somebody who has some hills between me and my workplace, that's a for me, it's a nonstarter. It also makes me really question my movement into that market. What would the banning of e-bikes in bike lanes do for our plan in Portland? And I say that from a perspective of I kind of always thought the idea was to make it easier to get into that, that mode of transportation versus protecting it for the die hards. Curious about your thoughts?
24 I do have thoughts. I do also have an expert in that space. That's art pierce, who is the director and art director of.
25 I see him over there. I see the top of his head anyway,
26 Planning. One of the things that has been a topic of conversation for us as it relates to the bike lanes and who should be able to access those and use those, is the conflict between the speed of an e-bike and the speed of a human powered bike, and the difference? My e-bike can go up to 28mph. Have I ever gone that fast? Yeah, we'll see. But I do use the bike Lane because I do feel the sense of safety. So right now, while we've entered into the conversation for the city of Portland, we intend to continue to allow for e-bikes to access the bike lanes. What does that mean regarding the design of the bike lanes for the future? Should we be looking at wider to create more space for multiple types of users? Potentially, there are lots of opportunities for us to evaluate how we can support communities and members of communities who are seeking to make that shift, and doing so without an excuse around. Excuse me? Doing so without an excuse around, oh, it's too fast or it's too hard or it's too different. But rather, let's be thoughtful about how we can make sure that we're serving those who are interested in using e-bikes and protecting those who are less sure, less confident when riding a bike in a Lane with something that's whizzing by them rather quickly. So it's a it's a we've posited for discussion and planning today. Are we prohibiting bike lanes from e-bikes, from being in bike lanes? No. In the future, that will depend. And I anticipate that we'll have the opportunity to engage in the conversation more deeply.
27 Thanks. I hope the answer is no. I think that bike lanes and e-bikes are synonymous. They go together. I don't know what the answer is with respect to the senators. What is a moped? But it doesn't smell like a duck. It doesn't look like a duck.
28 They are two very different things.
29 But bikes look like bikes. I hope we stay in that route.
30 They are different things and I will. I will share that. One of the initiatives that was funded through the PCEF investment in PBOT was the intentional cleaning of bike lanes. Part of that was driven by the fact that there was going to be an investment in e-bikes for communities that did not have access to e-bikes. And we said one of the deterrents to people using e-bikes is that they are concerned about the cleanliness of the bike Lane. And so we need to have a clean bike Lane so that people will feel comfortable with riding in the bike Lane. And we want to have people to feel comfortable with accessing it regardless as to how that's happening. So today, yeah, we're not planning.
31 To do that in terms of and this is for dca. You know, one of the things we hear I'm going to use the food cart example. Right. Just in my own work that it can be a little challenging in the old Portland model to navigate upgrade upgrading your system or your connection into the system when you have to go to each one of these, what we used to call fiefdoms. But let's we'll move away from that. How are we making it easier to work in the permitting public right of way space, so that a person who is a Portland consumer is not feeling like they have to shop their experience with multiple bureaus, but when they come to the city of Portland, they come to one city of Portland. Meaning I go through the process and you all make it happen on the back end versus me having to go meet each bureau with my hat in hand. From a permitting perspective, how are we improving that?
32 I'm going to attempt to answer that. I think, my fellow.
33 You can also just share your philosophy on where you want to go. If the details haven't been worked out yet.
34 I can share what I know, and I think so. We do have a Portland permitting department, a bureau that can specifically where they can go and get their permits done. And the bureau has, you know, PBOT water and bts stuff in, in the bureau. Who would be doing those, you know, permitting with respect to right of way or anything related to those kind of permits. And so it's a one stop shop where they can go and get those needs addressed. And that bureau coordinates with a public works bureau and any permits, that is any permit reviews or anything that is needed. And the public works bureau also funds those staff in those bureaus at this time.
35 Okay. That's great. It's good to hear that. I hope that the days of saying, well, I was good with transportation and I was good with bts, but water bureau was the one who ended my plan. I hope those days are over. Right. Because we're working that from the back end. And I know it's a work in progress, but I really it's been a lot of work and I appreciate it.
36 And I also want to add when there are permits that are stuck right now, sometimes if it gets elevated to the dc level, like for example, there are projects that have been that are very elevated in the community and if the permits are stuck, then the dc's are able to connect among ourselves and say, this is stuck, what is the holdup? Let's let's get through it. And we are able to make progress quickly.
37 That's that's great. So it's not lost on me as a person who grew up in Portland, that how far we've come with the use of our river and how clean it has become. And without jinxing anything, that not having any big spills like that's not lost on me in any way. You know the difference between how we can use our river in 40 years from now, from how we did 40 years ago when I was born, is remarkable. So a lot of appreciation towards, because all three of your departments are contributing to that improvement. Thinking about johnson creek and bts, you highlighted that project? I am curious, it's also an area that's become riddled with a lot of urban camping. What kind of effect? When we go through these natural habitat restoration projects and then they become an urban camping site for years on end, what kind of effect is that having back effect, if you will? Are we taking steps backwards when that is happening? What types of things is your department having to deal with when people are living in those protected areas? What does that mean for your for your department?
38 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for that question. Yes, we have had a very significant impacts to our natural areas with camping and other unauthorized activities. And there's one site in Portland in particular we refer to as big four corners that was particularly impacted. It reached a point where there had been so many fires and so many unlawful activities, that we did have to go in and clean. It got really bad during the pandemic, and so we really didn't have the opportunity and resources to get out there and control what was going on. So it reached a breaking point, and we did have to go out and clear it. And I had the experience of walking through once all of the major debris was removed. And it was a memorable, memorable experience. The site is, you know, in many ways contaminated. It's filled with microplastics and garbage and all sorts of things. The soils are compacted, the waters have been impacted. And I'm just using this one site as an example. But in johnson creek in general, we have a really felt the impact of our houseless and housing crisis. And so we are doing our best to work with security and to get resources to people and to redirect them where they need to go, and to provide fencing and work with our our park bureau partners and our rangers, and making sure that we can keep people out of these areas that are meant for water quality and for all of Portland. So it is it's an ongoing challenge that we're facing. It's expensive to go in and to remove the damage that's done. And once the damage is done, it's really hard to recover. It'll be probably many decades before a sitite like big four corners that's been impacted can be fully restored. Sohe challenge to us is to really stop it from happening in the first place.
39 Thanks. And I appreciate that. Commenting on that can be a little bit delicate at times. But, you know, I think we've just come such a long way in some of these environmental and repair areas that I hope we keep doing projects despite what is happening to them, and take note of what the impacts are. So I appreciate that. I grew up not far from the johnson creek project, and then I know there's going to be some other questions about rates. So I'm going to shift a little bit back to PBOT. You know, I didn't hear a lot about our, you know, pavement condition goals. And in terms of what that index looks like and the classifications. And while we were sitting here, I had the if anybody knows me, you know, that I have worked at fifth and Hawthorne on and off since 2007. So just right over there for a lot of people would call that downtown. But it's, you know, it's the central city. It's not downtown. And just sitting here, I can look at google maps images. And in 2007, I can look at the sidewalk and the on or the ramp from the road into the sidewalk. Right. It was nothing special, but it was a ramp and it was usable. And then I can go through the characteristics, the photos up until August of 23, and I can see that it looks like it's been redone at least three times. And I think if there's a picture for August 24th, you would have seen barricades around it because it's being done for its fourth or fifth time. Okay.
40 Not okay.
41 So here's my here's my struggle here. As a person who lives in southwest, who has gravel delivered to my property to put out where I would say normally a sidewalk would go and into the holes that are on my street and my neighbor's street. And having worked a lot in district one early in my career, I, as a consumer of the Hawthorne and fifth and Hawthorne sidewalk, I think I would have been okay with a c plus curb for this last 15 years instead of always having an a plus curb. If I could have had a b minus type of road and sidewalk system in southwest and deep east Portland, what is it going to take for us to expire? The mindset, particularly in east Portland, but also in west Portland, that if you want a road, you and your neighbors have to pay for that road, even though you're already residents of the city. I think it's an outdated mindset. But we seem to be investing a lot in the corps when if you were to put pavement down at 150th and something, that road probably doesn't have to get done again for many, many, many years because it's only a few local traffic. What is it going to take to expire? That old mindset that we applied to, the places we annexed 40 years ago?
42 Well, that is an interesting question, and one that I've often asked, especially when I moved to the city of Portland. I'm sorry, when I moved to the city of Portland and was unclear about homeowners or property owners having the responsibility of paving streets if they were in fact needing repair or did not exist. The challenge that we have is that when the city grew and we annexed and brought streets onto our system, there was not a maintenance agreement or maintenance expectation that those streets be maintained. And so what you see in portions of southwest portions of east Portland, every part of town where there's been annexing for the past 30, 40, 50 years is that there was that disconnect in the agreements that were necessary to ensure that when we received those streets, we were able to immediately begin to work to maintain those streets. And so that's not a great answer. It's not an excuse as much as it's the explanation for how that happened. Expiring. That is something that I would be delighted to see us do, but that would require the interest and investment of the political capital that you have to change the policies, codes, rules, laws to ensure that when such a transfer happens, as was the case with 82nd avenue, we would not take it until we had agreements from ODOT that we would be able to do what needed to be done to bring the street to a level that it met the city's expectations. So those are the types of conversations that need to happen. Growth, while great, often requires much more planning and intentionality than I think. People under assume. And so when those agreements were made, that's what happened. So I would be delighted to have conversation and develop strategy around how we can make sure that our city, all parts of the city, are receiving the level of care that's necessary. And every street is not the same. There are people who like the more pastoral environments versus living in the urban core and having the heavy streetscape, but that is something that is foundational in the way that we received those streets, and how we've been able to then move forward with maintaining the streets. It is an unfortunate set of circumstances, but I would love to be able to work together to solve for that. Regarding to yeah, regarding places where we've seen construction, reconstruction, reconstruction, that is something that I observed as well. And our team, the engineering services team, which has now a dedicated ADA ramp team, has been working to address our opportunities to demonstrate effective project management, project delivery, coordination with contractors, working with our internal teams to make sure that we are measuring twice, cutting once, and getting it right the first time. Because we recognize that portlanders are frustrated if they're seeing us do and redo and redo work, not understanding. And this is not to suggest that people aren't sophisticated in their understanding of what we do, but not understanding that sometimes we are not able to do the work that you think we should, because it is dedicated to a specific project, a specific part of town, a specific area of focus. And that is that's something, again, that I hope that this council will help us to be able to. Inform constituencies about, about it is very hard to we see it and we can't do anything about it. And so it's really challenging.
43 Thanks for that. I, I would love a proposal from the department in the future of. It sounds like a big task to do east and west Portland and get us up to the a proper road standard, but I think if you say it in a way of we will dedicate ourselves to completing one mile of new road every year. And you think about how short a block is. That, that over the 40 years that we've had, parts of east Portland would have made a tremendous difference. And I think about what the tremendous difference we could make 40 years from now if we just dedicated ourselves to one mile per road or one mile of road per year. And I, I also hope that we can examine, you know, in southwest Portland, we have some neighbors who have decided to buy their own road instead of taking the PBOT proposal, because the PBOT proposal is a checkbook this big, and they can find a private contractor to do it at this level. That screams of a of a level of access and inequity that that I can't even describe dias. But it also screams to just how non-practical unpractical practical taking a PBOT proposal would be. And we've got to say, hey, this is a road that only 20 cars a day would even touch. Can it maybe just be a c-plus level road? Right? So hey, I look forward to it. I'll take any proposals, work with you and thanks for answering so directly. I do appreciate it.
44 Our team will begin to prepare that even as we speak. I'm sure they're working away. I see the steam.
45 Councilor Green.
46 Thank you, madam president. And I've got a lot in my document of notes, so I would invite you to cut me off at any point that you feel is necessary, because I keep an eye on the time. But this is a subject area I know a lot about, and I'm very interested about across all of these issues, so I can't resist to use the opportunity. Thank you for the presentation today. I want to echo comments that I think councilor Zimmerman made that the this service area makes a lot of sense, and I and I support it. Before I get going, I just want to say I am a member of the infrastructure and transportation committee. I'm looking forward to working with the leadership of that committee to kind of broach some of these big issues. These are big structural issues. And so I probably have mostly comments, not questions. So just bear with me here. But that's where this is coming from. I want you to get a sense of my thinking as I work through this committee. So I want to start with utilities. The bureaus that are utilities. And here is a question. So who who's the authority that approves the rates for each of your bureaus? And what is the process of getting those those rates approved.
47 Go ahead.
48 You the mayor would in the new structure would propose those and the council will decide on them.
49 Okay. And then my follow up question would be, well, I think I already actually got this answer. You know, the question was, are you required to demonstrate cost causation for those rates?
50 I'm sorry, I didn't hear the second part of that question.
51 When you propose and seek adoption of rates, are you required to sort of demonstrate cost causation for those rates? Such as that? These rates are actually responsive to the costs that justify the rates. We do. We're fully transparent in what our costs, what all the money collected goes to. But we are not under the same sort of framework as, say, the state public utility commission. So the frame by which that is evaluated is set by the mayor and the council. And we're available then to provide whatever information is requested.
52 Thank you. And I in some sense that was a rhetorical question. I knew the answer, but I this is a public venue, and I ask it because I want to contrast with how rates are set in other regulated utilities. There's a very lengthy and rigorous process of describing all the alternatives that would go into your investment plans, that would then determine your rate schedules from now through some time horizon. And so going forward, I'm going to be taking that type of lens in looking at future rates, because when I look at the water bureau's rate schedule from 26 to 23, that's an 8.1% annual rate. That's not only above the rate of inflation, but cumulative by 2030. That's a 47% rate increase. Increase on someone's bill, right. That's untenable to me. And I understand that there are requirements and constraints that we need to maintain service. But I used to work in a utility, and I know that there are choices we can make. And so my priority is going to be thinking through this committee and this council to find ways that we can we can lower that, we can bend that cost curve and maybe, maybe lower those rates because rates are a tax, they function economically the same as a tax does, and they are a tax with a flat to regressive incidence on households. So those with the least amount of ability to pay bear a higher burden. And so if you're a landlord and you face a water bill and a or a bs tax storm water tax, you're just going to pass that directly on to your landlords or your tenants. Your tenants are paying that tax. If you're a homeowner, you're seeing that that runaway tax rate schedule at the same time you're seeing your property tax bill. And I got to tell you, it doesn't feel good. Okay. So I'm really committed to working with you guys to think through strategies. Maybe there are some creative financing mechanisms that we chatted a little bit about this dca. And so I guess my guidance here would be, you know, if you encounter a policy or a law that puts you down a path, let me know if you think it's inefficient because I'm I'm willing to change that. I'm willing to work with my colleagues to change that or lobby the state government to change that. What I don't want us to do is to March through time, sort of going through, you know, going down the path, like having the past sort of put us into the future where we accept a cost, cost structure that's the best we can say is, you know, this is just how we've always done it. So those are just my comments on that. I really welcome the one water concept, I think. I think that's a move in the right direction. And I just hope that we can take advantage of the efficiencies, because we have two rate funded agencies here. So we can maybe share some overhead costs. On the rate analysis side of that. I want to talk about revenue challenges in looking at, you know, your service area is 50% of the city's budget, right? That's right. At the top of your top right hand of your handout. Most of this work, however, is funded by rates or excise taxes or system development charges. And I want to echo piggyback a little bit on councilor Zimmermann's point. I think relying upon user fees and marginal taxes, which is what these are, or rates, which is what these are, really hampers our ability to deliver services for our city. I understand the idea is to link the cost to the new use, and there is a certain intuitive appeal to that, but it has an adverse effect in that it stymies new development, which then reduces the rate at which we grow our property tax base, which then takes away from the future opportunity of revenues for our broad, unrestricted uses in our city. And so if we want this to be a city that has affordable housing, if we want this to sit as this, to be a city that has infrastructure in every part of it, that we've got to move past a world where we rely upon system development charges and we've got to do something about our rate schedule. And, you know, we're going to have to deal with the gas tax. Of course, that's that's underway. I support a vmt approach moving forward. Sorry, I'm just giving you a lot of comments. So if there's a point where you want to interject and ask clarifications, please, please do and let me know how I'm doing. I want.
53 To give you another minute or two.
54 Okay. Thanks. I want to shift to transportation for a second and really zone in on the montgomery park area plan. I know that there was an ordinance adopted last December as an adopted a transportation amended transportation resolution. I'm very I'm very concerned about the streetcar as part of that. I wonder why we have $178 million plan for a broader housing and economic development. That would probably happen without that streetcar. Okay, I view that as a streetcar led development process and not a transportation solution. I want to take a second look at that. And I and I guess my question would be, you know, I think in the presentation I saw that there's a the current budget has $195 million for the capital improvement plan as part of the budget, the streetcar, the new streetcar extension is $178 million total, all in cost, which currently does not have any identified funding. So I'm worried about the scale here that we've got this new capital plan, this new capital project that could potentially impinge upon our already scarce capital improvement plan dollars. So I wonder if you can speak to that.
55 I believe the conversation is one that would require a little bit of a little bit more time for us to help to ground you in some of the decision making. That got us to the point of even proposing that there be a montgomery park streetcar extension. There are several factors that we considered, as we proposed, that we would move forward with this as an idea. One of them is that TriMet is not intending to extend its service in. Appreciable ways into that area. Development or no. We have been identified as the transit provider of preference for that location, and we would have the ability to extend the existing line in order to be able to do that. We've been able to explore getting funding to pay for the majority of that work and the purchase of the streetcars. But what we've learned from the current streetcar system, especially as we look at the OHSU area and the omsi development areas, is that the initial streetcar investment actually did create a great deal of private investment in those areas. The waterfront area around OHSU looks very different. And what we heard from developers was that was that part of why they made the choice to invest in those areas, housing, businesses and otherwise was based on the fact that there was a local, readily available transit operation that was happening there. So that helped to inform the montgomery park street strategy, streetcar strategy. But I believe that we would be well served to have a deeper conversation in committee about our plans, how we anticipate moving that forward. But if you'd like for us to dig in further, art is also back there and can come to the.
56 I want to be respectful of time, and I appreciate that answer. I would invite a conversation on that specifically. In committee. We can work together on setting that in the agenda. And I just I'll just leave you with this. I'm a skeptical person, and I know that the economic analysis in that ordinance supposed, you know, justified it by saying it will support potentially hundreds new middle wage jobs in 2000 or more housing units. I would submit that those may have happened anyway, and we would need a counterfactual analysis to demonstrate that. So we've got to kind of move forward in a world where we really test that, that, that, that historical.
57 Thank you. Councilor greene will be prepared for the conversation.
58 Thank you, councilor Green, for all the comments from our conversation. Looks like we could we could use briefings with either the transportation infrastructure committee or by districts on a few topics here, the utility rates, for example. And then appreciate your background in economy and funding and financial, the financial world. So open to collaborating with you on this one. And also looks like the montgomery park extension would be another briefing that you all would like. You mentioned your support for one water, and I think we were planning on doing a briefing to all districts in addition to the committee as well on one water. So we will bring forth those topics to for a deeper dive. Thank you for your comments.
59 Thank you. District four councilor Kanal.
60 Thank you, madam president. Thank you for being here in d.c. Directors and your teams in the back. I feel pretty good about most of the non-budgetary items with water and bess as well as the service areas approach, so I'll save time. I know colleagues are asking questions, and we'll be able to discuss the budget items and other conversations, and I'm committed to assisting with that to the degree I can, including if needed in Salem, that's for sure. So I'll instead focus on PBOT here. And just by way of introduction, I might sound like I'm picking on PBOT. I'm not. I think you've done some great work on ADA compliance, 82nd avenue transfer, the reopening of the third and alder smart park, and more. I am still at the same time trying to solve problems that I don't exactly know how we can help do that. I know there are big issues with funding, with the state, things that are either outside of our control or predate anybody in this room. So please don't take this as a criticism. I'm going to focus on four issues and the four questions because they directly affect safety and human life. And they also reflect that nearly all the major accomplishments you mentioned are in districts one and three, and none in district two, except the bridge. That is a key freight connection. I know there are other more minor ones, including in d2, but I want to point this out because our district is not on the transportation and infrastructure committee. And so to paul's point a moment ago, I want to make sure d2 gets a briefing as well. So the first one is sidewalks. Our laws make private property owners responsible for the building and maintenance of sidewalks. We see major gaps in sidewalk coverage between districts, neighborhoods, streets, and even within one side of a road. And pedestrians often step into roadways when there are no sidewalks and are more vulnerable to collisions. Then why do we not take responsibility as a city for sidewalks, as a lot of other major cities do? And how can we fix that?
61 This body has the. Thank you. Excuse me. Councilor Kanal, thank you for the opportunity to respond. The response is similar to the one around streets and street infrastructure. When properties were purchased and infrastructure was put in place. In some instances it was not a requirement. We have worked as we've moved forward to ensure that if there is development that is occurring, that there are expectations that property owners, developers would in fact complete the sidewalk network, build the ramps and construct the street if it was necessary. But that is an historical challenge that we have, that there are places that don't have it, that haven't had it. And unless we do something really significant to change our codes and policies, they will not have it. It is a very expensive venture, and I, I hate to use that. We can't afford it as the excuse for everything, but it is a very expensive venture. Sidewalks are are very expensive. Streets are very expensive. I would love to do a mile a year, but a mile, depending on how complex it is, is $1 million. And that's just pavement. That doesn't include the stormwater, that doesn't include the drainage, that doesn't include the sidewalks and the curbs and the curb cuts. So the hope is that we would be able to look at some strategies for how we can create this more complete network of streets and sidewalks. Right now, what we do is use the available funding that we have on, on capital from capital projects that we've gotten grants for, to design strategies and plans that allow us to fill in those gaps. We have some smaller buckets of money that aren't associated with our cip that literally are called, you know, gap filling measures. We're working to do that and acknowledge your concern around us having projects or an absence of projects or work that's happening in district two. We look forward to being able to share with you the full list of opportunities that we have to service community members in district two. While there aren't necessarily the bigger projects the 82nd avenues, the bridges, there is a lot of work that's happening all across the city. It looks different for each part of town, and so I'm looking forward to being able to provide you with some insight there.
62 Thanks. The second thing is daylighting, which is for those who don't know the idea of parking setbacks where one cannot park a vehicle within 20ft of an intersection, which is state law. When I'm on taylor coming up to fourth downtown right here and I'm taking a right, there's normally a pedestrian crossing that's very hard to see because there's always delivery trucks or or utility trucks parked right on the corner. And that creates if you're not inching forward as I do, it creates a hazard for the pedestrian there. The same is true for several crosswalk areas on trenton in my district, where and it's particularly notable for people with mobility issues who may be in a wheelchair or people who are children and are shorter. You know, so I want to talk about the infrastructure side of this, not the case by case enforcement side. I personally live near an intersection that has curb bumps preventing parking up to the corner. We've seen the use of bike racks on streets with businesses and street planners on more residential streets, which I'm sure also has a stormwater impact and drainage and all that. My question is, what is the long term vision for improving visibility for pedestrians through infrastructure that creates daylighting?
63 So there are a couple of things you've mentioned that we have curb cuts and bump outs in certain parts of the neighborhoods that you all live in that create that automatic barrier for people so that they're not pulling all the way up to the curb, to the corner, or to the intersection. We are making sure that the, the, the first way that we're working on it is to really enforce what is state law. So we will be putting signage, we will be putting paint on curbs, we will be engaging in robust enforcement actions around making sure that people understand that it is their responsibility not to park past the sign that we're going to have there. And if they do, they will receive a ticket. We've done the work in the on the on the roadways that are high crash corridor roadways, the 30 or so high crash corridor roads and the intersecting roads for that. But we see the issue all over the city. It's going to be both the infrastructure work that we'll need to do. Some of the capital project plans that we have will include ways to ensure that people aren't parking all the way up to the corner, but then we'll also have to do some education and remind people of what their expectations, what their responsibilities are for making sure they're keeping the corners clear. We in some ways, we aren't able to build our way out of the problem. We really have to work in partnership with community to help folks to understand that we are going to be doing things a little bit more differently as we move forward, because it's important not just to ensure that we're creating spaces for people to cross, but that we're ensuring that we're allowing for the drainage to move forward. That, I mean, there are so many things that are challenges. But as you said, you inch forward, you're looking up, you're trying to see over a car you can't see. Then there's a person and then there's another car, and then there's then there's then there's. And so we're working strategically to do that. The city's traffic engineer, wendy colley, is here, could speak to some of the intentional efforts, but it's also not just traffic operations responsibility. It starts with the planning and design of streets. So the whole complement of the team thinks about those things as we're moving forward. I often say that all of our projects are safety projects. They have as their foundation safety. And so we think of that first and look at all of the eventualities. If we fail to do some of the things that are practical and that are necessary and frankly, that are legal. So we'll work to address that. We can give you additional information about some of the strategies around how we're making sure that we're clearing corners. We have seen really serious incidences of accidents and worse, crashes, excuse me. And worse. And so we want to make sure that we are doing all that we can to help, to avoid those types of things from happening.
64 Yeah, that that answer is mostly reassuring. I do want to evolve away from the idea that we can't build out of it. I'll note that your graphics actually show a lot of these particular points in your presentation. Curb cuts with planters and things like that. So I know that this is a part of the philosophy, and enforcement has disproportionate impacts. There's issues with we can't have someone everywhere on every intersection. Although please do start on taylor and fourth. Okay. And with those amazon trucks.
65 I'll add that to the list. Yeah. Yeah.
66 But but yeah I do appreciate that the next two relate to the thing you mentioned about the gas tax, because I do think that that the renewal of the fixing our streets tax does show our priorities. And I have questions about the priorities. The first the third of four is on crosswalks on lombard and mississippi. There's a crossing with no painted crosswalk. State law is that all intersections are crosswalks, whether marked or not. Obviously, crosswalks dramatically painted crosswalks dramatically improve visibility, especially if there's lighting there. Kids at trinity academy a block away, this one I'm bringing up because it was particularly publicized. One of our constituents, patrick thomas, wrote a op ed in the Oregonian about trying for a year to get something done at that intersection before he, himself a teacher at that academy, was hit in that intersection. And despite that, you know, there's been some issues about getting lit intersections and things like that. I know that this is lombard that's unique due to odot's role, I get that, but this applies to roads we own. To painting a crosswalk is one of the cheapest things we can do, and that's why we have people doing guerrilla style crosswalk painting. So my two parter here is why is it so hard to get to get this done for PBOT? And how can we make more PBOT more responsive? I personally don't know who to call myself to get something done by PBOT, and I've never been able to get an answer to that other than 311, so I'd like to. This is kind of a two parter. One is about that specific type of situation, not lombard so much. And the second thing is the customer responsiveness aspect.
67 I'm going to quickly answer about the 311 it is. I'm not sure how it was working before, but we tested it. If a if a inquiry comes with 311, it's coming directly to our office and then we will coordinate with PBOT and make sure it's responding.
68 Don't get me wrong, I love 311 big fan. It can feel a little separated and a little distant when we direct things there. When we don't, then see a response. And I think the issue is not about 311. It's that when you can call someone at PBOT and you can, you feel as a constituent that you might get some answer. And I think one of the most common things I heard is you're throwing it into the void when you call it specifically PBOT the city broadly, I know that's been brought up, but PBOT as maybe the number one on that list of bureaus around the city.
69 Thank you for your comment. We will take that into consideration. Yeah.
70 Yes. So I'm the city traffic engineer. My name is wendy colley. I use she her pronouns. My I am responsible for the traffic, engineering and traffic operations responses and actions throughout the city. We had an 823 safe line. You can call 503823. Safe to report these. They do go three one 1 to 3 one one. Sometimes if we're not on answering the calls live, but the 823 safe program takes calls from the public about safety concerns. Crosswalks is one of those concerns. One of the things we hear a lot about stop signs are another. And speeding is the top concern that we hear. This program is on the cut list for the second year with budget cuts, because it is funded almost exclusively with gtr. And we have, as you saw, very little gtr at our discretion to fund this program. And so our response times are very long at this time. We hold a lot of positions vacant in that section so that we can account for potential budget cuts. And so we do respond. Last year alone, we responded to 589 customer concerns or requests from neighborhoods for various things. We probably received over a thousand calls to address these things. So that's the answer to what happens when you call 8234311. Our response time is 12 weeks, probably at a minimum, and closer to 16 weeks on average. For these concerns, I think you wanted me to address why it's difficult to get marked crosswalks is that.
71 Yeah, especially on these high crash locations like lombard and mississippi.
72 Right. So crosswalks, just a marked crosswalk is often not enough to provide enough of a safety benefit for pedestrians, meaning that if you're on a 4 or 5 Lane roadway, a marked crosswalk isn't enough. Just the visual cue to have drivers stop. So oftentimes we need to put in flashing yellow lights or even a full traffic signal to make sure that drivers are stopping and even aware that pedestrian is waiting to cross those on the four Lane roadways. Those types of treatments are very expensive. They range anywhere from $300,000 for the flashing yellow lights to over $1 million for a full traffic signal, and so we don't have the resources to accommodate every single crosswalk that we request that we get on those major streets. And most of our high crash network is a 4 or 5 Lane roadway. So we address as many as we can through capital projects. And again, we have very little discretionary funding in our 823 safe program to address marked crosswalks and other requests.
73 I'd also like to share. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Yeah. From time to time, depending on the location, while a constituent will make an assumption around the best type of treatment, sometimes we're not able to do the thing that they would like. That seems like the obvious thing. We'll just put a stop sign here. Just do it. Those aren't the things that, through the policies and guidelines that our traffic engineers use to guide their work, that we're able to do. And so when we respond with this location doesn't warrant x, y, z, that is often met with a great deal of disappointment and, frankly, disdain and disappointment around our inability or what is interpreted as our unwillingness to solve the problem. We aren't unwilling. We are often restricted by what we're able to do, and again, not to use the funding as the as the main thing. But it is unfortunately bringing the infrastructure to the place where it should be is a very, very expensive venture. And so we work really creatively to try to solve those problems. We will. I'd love to be able to connect with you to find out a little bit more about the specific location, so that we can meet and determine how we might be able to support that community that's requested multiple times. Regarding not being able to get a person on the phone. We understand that to be a challenge. We do have the 311 avenue you can call a23 safe. You can also call maintenance operations directly. Often some of the questions do end up in a nebulous space, and we work to figure out who should be responsive. But my expectation from the team is that we are responsive to everyone. And often when people don't know who to call, they begin to call every and every, any and everyone. I do get quite a few inquiries directly in my email box, but our goal is to be responsive, and so we will work to make sure that on our website that's outward facing, we're giving people a series of options of how they can get the answers to their questions on specific topics, because it is frustrating to call one and feel like you're being placed in a queue to go here, to go here, to go here, when often we can get you some direct answers.
74 Thanks. And just a numerical answer to the last question, I hope. How much do we spend per sign to put up those one 800 bump call things? And how much does it cost on average to fill a pothole I have seen no, just a comment. I've seen no greater sign of a failed city as a whole than those blue signs that say call one 800 bump to get only the potholes that most people complain about that the most people complain about filled. And I think that is one of the biggest frustrations I have with the entirety of the city. So if there is a understanding of the cost disparity there, I would love to know.
75 Sure. So I've asked that jody yates, the maintenance operations director, come forward to provide insight.
76 The average cost of a pothole is $300 each, and we filled 15,000 of them last year. In calendar year 2020. For very specifics, I'm confused about your.
77 Signs in the right of way that say, you know, bump or uneven. Those are.
78 Old signs. They're probably been they were put up around ten years ago. Yeah. 823 bump goes now to 311. The maintenance operations dispatchers are also part of 311. So that it's a collective system. So for that one folks just leave the location. We map it and then and then go and fill those. So do you are you asking for a mapping of where our potholes are or I guess.
79 No, I'm asking because I've seen a few new blue signs or at least restored blue signs that say that. And I'm curious how much each of those costs.
80 Oh, average cost of any of our signs going up is ranges around about $150 each. Depends on if we have to install a new post or or not. That's why we get a little variability, but it's about $150 each for sign out there.
81 Thank you.
82 Yeah. And if you could tell me where those are as new ones, I'm curious, but we can talk offline.
83 We have a few counselors who do need to leave right at noon. So you may see people start to file out. But we do have three more people with questions, and I'd like to make sure they get to ask at least a couple of their questions. Councilor Smith, go right ahead.
84 Thank you, madam president. It was it was great to hear this exchange about different constituent concerns and the work that you do. I have a real extensive. So we're going to have to have another conversation about about your about your presentation. Because I think for me, I want to get my constituent concerns out first. I went to the east Portland action plan meeting last night, and the neighborhood association president, lauren park, he let me have it. And I was all for it, too, because I wanted to make sure that I had all the information that he was talking about. He said there was an accident in 2018 that knocked down a lamp post, and it still had not been fixed. And as you know, district one has the highest pedestrian traffic incidents in the whole city. And I want to make sure that district one folks feel that the city of Portland is here to have it work for them as well. And I told lauren, I said, I'm going to be speaking to the public works folks in the morning. I think this is going to be my question. And this is in hazelwood, which is out in the gateway area by 107th and 107th area, by the gateway area is where hazelwood is. And so he received a, a work number, a work code. And this is like it's 20, 25, 26, 27. So this was like seven years ago. And I know you all said that you you come out and you fix things within, you know, 12 weeks or whatever. And I'm just curious if I give you this work order about this light pole and I'll give I'll give you what I have to. Can you all follow up on this? Because it's been like seven years and there was a huge conversation that went on about how the people and the culture in district one felt about how they were being treated by the city. The first response is always, you know, being very defensive and money. And then when I heard the, the dates, that's what really got to me. If it's taken seven years for folks to get help, in my mind that's not acceptable. And so I think this is some low hanging fruit because I have some work numbers 84866. It's a light pole on northeast 108th work number 84867 on northeast Oregon. And I think the work order number is 7156385. And I will be happy. And since you have your dca here, miss williams, can she work with me on this?
85 Absolutely. We will follow up and make sure we get a response back to you.
86 Thank you. That is that is so good because I was looking at the report and listening to you talk about the ice and the leaf removal and, and all the direct services that you have and the street light maintenance. And I was like, okay, we're really doing a whole bunch and we're spending this money wisely. And I'm with it. And I and I often don't want to give you a real extensive. Question to be answered in this open forum without having background information, but I will have to tell you what my aunt dora said. She said, could you make sure that they clean our streets? Because miss williams at the church said, our streets are dirty. And I said, well, wait a minute, let me find out what I can find out. What is our what is our systems for street cleaning? Miss williams? What how often can they expect their streets to be cleaned?
87 Thank you, councilor Smith, for both of the questions. I'll answer the last one first, and then I'll ask that. Wendy. Callie, address the question around the street pole. But I will say that again, budget is often the driving force behind what we are not able to do with regard to street sweeping, specifically residential street sweeping. Yes, that was removed from pbot's budget. Budget decision was made previously to remove street sweeping, residential street sweeping from the budget of the bureau. And we have not been we do not have budget authority to go into neighborhoods and do street sweeping at all. We do not do it at all.
88 When was that taken out of the budget?
89 It was in 20th.
90 July, first of 2023.
91 Yeah, July 1st, 2023. Prior to that, we had already reduced the number of times, but we have completely eliminated since July 1st, 2023.
92 So here's the thing with all the unsanctioned camping, the rvs that are on our city streets and you know, for people who who need a lot of care, who are on our city streets or are homeless, I cannot imagine how we are not cleaning streets since 2023. And we took that out of the budget. That is unacceptable. It is inhumane to have our people who live in, who are residents, who live in our city, who can't afford housing, and they have to sleep on our streets. But I just can't imagine that all that we have going on infrastructure wise and with the homeless and housing that we would not be cleaning our streets.
93 It is something that really does keep us up at night. It's something that bothers all of the people who are responsible for that work. They just want to do their jobs.
94 I want to help you all get some sleep July 1st.
95 Okay, that sounds great. We do.
96 Have help. Y'all get some sleep.
97 We have information ready to help, to inform what it would take for us to return or restore.
98 I would really like to have that information to see if that's something that we can reinstitute, because that's important. I've been so very proud of. I'm a michigander. I came here many years ago to go to college, and that's how I got to, to, to Oregon. My grandparents and dad lived here and family members. And one of the things that I always noted about Portland, when I would come here for summers, when I was in elementary school all the way to high school, that Portland was so clean, it was one of the cleanest cities that I had ever seen. And when you're coming from the detroit area and other places, you there's a difference. There is a big difference in Portland was always that difference maker. And so I want to get back to the point where, like the mayor said yesterday, some things are not acceptable. It is not acceptable that our streets are not clean. It's not acceptable that our homeless are sleeping out on the streets without someplace to go in the evening. So I do want to follow back up with you. Thank you. I want to follow back up with you and make sure that we take care of mr. Loren parks, who's the president of the hazelwood association, that he knows that somebody's going to get on this about that light post that was broke down in 2018, and we're going to see if we can get our streets cleaned.
99 And we will work with you to address both of those. I will share regarding the street lights, one of the other areas where we've had to make significant cuts is in the restoration of street lights. If they get knocked over often, they will have to remain. We remove them, but we don't have the funding available to restore them.
100 Okay. Thank you, I understand. Thank you very much.
101 Thank you very much.
102 We have two more questions for you. Okay. Councilor Ryan?
103 Yeah. Thank you, madam president. And I want to start off by saying that video is really good. No one's commented on that. So who's out there was in charge of overseeing that? I'm trying to give you some love here. It was a.
104 Team communications team.
105 Good job. It should be shown widely. I'm going to dive right in because of time. And a brief brevity is a leadership skill. So let's start practicing it. I'll try to model it. Sdcs. So you all had, well, two of the bureaus had it in their budget on how much revenue comes in. I don't recall seeing it in PBOT, but I'm sure it's in there. Here's where I'm at. So my experience is that when you had in a previous role, you had authority on making sgc investments, and then when you're doing that, you're scratching your head because you can't use them on deferred maintenance, which is really what you hear about a lot in PBOT parks. Every time I've met with you, you talk about deferred maintenance, and yet you can't use that for, which is nonsensical like so. Your roof is falling apart in your house, but let's build a spare room in the back like, no, you got to do your roof first. So no one in the public understands how this statute at the state is set up. My question is, I've been asking with fellow commissioners from the last commission, the last council, on why this isn't a legislative priority. And I'm beginning to think you all don't want that. So do you not want to change that statute? What's going on? Why can't this be lifted as a legislative priority? Let's tell the truth on this. What's going on?
106 I don't think that my colleagues or I would be concerned with it being raised as an opportunity for us to reevaluate how we.
107 So you would be supportive of it being a part of a legislative priority to see clearly. There's a lobby that doesn't want this to change or something that's such common sense would have happened a long time ago, but I just have to make sure that we at Portland would like this change so that we have more flexibility to use those investments towards the deferred maintenance that is so apparent in both the park space and the PBOT space.
108 The flexibility would be something that we would welcome, but how we would get to that is something that we would need to.
109 Continue to let our office of government relations know that at least one primary bureau director that has that issue annually would be open to that being a part of our legislative agenda. Thank you.
110 Open to discussing how it would become what's that open to discussing how we might make it a priority?
111 Well, I think opens good conversation is fine, but there's a lot of urgency right now. There is. It comes to finances. And so my questions are going to stay up here in the system and financial level. I loved all the questions that got down to the ground, but I'll stay focused on the bigger picture. And as leaders need to tackle that at a time of crisis. So thanks for your openness to finally look at that. The second one is clearly we're in a we're in a financial cliff. The one water discussion was mentioned. And when I think about how we're going to move forward and make some bold changes, where's the urgency about, you know, it's one bill, right? All of our consumers out there see one bill. So they already think it's one water. So when are we going to look at this as a it didn't sound urgent to me. And at a time where we have to make some really big, bold changes, I need to understand if it's urgent or not that you're looking at one water.
112 So last year when we did the exploratory phase, we it was with urgency that we looked into it. It was a six week time period where we prioritized looking into one waters, how it would fit for the context of Portland. And we came up with a list of recommendations, which included a unified public works integrated strategic plan and also a unified cip plan that will be implemented and along with many other recommendations that would help towards operational efficiency and good governance and all of those things. And those recommendations were going to be implemented in a period of 1 to 5 years. There is interest in going forward with that implementation. And we are looking into the unified cip plan with earnest right now to see how that would help us with the increased capital cost and the pace of rate of pace in which the rate rates are increasing and the operational costs are increasing. So having having the unified cip plan will be the first, one of the first things that we're going to start looking into right now, the time period of 1 to 5 years is what we're following. But if there is direction for us to, you know, to advance it, we will definitely take a look into it.
113 Thank you very much. I, I think I did hear the word one, and I hope my colleagues on the committee, as we get into the budget season, which is now that we look at that urgency and we look at where the efficiencies could be gained. None of this is fun to talk about, but it's reality. And so having to look at these bigger, systemic, bold choices to move forward, I think the time is now and I will do one more really quick statement question. There was a survey about a year ago where taxpayers and consumers all ranked maintenance. Some of the conversations we've heard today around potholes and such come to mind as their number one priority that they want to see from PBOT. And then when you did the survey with from people who are on your commissions and your committees, I recall it being planning. And so there was a, you know, a disconnect between those on the inside and what they thought was a priority. And the consumers. How do you reason with that? Because I know when all of us are out listening to our constituents, they definitely remind us why they put maintenance at the top of their list. So could you explain that cultural disconnect, I think, between maybe the inside and what your average consumer would like?
114 Thank you so much, councilor Ryan.
115 And I'd like my all my colleagues to see that same survey. So I don't think I'm making any.
116 We can share that information. The difference in sentiment, frankly, depends on who the respondents of the surveys tend to be. When we ask certain questions, certain people answer. So we recognize that there's some skewing of the numbers based on the audiences that are responding. But what we do know is that even those who are interested in seeing planning as a priority recognized that that planning goes into supporting the overall maintenance and livability of our system and the integrity of our system. So as a bureau, we are focused on making sure that I've called it back to basics, but that we're focusing and making sure that if we are making choices, that we're thinking about how we're maintaining, how we're restoring, how we're ensuring that the things that are in place right now are able to continue to serve our community well. But that is incredibly challenging given the $600 million maintenance backlog that we six $6 billion maintenance backlog that we have and.
117 We can't spend cdc money on.
118 Yeah, it's I don't want to make excuses around why things don't seem to be happening or aren't happening or don't happen, but it's a drop in the it's a drop in the bucket when the needs are so great. It's every part of town. It's not just one part of town that is suffering because of the decades long under or under or disinvestment in transportation and infrastructure, the hope is that we'll be able to again turn the corner so that we can begin to address the things that people are expecting us to maintain the streets. People are expecting us to clean the streets. And as I've shared, it's very frustrating for our teams who want to do that work, to be able to do that work, and even people who are looking at more progressive things as it relates to transportation and land use and other other things, they still want the basics to be in place. They need for the basics to be in place. I have often said we can't continue to hold streets together with stripes for bike lanes. The street needs to be foundationally sound so that everything that goes on top of that, everything that makes us has, gives us the opportunity to be transformative in our work, has a strong foundation.
119 Well, please know I really appreciate all the employees of your three bureaus. I think the through line today of my questioning is that here we are, $100 million projected deficit at minimum. And can we look at some of these systemic issues and also maybe rethink some of how we show up to provide service? There is a back to basics call when you're looking at cuts. So I appreciate you taking those in and knowing that this is the beginning of longer conversations and some tough decisions we have to make over the next few months.
120 Thank you. Looking forward to having the conversation. Just wanted to mention budgetarily. As was demonstrated in the slide, the Portland bureau of transportation, out of its 500, roughly $500 million budget, has only 140 million of that at its discretion to use. And only half of that is something that we can actually use toward the maintenance and work, that operations work that we that we have discretion over.
121 If there was one bipartisan moment that happened the last four years, it was the infrastructure bill. So let's hope that we can also have a lot of those restricted investments come to some of the projects you're talking about. Thank you. Thanks.
122 Councilor. Novick. Close this up please.
123 So I will lead up to the question, but I will begin with a screed. I am not in the infrastructure bureau, but I and unfortunately three of them are the infrastructure bureau aren't here. But I want to let give people everything I learned in four years of being the PBOT commissioner in charge. Before that, though, by the way, I want to tell the other directors that I recall that under commissioner Fish, it was very hard to figure out ways to do anything for low income people in terms of water and sewer bills. And it sounds like you've done something, so congratulations on that. So I just want to say that the condition of the streets that you see now is the result of 30 years of neglect by the administrations of bud Clark, vera katz, tom potter and sam adams, who completely neglected street maintenance because it takes a while for street maintenance to collect to show up. They knew what was going on, and they decided to do nothing as opposed to the electeds in surrounding jurisdictions who recognize that the money they were getting from the state and the feds wasn't enough to maintain the streets, and they adopted a local funding sources. We did not do that until I and charlie hales took a measure to the ballot, passing a ten cent gas tax in 2016. But at that point, the maintenance deficit was so big that it was like applying a band-aid to a machete wound. And I said at the time, this will slow the bleeding a little bit. It's not going to stop it. A few points that I think are important to know one, roads are like teeth. If you don't do regular brushing and cleaning, then you're into root canals and extractions, which are a lot more painful and much more expensive. So one thing that frustrates people is sometimes PBOT will repave a road that looks fine to them. Why aren't you repaving the road that looks destroyed a few blocks over? The answer is it's actually much more responsible, with limited money to keep the streets that are still okay alive. If you spend all your money in the few streets that are already dead, then more and more streets will fall into disrepair. And another really depressing thing is that passenger cars do not impose much wear and tear on the streets at all. The enemies of pavement are trucks, busses, and whether if you know car drove on a street at all, it would deteriorate because of the weather. So councilor Zimmerman, the idea of leaving a street in a c-plus condition because only a few cars drive on it. The problem is c-plus fairly quickly becomes d and d minus and f, so director williams, I would say don't apologize for saying we don't have enough money. Scream at the top of your lungs. We don't have enough money with a lot of expletives attached to it because that is the case.
124 Both of those.
125 Things, what. I can do both.
126 Of those things? Yes. I mean, and as to some of the streets in the west side and the outer east being gravel, my assumption is that unless we get a huge amount of money, most of the streets in Portland are going to be gravel in another 40 years. So the question that I have for you and for is, if you can answer it, is one how much additional money would we need right now per year simply to hold level, not to get streets in better condition than they are now, but to keep where we are now? And the second question is what percentage of streets would you expect? Logically, we need to let to revert to gravel in another 20 years and another 30 years. Oh, and by the way, one more thing. As a respondent, following up on wendy's point about crosswalks, some crosswalks are actually deadly because they provide a false sense of security, but cars aren't going to pay attention to them, I don't know councilor If what crosswalk you were talking about, but I remember that there was one on powell at about 30th that every time I looked at it, it was like, that's a death trap. Because a car charging down at 30 miles, 40 miles an hour isn't going to see it. But a pedestrian might think they're safe anyway. Now I'll shut up and ask the for an answer to the yearly missing money to keep hold us even question in the gravel question.
127 Thank you so much councilor Novick, for sharing the context and the framing for how we part of how we ended up where we are. To answer your last question, first, our team is working to identify what number of streets would diminish, so much so that they would just be better served as gravel streets. I was not able to get that information in advance of this convening, but we'll make sure that you get that information and that we share it with the rest of the council. I will share that. As I mentioned briefly in the presentation, more than 60% of our streets are in poor or very poor condition. I have some graphics that I'll be able to share with this council to demonstrate that the amount of red on the map is staggering, and I think having the visual presentation representation of what that is would be really helpful just for you to get the enormity of the scale of the problem, to maintain what we're doing today, which is not enough. The hole that we would need to fill is $27 million, but that's just filling the hole for what? To keep us from having to make any cuts. Today. We are not providing good service today. We know that. And so in order for us to be able to improve upon what we're doing, to be able to restore some of the things that we've had to cut, like street sweeping, like some of the residential paving that we were doing. Fixing our streets has actually replaced some of the routine maintenance that we were going to do. We cut that and we're able to fill it with the with fixing our streets dollars. So that number is pretty large. We'll make sure that we get that for you as well. But I would imagine that the number will there will be some sticker shock when we see that.
128 Actually that to me, just off the top of my head, that sounds too optimistic. I mean, 27 million wouldn't be enough to keep the streets in the condition that they are today, right?
129 27 million would keep us from having to make massive cuts to programs and staff within this next fiscal, in the next fiscal year. That's all that it would do. It would not allow us to make any improvements. It would not allow us to maintain really very well what we have.
130 Yeah. I mean, what I'm wondering, maybe jody could comment on this. I mean, is there a number we could say if we had 100 million a year, we could prevent the streets overall from deteriorating further than they already are? Or is it 200 million a year or what is it?
131 Yeah, we sure? Please allow us the opportunity to come back with a real number. We know it won't be small. I would dare say that 100 would not be enough because of, again, the conditions that are currently what we're experiencing. But we will be able to provide that for you. And again, I thank you for the question. That was something that I was hoping someone would would inquire about, because it does speak to the acknowledgment of the severity of the issue.
132 Thank you councilor.
133 Oh, perfect. I was going to say we actually need to cut off here because we have lost quorum to other meetings. So I know there's a lot of follow up we've asked for. We'll look forward to getting that. I know there is a lot more conversation to have. I will just state that we don't have quorum that I know many of my colleagues are concerned with sdcs, but there are actually a few of us who support sdcs, and I'll save my comments for a time when we do have quorum.
134 But negativity on this disease.
135 I know, but we've heard it a few times from people now. Thank you for taking the extra time. Thank you for being here. We appreciate all the information, including the graphics and overviews that help make a lot of these concepts more tangible, not just for us, but for portlanders who are watching and better understanding how their how their city works as well. With that, we will close the work session.
136 Thank you, thank you.