The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-05-15
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (27,566 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council held a work session on Thursday, May 15, 2025, beginning at 2:32 p.m., focused on the Public Works Service Area budget. The session opened with an explanation of pathways for submitting budget amendments ahead of the May 21st vote, including deadlines for CBO review and pre-filing, followed by clarifying questions about Finance Committee procedures and amendment tracking systems. Presentations followed from the Deputy City Administrator for Public Works and directors of the Bureau of Transportation, Portland Parks and Recreation, Bureau of Environmental Services, and Portland Water Bureau, covering budget structures, revenue sources, proposed reductions, and service impacts across paving, parking, street sweeping, graffiti abatement, parks maintenance, tree management, utility rates, and infrastructure investment. Topics discussed included a projected transportation revenue shortfall, parks levy sustainability, environmental services staffing reductions, and water/sewer rate forecasts. During the questions and amendments portion, numerous councilors read proposed budget amendments and budget notes into the record covering topics such as police bureau funding, parks maintenance, transportation network company fees, tree regulation programs, small donor elections, housing assistance, and community engagement services. Discussion also touched on a business permitting error involving outdoor seating construction, with bureau staff committing to remedy the situation. Some figures presented, such as certain funding totals and shortfall amounts, were stated inconsistently across speakers. The session concluded without votes being taken on any of the proposed amendments discussed.
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 Good afternoon. I am calling us into a work session of the Portland city council. It is 232 on Thursday, may 15th. Councilors, this is our work session on the public works service area for our budget work. And before we start, I know there have been a number of questions over the last few days about the various pathways for bringing amendments forward as we move toward next week at an increasing speed. So I just wanted to run through those various paths quickly. The first is that if you are planning to announce an amendment in a work session, which is a good way to let your colleagues know what is coming up, and to make sure that we know what you are interested in doing, so that the finance committee can consider whether it should be part of a broader amendment package. Today is our final work session. Before then to put those things on the record. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Is the deadline. If you would like cbo to review your amendment to ensure that your language is technically accurate. There are ways to bring amendments even after that, but to guarantee that cbo will have time to review your amendment, you need to send it to director levine and to own sites. By 5 p.m. Tomorrow. They will work over the weekend to confirm the language and share back with you by Monday. If you would like your amendment to be pre filed, meaning it will be posted on the clerk's website before we are all together on the 21st, you need to send it to director ruth levine and to haley beyonce by 9 a.m. Next Monday the 19th. They'll put together a list of amendments that will be pre filed so that folks watching at home can see the language. And so that when you introduce your amendment, you can introduce it by your name and the amendment number. So for example if I had five amendments pirtle-guiney 1234 and five, rather than having to read the entire thing into the record, and then your third path is to bring something on the dais on the 21st while we are in session, which I would just remind you, will probably lead to one of your colleagues asking you to reduce it to writing. So please be ready to actually submit that in written form. If you bring it on the dais on the 21st. Hopefully that's clear as mud for everybody. So a couple paths there. I think that is my only preamble here. So I am oh, there are a couple of questions. Councilor Kanal is that a question about what I just said, or are you already so excited that you're in the queue?
1 I am excited, but it is a question about what you just said. Go right ahead. So just first a clarifying question. So the I'm going to just assume, but am I correct in assuming that if you were to give your amendment to cbo by 5 p.m. On Friday, that that would accomplish that, that that would also check the box of sending it to cbo by 9 a.m. Monday. Or is that a separate.
2 As long as you let them know that you are okay with them publicizing it? Yes. If you tell them that you want it to be confidential, then they will not publish it with the pre filed amendments.
3 Okay.
4 And if you send it and you don't tell them to keep it confidential, then yes you would have already checked that box.
5 Okay. And then I wanted to just get a little bit more information regarding the finance committee aspect of this on Monday. And I got a little bit of clarity, and I'm a little less uncomfortable than I was at first. I'm trying to understand how things will get into the finance committee's output versus not absent deliberation. We had a reference to a couple counselors being on zoom, and so they weren't able to have their nodding visible in that scenario. And I'm just trying to understand that aspect of it without deliberation. In that committee and without seven of us there, how that's going to play out.
6 So in order to hopefully have things move at a reasonable enough pace that we can get through everything on the 21st, I had hoped to bring an amendment that had pieces that seemed like they had support from a wide variety of counselors, and I didn't think it was appropriate to pull that just out of my own head. Yes. So I've asked finance to have a conversation about what that group, which I think is relatively nothing, is ever as representative of council, as council as a whole, but has a good broad spectrum of folks from council on it to provide some thoughts on what they think might have broad support from across council. So that will be a conversation that the finance committee has on Monday.
7 So just clarifying, finance committee is not utilizing their own preference between the five of them, but rather making their best guess of the preferences of the 12 members of council. I would.
8 I would ask the chair to weigh in there, since I am not the one who runs that committee. But that is has that has been. My request is that we try to think about what would have broad support from across council, based on what we've seen here, what we know of our colleagues and what we see submitted. Because my assumption is that there will be some topics. We heard some yesterday that multiple people are thinking about submitting.
9 Great.
10 I would love to hear that if chair Zimmerman has.
11 You want to weigh in at all?
12 Yeah, I think thanks. It is. I think the finance opportunity offers the. The ability for some discussion around all the amendments that have been made up to that point and given the given the nature of how these conversations need to happen in some sort of public format, and there's always a negotiation, I think, most likely to come out of the finances, that the president gets an idea for what could potentially be my words here. But like a president's package that maybe has a number of the amendments in them, maybe at different sizes, but the whole goal here would be to get as many amendments that make sense and have a support and be balanced, because one of the one of the risks, I think, for the 21st is that we must approve a balanced budget on the 21st and in all other governments where I've done this right, we've had some level of negotiation between all the variety of amendments that get made throughout the process. So this is trying to be some sort of way to have a little bit of that conversation, given the new rules and the new structure. So I don't I don't know what to anticipate in terms of a product out of finance, but what I hope is that it is a way for us to take a look at things that are complementary, things that are maybe speaking past each other in the way that their amendments work. And we've already had some of those which are not intentional. It's just the nature of this process. So I would anticipate that at least the president at the minimum, maybe others come up with an idea that, okay, I think this encompasses a package of amendments that are I'm going to use the word palatable for broad support as a mechanism to get past the 21st hurdle. It's not perfect. It's not exactly clear because it's not nothing holds any of us to it. We all have the ability to say, I appreciate that you put my amendment in that package, but within it are things I can't get down with or my program. I asked for it to be a million. It's really not effective at 750,000, so you might as well have just zeroed it out. Those are all reasonable statements. And so I can anticipate that there will be some amendments that will continue to still need individual votes on the 21st or at least considerations. But I think the president set what I would consider a good goal, which is if we have some amendments that we can, quote unquote, get off the table, because we can get the balance there on the 21st and get them built into the proposed budget, we should tackle as many as them as we can, because we'll still have until the 11th and through until the 18th of adoption for those types of changes, which I do anticipate amendments to come in the second half of this process. So that was again clear as mud. But it's the nature of a government's first time going through a new system and using some of our experiences in other governments as a way to, as a way to capture the imbalance that we're in. Now, if all the amendments that have been proposed, we've got to find a way to balance. That's the ending goal, ultimately. And I think that counselors should be making, you know, making the cases to their colleagues and whatnot. That's part of the here's why I care about this item. That's a great conversation to be for people to be having with their with their fellow colleagues. And so I'll just leave it there.
13 Councilor I think I hear in part of your concern, wanting to make sure that finance committee members don't have two bites at the apple. And what I can share with you toward that end is that I am bringing a budget note forward that I specifically think might be more controversial and will not include in any sort of package like that for that reason. Right? I don't see this as an opportunity for me or anybody else to have two bites at the apple. I see this as a place where we pull together things that would have broad support, might not have the same level of controversy as some of the other things that will be brought.
14 Thank you for both for clarifying that. That is helpful. I'm I'm interested in observing this process as we look into future years and making sure that we're not just doing the things that we think might have 11 votes if seven is all that's required. But I can't predict that that wouldn't happen or that it would without seeing it. Thank you.
15 Absolutely. Councilor Morillo.
16 I just had a quick logistics question as well about how the document is getting edited. The one where the tracker, where staff are taking notes on the things that we're saying verbally. I will say right now, I think in my absence and having been sick earlier in the week, I'm probably going to quickly read through my list of amendments today before the end of day to make sure it gets through, but I know some folks, it seems like did their due diligence as far as having those submitted in written form earlier, which I think is actually easier for more people to follow than it is to be saying things verbally. And then they were removed from the tracker. So who is removing who is adding things to the tracker and like what are the rules around that?
17 I'm going to respond, if you don't mind. President.
18 Go right ahead, councilor.
19 So councilor the we have, we have two different trackers that are existing, right? One is being tracked by the budget office and that that tracker is designed for each of you to be able to have conversations and numbers with them that are private to you and your office. And it allows you to get get input before it's live, so to speak, to the rest of us. The other tracker is that I asked one of our council ops staff, the one who staffs finance, to keep a tracker for the amendments that are read in the room and when. Because my instructions were not clear, some things that have been emailed out got included into that, and I asked him only include the ones that are read in. And so that's where this point of friction that you're identifying is occurring. So I think your tactic today of reading things in if you've got them is the right move. The other thing and I, I said it to the group yesterday is we were breaking. But I don't think everybody heard is there were a number of amendments that got read yesterday. And your best practice I think right now would be double check with, with the council ops staff that it was captured the right way in the moment so that that that tracker is the has captured the essence of the amendments that you've read in. And I'll put it this way, this the budget staff keeps a very complicated list. So I'll just give an example. I'm going to make some corrections today to one of my amendments, because we can say something like amend this program. But the way that our bureaus have structured a number of programs, they've got several versions or several means in which they fund themselves. General fund, pcf, levy, etc. That doesn't come off the tongue very easily. And so the budget office is keeping the gnats detail, whereas christopher is keeping the overarching Zimmerman amendment one. For this amount to this place. Right. That kind of the general idea. So it was designed to be a workable one. So we can just talk about big topics, whereas budget keeps some real detailed ones. When we get into the final document on the 21st, those detail ones that the council president was talking about, those are what will be filled out and read.
20 Okay, I appreciate that explanation. So we should make sure we get any specific language to christopher by end of day tomorrow for specifically for the finance committee and then also to ruth. Okay. Great.
21 Thank you. And we are we are cross-checking those now and making sure okay what was read, what was not what's being worked on privately, what's not those types of things.
22 Yes.
23 I appreciate that. Thanks so much.
24 Councilor Ryan.
25 Yeah.
26 In summary, everything is due tomorrow at 5:00 in writing. And those are the official amendments.
27 If you would like cbo.
28 Why? Why is that a no, when all I keep hearing.
29 Well, let her let her answer.
30 If you would like cbo to review your amendment to make sure that your language is technically accurate, which I would highly recommend you do. Same. It is due by 5 p.m. Tomorrow to ruth and ellen.
31 Okay, everything that were orally, verbally saying this week in various committee meetings is a rough draft of what's going on in terms of these amendments.
32 It is a rough draft, but it is also what will allow your colleagues to know what's coming and allow finance to do their work. If you have kept your proposals otherwise private. Got it? And for folks who are not going to be ready by 5:00 on Friday, you can still bring things to the dais on Wednesday. It just may not have the cbo review and we can't guarantee that it will be workable. We'll have to have that conversation on the dais.
33 Councilor Kanal little clarification if it's emailed to cbo by tomorrow at five, will finance be able to consider it on Monday? Yes.
34 We're working this weekend.
35 Copy.
36 It's all about that.
37 The reason I shook my head, councilor Ryan, is that nothing will prevent a councilor from reading a perfectly legitimate amendment into the record on the 21st, and having it be considered, I didn't want the Friday to be considered a gatekeep and it not be an eligible amendment if it comes in on the 21st. But to the president's point, it will not have been quote unquote scored or detail oriented. That's the reason I shook my head initially.
38 Okay, councilors, we have a large presentation today. I'm sure a lot of discussion, and I am guessing there will be a lot of folks wanting to spend some time reading amendments into the record as well. So I am going to turn it over to dca. Donna paul, to kick us off and introduce your team.
39 Thank you, council president. Good afternoon councilors I'm priya, donna paul. I use she her pronouns and I'm the deputy city administrator for public works. It's an honor to be here on behalf of public works. And I'm very excited to be sharing our important work with all of you. Next slide please. I'm proud to be joined today by the directors of each bureau within the current public works service area, transportation, water and environmental services, as well as parks and recreation, which will soon join public works beginning July 1st. We also have subject matter experts and operational leaders from across our teams in the audience as well. Together, public works bureau is managed more than 90% of the city's built assets, over half the city's total budget and a third of the city's workforce. Next slide please. Here's what we'll cover today. I'll start with a brief overview of the public works service area, how it's structured, what's changing, and how we are aligning funding strategy across our bureaus. And then you'll hear from each bureau director on the budget, priorities, operational needs and how they're delivering critical services to portlanders. We have a lot of ground to cover. So let's get started. Next slide please. This is a current service area organizational chart. In a first year as a service area, we have made measurable progress towards becoming a more aligned, strategic coordinated team. A major milestone has been the alignment of the Portland water bureau and bureau of environmental services through one water initiative, which is already helping us think and plan across systems, allowing us to look at the full water cycle holistically rather than in silos. We've also strengthened cross-border coordination with the addition of a shared capital improvement program manager, and their role is helping us better align major infrastructure investments across the service area, identifying opportunities to coordinate work, reduce costs, and minimize disruptions to the community. Next slide please. Beginning July 1st, we're excited to soon welcome Portland parks and recreation and vibrant community support services into the public works service area. This will help bring natural systems and build systems into even closer partnership, especially on projects that touch right of wa, stormwater and recreational assets. We will also formalize the alignment of the water bureau and environmental services under a unified Portland utility director, creating a strong foundation for one water implementation and joint service planning. We're looking forward to deepening collaboration and continuing to evolve as one integrated, forward looking public work service area serving one city. Next slide please. I'm honored to lead and work alongside the dedicated teams who serve the city 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, often behind the scenes, but always essential public works is portland's civic circulatory systems. It's the water we drink, the streets we travel, the stormwater systems and sewers that protect our health, and the parks that restore us. They are not. They aren't just infrastructure assets. They are commitments and promises, promises of equity, public health and resilient Portland that serves everyone now and for generations to come. Next slide please. Our vision this year is to deliver as a one public work system for one Portland. While our bureaus have distinct roles, our services are deeply interdependent. Portlanders don't experience government in silos. They experience safe streets, clean water, and healthy parks to work together seamlessly. We share customers responsibilities and outcomes as when it comes to public health, community safety, and environmental resilience. That's why coordinated capital planning and emergency response are essential to how we operate. We are committed to gaining efficiencies through the integration of shared services, reducing duplication and aligning strategy across bureaus. We're also laser focused on maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure from roads, sidewalks to sewer and storm systems, drinking water parks and community centers. At the same time, we must prepare. We must prepare our infrastructure for challenges ahead, like seismic risks, extreme weather and climate change. And financially, we are navigating a constrained landscape and we are focused on financial resiliency, addressing budget constraints, managing rising infrastructure costs, and identifying new revenue opportunities to balance affordability with the need for investment in critical services. At the core of all of this is equity. Every investment must be guided by a shared equity lens, ensuring historically underserved communities benefit from the infrastructure improvements we deliver together. This is how we invest not just in infrastructure, but in people in place and in portland's future. Next slide please. Our budget decisions are shaped by four key factors. First, we must manage the real risk associated with aging infrastructure and potential regulatory liabilities. Delayed. Delayed maintenance can lead to failures that are not only expensive, but dangerous. Second, we are obligated to meet our existing financial commitments repaying debt, settling legal liabilities, and upholding bondholder trust. Third, compliance is non-negotiable. We must meet federal and state regulatory requirements, particularly in water, wastewater and environmental and stormwater services. And finally, we are deeply aware of the importance of affordability for portlanders, striking the balance between long term investment and short term impact on households is a responsibility we take seriously. Our park systems also brings a valuable lens to this discussion, reminding us that infrastructure isn't just pipes and pavement. It also includes a Green assets like parks and open spaces, trees and natural areas that provide climate resilience and improve livability for every portlander. Next slide please. In a constrained budget environment, we have to make difficult choices choices that balance urgent community needs with long term financial responsibility. The mayor's proposed budget prioritizes revenue generating functions that sustain critical infrastructure, while also advancing projects that directly improve community health, safety, and livability. We know we can't meet every community priority this budget cycle, but every decision was made with care and intention focused on protecting our core services and outcomes that portlanders rely on every day. Excuse me. What remains constant is a north star, which is ensuring equitable service delivery for both current and future generations of portlanders. And this focus on equity guides our every decision we make, reinforcing a mission to build a resilient and inclusive city. Next slide please. And with that, I'd like to introduce melissa williams, director of the Portland bureau of transportation, who will talk about pbot's proposed budget and its impacts.
40 Thank you. Deputy city administrator donna paul. Good afternoon, councilors. As has been mentioned, my name is millicent williams, and I serve as the director of the Portland bureau of transportation. Before discussing the specifics, and we can go to the next slide of what's included in the mayor's proposed budget. I'd like to provide a high level overview of the scale of the bureau's budget and how it's spent. The bureau of transportation's overall budget for fiscal year 2526 is $626 million, which is slightly lower than the current year's revised budget of 634 million. Of the 626,000,256 million is expended on capital projects. Close to 20 million is spent on the repayment of debt. 20 million is transferred to other areas of the city, mostly to the general fund. For citywide services. 100 million is held in reserves for future expenditures, mostly capital, and the remaining 230 million is spent on operations and maintenance activities. The additional positions between the revised budget and the proposed budget is due mostly to the conversion of some limited term positions to regular ftes and the addition of ten new inspectors for the utility inspection in ADA curb ramp inspection programs. We'll dive a little deeper on the revenue sources and expenditure line items on the next slide. So if we could advance to the next slide, please. This chart, which many of you have seen before, provides a high level breakout of our total budget, both revenues and expenses starting in the upper left, general transportation revenues, or gtr, includes state highway funds, so gas taxes and dmv fees, parking related revenues, meters, permits and citations, interest earnings, and the mayor's proposed increases in transportation network company fees. These are our most discretionary revenues, but also have limitations in how they can be spent. The bottom left provides details on our restricted resources, which represents a majority of our budget. We categorize them as restricted because they can only be spent on the programs that they were either awarded for, such as federal grants, or for which we charge a specific fee, such as permit fees, to make cuts in or excavate the street. Other significant sources include the Portland clean energy funds, a majority of which is spent on the replacement of streetcars. Fixing our streets funding, which is restricted for uses outlined in the ballot language work for other jurisdictions, mostly bts system development charges, which can only be spent on expanding the system and parking garage revenues, and independent business entity. The upper right displays the corresponding expenses supported by gtr revenues. It's important to note that even though these resources are our most discretionary source of funding, we have significant required expenditures or revenue generating programs that are supported with these limited resources. We call them required expenses because we do not have the ability to reduce these expenses in order to fund other high priority needs. Payments for citywide services, such as such as general fund overhead, are determined by a citywide allocation model. Debt repayment includes costs for the Sellwood bridge, portland-milwaukie light rail and pension payments. Reductions to parking enforcement staff would only lead to less revenue collected. The remaining flexible expenditures, totaling $90.5 million, include the funding left for core transportation services, including paving, street cleaning, signals and street light maintenance, transportation planning and support services. When we talk about reductions to gtr, those reductions will come from these flexible gtr expenditures. In the lower right, we highlight the expenditures supported by restricted resources. As you can see, most of these expenses are included in our capital program, both for current year expenditures and future year expenditures shown as reserves. Here you will also see expenditures related to permit issuance, work on behalf of bhs, and the restricted resources contribution towards support services and payments for citywide services. It's important to note that these are restricted expenses, that these restricted expenses also provide services that are viewed by the public as core to PBOT responsibilities. We just do not have the flexibility to move these resources to other programs if the need arises. Next slide please. Now that you have a greater understanding of our overall budget, I'd like to take a moment to walk you through how we balanced our general transportation revenue forecast. First, let's discuss the budget changes leading to the original $38 million shortfall we discussed at the start of the year, the majority of the $38 million forecast shortfall was due to new expenditures expected to start in either fiscal year 2526 or beyond. These included citywide interagency costs. The creek settlement cost, which was 50% of the expected shortfall. The impact reduction program, Portland permitting and development subsidies, and increased personnel and increased personnel costs due to earlier union negotiations. We also updated our updated our revenue forecast to match the state highway fund forecast, updated last fall, and updated our parking forecast to assume no growth in parking demand. The city administrator's budget updated our forecast assumptions and included new potential resources, thereby updating our reduction target to $17.8 million. The city administrator's budget included removing forecast assumptions for higher city administrative costs and out years of the forecast, a reduction in the subsidy for Portland permitting and development, a transfer of positions into the dca's office to support service area wide operations, and assumed approval of bond financing for the ADA curb ramp settlement again. Creek. The mayor's proposed budget included these assumptions and added increased support for derelict rv and abandoned auto removal, graffiti abatement, and pothole repair. These new investments and the remaining funding shortfall were covered through increases in parking meter fees and hours, increases in transportation network, company or tnc fees, and assumed revenues from the pending state transportation funding package. These items will be discussed in more detail in the following slides. Next slide please. The proposed budget includes four proposals to balance the five year forecast, one of which was already approved by council on may 7th. This proposal captures savings in the ADA ADA curb ramp program by financing the construction of 1500 ramps per year over a 15 year repayment schedule. Next slide please. The three balancing proposals that still require further action include the increases in parking rates, transportation network, company fees, and the passage of a transportation revenue packag. At the state level, parking meter rates were heard by council at the may 8th hearing, but are not scheduled for a vote until may 21st. These proposed changes contribute $6.8 million in additional revenue collected through the following actions. Increase in hourly parking meter rates by 25% in each district, generating approximately $5.5 million per year. An increase in hourly parking meter rates, generating approximately $350,000 per year, and these rates would be in providence park district and the lloyd district, and the restricted event district in northwest. The proposal also assumes the extension of parking meter district evening hours from 7 p.m. To 10 p.m, generating approximately $1 million per year. The tnc fee proposal raises $5 million by increasing the ride fee for trips starting in Portland from $0.65 per ride to $1.30 per ride. This proposal requires council action to amend the current fee schedule. The finance committee is scheduled to review this proposal at the may 19th committee meeting. The state highway fund proposal of $11 million assumes passage of a transportation bill at the state legislature that would support cities across Oregon, including Portland. These revenues come from state gas taxes, heavy vehicle use taxes, and dmv fees. The proposal requires approval from the state legislature. If any of these proposals are not realized, the bureau would need further direction from council to either reduce services or find alternative revenues to balance its general transportation revenue forecast. Next slide please. The proposed budget doubles the investment in towing and demolition services for the next year. These additional resources will allow the bureau to demolish more rvs, thereby creating space at the current storage facility. With this new space and additional funding for towing, more rvs will be removed from the city's right of way. The proposed budget also doubles the investment in the current abandoned auto program. The additional staffing will allow for more tagging, warning and towing of abandoned vehicles in the right of way. Next slide please. The current graffiti abatement program can only respond to requests from the community within 7 to 14 days, whereas city code requires a response in ten days. The new funding included in the proposed budget will allow response times to decrease to 1 to 5 days and create the opportunity for proactive, self-directed response efforts. Pre-event scheduled cleaning, enhanced service businesses, enhanced service and business districts. Pre parade routes. Cleaning response to request and cleaning of key corridors and business districts. Next slide please. The proposed budget doubles the investment in pothole repair for the next year. These additional resources will allow the bureau to fill an additional 1500 potholes per year. Next slide please. And finally, the mayor's proposed budget adds $3.1 million of ongoing interagency revenues from the bureau of environmental, bureau of environmental services and nine new permanent positions for residential street sweeping funding, street sweeping in areas that drain to surface water or groundwater supports water quality permit compliance analysis has determined that 12% of citywide arterials, collectors or collectors, and 26% of residential streets are in areas that drain to surface water or groundwater. Using these allocations, the bureau of environmental services believes that $3.1 million can be transferred to PBOT for sweeping of these areas. During the first year of the program, PBOT will expand the leaf program, hire and train new staff, acquire additional sweepers, which requires about a one year delivery time frame and phase in the installation of parking signage citywide to notify residents of sweeping periods, thereby clearing the curb for a more complete cleaning. Limited street sweeping and residential areas would be completed in the first year. Next slide and this is my last one. Pbot was set to receive about $11.5 million. Excuse me. Although the general transportation revenue forecast was balanced and includes additional support for livability programs, PBOT still saw reductions in other funding sources which required programmatic cuts. Pbot was set to receive about $11.5 million of general fund resources in fiscal year 2526, of which 10.1 million was dedicated to the ADA curb ramp program. The remaining $1.4 million of ongoing resources is dedicated to programs such as paving, gravel, streets, or the out of the mud program. Sustainability efforts, street cleaning, Sunday parkways, and reimbursing the bureau for lost parking revenues. Due to the creation of director park. These programs, not including the funding for ADA ramps, all received an 8% reduction. As part of the balancing efforts required of the general fund, about one third of the $10.1 million contribution for ADA curb ramps was reallocated to fund debt service for the bond financing proposal approved by council just last week. The remaining funds were reallocated to balance the general fund shortfall. Reductions in cannabis tax revenues include $400,000 from the current year, and another $277,664 for fiscal year 2526. This leaves just under $1 million budgeted for next fiscal year for vision zero programing. The impacts of the lost revenues include a reduction in vision clearance for priority locations and pedestrian intervals at intersections adjacent to schools, reductions in improvements along the high crash network, such as turn calming rumble strips and raised pavement markings, and the elimination of safety related outreach materials and engagement with community based organizations. Finally, the bureau of environmental services notified PBOT of a request for a reduction in service starting next fiscal year to help balance their own financial shortfalls. Pbot provides the maintenance services for sewer and stormwater infrastructure. These services will be reduced by $3.5 million, including the elimination of 24 positions. Further review will take place next fiscal year to ensure that these reductions are not hindering bay's ability to meet its permit requirement, and with that, I will turn it back over to dc. Donna paul.
41 Thank you, director williams. We began this budget process facing $38 million in shortfall for PBOT. And thanks to the leadership and support of mayor, this council and pending action from our state partners, we have built a proposal that closes that gap without service reductions. And for that, we are deeply grateful. That said, our current forecast is balanced but fragile service levels are still falling short of the community expectations. Decades of underinvestment have created a maintenance backlog that cannot be solved through short term balancing alone. This budget prioritizes core services and makes targeted investments in safety and livability. But to maintain these gains and to avoid future reductions, we will need continued collaboration to build a more sustainable funding model. Nearly $11 million in this year's balancing plan is outside of city's control. If the state legislature does not act, we will need to revisit, revisit reductions or explore new local options. And over time, it's clear continued reliance on gas tax and parking revenue is no longer viable. Portlanders are changing how they move, and our funding model must evolve with them. We look forward to continuing this conversation with the mayor and all of you on how to stabilize PBOT for the long term so we can deliver the safe, connected, and climate ready transportation system that portlanders deserve. Thank you. And with that, we can move on to Portland parks and recreation, if that's okay with council. Okay. And now I would like.
42 To have you go through the full presentation and then we'll do questions.
43 Okay. Great. Thank you. I'd like to introduce Portland parks and recreation director adena long, who will talk about parks proposed budgets and its impact.
44 Thank you paul, we appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the public works service area budget work session, and we look forward to formally joining public works in July and exploring new opportunities to align priorities and operations. Good afternoon, madam president and city council. For the record, I am adena long, director of Portland parks and recreation. Thank you for having us here today. As you are well aware, it's been a daunting budget season so far. We greatly appreciate the support we've received from you and from the community for our programs and services. Okay, let's get started. Next slide. This is an overview of all resources and requirements. Because we budget in nine separate funds, there is a complex interplay between them that can make this confusing. While the next slide will give a much clearer picture. A key takeaway here is that while our overall budget is for 183 million. A lot of that is in fund balance and committed to our capital plan. It is spent down over several years as projects are delivered. Another thing to note is that inter bureau transfers, reimbursements from the parks levy to the general fund for eligible expenditures make up another big piece of this. One last key takeaway is our staffing. The increase you see here in the fiscal year 2526 budget from the current year is related to PCEF funded positions being added. The reduction from that base is the impact of the reductions. We'll discuss in a moment. I'd like to note that in addition to full time staff, seasonal casual staff are critical to delivering our services. These are the lifeguards at summer pools. Seasonal parks. Seasonal staffing hours translate into over 400 full time equivalents for parks. Next slide please. Here we've tried to break down revenues and expenses into more granular level and show what resources pay for what the top portion is our general fund. This is where we budget our most flexible resources, and it is where most of our day to day operations are budgeted. As you can see on the left, the two biggest resources in this fund in the mayor's proposed budget are general fund discretionary and parks levy. The parks levy is actually its own fund. And that fund reimburses the general fund for eligible activities, using a funding model that leverages general fund, discretionary and other resources. So it shows in the general fund as reimbursement. Additional revenues include space rentals and leases, services provided to other bureaus, new funding from Multnomah county for preschool for all. We also charge parking fees at several locations, and there are other miscellaneous revenue sources that make up a small part of our general fund. The resources that I just mentioned fund the operating expenses at the top of the right. On the right, the next session section shows our capital fund. Next year, we anticipate significantly reduced system development charge revenue. In addition, we get a little less than 5 million annually for capital major maintenance as a transfer from the general fund. Everything else in that fund is allocated to projects and capital programs that will spend down this year and in future years. Then we get into other, more restricted funds for the sake of time. I won't go into detail about all of them, but I do want to highlight the Portland clean energy fund, which in fiscal year 2526 includes funding for starting up the street, tree maintenance function, tree planting and other work, as well as about $7 million of urban forestry functions that were previously funded by the general fund. Outside of urban forestry, PCEF funds about 2.3 million and other costs for energy efficiency projects. Next slide. As we head as we headed into this budget cycle, we knew we had a gap to close. The biggest drivers are summarized here on the revenue side, for this current fiscal year, we were asked to cut 3.8 million in general fund because that direction came in December 2023, only one month before submitting our budget last year, the decision was made to take time to figure out how to address those reductions and absorb them with parks levy balance that had built up over the first three years of the parks levy. At that time. We also received an updated forecast from the city economist that indicated that parks levy revenue was expected to decline by about 6 million ongoing. And finally, Portland parks and recreation received an additional general fund cut of 6.8 million. In the guidance for the fiscal year 2526 budget. On the expense side, we've seen internal services double in the last five years. While some of this increase is related to increased staffing associated with the parks levy, large portions have been driven by external factors seen across many other bureaus. We have increased staffing over the last several years with the parks levy, but at the same time, we also saw an acceleration in the cost per hour worked, which was driven by purse increases, health benefit increases, two colas that hit the 5% cap, and new labor agreements that resulted in increased steps and premiums for many classifications. And finally, the last driver on the cost side is operations and maintenance of new assets. The figure shown here is the increased cost. Looking forward over the forecast for bringing on new assets. The more discretionary parking revenues we also earn revenues at Washington park, but per multi-party agreement, those revenues are dedicated to transportation and infrastructure improvements at the park. Next slide. All of those factors drove our financial plan and the direction to begin closing the gap that was opening. As a result, in the general fund, we spend all our earned revenue first, then general fund discretionary. Sorry. And then general discretionary. This makes the parks levy the last dollar in. Consequently, we use the parks levy outlook as a primary tool for communicating opportunities and challenges to come. Here you see revenues as the orange bars extending above the zero line and expenses as the blue bars extending below the light blue line is the net. So wherever that net is above the zero line, we are building a balance, the Green line and wherever it is below the line, we are drawing balance. You can see a substantial draw this year in 2025, as we absorb last year's general fund cuts and deal with rapid cost increases. I mentioned on the last slide, you can see that with the proposed budget, we maintain a positive balance at the end of next fiscal year, but with a projected deficit that would drive the fund negative if all things continue the same into future years, to shift the blue line up and stop the Green line from going down, we'll need to identify additional revenue and or reduce additional expenses. Next slide please. Tying back to that first section of sources and uses, here are the uses of general fund resources. Most of our gap closing was through reductions to service though 13.6 million. You see in the second column. However some gap closing was done through increased revenue because our program planning, hiring and registration happens well before the summer, it was important to ensure programing stability for the summer of 2025. Therefore, a number of reductions are funded on a one time basis through September 2025. Now we'll take a look at the categories more closely. Please note our slides do not include line by line. Every decision package listed in the mayor's proposed budget. With 80 packages. It would take us far more time than we've been allocated today. Instead, we grouped together the main decision packages and tried to focus on impacts so you can understand what's being cut and how that affects our programs and services. In addition, throughout this presentation, you'll see programs or services that are funded through summer of 2025, but cut as of as of September 1st, indicated with an asterisk. Next slide. While most of this presentation is focused on the mayor's proposed budget and how it affects our base budget, this slide shows the crosswalk between the administrator's budget and the mayor's proposed budget. As you can see, the mayor preserved several recreation programs that were reduced in the administrator's budget. These add backs totaled 4.8 million. There were also several reductions that were included as part of the proposed. They totaled 3.4 million and offset some of the add backs. The remainder of the add backs are offset by net new resources totaling 1.5 million. But note that a big component of the add backs are funded with one time balance. Next slide. Let's start with recreation services, which includes the facilities that support recreation as well as public recreation and arts and culture programs. The overall budget of 52.5 million for recreation services is reduced by 429,000 on an ongoing basis. That is the net change and includes reductions as well as new resources, particularly for preschool for all. A total of 1.3 million is funded on a one time basis to continue programing through summer 2025, there are no net changes to staffing, with a total of 22.14 fte budgeted in the proposed. You can see from this slide that all community centers, art focused centers and pools remain open. In addition, the sun community school programs and citywide sports programs are funded. Some are free for all events are fully funded for summer 2025 due to the summer restoration package. Next slide please. The mayor's proposed budget eliminates the teen collaborative initiative grant program. Starting in September, summer camp programs will be eliminated. Recreation services reductions include reduced hours at regional community centers, indoor pools and the Portland tennis center, decreasing summer free for all events by more than half. In summer 2026, and these reductions again begin September 1st. Our preschool program will be aligned with Multnomah county preschool for all, and we're restructuring an interagency agreement with the Portland water bureau for care and maintenance of decorative fountains citywide. In addition, we're increasing some fees for programs in community centers, outdoor pools, and other recreation activities. We're aiming for a 10% fee increase where possible within market constraints, but our access discount program will ensure that we meet the levy commitment for access and equity. Next slide. The group caring for assets and facilities. The assets and development division, is reduced by 2.3 million from 21.3 million to 19 million in our main operating fund across all funds. That reduces staffing from 129 to 120.5 fte. The mayor's proposed budget has preserved asset management and long term planning, the capital improvement program and repair and maintenance of assets will continue with less resources and staffing to meet community needs. The proposed budget eliminates the professional repair and maintenance, weekend crew maintenance, trainee programs, a heavy equipment operator and office support specialist, and all nonprofessional repair and maintenance staff training. Next slide please. The mayor's proposed budget reduces the items you see here, including some professional repair and maintenance services like safety training supplies and internal capacity for program assessments and studies that support park plans and trail and acquisition work. This budget restructures or realigns. A carpenter who works on ADA issues and overhead for capital projects will be slightly increased. Next slide. Taking care of our parks, open spaces and natural areas is a core function of Portland parks and recreation. We will continue to do this work, but less resources and less staffing means we will be unable to meet community needs. Standards in the mayor's budget, funding for the land stewardship team is reduced by 4.6 million on an ongoing basis, with summer programing bought back on a one time basis for 861,000. This takes the team from 46.3 million and 206 fte to 42.6 million, and 188 fte. The mayor's proposed budget eliminates the utility worker crew and swing shift crew, reducing evening and weekend coverage and arborist position, and nature based summer day camps and environmental education programs will be eliminated effective September 1st. Next slide please. You can also see this list of additional reductions, including reduced ems budgets for all maintenance zones and the trails team, which impacts our ability to complete critical improvement projects within parks and trails, administrative and other personnel. And in September, all restroom cleaning, trash removal and litter pickup in parks will be reduced by one day per week. There are additional reductions in impact impact sports fields as well. Next slide. Tree management and care represents 9.4 million of our main operating fund budget. This is after much of that operation was shifted to PCEF in the current fiscal year. Between those funds and other resources, they pay for 145 fte. The mayor's proposed budget reduces the general fund amount by 1.7 million ongoing, with about 78,000 brought back for summer 2025 programing, bringing the total general fund budget to 7.8 million and total fte across all funds to 144. Mayor wilson's proposed budget preserves funding for urban forest management and planning, tree maintenance and planting, 24 over seven emergency service for fallen trees and public rights of way and title 11 regulations. As of September 1st, a two thirds reduction in capacity to manage outreach, volunteer and community education program, and there will be reductions to staff trainings and supplies. This budget calls for using urban forestry fund for nuisance abatement, tree preservation, planting and emergency response capacity, which will deplete the urban forestry fund. The proposed budget also calls for additional revenues and funding shifts. Next slide please. Park rangers and our safety team is reduced in the proposed budget by half 1,000,004 fte, from 6.7 million to nearly 6.4 million. The mayor's budget proposes maintaining 29 ftes and providing up to 15 seasonals in the summer. Supervisor coverage is also maintained across all shifts. The budget proposes eliminating ranger dispatch, a coordinator, and a vacant office support specialist position. Finally, the park ranger program received about $755,000 in ARPA funds over the last three years to increase summer seasonal patrols at hotspot parks and to support ranger operations. The ending of this investment will be most felt as a reduction of our seasonal hiring from prior years. Next slide. On this slide, we're showing central functions, which is largely vibrant community support, service services and enterprise changes together, central functions and charges that are paid centrally, like a bureau wide charges for the city's financial software. Other bts functions, the risk pool, etc. Are reduced by 4.2 million from 45.2 million to 41 million, with a total reduction of 14 fte. The mayor's proposed budget preserves capacity in the director's office and support services, although we've taken significant reductions that you can see on the slide, including 13 staff positions from our support services team. And like recreation services, the budget calls for increased reservation and payments fees. That concludes our discussion of the mayor's proposed budget and what it means for Portland parks and recreation. We hope the summaries that we've provided today help you understand what's been included and what impact it has on programs and services. And I will turn the presentation back to dci donna paul.
45 Thank you, director long, for your presentation. I want to underscore a few key takeaways for Portland parks and recreation. First portlanders deeply value the parks and recreation system. And you hear it and we hear it across the community. Parks are essential to our city's livability, health, and identity, and Portland is nationally recognized for that. We appreciate the mayor's efforts to preserve critical services like sand schools, citywide sports, and a neighborhood community center. That said, ppnr is facing an unprecedented $13.6 million in reduction. These cuts will impact programs, jobs, especially youth jobs and the overall condition of our parks and natural areas. While summer 2025 programing is protected, future summers could see major losses, fewer concerts and movies, no summer camps and reduced maintenance. Looking ahead, the parks levy expires after the fiscal year 2025 2026 and council's decision on referral timing and rate will be critical. It could shape not only long term sustainability, but service levels as early as next year. We look forward to partnering with you to ensure portlanders continue to have access to the safe, welcoming and vibrant park system that they can count on. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to ting lu, interim director of bureau of environmental services.
46 Thank you, dc dana paul, good afternoon, council president and councilors. My name is ting lu. I'm the interim director for bts. Next slide please. Before we dive into the budget information, I would like to share with you our high level services, challenges and our key priorities. Like dc, dunbar said earlier that both bs and water are heavily regulated and required to meet federal and state regulations. With that, our operations and maintenance of all infrastructure assets is a key part of our day to day priority. From a capital investment side, it's driven by multiple factors, including complying with existing and future federal and state regulations, addressing aging assets and reduce system failure risk. And sometimes the system also needs to be expanded to accommodate the city growth. On top of that, we are also trying to address climate and seismic risk and provide equitable service delivery throughout the city. All these operational and capital delivery are enabled by the core administrative support. At the same time, maintaining high quality customer service and affordability program remains our key priority and service. Next slide. Onto our budget. The bureau manages multiple funds to ensure proper financial accounting and maintain compliance with the various legal obligations. First, let's review the resources. You will see that our primary revenue source is utility rates, which are budgeted at the $430.6 million. Other revenues serve important, though relatively smaller, source of revenue for the bureau. The most notable revenue sources in this bucket include revenue from Portland clean energy fund system development charges and other interest incomes. The transfer budget is primarily the result of complying with the local budget law. Only $3 million for less than 1% represent incoming revenue to the bureau. Beginning, balance, and bond proceeds represent the money in the bank from the prior year, including our rate stabilization fund. Now we'll review the requirements. The proposed budget is $1.43 billion, which is a slightly lower than the prior two years due to a decrease in cip program. As we are ramping up the secondary treatment expansion program, also known as step capital investment, continues to be a large component of our budget, which includes debt service paying off previously financial capital expenditures, and also the capital improvement program. Additional ongoing major capital investment include carolina trunk replacement, the inverness force main rehabilitation project, and more. Investment in the columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant, which is the largest in Oregon. The operating personnel and materials and services budget, totaling 261.2 million, with about 40% in personnel and remaining for materials and services. Similar to resources. Only 16.6 million of transfers in the current budget represent nil non pass through costs to the bureau contingency represent bureaus. Reserve funds. This include monies in our rate stabilization fund. Required debt reserves and saving for future loan obligations for our fte. Our fte count has decreased slightly over the past several years, which is a net shifting resources within the bureau to support our priority portfolios, including o&m needs, and also support city initiatives. Next slide. This graphic identifies where the money comes from and what it provides. First, on the revenue side, as I shared earlier, our largest revenue is through utility rates, which represent about 87% of the current year's revenue in the budget. Our revenues are diverse. However, some revenue sources like Portland clean energy fund and Portland harbor citywide obligations are restricted to specific uses. The fund management category for both resources and expenditures are represented broadly to comply with the local budget law, and only reflects the interfund transfer between funds. Now, turning to the expenditures. While the overall budget may appear substantial, the portion available for discretionary adjustment is quite limited, which is within personnel services. External materials and services such as the chemicals and materials for pipe replacement, and this adjustment areas are represented in the orange categories. However, it's important to note that these categories also include non-discretionary costs. In total, only about 11% of our budget is considered discretionary and subject to adjustment, meaning that even a minor change in this portion can significantly affect our overall financial position and meeting permit compliance. Our capital project category is also shown in orange, as we are continue to use a risk based approach based on asset risk, consequence of failure, as well as the permit requirement. Next slide. This. This slide shows how bhs is balancing the various budget changes from the previous slide. If I can draw your attention to the first box on the left, which shows how bhs balanced the city administrator's budget. Bhs began this budget cycle by identifying 1.5 million in critical operating needs. This include utility cost increases, aging equipment replacement, and essential materials to maintain operations. To that, we added 700 k increase to general fund overhead, 3.5 million for city government reform and rising internal services costs, 3 million to increase to the cooperative work agreement with PBOT for sewer and stormwater maintenance and 1.1 million from the previous mayor's budget guidance, and this has been restored on the mayor's proposed to balance this additional additions. I'm very proud that bhs team took a very holistic and collaborative approach. We identified 80 plus items totaling 3.3. 5 million in operating reductions with minimum service impact. This included contracted services, reduced loan to the urban flood safety water quality district. Other reductions reduce part time seasonal workers and also reduce security expenditures expenditures while leveraging central security services. Totaled together, the information. The information listed in the mayor's budget represents the new budget additions and reductions on top of this, city administrator's budget. In addition, we reduce our 12 million environmental remediation set aside by 1 million. To offset this, additions, cut $2 million from a capital policy implementation funds defer 20 million capital project over five years, saving 1.3 million in debt service, and reduced our contingency to close the remaining gap. Now let's turn to the mayor's proposed budget changes shown on the right. The bureau saw the increase totaling 6.8 million to support street sweeping, revised purse amounts and an increase to the general fund overhead. The bureau proposed to balance the increase by 200,000 savings from having one utility director position. Further reduction of the environmental remediation set aside by additional $2 million. Reducing capital policy implementation funds by an additional 1.1 million. Reducing central city interagency costs and future efficiency savings by a combined 1.4 million, and then restoring the initial 5% reduction, which will add back about 1.1 million of revenues. Finally, the remaining amount is the balance by contingency, which is to close to close the gap. I would like to note that some of this reduction measures, such as environmental remediation, set aside deferred cip and utilizing contingency could introduce long term financial planning complexities that will require the bureau to navigate and higher utility rates down the road. With that, I'll turn it over to director light.
47 Thank you, director liu. Good afternoon, council president and councilors. My name is quisha light and I am the interim director of the Portland water bureau. While the numbers you see here may look large, nearly all our budget is committed to bond payments, regulations and critical system operations. For example, 86 million in debt service and 700 million in capital investments are already locked in. Major projects like the bull run filtration project are federally mandated to ensure safe drinking water. We also maintain a $130 million rate stabilization account that's there to protect affordability and avoid sudden spikes in rates. We've also been reducing our staffing. We have eight fewer positions than last year, with 32 more expected to be eliminated, including 18 permanent roles. Despite these constraints, we continue to prioritize and focus on our core work. The delivery of clean water, maintenance of the system, and compliance with regulatory obligations. Next slide. This slide breaks down our sources of funding and where it goes. Nearly 90% of our revenue, just like with bills, comes from utility rates, which include both direct sales and wholesale contracts. These revenues support day to day operations and system upkeep. Non rate revenue, like the 3.8 million in funding is also critical. It's helping fund our leak repair program. Energy efficiency upgrades across our operations and our micro-hydro generation projects. The funding is distributed annually across operating and capital expenses and aims to improve environmental outcomes while enhancing affordability and resilience for Portland residents. The only flexible parts of our budget are operations and maintenance and capital projects, but even those are largely locked in. For example, the federally required filtration project alone represents 86% of the cip in the next fiscal year. Other revenues include interest, earnings, fees and charges related to new development and payments received for support we provide to other city bureaus. Next slide. To meet the city's balanced budget requirement, we had to make some hard choices. The city's. The city administrator's budget increased. City services, city service costs and reduced rate revenue. So we eliminated 18 vacant positions while we avoided layoffs. Some essential work like long range planning, system maintenance work to protect the water system from cybersecurity will be delayed, as well as having impact to our ability to be responsive to customers. We also increased funding to parks to maintain our decorative fountains and offset this with the reduction in our facilities maintenance budget. In the mayor's budget, our 8.1% rate forecast was restored, but labor and pension costs increased. We balanced those with 1.9 million in annual savings from no longer covering credit and debit card convenience fees. We also are seeing enterprise efficiency savings proposed by the mayor and savings from having one utility director. These changes allow us to preserve the basics of safe water system maintenance and customer service, despite the financial constraints. Next slide. Together, bhs and water manage over 46 billion in utility infrastructure, and our combined five year cip totals 2.8 billion. Much of our critical infrastructure is over 100 years old for bhs, about $1 billion of work is planned across three portfolios treatment and resource recovery, collection system pumping, sanitary and combined systems. These investments ensure regulatory compliance and reduce the risk of service disruptions and environmental harm. Water's priorities include the bull run filtration project, pipeline and seismic upgrades, and transformational projects like the $50 million eight. Excuse me. I want to say ami project because that's all I know. It is the advanced metering infrastructure project. These investments are not just about today. They are how we protect portland's future. And now I'll turn it back to director liu, who will walk you through the broader context of rising utility utility costs and the impact of rate changes on our ability to deliver services.
48 Thank you, director leitch. This slide shows some benchmarking across the country. Standard inflation metrics are important indicators indicators for how costs are changing broadly across the nation. But they tend to underestimate the unique environment that utilities operate within the water sector. From government, financial officer association webinar the top orange line shows the top orange line shown here is focused on utility rate, the cost of doing business nationally for water and wastewater utilities are rising at a significant higher rate than general inflation since the pandemic. So you can see basically doubles every year. So we can anticipate even more increased costs with the tariff increasing and likely further impacting supply availability. This puts added pressure on our bureaus to keep delivering the same level of service, while our expenses continue to surpass revenues. Next slide. It is important to note changes to forecasted rates have only minimal impact on customer bills, but have major impacts to utility revenues and budgets. The previous mayor's budget guidance to reduce the rate of increase by 5% will likely go unnoticed by most customers, but it will have a material negative impact on the utility's ability to manage system risk, including current and future operational and regulatory requirements. Especially, this guidance would have resulted in the average customer seeing a less than 50% reduction to their monthly bill. However, the utilities have needed to reduce our budget expenditures by a little more than 1 million. To offset this reduced revenue. At every step of the way, we try to strike the balance between minimizing impact to our customers and the need to maintain investing and improve our water systems. Next slide. This slide shows the impact of a budget guidance to reduce next year's forecasted rate increase for water from 8.1% to 7.7%, and for bts from 1.15% to 4.89%. The average customer bill impact is about $0.50 a month. This is from the previous slides, but we'll experience a 1 million reduction in revenues to looking to the combined bill. Each Portland utility customer receives the combined bill that includes water, storm water and sewer charges. Each bureau charges its own rate, and the water bureau serves as a billing agent for both bureaus. This utility bill bills provide the revenue that each utility uses to pay for nearly all of our services, at our cost. Costs rises due to inflation, system expansion, and the cost to comply with new and existing regulatory requirements. Our billing revenues must also increase. Water, sewer and stormwater rates are based on the cost of serving each customer. We increase rates only as much as needed to cover our current and future obligations. Both environmental services and water create long term financial plans with the intention of smoothing out the customer impact of these increases. As you heard earlier, we want our rate increase to be modest and predictable, but still sufficient to meet our financial obligations. In previous years, city council has sometimes decided to implement rate increases that are lower than the bureau's projected need. This leaves us without the revenue needed to maintain the level of service our community expects, and increase the risk of system failures, with the potential negative impacts to public health and environmental quality. Reduced rate increases also create future financial liabilities in the form of lower liquidity levels. This can lead to lower lowered credit ratings and also an increased cost of borrowing for the bureaus and the city by maintaining good bond ratings. Our bureaus are able to access the credit markets at the lowest possible interest rates. This produces substantial savings over time for ratepayers. We will be updating this rate profile in the coming months, months likely upward to incorporate economic cost pressure driven by significant inflation and tariffs, ongoing citywide cost increases and ending additional any additional rate revenue such as changes to sdcs fees and charges. With that, I'll turn it back to director lloyd.
49 So, as you all know, reductions have consequences. With most of our budgets, fixed reductions land squarely on our services. Pipe repairs, customer support and system maintenance. Deferred work doesn't disappear. It gets more expensive. Today, portland's utility infrastructure maintenance backlog is estimated at $6.8 billion, with 6.7 billion in bts alone. Let's be clear every cut chips away at the basics. Our ability to respond quickly, prevent system failures, and keep the public safe. This is why consistent investment matters. Without it, we risk more system failures. Failures that don't just come with noise and disruption. They come with public safety risks and a higher price tag for the next generation. Next slide. But here's the other side of the story that we love to share. When we choose to invest not just in pipes, but in people, we build resilience, restore trust, and create stability. These are the kinds of investments that reflect our values and ensure portlanders can count on us. Access to water is a basic need, and next year, our $39 million in affordability programs ensures we don't lose sight of that, even in tight times. These programs serve low income seniors, families, and affordable housing providers. Some programs cut bills by up to 75%. Others offer payment plans, crisis vouchers and storm water management and water conservation support. This isn't just about budget math. It's about the kind of city we want to be. Every investment in access and equity is an investment in portland's long term strength, stability and shared future. With that, I'll turn it back over to dca. Donna paul.
50 Thank you, director light. We've covered a lot of ground today across both the water bureau and biz. And I want to leave you with four key takeaways. First, infrastructure investments are non-negotiable. They ensure compliance with federal mandates, prevent catastrophic failure, and uphold public health. And second, delaying maintenance increases long term costs. $1 million cut today may save $0.48 per month for the average customer, but increases long term risk and expense. Third, our affordability programs are working. We are actively supporting those most in need through income qualified discounts, crisis assistance, ramp for multifamily housing loans and stc waivers to spur development. And finally, every dollar has a story. Each dollar supports a real outcome clean water from a kitchen tap, a sewage system that doesn't back up during storms, or a discount that helps a family avoid shut off. These aren't abstract numbers. They are services portlanders rely on every day. Next slide please. Thanks to our pier directors for walking through the mayor's proposed budget. I want to close with a few reflections about why this work and this budget matters. Next slide. A recent report from a city auditor highlighted what many of us already know. Years of underinvestment have created a growing backlog of costly and urgent infrastructure needs. The assets we manage are essential to the daily life of portlanders, and when we delay maintenance, we increase costs, risk, service disruption and expose the city to legal and regulatory risk. Strategic investment now helps us avoid emergency repairs, protect public health, and stay ahead of failure. Next slide please. Infrastructure is not just concrete and pipe. Investment in our infrastructure is investment in the community, its health and safety, its economic viability and livability. We're living today with benefits of choices made by past generations. The question before us now is what kind of city are we building for the next 100 years? The work we do supports public health and safety, economic and financial resilience, equity, livability, and generational responsibility. We have an obligation for future generations to make sure they can benefit from investments we make today, just as we benefited from investments of previous generations. Next slide please. Infrastructure investments make for good government too. It leads to fewer lawsuits, safer working conditions for employees, and makes progress on climate and resilience goals. Finally, I want to leave with three. Sorry with four again last. Key takeaways. Public works is foundational. Next slide please. We manage the systems portlanders rely on daily transportation, parks, water, stormwater and sewer. The cost of doing nothing. Nothing is rising. A backlog grows by $1 billion every day. Every year. Delay compounds risk, legal liability and generational costs. This is a budget of tradeoffs. Limited resources means we must prioritize core services and protects the assets portlanders depend on every day. We work to present a budget that addresses budget constraints, identifies new revenue, manages rising infrastructure costs and balances affordability with rate adjustments. We are faced with increasing costs for construction and materials and labor, and non-negotiable costs associated with debt servicing and regulatory requirements, and a backlog of necessary maintenance and repairs and increased costs for city services and general fund overhead. To meet those challenges, we've made the tough choices and focused our spending on programs and services that positively impact our community. We're committed to gaining efficiencies through integration of shared services. We have identified new sources of revenue, including parking rates, tnc fees and state highway funds, and we've carefully and thoughtfully planned for necessary increases to rates and fees while balancing affordability for our customers. We are building a sustainable path forward, and strategic investments today will reduce future rate shocks, improve equity and protect our most vulnerable community. And we thank you for your partnership in making these investments in our community. And with that concludes our presentations. And we are now happy to take your questions.
51 Thank you all for the very thorough information. Counselors. We have about an hour and a half, which, as we noted yesterday, is about 7.5 minutes each. I know that a number of folks have amendments that they want to put forward unrelated to this service area, and I'm guessing there are a lot of questions. So for this first round through, if you can, try to keep yourself to that time so that all of your colleagues can get in as much as they can, also, that would be great. We'll loop back around if there's time at the end. Councilor Green jump right in.
52 Thank you, madam president, and thank you all for the presentation today. I want to particularly highlight the framing that you brought at the end dca that. Being penny wise and pound foolish, is costly down the road and leaves our future generations with a bigger asset management problem than we have today. So that's the frame I take here. I have some questions about the sdc aspects of this. I'll start with director long. The sdc was about $13 million, if I recall correctly from the slides. I can't remember exactly, but I guess my question is the sdcs are for building new capacity in the parks, right?
53 Correct.
54 Are we building new parks?
55 In fact, we're opening two in the next two months. Mill park and park Lane park.
56 Okay. So going forward though, is our maybe this is something for council to think about. I'm not necessarily opposed, but I want to know what we want to do with future park production. Because the way the way I see it is, is when you build new parks, then you've increased the operations and maintenance liability, and we're going into a period of time where the only way we're going to do cost control without laying people off is to avoid creating a new operations liability. And so I don't need an answer right now or want to debate it. But that's that's a question I want to think about in the, in the, in the landscape of the mayor and the governor's kind of 5000 homes challenge. I'm really trying to understand the trade offs. I'm pretty pro that I've sort of endorsed the idea, but I want to understand the trade offs so I know how to think about next year and the year after. But I also wonder, so there was like 100 and. Now I'm going from memory. You're drawing. Are you drawing down a balance of sdcs or are those passthroughs?
57 So we are currently drawing down on sdcs for projects that are currently being developed with the mayor and governors. Sdc freeze, we've identified projects we anticipate that we would need $27 million to meet the goal of that of that mandate, I guess, and we've identified future projects that have not had sdcs allocated yet, and some that have. And those will be, I imagine, discussed at some point. And I think it's important to note that mostly our sdc allocations are in the out years. So they're projected.
58 Okay. That's that is helpful. This is probably for dca barry who's in the back. But but you may know director long or dca donna paul do our contingency balances for restricted funds like sdcs. Do they earn interest as part of the broader kind of reserves and investment portfolio? I see some movement back there.
59 We need another chair.
60 I am. This is one of my favorite topics. I'm such a nerd.
61 Yeah, great. For the record, jonas barry, do you say a bunch of finance and city's chief financial officer? Yes. Councilor they do any anything? Sitting in a fund balance anywhere in the city does collect interest. On the city's collectively managed portfolio, and the interest proceeds are dispersed back to those funds.
62 Okay. Thank you.
63 All right. Sorry.
64 That was less dramatic than I thought. There's a question for. On the water and sewage rates. Question. There's an interaction between sdcs. On the one hand, like in terms of its if high stakes prevent development, then you get less development, which means you don't grow your property tax base, which means you don't spread your fixed costs over a larger base. But I also wonder if it's adding new demand for new capacity that offsets it in the other direction. So I'm wondering if the bureau has any thinking on the interaction between those two elements there from like sort of a rate design perspective?
65 Councilor keelan I would like to call upon for who's a finance lead for us to answer that question.
66 And I will leave.
67 Good afternoon, council president. Council. For the record, my name is farshad allahdadi. I'm the business services group manager. Bts. There is an interaction between sdcs and normal rate revenue. We build our rate forecast based on all of our revenues. And so the rate increase that we forecast assumes some level of sdcs to pay down the debt for the investments that we've made. Debt is one portion of use for sdcs, but also o&m costs as well. So I think you're correct that there is some potential upside from new development, but that is not completely the rate. Revenue from that new development does not completely offset the loss of revenue from sdcs, because some portion of that sdc revenue pays for operations and maintenance costs.
68 That's helpful. And just to signal to my colleagues, I'm likely to introduce a budget note to sort of require a conversation rate design over the next year, just just because I think it's time and I'd like to understand more. And I wonder if there's some any other tricks up our sleeves.
69 So I just say counselor Green, we that is something that we are also planning for. So know that we have started that work looking through right now. What are the objectives we want to accomplish with, you know, a rate study and other things. So we are looking at that. And so thank you for that.
70 Okay. I was going to say something else about another budget note, but I don't have any time left. So maybe I'll defer to councilor Novick because it's a joint thing. So I'm done. Thank you.
71 Thank you, councilor, councilor Dunphy.
72 Thank you.
73 I'm going to start by saying. I don't know if this is a budget note or not, but I'm specifically for transportation and for parks. I want to make sure that we are holding east Portland as harmless in discretionary opportunities as possible. And I want to be intentional about that. I've talked about it on this day as a couple times, but as we said, it's wonderful that the mayor is putting more money into street sweeping. But if you don't have a sidewalk and you don't have a curb, you're not getting your street swept. And where those discretions are, where, where there's a discretion ability. I want to make sure that east Portland is held harmless because we simply have less. I also want to introduce an amendment. Right now I'm just going to jump in. I was told by the mayor that leach botanical gardens pass through. Funding was held harmless this year. From the presentation, it seems as though that is not the case. I will disclose my wife does work at leach botanical garden, but it is also our only community garden partner in east Portland and it's a relatively small amount of money. They are moving towards a financial sustainability model, but as of right now are not not sustainable. I've also heard different things. I've heard that they are on the that they're pass through funding has already expired. I heard that they were held harmless. And then I saw in the presentation today that it was being reduced as an amendment. I want to just make sure that that pass through this pass through dollars. Continue. Those are my two the closest things I have to amendment one is very clearly an amendment. I have a couple of quick questions, though. Director williams. I saw streetcar expenditures in $24 million, but I didn't see revenue on that. I may have just missed it. Do we get revenue from streetcar?
74 Good afternoon, jeremy patton with PBOT finance. Yes we do. It's a mix. So what you're seeing in to back up a lot of those expenditures, we do have PCEF resources that are going for the help for the purchase of the cars, but most of the operations is either coming from general transportation revenues. It's also coming from TriMet.
75 Okay. And that's the great numbers question. The next question is sort of more philosophical. Should we still be in the business of running the streetcar? It seems we are often doing things that are not part of our government's job.
76 Did you want to? I can address it.
77 We are having an active conversation now about what the future of streetcar in the city of Portland looks like, looks like, especially in partnership with TriMet. They have been a longstanding partner. They are interested in the same things that we're interested in, which ultimately is service to portlanders and to the region. But we do need to address what has been a long standing conversation, and perhaps even in some folks view, conflict around how we best deliver those services. So for folks information, the operators for the streetcar are TriMet operators. So we work in very close coordination and collaboration anyway, but we are looking at how we might maximize efficiencies in that space. So you can look forward to hearing more about what that will look like as we move into the future. I know that just this morning, apple and gm sam disu were having a conversation after the conversation, that meeting that happened this morning, the city administrator and mr. Disu met earlier this week to talk about that very concept, about how we will, as a community, move forward together.
78 Great.
79 I did want to mention regarding street sweeping and cleaning in community, we do flush streets that don't have sidewalks. We don't do the traditional sweeping as as we would for those with curb, but we do do the flushing there.
80 Excellent, excellent. In that same sort of vein of talking about what the city does and what it doesn't. Director long, I was at the Sellwood community house, which previously was a community center and is now, I mean, still a city owned asset, but it's run by a community group. Are we looking at other models similar to that, to trying to, you know, offload operational dollars onto a nonprofit or trying to look for where community partners could take over some of the things that we're doing. It seems like it's a really good model, and that particular facility seems vibrant.
81 Yeah, that that model began as a part of our 2019 budget cuts. So yes, we've done it in the past and we'd certainly be open to that in the future. And yeah, so we've done that also at, at I want to say hillside, fulton and Sellwood. So we've, we've, we've been fairly successful in having community organizations, nonprofits come in and run some of our smaller community centers.
82 Great.
83 And lastly, I should know, I'm sorry. Two more quick questions. I saw reduction in downtown loo cleaning. I guess I had thought that that was under the contract with clean and safe. Am I incorrect?
84 No, it's not with clean and safe, it's with rapid response and we also we also our staff do cleaning as well. So yes. But so that would be a decrease in the contracting amount okay.
85 Thank you. And then the last question was the reduction in dispatch for rangers. Is there an effort to bring them into the dispatch system under boec.
86 So we're working with 311. We've had conversations with boec, but we're working with 311 to help supplement that work.
87 Okay.
88 Those are all my questions.
89 Thank you, thank you.
90 Councilor Morillo.
91 Thank you, council president. Thank you all for being here and for your presentation. In the interest of time, I'm going to read through my amendments first. So, christopher, wherever you are, I hope you're taking notes. And most of these are related to your service area anyway, so I hope it's still relevant. And then if I have time, I'll ask a few questions. So my first amendment is to transfer $2 million in new one time funding increase provided to the Portland police bureau in the mayor's proposed budget to support ongoing maintenance items for parks that have been proposed for elimination in the mayor's budget. So that's a little bit different than councilor Avalos, because hers uses ongoing funds. So we've been having some discussion about that, but we're values aligned so that mine would include things like playground repairs and the supplies necessary for keeping parks trash free and in good repair, and support for park staff that have been proposed for elimination would be covered by funds saved with councilor Novick call priority amendment, which I'm also deeply in favor of. My next proposal would be something for the city budget office, which I think plays a critical role in providing independent, in-depth analysis of bureau budgets to inform council decisions and recent reductions in the scope of their reviews and analysis. Have limited council's ability to assess trade offs and make evidence based investments. So I'm introducing a budget note that will direct cbo to, among other things, restore cbo's core functions and ensuring transparent routine analysis that supports fiscal accountability and sound governance. I'm reading through these very quickly, but next one I've been working with councilors Novick Green and dunfee to increase transportation network company fees, or tnc fees, as we've been discussing them from the mayor's proposal of $1.30 to $2. And those funds will go to critical infrastructure projects managed by PBOT. Sorry guys, I should have done this earlier, but I was sick all week. So now you're going to get all of them. My next one is the golf reduction to support park services. So as a potential alternative solution to restoring parks maintenance cuts, I am proposing a transfer of up to $5 million from the golf fund. I talked about this during the climate committee today, and this proposal can move in concert with councilor Green's proposal to increase golf fees. So under this proposal, the golf fund will remain funded in line with binding city guidance, which requires that they maintain at least $1 million. But currently they have $7 million. And so it will also provide critical support to parent agency to its parent agency, parks and rec, in this time of budget difficulty, we're getting close. Sorry. My next amendment is to provide $1 million in funding to the Portland housing bureau to offer heightened levels of rental assistance and eviction, legal defense programing to meet demands that have not been met since the federal government has taken those resources away. And I think that's really important, as we're talking about long term housing solutions and not just sheltering people. My next amendment would support the small donor elections program. We are directing one time transfer of $900,000 to ensure that the small donor election, the small donor fund can meet the demand and not have sustainability, lower match caps and match rates in upcoming election cycles. This funding will provide council with time to develop long term, enduring funding strategies for the fund, and I think that's something that really matters to the council and to a large number of members of our public. This fund is key to ensuring that we have people centered elections that are not bought by whoever has the most money. Amendment number seven, this is one regarding the police that I don't think anyone else has discussed before. I am directing that $1 million of the police bureau's special revenue fund be leveraged to launch a program evaluation initiative developed in partnership with external research experts and overseen by the city's performance team and independent police oversight body. So for folks who don't know what the special revenue fund is, it's essentially when at the state and federal, local, state and federal level, police have seized assets and then they accrue money from that. The police have a ton of money in that pool that has remained untouched, that I think they could use to support their own bureau. This initiative will define success up front and use the best available research methods to ensure that council and the public have meaningful research, and not just anecdotes and data in a vacuum on the outcomes and tradeoffs of police strategies. I think that public safety needs to be built on evidence and not assumptions, and I hope that this kind of information will give us all more transparency and evidence based policy in policing. I'm going to move an investment of up to $800,000 to ensure the completion of critical pedestrian safety work on cesar chavez boulevard from powell to schiller, where there have been numerous traffic incidents in my district. And that has been pretty important to my constituents. And finally, I'm going to talk about restoring the two. Cbo analyst proposed for elimination in the mayor's budget, a one time budget analyst and one performance analyst, as I've discussed in the context of my budget note on cbo, cbo's independent evaluations have long served as a backbone of portland's fiscal stewardship and offering vital scrutiny on bureau spending, program performance, and long term budget trends. So I want to ensure that we actually have the expertise needed to support our work in the upcoming budget cycle. Lastly, I discussed this one the other day, but I will be bringing a budget note that provides guidelines to govern the mayor's process for discovering, quote, enterprise efficiencies. I want to ensure that his team checks in with council at regular intervals, in executive sessions, with temperature checks, decision points, and data driven presentations that clearly articulate the impact of programs and individuals. Subjects to the cuts. Jobs are on the line, and so we don't want to hear about theoretical impacts. We want precise discussions about which employees are vulnerable and what the alternatives are moving forward with that. Madam president, I don't know if I have any time left or if you were timing me, but you.
92 Have about a minute left.
93 Okay, well, I'll cede my time, but I did what you wanted me to councilor Zimmerman. So now it should all be written down somewhere. Thank you.
94 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Novick.
95 Thank you, madam president. I will follow my district three colleague in starting by rattling off a bunch of proposed amendments. Some many, many of them related to parks. One amendment would be to raise the reduce the cuts to parks outdoor maintenance by $3 million, by reducing the Portland police budget by that amount, by between 2 and $3 million, which reflects the savings I think the pbb could achieve by ceasing to send armed officers to welfare checks and instead shifting that responsibility to a combination of psr and public safety support specialists, ps3's. If my colleagues are not comfortable making an actual cut to the police budget relevant to that goal, an alternative I would propose is setting aside 2 to $3 million of the police budget that the police can only access if they demonstrate they're making progress towards hiring more ps3's and shifting the responsibility to welfare for welfare checks to ps3's. And in any event, I will propose to increase the position authority for ps3's. Another way, I would propose to potentially raise money to offset the cuts to parks maintenance is to close two parks assets that have serious capital maintenance problems and might need to be closed for that reason, the not too distant future anyway. And to close them three months into the year. Those are the community music center, the Multnomah arts center, nine months of operation of those equals about $1.8 million. I also propose increasing funding for pbem for such things as 24 over seven watch planning positions and training exercise position, increasing pbem funding by $3 million, which I would pay for by reducing council office budgets by 300,000 apiece. Not counting the council president. There's a particular reason why any savings for from council offices should go to pbem, which is that much of the council offices consist of overhead funding, so it can't be automatically transferred to operating funding for any bureau. Pbot pbem, however, is largely an overhead bureau itself, so you can get a one for one bang for the buck. I believe that pbem is woefully understaffed and does not even constitute a skeleton crew to plan for and respond to emergencies. I also may be proposing an amendment to restore two Americans with disabilities act compliance positions, one in pa and one in the office of equity. Do I have any time left? Council president?
96 You do?
97 Okay, I do have a couple of questions or highlights on PBOT. Director williams, it's my understanding that our budget for pavement maintenance this next year will be about $20 million. It's my further understanding that the amount that we would need to be making progress towards having our streets be fair or good position is about $480 million a year. So that's a deficit of about $460 million. Is that correct?
98 That is correct.
99 And as the result of funding pavement maintenance at $20 million a year, is that the maintenance deficit will continue to grow at a rapid rate?
100 That is correct.
101 I also wanted to highlight something I my understanding is that one of the projects that is expected to be funded in part by sdc, funding used as match for federal funding is the 82nd avenue bus rapid transit project, and it's my understanding that you are relying about $6 million in projected sdc revenues for that purpose. Is that correct?
102 That is correct.
103 And finally, I just wanted to note, in response to councilor Dunphy, that I am convinced that ridership and therefore revenues from the streetcar would it would improve dramatically if we took the obvious step of naming each streetcar after an emotion such as, for example, desire. Thank you.
104 That's one of your first emails.
105 Councilor Clark.
106 Thank you, madam chair. First, I just want to say thank you to all the bureaus and dca for all the hard work that you put in developing a budget and now a new budget. It's been kind of an emotional roller coaster, I think, for all of us. And I just appreciate all your hard work. We've certainly had an opportunity in the transportation infrastructure committee to do a deeper dive into some of these areas. So I'm not going to oh, you have something else you need to add.
107 So yeah, I completely forgot something. I'm sorry. Okay.
108 Why don't we let councilor Clark finish and then I'll have you add it in councilor Novick.
109 Okay.
110 Where was I anyway? I know we're all really anxious about what the state legislature is going to do, and depending on the day, it's good news. Again, kind of an emotional roller coaster, but I'm looking forward to good news. I know that's an $11 billion potential $11 million hole potentially. I'll just cut this short by saying I have about six different budget notes or amendments that's relevant to this service area. I believe I'll have a budget note on PBOT. Looking into all of our financial possibilities, all funding options, and actually all of these are going to be submitted tonight so you can get the details. I won't go into any detail here. I'll have two on relating to southwest trails. I'll have two volunteer proposals to create a program, encourage encouraging volunteerism, a lot more detail, and then two on asset management, which I think I may have already. Mentioned, and that will impact this service area. Still working on whether it's an amendment or a just a budget note. And I think all of my others I think I've already discussed, and I just want to say to councilor Dunphy, I think you must be clairvoyant, because we've we've talked about the streetcar before, maybe just in tni committee about that. And I know that TriMet is doing some work on evaluating what it would take for them to take over the streetcar and the Sellwood. I've been working with the Sellwood community house, and I think they're really a model for what we can do across the city, actually. So with that, I think I will end just really appreciate all the work that you've done and your comments about the cost of doing nothing is rising. Thank you.
111 Councilor Zimmerman. I'm sorry. Wait a minute. We're going back to councilor Novick for just a moment.
112 I apologize, I forgot to mention that tonight the PCEF committee will be considering a proposal from councilor Green to offset the proposed cuts in parks, not just parks maintenance, through a $10 million loan from PCEF. And we will be proposing that in order to repay that loan, we would introduce that in concert with the idea of increasing the surcharge of our in our business license tax on corporations that pay their ceos more than 100 times what they pay their median worker. I have discussed an increase to that surcharge with the revenue office that they say would raise approximately 27 million a year, which would be enough to pay off a $10 million loan next year, and also give us more money to guard against the fact of the heavy reliance on one time funding we're making for this year. The tax increase would not generate usable revenue until 2627. So that's why be a package deal with councilor Green's proposal.
113 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Zimmerman, I'm sure you're excited to follow that.
114 I'm going to let that one go. As tempting as it was. Okay, my questions are back to the panel. I'm looking director long at the maintenance line item in your budget from 2324, it was just over 14 million. And in the proposed budget this year, it's about 3.5 million. And it was a stark decrease last year by almost 10 million. I'm just trying to understand that versus park maintenance versus natural area maintenance. But the maintenance budget that was it was 4,000,022. Then it was 14,000,023, and then it was 5,000,024. And now it is 3,000,025. What is that.
115 I would like honestly, I don't know what you're looking at. Exactly.
116 So I'm looking at the proposed budget page 276 of the mayor's proposed. And since this is the only thing we get for a budget, which I will just say is woefully undetailed. That's what I've got.
117 Yeah, I don't have it in front of me. So if you just give me a moment.
118 Sure.
119 My finance person is going to pull it up. Okay.
120 Thanks. While we're doing that, as you all know, I made a an amendment earlier in the or last week regarding tree regulations. And one thing I've certainly learned from that is that we play hide the facts a lot with the way we fund things. And so I have to ask this next question about the natural area maintenance. It's $7.5 million. And I came into this process thinking it was $7.5 million of general fund and or general fund and levy, but there are no documents that I can find that support the makeup of the natural area maintenance fund. Is it general fund, is it levy, is it pcf? Is it magic dollars from something else?
121 Well, I know for natural area maintenance we have not received any pcf funding for that. It is likely levy general fund blend.
122 Okay. Thanks. While your analyst is working on the other 14 million colleagues, I'm just going to clarify my amendments that I made about tree regulations and because because that one amendment is, is really 3 or 4 parts. I'm going to read some into the record. And these are just what I would call polishing of the rock. So the first part is reduce 5,809,968 from urban forestry. And that breakdown breakdown is 756 398 of general fund. And 5,053,570 of parks levy. Reducing that of urban forestry. Excuse me, the second part of that amendment or b is increased park maintenance by that same whole number, 5,000,008 09968 part c reduce 37 fte in parks for tree regulation. Part d increase five fte in pp and for tree regulations for tree inspectors, one senior tree inspector and realign those pcf dollars to pay for those jobs from parks to pd. Basically, the pcf dollars come with those same employees to make them whole. No change to my earlier amendments. It's just clarification there. I also want to offer an amendment for of $50,000 for, excuse me, $50,000 to support the community based trails alliances for sign maintenance, trail maintenance as they see fit to be within the parks bureau. Do we have any more information about the maintenance dollars?
123 Hi. Yeah, hi.
124 My name is claudia camposano, finance property technology manager for vibrant community support services. Yeah. So looking at what you you were pointing to, it's on page 301 of the of the mayor's budget. So this is a breakdown. That is not it's not organizational in nature. It's service service based. And we tend to adjust that year by year. You'll see that there's also a line for parks maintenance that is just a couple of lines below the maintenance line. That goes from 19 million to 25 million. So that's it's really just a question of characterization in order to really look at sort of the organizational, organizational changes, we would want to look at that sort of organizational cut, not this sort of service oriented cut, but but things do move around on a year by year basis as we as we try and re characterize them in terms of like, exactly what is the nature of that service and in this case making it more precise.
125 This is going to sound mean. But that was deeply unsatisfying. So we move things around based on what we want to call it. Each year is essentially how that broke down, because, I mean, ultimately, we go from a $4 million budget to a $14 million budget from 22 to 23.
126 Yeah, and.
127 Seems like there must have been some project because the 19 only went up to 23. In that same other line you're comparing it to.
128 Yeah. As I said, this is not a this is not a slice of the budget that we typically work, work from, from a planning perspective. So this is largely so we typically will work with the organizational components. So the different the different different fund centers. This is sort of a functional approach. And often things get miscategorized particularly in actuals. So I think you'll see that in a lot of throughout the city budget sort of numbers bouncing around because of where they end up, where those actuals end up getting charged. So I recognize that it's not satisfying, but I would be happy to walk you through sort of an organizational picture of the of the how we deliver maintenance in the bureau.
129 I I'll introduce a budget note that'll come in later, but I just colleagues I just use this as another example that we have such a need to wash this budget system down the drain after June 30th, because this does not work when this is the only printed document provided and it just has byline numbers on it. And then we're told those byline numbers are not accurate, numbers not perceived correctly. And earlier this week, my last week of battling of you can't actually defund the tree regulation program because it has pcf dollars in it. So pcf dollars are permanent where they stand, unearthing the amount of budgetary hide. The rock that exists in this organization is a full time job. And I mentioned yesterday that I was interested in the city administrator and cfo bringing a package forward for what it would take to hire up in our cbo office, as well as to really, I think, gut the business analysts who seem to only report to their bureaus instead of through cbo, because I don't know that we can actually function as a government moving forward with this type of budget document, when everybody should be working for one boss and they seem to still be in a system and not their fault, but a computer system, a budget system that is designed really for the five commissioners of yesteryear. So I just this is a parks is one of the most difficult because of its recent influx of pcf parks levy and general fund, but this exists in all bureaus. This exists in in nearly every single area, and I don't think we're ever going to be able to be as transparent and as precise in what we want to deliver. As long as the document we're given with the numbers is not actually the document with the numbers. Right. These, these these are these are sentences that don't make sense. And we're going to pass this thing which we should, but we're going to pass this thing. And a whole lot of it is on faith. And that's it. Thank you.
130 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
131 Thank you, madam president. And thank you to this esteemed panel of leaders who presented this afternoon. The good news is I will not ask you any questions. As explained earlier, now's the time to share some budget amendments and budget notes for your consideration. My basic theme here is save our storefronts, or s.o.s. The first amendment is supporting our storefronts. Continue and expand, restore and repair grant program. We allocate 1.5 million from prosper portland's general fund resources to the restore and repair grant program. The program is funded in fiscal year 2425 with one time funding, which we heard yesterday, ran out before December, and no funding is included for this program. And prosper portland's 2526 proposed budget. We need to continue this vital support lifeline for our local businesses. The second amendment is supporting our storefronts, storefront vacancy assessments, allocating 529,999 $997 for ongoing funds to build capacity in the small business office for two related bodies of work performed surveying that will produce baseline data of the number of empty storefronts and businesses in Portland. These surveying efforts will result in creating an inventory of vacancy storefronts that will be presented in annual reports to the city council. The goal of this program will be to provide valuable point in time data and an overall picture of the local business ecosystem to help inform city council policy decisions regarding the storefronts in our business community, perform exit interviews with businesses who relocate out of the city of Portland, or close altogether. This information from these interviews interviews will provide valuable quantitative and qualitative data on reporting and can help inform the city council policy decisions regarding our storefronts and our business community. A third amendment I'm offering is supporting our storefronts again in the sos category is a response network. This amendment will allocate 207,000 in ongoing funding to formalize citywide response system that serves local businesses hit hard by crime, vandalism and livability issues. In recent years. As mentioned, many businesses have or are considering closure or relocating, and it's imperative that the city adequately meets the needs of the local businesses and storefronts. Now more than ever, we must avoid sliding further down a doom loop. The goal of this amendment is to provide local businesses with coordinated and managed response to safety and livability issues that they report to the city, and to do that, formalize internal coordination and management is needed. The proposal will strengthen the good work of many partners, internal and external, to the city and the multi-organizational model that includes weekly problem solving meetings that include the police bureau, Portland solutions environmental management team, pmo clean and safe, the mayor's office, of course, the business community reps and the community of volunteers. The support of our storefront amendments are targeted efforts to ensure that the city is responsive to the needs of our storefronts, that we will uphold our businesses as valuable partners in our city's path forward. When they are doing well, we have a healthy budget. This morning, it was reported that Portland is experiencing a slight increase in population after four years of decline. Slight is helpful and it's promising. In recent years, the city council has made many tough decisions to respond to the extreme public safety concerns on our streets and began to build 911 fire and police to respond to this reality. Allow me to highlight just a couple of examples. We lobbied actually beg the state to edit the ill timed legalization of hard drugs on our streets. Measure 110. Since the treatment center promises did not materialize, only the increase in open air illegal drug use and associated crime increases happen in those areas of usage. We built shelters with services, so there are places for homeless people to go that are safe. This past summer, after four years of making hard decisions with countless portlanders screaming at decision makers like me to do something to improve the livability in this city, people actually started to stop me on the street and say, thank you, Dan. Things are actually improving in Portland. And so listening to many of these amendments that include cutting the police bureau, which has the lowest staffing levels for a city of our size, I asked myself why, when the city has made gains in the past four years to stabilize public safety ecosystem, why is the defunding police rearing its head again on this dais? When you listen to the storefront owners, when you listen to the people on their porches, when you talk to parents in parks and schools, they tell you, please focus resources to ensure quicker police response and more police assistance in crime and chronic livability issues in our neighborhoods. They want us to invest in police, and if we want our tax revenues to improve in the future years, you should too. Here's the doom loop reality. If we cut the police budget, residents and businesses leave Portland. It erodes our tax base further. Less money for our city services, declines in public satisfaction. And yes, the continued exodus of people and their businesses will persist. We can't backpedal at this juncture when we finally have momentum. I want to thank mayor wilson for providing a balanced budget with difficult tradeoffs. The mayor was elected across districts one, two, three, and four with a clear mandate to end unsheltered homelessness in our city. The mayor responded with a balanced budget that includes investments to stabilize core city services. Mr. Mayor, you are the only elected person who has the weighty responsibility to produce a balanced budget across the city bureaus. You have gone to great lengths to connect with everyone on this council to make this a collaborative process. Thank you for those thoughtful efforts. We should all show our appreciation for the difficult decisions that you and your team have made. And to send my comments.
132 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal.
133 Thank you very much, madam president. So I will be proposing two standalone budget notes. One, they're both for revenue, instructing them to explore and report back on two different potential revenue generating projects by next year's city administrator's recommendations. That's a timeline. One is on a vacancy fee for both residential and commercial. Those can be separated, analyzes, and the other is a package delivery fee on a per delivery basis for non-food deliveries, which colorado and minnesota have recently done something similar on that. There's this is not a proposal for a new tax or fee at the moment, but something I'd like to get information on for the future. I'd also like to clarify one of the amendments that the only one of mine, although I've said a few that is in the tracker right now, it says $2 million to restore funding for one year of operations for sunderland rv park. This is actually for nine additional months. It's already funded through the end of September. It is $1.95 million and it is one time dollars. So just clarifying what that was in there, and that's going to be part of an amendment package that I'm going to be bringing forward that is not exactly ready yet for prime time. I do want to mention a few that are currently getting close to ready or ready. We're just verifying a couple of numbers here. So I reserve the right to adjust the dollar amounts. The first package is to replace one time dollars with ongoing dollars at boec for eight limited duration telecommunicators at the chat program for one of their $2 million of city funding, reserving the rest as one time and $281,000 roughly, of ovp ceasefire grant funding, which is all one-time dollars. And to swap that out with ongoing dollars that would be replaced by one-time dollars, separate from the other amendments you've heard for the police bureau, this is a rough estimate of the amount of money that was used for the protest response in November, as well as the holiday markets in December. These numbers may adjust. This is not a cut I stress not a cut. Another package will restore some of the funding for eliminated positions around the city. I'm going to get that in email to cbo by and fund that by reducing by instructing the mayor to reduce non public safety, general fund deputy directors and reclass some of those positions with managers one level below. We have a lot of management bloat. Our organizational chart needs to look like a pyramid and not like a column. And this would be accompanied with examining as well bureau director salary scales, because a year ago, bureau directors reported to elected officials, and now they report to two layers between them and an elected official. And so that's just a reexamination. A third one is to fund out of the strategic investment fund at prosper, $500,000 of the of the excuse me for the repair and restore grant. I'm hearing councilor Ryan's argument for more money, and I am potentially interested in talking about that with him as well, as well as $50,000 for the large event stability grant. These are grant programs that help keep our largest events stable, but also looking at what they what we lose when a large event moves out of our city. We've had a lot of. First off, we need to look at what large constitutes as well. I think there's some question of where you draw the line there, but large events help drive our economy. They help drive our tourism. They help drive our image as a city and ensuring that we are keeping our windows when they are unfortunately smashed in, replaced, as well as those large events in the city is going to help our recovery. A fourth one is removing a vacant position at the city attorney's office and transferring that budget to for a deputy city attorney and transferring that budget to council operations for as external materials and services to fund a outside legal counsel for the purpose of assessing separation of powers and charter interpretation issues. Another is to eliminate the office. I mentioned this one yesterday. Eliminate the chief engagement officer position. Add an analyst to for council for community engagement, as well as external materials and services to make up that difference. These are ongoing dollars to council operations as well as move one of the analysts threes that does community engagement from I think it's in the administrator's office or civic life. I am verifying that to council operations as well. So that's two positions that would move over. And the last one is to add $3.4 million of one time dollars to the citywide obligation reserve funds sub fund. Before I get to that one, it is a city administrator, not civic life in the previous one and the last one I'm here to that I can read out here, is adding $3.4 million of one time dollars to the citywide obligation reserve fund, the sub fund for the office of community based police accountability, and designating that the existing $3.4 million of ongoing dollars, which is already allocated to independent police review, is not part of the ocpa budget, and that's to ensure charter compliance because, as I noted yesterday, right now we are funding a agency that is not allowed to be funded with a certain pool of dollars, which is the 5% allocation for the community board for police accountability out of those dollars. And it's unfortunate we have to put in amendments just to comply with the charter that that voters approved. But that is the world we live in right now. So I will be sending all those via email out. There is one more I'm working on that. Hopefully I'll just note all of these are balanced except for that last one, except for the fact that they actually free up ongoing dollars and commit more one time dollars, which is the better direction, I hope to the tune of about 1.7 million by our back of envelope math that we're verifying by tomorrow. Do I have any time left. For minute? Great. I just want to comment on some stuff that came up here. Then I'll take that opportunity. I understand that opening parks can be a liability that's currently unfunded, and I think that's a really important note that councilor Green made. I think parks density in an area is something that you use already, and I'm grateful that you use it, because I'll note that both mill park and park Lane park are in east Portland. I think it's vital that we also look at maybe reducing, but focusing, right? I am very uninterested in privatizing or closing community centers or transferring out the streetcar, but I will say I asked a similar question to you earlier today. Councilor Dunphy, about park ranger dispatchers, and that is part of the one that I am not quite ready for yet. I think if we're going to give this function over to 311, we want to make sure that they're staffed enough to do that function. And there are three people who've been doing that job, so it might be worth considering if some or all of them are able to move over with those position authorities to the 311 program. Thank you, madam president.
134 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
135 Thank you, madam president. Thank you all.
136 For the presentation today.
137 I was looking at your decision packages. There's a decision package on page 58 and it says deputy city administrator staffing support. This package creates an interagency agreement that realigns six existing positions from the Portland bureau of transportation, Portland water bureau and bureau of environmental services to public works service area level operation and initiatives. These are not new positions. They are repurposed from existing roles within the three bureaus, with each bureau offsetting costs through corresponding reductions to ensure a net neutral citywide impact. These roles will operate at the service area level to support cross bureau functions, strategic planning, and unified implementation of key initiatives. I. A balancing PBOT. This package balances interagency costs between PBOT permitting and development, and in this package it didn't deliver. It did not identify what the dollar amount even though it's across the board trade, it doesn't have a dollar amount in which it's worth. I 58 of the mayor's budget.
138 Thank you. I want to check with I'm going to defer to. For one point. Councilor Smith. It's $1.3 million.
139 So that's $1.3 million that's going to stay in PBOT. Or is it going to the deputy city administrator staffing support?
140 It is repurposing of positions from within the three public works bureaus to.
141 You all are giving to.
142 To serve service area wide initiatives.
143 Right. But it's going to you're going to move those because they're taking supposedly six from their department. And you guys are swapping of sorts or you're giving them you're giving them six positions. And so they've gotten rid of positions and realignment. And what I've noticed about this realignment, it's not really realignment. It's just moving the shell. It's a shell game. This one moves realignment. They say it's not adding or subtracting. You put six over here and then the six over here puts another three over here and another three over there. So I mean it's it is so confusing and frustrating when dollars and cents are not used and fta fte specifically and how much they make are not used. I don't know how much of that 1.3 is in services and materials. So that part I'm equally as frustrated as councilor Zimmerman is about this, about this process. But what I want to say is there's another one in the water bureau realignment, deputy city administrator, staffing support. This package creates an interagency agreement that realigns six existing positions from PBOT, the water bureau, the bureau of environmental services to support public works service area level operations. So that also gives the city administrator additional folks that he's taking from your from your budget area. And so I don't like it. I don't like this this kind of shell game that's going on because they can't convince me that the work that you all are doing in your public works is going to be the same thing that's going to be doing in the administrator's budget, because that's not what they do. They direct. They direct executive agencies. Go ahead.
144 Thank you. Councilor, if I could offer some clarity on those six positions and the $1.3 million, their positions from within the public works bureaus that are being elevated to the public works service area, and particularly they are they are for helping with key service area initiatives like the unified cip work that is happening within our public works service area that will benefit PBOT and water and bees, and also the one water initiative that was rejected for the public works service area to do, which will benefit water and bees and the other constituent services and counsel office. You know, communications that we are coordinating between our three public works bureaus at this point. And when parks joins us, the funding allocation will be shared by the four public works bureaus at that time. So this is purely this is strictly to benefit the public works bureaus and the public works, key initiatives that are that have been directed for us to take on, as well as the transitions that are coming, upcoming transitions with respect to water bodies as well as parks joining us as well.
145 I understand. So there's 12 positions that there's 12. There's one in this one six. And then there's a second, a second one that that gives away another six. And so I understand. But they're going to be directed and they're going to be managed by the city administrator. If they're going to be doing work in the service area, why aren't they being managed by you?
146 They will be managed by me. Councilor. And they're not 12 positions. They're six positions. In addition to the one water director, which will be the position that will oversee both water and biz.
147 So I'm not clear. Are those people coming from the city administrator's office and you guys are swapping, or why do they have to do realignment?
148 They are coming from the they are repurposed from within the bureaus and elevated to the service area level. And they will be in my office.
149 Exactly. So that's what I'm asking. Why do you have to put that in writing if you if you're already over them, why do you have to put a realignment in here?
150 I think that's a question.
151 For the technical question. Chairman powell PBOT finance. What's happening is transactional level. It's moving two positions from each of the bureaus into the deputy city administrator's budget. So it's a net zero gain across the city. We're just moving two from each into the deputy city. The reason we have to do that is legally, in order to have those positions hired within those certain areas, the we have to pass the authorized fte counts, and those are by the different bureaus, and it's a separate bureau within those authorized fte counts technically. And so that's the transaction that's just moving those positions to the correct place.
152 But the deputy city administrator had to get rid of some, some positions in order to accept them to do across alliance. No.
153 No, there were only two. There's only two positions currently there. And then we're moving another 6 or 7.
154 It says.
155 This realigned six existing positions from PBOT, Portland water bureau and biz.
156 Correct. Two from each.
157 So that's two, four, six. And so they're going to be under the city administrator's office now.
158 Correct.
159 Under the. Dca office.
160 Under the deputy.
161 City, under your under your. Okay. Okay. That's what I was trying to figure out. Why why do we have to do that. And they have it under realignment okay. So the other piece is. There is a. A Portland solutions street services coordination center derelict rv cash transfer to PBOT. This request is for $1 million from the general fund, one time only for the Portland bureau of transportation for derelict and recreational vehicles, and this program ensures that PBOT vehicle inspection teams contact individuals, offer service, and explains laws and codes. So are these folks working in conjunction with PBOT or just coming from pbot's budget to Portland solutions?
162 They are. They would be pbot's employees that are doing the work. The funding is coming from Portland solutions to create the opportunity for more of that work to be done.
163 Okay.
164 We have what's called a fit team and that team of roughly ten parking enforcement officers have added to their responsibility to their scope of work. The opportunity to go out and provide that service. And so we have any number of folks who move from either those vehicles that are being lived in on the street or rvs into some sort of housing, or they're moving their rvs into, like the safe refuges, we help to support that work happening.
165 Perfect. So the big $100 million question is you all reduced your general fund shortfall. That was $38 million. How did you all do that? Where did the money come from?
166 How did how did we reduce the $38 million gap? How did we eliminate that gap? There were several things. One, just last week you this council approved the $80 million bond financing solution for the ADA ramps. That was a roughly $10 million that we would have been paying. So that's ten. We have the opportunity to increase parking rates. And we provided the numbers on that. And jeremy can I can look in my notebook, but jeremy can provide those numbers. He has them off the top of his head. So that was a portion of the gap, the ppe and interagency expenses. The city administrator made a determination that PBOT would provide less funding to that interagency agreement. So the gap was made smaller.
167 At the 9.5 million.
168 No, not 9.5. Was it. For roughly $4 million?
169 4 million. Okay.
170 So parking ADA ramps, the tnc, the proposed tnc fee increase, which would cover a portion. And there's always one that I forget.
171 Is the $11 million that we expect to get from the state. Is that how you.
172 Did that? That's the final component.
173 Yes. So I wanted to make you aware, and I don't know if you know, but I, I bet, you know, because you followed this kind of stuff yesterday. There was a forecast done at the state level. And apparently now they're short by $500 million. And so that may have an impact on what we get and what's passed in the budget for transportation. Yes. And so if we don't get our $11 million, are we prepared to be able to backfill whatever that $11 million is?
174 We would have a plan to make reductions to the tune of $11 million in order to backfill. That would be something that the mayor and this council would have to help to support, identifying funding to fill that gap.
175 And so.
176 Councilor, I'm noting that it's been about ten minutes.
177 Okay. Just one question. I it's there's two things here. About how many vacant ftes do you have right now? Across the one water system.
178 Across the service area.
179 Yeah, the service area, the public works service area.
180 I think water and b b is none.
181 We have some ten or so.
182 Pbot has roughly 145.
183 Okay. And my last amendment, madam president, there was an article in the paper on the 14th that said that the Multnomah county chair, she added 19.5 million of new shelter beds. We've added new shelter beds for hours are kind of the safe rest villages are like 38 million. So I have an amendment. I want to make sure that cip is passed, and I don't know how I can make this budget note, but I think we all need to talk because somebody needs to give up their shelter beds because it is causing us to take a back seat to our infrastructure. So I want to put an amendment down. I want to take away $8 million from the 25 that's in the housing joint office and make a budget. Note that we need to get together during our joint office, and we need to hash out who's shelter plan we're going to use. I'm not taking money from the mayor's new shelter, Portland solutions, or even the safe rest villages for 38 million. I am taking it off that 31 million, which is now 25. I want to take that 8 million off of that piece of money. Because if we're going to be doing shelter beds, we should not be giving them money. And somebody needs to say, hey, we're going to we're going to produce ours because they're adding new when they should be paying for ours. So I want to make a budget note of that. $8 million for cip to pay debt service and to have a conversation to say, whose shelter beds are we going to put online and pay for?
184 Okay.
185 Thank you counselor.
186 Thank you.
187 Counselor Avalos.
188 Okay. All right. Hello.
189 I am going to read my amendments, so I'm sparing you all of hard questions. I don't have any right now. Thank you though. Now a couple of things. So the following amendments are still in draft form, but I'd like to get them on the record as a placeholder as everyone else is doing. I am still working with cbo to identify some of the fund sources, as well as waiting to see how some of the revenue generating ideas that my colleagues are proposing evolve. So as a result, I may amend my amendments based on other people's amendments. And the way I'm going to read these are also listed in priority order for me. So you all see to which ones I'm going to be fighting hardest for are the ones closer to the top of my list. Before I do that, I have to say one thing. I have heard people often on this dais speak about shared sacrifice. If that is what we truly believe, why do we not hold every bureau accountable for participating in a budget exercise to critically assess what is needed to maintain basic service levels to all portlanders during a dire budget? I completely reject any notion that a police budget of over 300 million has no room to give. I reject the fear mongering that suggests any reduction will result in literal chaos on our streets. Put plainly, labeling the efforts of many of our colleagues to hold a bureau accountable for their spending as defund the police is offensive not just to me, but to the thousands of portlanders who have weighed in over the years asking for common sense community safety solutions. This is not 2020 anymore. We as a society have collectively moved on and grown our understanding of what our communities really need to feel safe, and that understanding is clearly reflected in what we've heard over the last few months in our listening sessions in the polls. And what they say is community safety is parks. It's economic opportunity, it's infrastructure to reduce crime through environmental design. I'm not interested in coded language. I'm interested in results, and I'm demanding them of every single bureau. On that note, my first amendment number one transfer 2 million to the parks and rec to offset parks maintenance cuts. Amendment two transfer 2.5 million to parks and rec to offset parks programing cuts. Number three move 75% of projected police and fire overtime funds out of bureau based budgets and into a council controlled policy set aside and require that bureaus require bureaus to submit formal justifications for overtime drawdowns, subject to approval or delegated criteria set by the cbo. Number four add 1.4 million to the Portland housing bureau, 400,000 for a rent subsidy for everett station loft tenants, and 1 million for the preservation of affordable housing units. Number five grant 1.5 million from the opioid settlement funds to help for health complete its new mental health facility in east Portland. Number six set aside 15 million in contingency to cover increases in health care costs that would impact the fy 2627 fiscal year. Number seven, a budget note, the mayor will instruct the citywide services of communications, engagement and equity to work together on a unified strategic vision for how these services will be standardized to provide better outcomes for portlanders. Before any cuts to staffing are made, the mayor will use the strategic plan and work with the chief officers to identify efficiencies and cuts, while maintaining the level of service needed to achieve outcomes identified in the plan. Number eight transfer $477,949 to the office of civic life to restore funding for the diversity and civic leadership program and the district coalition offices. Number nine add funding to expand 311 staffing and service delivery capacity, including multilingual support and digital access. Improvements. Require an evaluation of service performance, call response times and equity outcomes, with recommendations presented to council ahead of fy 26 seven budget and number ten transfer x amount of dollars. Still working that out to the small donor elections program to ensure that it can operate fully for the 2026 election cycle. Thank you. That is all.
190 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
191 All right.
192 Thanks so much for being here. Council president and I were messaging about how cool it is to have all these strong women of color leaders up here. It's awesome. All right. Taking the opportunity to speak into the record, my intent to propose the following for consideration during the approved budget hearing on may 21st, I intend to submit a budget note regarding vision zero. I've already spoken about this. It's mostly about increasing the frequency of reporting to make it at least quarterly disaggregating data. Committing to use the equity matrix. I also intend to submit a budget note regarding tribal relations. This amendment is being reviewed by folks in the office of government relations to make sure that it aligns with the work that is already in progress, and that they are doing. I intend to bring. Possibly okay, I intend to possibly. I still need to talk to dca a little bit more about if I'm going to bring a budget note to specifically name which key leaders will be accountable to. The city's vision zero action plan. We'll talk more in the next less than 24 hours. We'll make it happen. In addition, I intend to bring a budget amendment that ensures that the work of vision zero and traffic safety is made whole in the fy 2526 budget and also, along with councilor Dunphy and possibly another councilor or two, I plan I intend to submit an amendment that ensures current capacity in the office of equity and human rights for the equity efforts related to. Lgbtqia to plus communities is maintained, and I look forward to working together with all of you and all the amendments and budget notes that are being offered.
193 Thank you, councilor Colleagues. Two of our colleagues said they have quick things they forgot, so I'm going to go to them next, councilor Dunphy.
194 Thank you, madam president. Very quickly, I would like to introduce an amendment as well that would raise the exemption level for our budget. Our business license tax is currently set at $50,000. Gross gross business income. We are going after uber drivers and charging and minimum wage workers to charge a 2% 2.5% business license tax. My amendment would increase that to $100,000.
195 Thank you, councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
196 Thank you. For the last two decades, the city administrator's office has had a downtown marketing initiative. But the around the $200,000 range, I cannot find it in the budget. It looks like it was left out or directly and purposely excluded from the budget. So I'm proposing an amendment to add $225,000 for the downtown marketing initiative back into the city administrator's budget. Thank you.
197 Thank you, councilors. I am going to try to ask a few questions and still have time for my budget notes and amendments. Director williams, what would this schedule be for street sweeping under the $3.1 million proposal that you put forward?
198 Sure, within the first year we would enhance the current leaf district map. So more districts would be or neighborhoods would be included in that. We would also be making the purchases of equipment and hiring staff. You would see a small increase in the amount of residential street sweeping that would occur. However, the $3.1 million that's coming from bhs would be dedicated to those streets that have the ms4 permit requirements attached to that. So there's the drainage and stormwater efforts that need to be aligned. Well, so that's how that would be prioritized. But you would not see more much more than the current level of street sweeping in year one, because we simply do not have the capacity. When the program was cut in 2023, 20, 20, 23. With that went staff as well as equipment, and so it takes time to ramp back up to the efforts to the expectations that would lead us to having ultimately 3 to 4 sweepings per year or cleanings per year. Also, the first one would be need to be an impact cleaning, because it has been three years since we've gone into residential streets, and so it would be more than just sweepers and flushers. It would be more like a leaf day operation all over town. So it would take a significant level of effort.
199 So for non leaf district residential streets in year two, you would assume about a quarterly cleaning.
200 Every three jody.
201 There you go. Thank you. You're welcome. Jody yates I'm the.
202 Pbot's maintenance operations director. So in year two we would continue to acquire more equipment and more staff. We'd probably be in a 2 to 3 times sweeping in the second year. In addition, we'd also be adding in some signage and parking enforcement officers so we could actually clean to the curb. And so we'd be rolling that in in year one and year two, and by year three, we'd be at quarterly sweeping.
203 Okay. And for our more major streets that are already receiving some sweeping in that would benefit from those additional funds from bhs, how often would those be swept? Once we're at full capacity of the program.
204 They are currently being swept at 6 to 8 times per year.
205 And that would double. That would increase by 3 to 4 more.
206 No, we would keep those about at that same frequency.
207 Got it. So 6 to 8 times a year every other month or so for major streets and quarterly for residential streets, for the cost that we have in this year's budget.
208 Yes, ma'am.
209 Okay. Thank you very much. There was a transfer, and I'm not sure if this is a biz or if this is a PBOT question, but there was a transfer of $35 million for maintenance that isn't moving forward. And I'm trying to understand what the long term risk of that is. Is that something that we will need to put back in the budget in the next year or two, so that we don't have failures of our systems moving forward? Or is that something where we're doing excess maintenance that we don't need to be doing?
210 Are you referring referring to the cooperative work agreement for sewer maintenance?
211 This was part of pbot's budget presentation.
212 $35 million reduction, 3.3 $3.4 million reduction. And it's 24 staff that are related to that reduction.
213 And so I can take that first down.
214 And so basically.
215 This is a cooperative.
216 Work agreement. Bts pays for PBOT for complying with our stormwater and conveyance system permit compliance. Because of everything is rising the cost whether it's wage and everything. So there is a baseline of what we have been paying from the last year. And then based on that, and then we are also looking to the cost of service and impact of a permit compliance. So we have a paid increase of $3.3 million to PBOT. But still, considering what their cost increase and there is additional need. So we look for compromise that is continue meeting the permit compliance. But it's also having that balance to support our budget.
217 And I understand that we're meeting compliance. Still, my concern is that if we are going to have to add back in this money down the line so that we don't have failure of our systems, I think that my colleagues and I need to know that now, so that we can be thinking ahead for how we might replace those dollars. I worry when we say we're cutting 24 positions who do regular maintenance, given the track record of our city and maintaining our assets?
218 Yeah, we definitely the team members are working to finalize the updated work agreement. We're looking to the new level of service, and we are also looking to leveraging additional tools and technologies and how to be more efficient. So we can definitely provide more update as we finalize the agreement.
219 Okay. I'd like to know more about what the need will be moving forward there.
220 Yeah, we'd love to share with you. It's definitely challenging there.
221 Okay.
222 On the park side, director long, there are significant cuts after this summer to the summer free for all program. And I'm wondering how that program was funded before levy funds were available. Because we had an extensive program before we had levy funds, we then took over most of the costs with levy funds. And now when the levy is cut, we're talking about limiting program. What did we do before to pay for this, that we should consider doing again so that we don't have this deep of cuts?
223 Certainly prior to the levy, private fundraising largely supported summer free for all. It was led quite heavily by former commissioner Nick fish and with staff from Portland parks and recreation.
224 Thank you. And as we move forward, thinking about the 2026 year, what will the impact to luncheon plays, where we know many of our kids in our community get free lunches in the summer, be given the cuts that you're proposing.
225 That's unknown at this time. And we're we are suggesting that summer free for all would be reduced in 2026, not completely eliminated. And so we would have to work with our partners, who we work with pbs and others on the free lunch program. So right now it's unknown. I could do a little bit of reconnaissance with our staff to see if they've had any conversations with pbs and the other school districts, but they too, are experiencing some financial difficulties.
226 So thank you. I want to ask more questions about that as we move toward next summer and have a better sense of what the funding will be. Colleagues, I'll be proposing a budget note to ask parks to come forward by October 1st, with a plan for how they might maximize outside funding and develop a fundraising strategy so that we can maintain summer free for all programing at the levels that we have seen over the past few years. I'll also have a budget note directing the office of government relations to deliver a report to the council by September 1st on its plan to hire a tribal relations director, and to include updates to us in the city administrator's report quarterly on how they're using tribal relations money. Until they hire that program director, I will have a budget amendment adding two additional coordinator twos to the council clerk's office for $339,000, a budget amendment reclassifying an administrative three position within council ops to an analyst three position in order to better serve us with the work that they do for $24,000 and a reduction package to our own budgets by $200,000 each to cover those costs, as well as offset some of the additional costs that have been included in the mayor's proposed to better serve our body. I will also have a budget note asking for. Reports on outcomes of the new shelter plan, so that we can better understand, as funds are allocated to a new shelter program in our city, what the outcomes are. I will have those specifics when I bring that note forward. I'm sorry, I don't have them all today. I believe everything else on my list I have already read into the record, thank you very much. And it looks like councilor Canal is back in the queue for a second go and councilors, we have about 15 more minutes, so I'll ask for you to just take two minutes each. Here.
227 Thank you. Yeah, I think it's been said many times throughout this process that priorities are the things that we're doing here, right. Councilor Novick reminded a few of us in the past that, you know, we are deciding between a and b at any given moment. And I think we also need to expect our bureaus to do that. And so I agree completely with councilor Avalos and your earlier point that we need to be prioritizing here around what's actually going to deliver a city that cares for its people and helps us all thrive. And when I talk to business folks, business owners around, you know, asking for police to respond to their calls is the core thing that they're referring to and not to do the things that are outside of that scope. And that's been a big part of this conversation that's sort of separate from the budget, but is going to feed in here, too. And I also think that one of the things that makes it easier to run a business here is when and this is my pivot to PBOT is when we have support from our bureaus that provide the infrastructure support. There was reporting about living room wines yesterday, who put in on lombard in north Portland, which put in a seating area with PBOT approval from January, building it through may. And if you haven't been, you should check this place out. By the way, everybody but. And then we're told by ODOT that they could not do so and PBOT did not have the original authority to authorize this permit in the first place. Pbot, according to the reporting. And please correct me if any of this is wrong, because I'm not. I'm just going off of this PBOT offered $1,000 for something that had already had $11,000 of sunk cost, and would have additional costs to either. Disassemble it or move it to the sidewalk, which is evidently allowable. So I guess my question is, is this something that you have budgeted for to fully reimburse? Where does that come from? And can we make sure that this business is made whole?
228 Yes. Thank you so much, councilor Kanal, for bringing that up. I was actually hoping someone would, because I did want to have the opportunity to speak to the fact that, yes, PBOT staff did allow for the permit to move forward. We thought that the notion was great that the shop there would benefit from having what many community members benefit have as a benefit in their neighborhoods. With the outdoor dining, one of the failures in our process was to appropriately acknowledge that we did not have authority for that portion of the roadway, and when ODOT identified that, they did immediately let us know. But that was some months into the planning. Obviously, the structure wasn't there until it was, and it is a beautiful structure. And what I have instructed the staff to do is not just reimburse the permittee for the cost of the permit, which is the roughly $1,000, but we are going to work with them to move the structure at our cost. They will not need to expend any additional dollars to move or place the structure in another location, and we'll make sure that they are made whole. That was instruction that was given to our chief engineer and the team that is responsible for that work. We don't want to be a hindrance to people being able to move their businesses forward and be successful in the spaces. It is a beautiful space. I intend to go there tonight myself, but I'm glad that you brought it up because the direction has been given that we will make that entity whole. Do we have a lot of money lying around to provide that wholeness? No, but we do have some, and we will make sure that we will correct the problem and make sure that the relationship with that business owner is strong and with the community is strong. I'd also like to share that ODOT was not, you know, putting down the hammer as much as it was. Hey, we see this discrepancy and we work with ODOT all the time, almost daily to ensure that our service is seamless to community. And this is going to be another opportunity for us to demonstrate that when we see that we've done something that might be misaligned with people's expectations, that we take the time to fix it, that we address it in a meaningful way, we do it swiftly, as shared very early on in our conversations with this council, one of three of the questions that I ask of PBOT staff is it done? Is it done right and is it done well? And we intend to move forward with excellence in the delivery of our services in all of the ways that we are working with community. So you can expect to see an update there very soon.
229 Thank you. And you weren't kidding. You were prepared to talk about it. So thank you. And I appreciate it. I want to say like we're all going to make mistakes. I'm not implying any bad faith here. It seems very much like a good faith effort to try and support the business. And when we mess up, we'll make we'll get it right. And I appreciate.
230 We acknowledge we acknowledged it, we apologize. And I've been in constant communication all day today, even with others in the business community who are concerned about what this represents. And I have sought to make sure that they're clear that this is not something that they need to be concerned about, but rather that PBOT wants to be and will continue to be a good partner.
231 Thank you so much. Thank you, madam president.
232 Councilor zimmermann.
233 Thank you. You know, I think that, you know, we make choices, but I'm also I'm prioritizing. I don't think all things are equal in the city. I don't think that shared sacrifice is the way to go about a budget that has a deficit. I think you fund your priorities first. You fund what you can, and you make sure that what you do, you do well and what you don't, what you can't fund, you don't do crappy. So I just I'm going to share that because that's the perspective I'm coming from. And I think that prioritization is important in this. But given that and I've been transparent that I've had real concerns with how the tree regulation group has conducted themselves in our community. But there was a choice that was made in both the preliminary requested budget and in the mayor's proposed budget. And I was wondering if director long, if you can share why you prioritized holding the tree regulation program hole at about the same dollar amount, it looks like you reduced park maintenance dollars because that was a choice. That was a there was a reason behind that. I don't understand it. Obviously I've made some proposed changes, but to be fair, I would welcome your your explanation why you thought that that program should be held whole or less harmed than the maintenance program.
234 Sure. Well, first, the maintenance program just proportionately is a lot larger. So I just want to put that out there. Also, in taking in the guidance, both from the city administrator and then the deputy city administrator, and then adding my own, which was to ask my program managers, my sorry, my division managers to take proportional percentage cuts across the board. So I did not make a decision to go deeper in one area than another. I asked them all to do that with with other guidance as well. And that was one of the programs that was not chosen for reduction. Other programs within urban forestry were chosen for the reduction to meet that goal. I'll also add that the permitting and regulation program, we spoke about it quite a bit at the climate committee today, earlier today, has five distinct programs that offer a lot of services to the city. I understand that you have some concerns about some of the operations. I don't know if the amendment that you've put on the floor is going to solve those, and I look forward to continuing to have a conversation. We would love, love, love, love to come and brief you about the entire program, do site visits, ride alongs. We offer that to everyone on the council so they can have a better understanding about the importance of that program.
235 Thanks.
236 I appreciate it. I just want to note that we've had the urban forestry group in front of the finance committee, and that while you're right, I don't know that the amendment will solve all things related to permitting. I think that it certainly could help with the perspective and how we conduct code compliance and code enforcement across the city and standardize that a little bit, because I think what I'm experiencing is a hammer always sees a nail, but in ppe and that code compliance has to take a holistic picture of the entire entire situation. But I also I very much value and I appreciate that you said the directions were proportional in terms of how the budgets were developed. That is important because our mayor and our city administrator give directions out to you all and how to form that up. And I'm I'm sad to hear that. It sounds like they gave a proportional direction instead of tell me what we're going to do well and tell me what we're not going to do, which I said to them months ago I thought would be a better path, but that helps me in my decision making in terms of how I interpret what they have sent to us. So thank you.
237 The proportional cuts was my direction. We all received the same direction from the city administrator, and then I imagine each bureau also got deputy city administrator guidance. So that was my direction for it to be proportional.
238 Okay.
239 Thank you.
240 You're welcome.
241 Counselor Smith. And we have just a few minutes left. I don't think you were here when I gave folks that.
242 Heads up.
243 Thank you. Thank you, madam president. I just wanted to make a correction. I put in a not a budget note, but an amendment yesterday to put $5 million into civic life for business assistance. And I want to put that back into economic development, not in civic life. So I want to scratch that. I still want to do it. But I said the wrong bureau.
244 Thank you for clarifying for us, councilor.
245 Okay. Thank you.
246 Councilor Morillo.
247 Thank you, council president. I just wanted to add, as we're having these discussions, that we're in a really tough budget time and we are being asked to make really hard choices, as are the bureau directors and everyone who's in charge of this budget. And we also don't have to make these choices in a vacuum. There were multiple community surveys that went out, one that was led by council president and councilor Novick. That was done by someone who was an impartial survey person who surveyed the entire city. And they showed that when given the choice, if they had to choose, portlanders would ultimately choose to cut police in order to save parks and to save other programs. So I really appreciate that reframing from councilor Avalos. And I also want to say that there were further surveys done at all of our budget town halls that were held by the city budget office, and those reflected the same thing. So it's not just self-selected groups of people who are coming and attending our community events. It's also people who didn't go to those events and who were randomly surveyed. And I think that we also need to remind everyone that we are not cutting police. They were given additional funding that no other bureau was given. So when we're talking about this defunding police, as if though it's very dramatic, no we're not. We're holding them to the same standard that every other bureau is being held to as they are having to make really brutal and devastating cuts that will impact our employees and the services that we offer. I also think that we can't just cut parks or other services, because these are all part of community safety. I know when I worked as an anti-hunger policy advocate before coming here, the amount of families that we talked to were their 11 year olds were in line at a church waiting to get a can of food, who would end up being recruited into gangs because they had no other support structures? If they don't have their community needs met, if they don't have a strong family structure, if they don't have food, if they don't have services, if they don't have education, that is a lack of public safety as well. And that's the way that I'm going to be looking at this budget. And I think that a lot of the criticisms that our staff have received as far as not getting us certain pieces of information, I want to revisit with the finance committee next year, because the reality is that the communication flow that we've had as councilors between us and staff has been really difficult because of the structures of how we are able to receive information when it comes from the top people at the city budget office to dca's, to everyone having to have a chain of command, that makes it really hard for us to talk with experts at the bureaus. And I think that we need to revisit those systems and how they're working for us, because we have a lot of really talented and intelligent people at the city, and I feel like we weren't able to get a lot of this information until now. So I just wanted to say my piece on both of those issues and appreciate the time.
248 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith, are you back in the queue?
249 Yes, I am back in the queue.
250 At time, but if it's quick, it is.
251 It is very quick. And I just wanted to say in that on that survey that you all are talking about everything except district one. District one said public safety is number one. So I want to make clear that it was not citywide. And I think district four too. So I think we need to understand the facts or have someone come in and give us a presentation on that. So we're clear on what the community wants.
252 Colleagues, I see folks getting in the queue. We are at time, and I know we have a couple of folks trying to make it to other things tonight, and one colleague who just had to leave. So I think I'm going to close us up, I apologize. Thank you all for being here today. We appreciate the information. I know you sat through a lot of comments that weren't directed toward you, but there were also a lot of good pieces of information we were able to gain. We will be back next week. Colleagues. For more budget work. With that, I will close tonight's work session.