The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-08-13
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
A special meeting of the Portland City Council convened on August 13, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance of all councilors. After introductory remarks welcoming a newly hired Council Operations Manager, the agenda was approved and the body took up two items together: an ordinance adopting a regular council meeting schedule and a resolution establishing a new council committee structure. Several floor amendments were introduced and debated regarding meeting frequency, timing of morning versus evening sessions, and a proposal to shorten the deadline for scheduling council-passed items from committee to full council from 90 to 45 days. Two members of the public testified, raising concerns about committee structure, public testimony scheduling, and communication between residents and council offices. Discussion also covered proposed committee leadership models—chair/vice-chair versus co-chair structures—and whether each district should have guaranteed representation among committee chairs, with input from an acting deputy city administrator on staffing and land-use timeline concerns. Votes occurred on multiple amendments during the session; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting was recessed with unresolved amendments and agenda items to be continued at a reconvened session the following day at 2:30 p.m.
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.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good afternoon, good morning, good morning. It is 1033 on Wednesday, August 13th. I am calling to order a special meeting of the Portland city council. Rebecca, could you please call the roll. Koyama Lane here? Morillo here.
1 Novick here.
2 Clark, here.
3 Green here.
4 Zimmerman. Here. Avalos.
5 Present.
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6 Dunphy. Here. Smith. Here. Ryan. Here.
7 Pirtle-guiney here. Thank you.
8 I'm here to.
9 Apologize. I didn't hear that. Thank you.
10 Thank. Could we please have our attorney go over the rules of order and decorum?
11 Welcome to the Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at wwe Portland gov slash council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting other testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying one. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. Two if you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Three virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
12 Thank you very much, colleagues. We have two items on the agenda today, and we are adjourning our meeting in about three hours. But then we'll reconvene tomorrow at 230. If we have not concluded the business that we have before us, before we open up those two items, though, for public testimony and discussion, I'd like to just take a moment for something not on the agenda. Do we need to approve today's agenda first? Am I skipping?
13 Item one? Is agenda approval okay?
14 I apologize colleagues, item one is approving the agenda. Actually, before we do that though, I'll do this before we go to approving the agenda. I just want to take a moment because we had a new staff person start our council operations manager, dana richardson, on Monday. And I know some of you have had an opportunity to meet with her one on one already. I think for some folks that's coming later this week still, but I just wanted to give dana an opportunity to introduce herself in this setting for folks watching or in the audience today. Council operations is the group that does a lot of the support, especially for our committee meetings. And we had an interim manager when we started who was here on a limited duration, intentionally came out of retirement to work with us short term. So dana is our first permanent council operations manager. We are very glad to have her, and I wanted to make sure we had an opportunity again for folks on council who hadn't had an opportunity yet to meet dana, to get to hear a little bit from you, and also for the public who are watching, to just know who you are, given that you do and your team will, your team does and you will do so much support for the work that we do, but often behind the scenes. So please go ahead.
15 Thank you for this opportunity. Madam president, madam vice president and councilors, as the president mentioned, this is my third day on the job as the council operations manager, and I'm pleased to be here and eager to learn how my team can support this council and its success. As you probably know, I lead a team of ten folks that are here for policy development and analysis, whether that's in committees in your districts. We have capacity in communications and coordination as well. So our brand is really simple. We're here to work for you, each of you as councilors, as the council, as the council as a whole. And I'm really privileged to be here today. And I told I was told you all will go easy on me, at least for now.
16 Perfect. Thank you so much. And welcome. I think this is the first time that we've gotten the opportunity to have you here. I'm not sure if you were watching the committees earlier this week, but welcome and thank you for being here and being part of the team.
17 Thank you. Good luck.
18 Okay, colleagues, the first item on our agenda is agenda approval. And there has not been anything taken off the agenda or any requests to reorder the agenda. Do we have unanimous consent for agenda approval? Okay. As we move into our agenda today, we have two items adopting an ordinance on our council meeting schedule and a resolution establishing a new council committee structure. Both of these items have been discussed by the full council in work sessions, but this is the first opportunity we'll have for public testimony. I'd like to open up rebecca both items together so that if folks who are signed up to testify are interested in testifying on pieces of both, they can do that just one time and make sure to have a little bit more consistency amongst remarks there. Could you please open items two and three?
19 Item two adopt council regular meeting schedule pursuant to code subsection 3.02.01, 0.3.1. Item three. Establish new city council committee structure.
20 Thank you. And colleagues. We don't have our normal introductory overviews on these items because they were heard in work session. So if there are not questions before we begin, I'd like to move us straight into public testimony. But if there are any clarifying questions or amendments that haven't been filed that folks would like to share before, we do so, now would be the time. Councilor Kanal.
21 Thank you, madam president. I just wanted to make sure that that potential testifiers were aware I had pre filed an amendment and I'll officially move it here. It's filed as canal one to the adopt council regular meeting schedule. And it's a package that is based off of the feedback heard at the work session. Thank you.
22 Thank you councilor and colleagues. If you haven't had a chance to look at that, that has been filed. It's been up for about a week. And I know we had some discussion that was straightforward and everyone was on the same page and some where there were some divisions. I think councilor Kanal tried to capture the things where it was mostly straightforward and folks were on the same page.
23 Correct. Thank you.
24 Okay. Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith. Thank you.
25 Thank you, madam president. I did want to add an amendment that would include having Wednesday meetings. And on the third Wednesday having only one night meeting. So would I do that here or would I do that after?
26 You could absolutely do that now. So that would be a floor amendment. And I'm trying to skim through this to see where that would go. I believe that would be in the first there for a two, where it says on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m. And you would amend.
27 And I would amend that to have all meetings on wednesdays. And on the third Wednesday we have a night meeting so that we don't have to have two night meetings.
28 So this would I'm sorry.
29 Go ahead. I second that. Is that a motion?
30 It's not I haven't I did it from the floor.
31 No I know, but where were you? Just council president. You were saying you were suggesting it could go somewhere. Where were you saying.
32 On page two of. And I'm sorry. I'm working off of councilor Canal proposed amendment right now rather than the original. But on page two of councilor Kanal proposed amendment. Now, therefore, the council directs a council meetings will occur. I believe councilor Smith, one would say on each Wednesday of the month at 930 with a recessed meeting, and then two would say on the third Wednesday of each month.
33 We have two meetings, one in the morning, one at night.
34 So you're not proposing a 930 and a 6 p.m. On that third Wednesday?
35 You are. I am.
36 You are proposing both that every Wednesday we have a 930 and.
37 Not every Wednesday but the third Wednesday. Every Wednesday we have a city council meeting. And then on the third Wednesday we have a night meeting as well as a day meeting.
38 So the resolution would read every Wednesday, a 930 meeting, the recessed session at 2 p.m. On Wednesday or 2 p.m. On Thursday, and a 6 p.m. Meeting on the third Wednesday of each month.
39 Correct.
40 Rebecca, are you capturing that or do you want somebody to send this to you?
41 We do need the language then.
42 Okay, we'll work on that. Okay. That's been seconded by councilor Ryan, and I apologize. I don't think I heard a second to councilor Canales. Original amendment that is here. Is there a second for that?
43 Second.
44 Thank you, councilor Green.
45 I guess I'm trying to understand. Are we? Because councilor Kanal is an amendment. So are we adding another amendment? Correct. So are we now in councilor Smith's amendment?
46 We are not in debate right now, but folks are putting amendments on the floor so that our testifiers know what the options are that they're responding to.
47 Anything. Related to.
48 We have not had a consistent practice of having to offer amendments, but it is something that we have sometimes done in order to allow folks to know what is under consideration. I'll note that there are. Two amendments filed on the council committee structure as well, one by councilor Dunphy and one by me. We'll talk about those more when we get to that discussion. But for folks who are testifying, I would assume that those are both in play as well.
49 Okay.
50 Would you like did you have something to add, councilor Koyama Lane?
51 Yes. I also will be bringing a floor amendment that I just finished today and will I printed out for everyone around. Making. As we are looking to have weekly council meetings currently it takes can take up to three months for an item to be placed on the full council agenda, and I am looking to make an amendment to change that to 45 days, as we will be meeting twice as frequently. Okay.
52 Thank you councilor. And that's a floor amendment, but it looks like you have it on paper. Can you make sure that the clerk's team has it?
53 Absolutely.
54 Thank you. Councilor Morillo.
55 Did that get a second?
56 Yeah. I just wanted to request councilor Morillo email. Can you hear me?
57 Yeah. Can you pause for one minute? Was there a second to councilor Koyama Lane amendment? And if not, I can do that later. Okay. I hear a second councilor Morillo. Go right ahead, I apologize.
58 No, no worries. Thank you. Sorry I jumped ahead on that one. I'm just requesting that folks send an email with the updated amendment language so that we can all see it written. I think that's helpful for me. Also, I just wanted to say if I have to be camera off for a bit, just dealing with some chronic back pain today, and I don't think the public wants to see me laying on the floor.
59 So thank you councilor, and we absolutely understand.
60 And I'll send an email your way right now.
61 Councilor Kanal are you back in the queue?
62 I just wanted to clarify because when I first mentioned it, we hadn't done the second yet. The intent behind that amendment was to be the amendment I put forward was to be friendly, so I'd ask if my co-sponsors to that to the ordinance would be willing to accept the amendment that was emailed out as friendly.
63 Okay.
64 I see nods. Yes. Okay. Councilor Novick.
65 I just wanted to note that I'll be proposing an amendment to the committee structure as well, which my staff is going to be emailing to the clerk shortly if they haven't already, and then we'll distribute copies of it.
66 Can you give a two second so that folks testify? Know what that is?
67 It would involve striking the idea of actually, I don't think that it's formally referred to as a leadership committee, but it replaced the idea of the council president meeting with all the committee chairs, with an idea that committee chairs will meet with their counterparts and committees that have sort of overlapping jurisdictions and only have one committee meet with another at a time. And the council president and vice president could attend those meetings. Because my idea is that the point of committee chairs meeting with each other is to exchange information. And I think that that's important when you've got sort of overlapping jurisdiction. But I don't I think that it causes public meetings problems and also kind of exclusivity problems. If there's a group of six people that meets and then by definition, they can't tell any of the other six what they met about, because that would violate quorum rules. So I just think that we could achieve the goal of transmitting information without having a leadership committee.
68 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Dunphy.
69 Thank you very briefly. Just colleagues, I or my team sent an email around about this yesterday. But with regard to the committee structure, you'll note that the resolution as filed is pretty bare bones. And that was an intentional choice I had. We pulled out any of the sort of contentious pinch points that we had didn't have unanimity around, for example, vice chair or chair, vice chair versus co-chair models. And I have subsequently filed amendments so that we can individually have an up and down vote on either of those. The intention is that if the council decides that chair, vice chair is the model to go with, great. If this body decides that co-chairs of the model to go with great. If we can't come to an agreement, it defaults to a position of maximum flexibility for the president. So as we get into this, that that is what you will be seeing filed in on on the item itself. So just wanted to clarify that.
70 Thank you. Councilor. And was there a second to councilor Novick proposal?
71 Second.
72 Thank you, vice president. Councilor Kanal. Are you back in the queue or is that an old hand? Okay. That's okay. So for folks watching, I know that was a flurry of information. Very quickly, I'll try to summarize and if I've missed something please colleagues, jump in. We have an underlying proposal on council meetings, which was debated in a work session. An amendment from councilor Canal, which has been proposed and seconded, which would capture some of the conversation from that work session, an amendment from councilor Smith that we are getting written up, which has been seconded, which would change the meeting schedule to include a weekly morning meeting and once a month evening meetings and an amendment from councilor Koyama Lane, which has been seconded to decrease the amount of time before the council president must schedule something at a council meeting from 90 days to 45 days. We have an amendment that is under councilor Dunphy's name, which a few councilors staff helped to put together. That is a bit of a bare bones capturing of the conversation around committees. From our work session. We have a proposal that I have put forward based on some conversations since that was put together with a number of councilors around. Another way that we could think about committees and a proposal put forward by councilor Novick for that second item, the committee item around how our council's leadership meets with committee chairs. Did I miss anything? Okay, just.
73 Clarifying that that amendment was friendly, not seconded. The package on the first one that I put forward.
74 I think that we need to vote on it and not just accept it in okay, just given the extent of it, but I do. I thought I heard a second on.
75 It was seconded.
76 Okay, okay.
77 Thank you.
78 Okay. There may be other changes as we discussed that folks want to bring forward. But for our community members who are signed up to testify, this at least gives us a starting place for what the breadth of the debate is today. So with that, seeing no one else in the queue, rebecca, could you please call up our first testifiers.
79 Our first testifier is terry harris, followed by donna cohen. And excuse me, president, do you want to go to six minutes each or three per.
80 Because we're combining the two. Do we have anybody else signed up to testify?
81 No. These are the only testifiers.
82 Okay, let's give a little more time since we're opening it up on both at the same time. Yes. Thank you, mr. Harris. Welcome.
83 Yeah. You know, my governance committee testimony on Monday went 14 minutes. So cutting it in half is going to be, you know, just great. I appreciate the opportunity. As always. And I've had a lot of time to sort through all of this stuff. And I appreciate putting all the amendments out there. I'm going to testify generally as to not get into the weeds of all your amendments. In my assessment, the council's problem and this is important with committees and with meetings, runs deeper than what scheduling, consolidation or jurisdictional realignments are going to fix. You have some fundamental problems, fundamental questions around the role of committees and council, the procedural structure to implement that role effectively, and providing meaningful, meaningful public involvement within that structure. Unless and until the council commits to an approach to these interconnected problems, the committee system and the council will continue to struggle. The starting point for your committee structure discussions should be a recognition that committees are a solution and not a problem. So I have four pages of written comments in your files that is not going to fit my six minutes. So I'm going to hit the highlights here, the headlines if you will, and will be available to answer questions. First of all, an increase in regular meetings is not going to solve your workload problem. The detailed work of committee, detailed work of governance needs to be done in committee in parallel. In addition to establishing the new committees, the council should commit to actually using them and a committee of the whole will help you do that. I had, you know, 14 minutes on committee of the whole and governance on Monday. And I'll just say that you have some experience with that. Your budget committee operated as a committee of the whole. You took testimony in the budget committee as a committee of the whole. You did your amendments. You did all of your adjustment in the budget committee as a committee of the whole. Then you convened from the budget committee to the regular council to pass a budget bill. So that's the experience that can help you with broader discussions other than the budget, if you implement it in rules. So that's all I'll say about that. Verbal comments and agency presentations on legislation or legislative items should be generally necessary only once, and it should be directed almost exclusively to committees. If the public is here to give input to the council on a legislative item, they need to know that their input is being heard in the right place, at the right time, by the right people. Doing two hearings is confusing. That, and if you want to do things in parallel, you need to have that input in committee where the work is really being done. And that's early on. If you need a full council to hear a hearing, use a committee of the whole and do all the committee work at that level. Don't make people come twice because they don't know which which hearing matters and that will save you time overall so that you don't have. Presentations over and over again. Committees need to be structured to make recommendations to the full council that have consequence. They should be able to move things to a consent calendar or just kill things outright in committee. Finally, on to operate effectively and you're going to have full council meetings weekly and not bi weekly. You're going to need more committee hearings. The committee hearings bi monthly are not going to be enough. So you will have shifted the procedural bottleneck into committee. Now, I'd suggest that you can have long form and short form committee hearings alternating weeks. So that long form, you can have lots of testimony and discussion on big things and short form. You can do the quick little code fixes and things that get your eyes on it, but it doesn't take as long. Miscellaneous considerations in these last 55 seconds. Governance, governance and finance probably ought to be its own committee and not be relegated to a committee of the whole or full council thing. There are lots of small little nitpicky things in government, governance and finance that deserve committee attention, not the attention of all of you every single time. The internal service rates discussion needs not be an entire council conversation, but it does need attention in a committee. The sub quorum leadership group is a good idea, but its membership shouldn't drive the number of committees. There is some finesse that can be had to avoid your open meetings problems, and maybe councilor or councilor. Novick amendment might address that. Five standing committees and a committee of the whole is a nicely sized thing, and 10s committee chairs and vice chairs are preferable to committee co-chairs. Only nine seconds.
84 Thank you, mr. Harris. We appreciate hearing from you. I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about these topics.
85 You're good to approach, donna. Next we have donna cohen. Okay.
86 Welcome. Thank you for being here with us today.
87 Thank you. I'm going to take a breath in between the two testimonies, if that's okay. So. Morning, council. My name is donna cohen. I'm a resident of district two. I present workshops on civics to adults in the how to engage with your elected officials. Part of my citizen activism 101 workshop, which I presented at midland and albina branch libraries this summer. I have always been pleased to say how fulfilling it is to speak to one city council, county commission, etc. Would you show the picture, please? This is a picture I show of when several of us came to council about a very serious as in people with dying traffic safety issue in saint john's. Our t shirts, by the way, signified the project we're working on. At the time. I'm actually on the schedule there, but I had spoken before and a new person wanted to speak from the neighborhood and we swapped something which can't be done. Now. I don't quite understand that. Now I add a picture showing the slow process of the public communication process. Unfortunately, prior to 2025, my experience was that I could request a slot to speak to council and get scheduled within a week to a month. The current wait is over two months, and you're lucky if you can grab a spot at all. And the waitlist option, which may or may not prove useful, is exclusive to those who can get email alerts from their phones and respond within as little as 4 to 5 minutes. I kid you not, I have time stamp evidence of waitlist opportunities, and when they are fulfilled and not everyone has the luxury of flexibility for last minute cancellations for a slot either, as outlined on the web page description for this agenda item, there have been less than half the opportunities for open public comment, with the new council meeting structure being able to speak to council on matters which council has yet to discuss or even be aware is critical. Council definitely needs to meet more frequently and thus provide more opportunities for the public to speak on any topic. Yes, the proposed ordinance will do just that. As someone who participated in forums during the creation of the plans for the new city government, it was on the speaker's bureau for Portland united for change. I was impressed at how often the issue of communication between the public and the city council was brought up. I commend city council for recognizing the issues addressed by the proposed ordinance. We're still going through growing pains and our new government with our new government. But you're clearly trying. Thank you for the proposal to increase council meetings and thus public communication with council. Okay, so now the second ordinance on policy committees. In regard to the policy committees, there is a discussion of whether to reduce the number of committees from the current eight, whether to increase the time allowed for the meetings, and whether to make sure there is someone from every district on all policy committees. I am in support of all these changes. One of my main concerns is that there has not been enough. There has not been time scheduled for open public communication during policy committee meetings, for example, I have some thoughts and some research to share with the housing committee, but have had no opportunity to share them. I wrote to all the committee members, received no response. I wrote again indicating a second attempt, and received response from two councilor Offices, both directing me to the agenda page where there was no option for open public comment. Neither is there an email specifically for the committee. In other words, the public is totally shut out for anything but an agenda item. Another example is that as the issue of life and death impact to tens of thousands, not only in district two, but all those who have family members that work at the port facilities and rivergate industrial area in district two, namely, that the north peninsula will be completely severed from the rest of Portland after the quake to come, possibly for months. This should have been able to be presented to the transportation and public safety committees. It is a separate issue from the cei overall. By not being able to do so, we saw the siloing of efforts to solicit monies from the legislature. One effort by the mayor and the city as a whole, and another by the community on the north peninsula, just two councilors and our state legislators. Imagine how that looked to the state transportation committee. Now, some of our leaders on the north peninsula are seeking a zoom meeting with the mayor and some of you councilors to smooth this out for the upcoming special session. We want to be on the same page. We have received an answer. As of yesterday, we only received an answer from one office councilor Morillo. And today we heard something from d2 and I dropped off something in the mayor's office and councilor Clerk's office today, public communication and policy committees would allow input on new ideas to those council members most involved with the topic and overall provide more opportunities for public communication, with communication with council. Because the proposal to increase such time with the full council only brings us up to the amount that was available under our prior form of government. Thank you for your time.
88 Thank you very much for being here, donna, and for sharing all of those ideas. Thank you.
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89 That concludes testimony.
90 Colleagues. I think we've heard a lot of ideas from each other, including some today, and we just heard a number of additional ideas, some of which have been part of our conversation and some of which have not yet. From both terry and donna, I would like us to focus first on the first agenda item, the ordinance before us, and open up discussion on sorry, I'm losing my page here. Open up discussion on the ordinance to adopt council regular meeting schedule pursuant to code subsection 3.02010 c1. We have a few amendments open, but I would like to start with the amendment that councilor Kanal has put on the table. He was the first to propose one. It also generally relates to the discussion that we've already had. Councilor Kanal are you in the queue to speak to that amendment? Okay. Why don't we start there?
91 Thank you, madam president. Colleagues, today we are introducing an ordinance which would return council to scheduled weekly meetings. It's being proposed by councilor Dunphy, councilor Avalos and myself. We talked through the document at a work session last week, and based on those pieces of feedback heard from colleagues, I have proposed an amendment which has been agreed to by both co-sponsors as well to reflect your feedback in it. It does not reflect the things that were points of contention. As the council president brought up. I think we can debate those subsequent to this amendment, but it does reflect everything that was discussed. That was consensus position or near consensus. So I'll just walk through it briefly. The key points here in the council findings section one, it adjusts for the dates and times that have been updated since this was written in may. It removes references to July. We're past July now. It adds in to the findings, the dates that we had scheduled, special meetings, and the key points are in the now. Therefore, the council directs and it removes d and f entirely from it. This is the removing the no. Executive sessions may be scheduled on Thursday between 2 and 5 p.m, unless with the written consent of at least nine councilors. I'm realizing as I read this and I'll mention now to rebecca. Sorry. Section c should also be removed. That's based on feedback there. So we'll send you that updated file. It removes the references to meetings on July 2nd and June 25th. That was part e, and it also removes references to the budget specific work sessions and meetings that we'd already scheduled, which was section f, so it narrows the field back down to the creation of a new schedule that has weekly meetings. On Wednesday, the soft stop on at 9:00 on evening meetings, and then there's updates to the impact statement to reflect everything I just said. And you can look down there. Finally, although this was not discussed, I did take the opportunity to clarify one item in the second and third to last lines of the impact statement, which just had the word folks, and I expanded that out to emphasize who folks refers to, which is community councilors and staff. That was not discussed, but I figured it was it made sense to update through this process as well. So that's what the amendment would do. I'm happy to take any questions on it. Again, this was my interpretation with colleagues based off of the full council feedback in the work session. Thank you. And this was seconded.
92 And this has been seconded. Thank you. Councilor colleagues, is there any discussion to the amendment before us as described by councilor Canal?
93 I guess my question is, are they is it sorry point of order because it's friendly. Is it an amendment that we have to approve or. No.
94 I think that this is extensive enough that we should vote on it. Just with all of those removals. I hope it moves quickly, but I think we should vote at councilor. Zimmerman. Was your hand up? Yeah. Go right ahead.
95 Thanks, councilor Kanal. I appreciate the detail in which you listened at those work sessions and c, d, e, and f being out is enough for me to support this amendment and make this the new underlying baseline document. I also plan to support, you know, councilor Smith's. But this is, I think, a better start, if that is, if it's going to go forward. So I just want to say thanks for that and you'll have my support on this amendment to the baseline.
96 And I'm not sure if everybody heard it. But just to clarify, c is not in the underlying file, but c should be removed as well. That's an error on our part when we sent it in. So I, I'd ask councilor Green if you're okay with friendly amending this amendment to include the removal of c.
97 So essentially the therefores would be a with the removal of the date and b. And that's really what we're talking about here.
98 Substantively correct.
99 Councilor councilor Koyama Lane.
100 That was almost exactly what I was going to say. Thank you.
101 Councilor Smith.
102 Thank you, madam president. I am in favor of weekly council meetings and generally supportive of councilor Kanal proposed amendment, which appears to meet several of our shared goals. One area of concern that I have is with introducing two evening meetings. Considering the increased cost and the toll evening meetings have on our support staff, that that would not be the most optimal way to go about it in the financial and budgetary impact section of the amendment, it is suggested that the proposed changes would occur parallel to a corresponding reduction in committee meetings, in a way that would mitigate, cancel out, or even exceed the budget increase from the additional full council meetings. But since its submission, the current best proposal for a subcommittee structure includes five standing committees, down from eight, which would not reduce committee meetings or meeting time enough to be proportional to weekly council meetings as proposed. It seems that the only way to mitigate a substantial increase in costs without rejecting the proposal would be to limit evening meetings to once per month. Individual council offices may be able to hold office hours in the evening on an individual needed basis, to increase opportunities to engage with the public, and engagement is important and it's critical, and I've heard a lot about that. So that's where I'm at about the current proposal.
103 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Clark.
104 Thank you, council president.
105 I agree with councilor Smith, but I also had a question. So if this passes today, when does it go into effect?
106 So this is an ordinance that does not currently have an emergency clause. So we are considering amendments today. But unless somebody introduces an emergency clause this would actually move to the calendar on September 3rd for passage. Non emergency ordinances go into effect 30 days after passage. I have scheduled out on our calendars where I have had the clerk hold time on our calendars every Wednesday morning moving forward, and we have been scheduling those as special meetings. So it would be my intent if it appears that we're moving in the direction of passing this, to begin implementing a schedule as close to this as we can get through special meetings immediately upon passage. But it would not go into effect until 30 days after passage, which would either 30 days after passage, which would likely be September 3rd, I believe, is that first Wednesday of the month, unless we were to add an emergency clause today.
107 Okay, I was thinking October, but maybe I'm I'm am I calculating that right? October.
108 October 3rd would be the effective date if it was 30 days after passage on September 30th.
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109 Okay. But you're basically scheduling as though it were the real thing.
110 We have been scheduling special meetings to allow us to get through our work without running over time. For the last few weeks, and I would intend to continue that practice unless I heard from folks on the dais that that was not of interest.
111 Can you talk a little bit about the budget impact and what that means for the council clerk's office?
112 Well, I can do my best. And I also may phone a friend as I start to talk, because.
113 I would just a point of order. I want to make sure because I'm a little bit I want to make sure we're talking about the amendment, because then we have the overarching vote, and I know it was friendly, but that could be confusing because and I'm sorry, councilor, but like right now, as it reads with two night meetings, I'll be a no vote on the overarching document. But this amendment, I think, is an improvement to the overarching document. So I plan to vote for the amendment. I just want to clarify that because it is a strange, friendly amendment, but substantive.
114 Let's do this. Councilor. There is a fair amount of data that we've been sent about costs of previous meetings, and I'm going to see if we can get somebody from our city operations team here to talk specific numbers on costs. When we get back to the underlying ordinance. So let's hold on the answer to that question. But I'll make sure that we have information at least as good as what I can share, and hopefully better once we're through this amendment.
115 Let me just say that I don't feel a real sense of urgency right now, before the end of the year, to have these meetings every week. I'm not feeling that kind of sense of urgency, but I am really concerned about the impact on staff. Not and not just the clerk staff, but all the other staff that we have come to this committee as well. Just put put that out there. I'm very concerned.
116 Thank you. Councilor Kanal.
117 I just ask for if you could, madam president, take councilor Zimmerman's point because it was a point of order that that's this entire conversation around evening meetings is sort of separate from the amendment we're currently discussing.
118 Correct.
119 So I do want to talk about it. I just want to separate the conversation. And I just ask for that point of order to be acted upon.
120 Thank you. Councilor. Any other discussion to the amendment? Okay. Rebecca, could you please call the roll on the amendment from councilor Kanal, which, among other things, removes c, d, and e from the enacted language and f.
121 Can I ask a point of order? Okay, we're we're voting on the overall.
122 We're voting on councilor Kanal amendment. Okay. Which would remove.
123 The original his original.
124 C, d, e, and f, among other changes based on the conversation last week.
125 I'm sorry to be dense, but when are we going to vote on councilor Smith's amendment?
126 Presumably that will be. I have that written down as the next thing on the list in the order things were proposed.
127 I just wanted some reassurance.
128 We will get to have the conversation on night meetings posthaste. Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
129 Just one point of clarification. This is canal one for document 2025. Dash 300. Yes. Okay.
130 Canal one plus c, which was a floor amendment to canal one. We're removing c as well.
131 Koyama Lane I.
132 Morillo I.
133 Novick I.
134 Clark. I Green.
135 Zimmerman I.
136 Avalos I.
137 Dunphy I.
138 Smith I.
139 Canal I.
140 Ryan I.
141 Pirtle-guiney. I and the amendment is approved with 12 I and zero nay votes.
142 Thank you rebecca. Colleagues we did have two other amendments that were proposed previously to this ordinance. Councilor Smith, do you have the written version of your amendment?
143 I don't have a.
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144 Madam president. I don't have a written proposal. Other than the fact that what I said earlier to have all council meetings on wednesdays starting at 930 the third Wednesday of the month, we have two council meetings, one in the morning and one in the evening.
145 Thank you councilor. And there was a second to that, I believe. Okay, colleagues, is there a discussion on councilor Smith's amendment? And, rebecca, we are working on getting that in written form for you. Councilor Zimmerman.
146 So thank you, councilor Smith. I plan to support the amendment. I, I think it is the underlying change to the document that couldn't get me to support weekly meetings. As I've said before, the largest city in Oregon should have weekly council meetings. I feel very strongly about that. There's a lot to continue to fix. And I also appreciate the consistency that you introduced by not having an either or on that third Wednesday, but having an increase. And I appreciate that I share. Councilor clark's concerns about the urgency and timing and the impact on staff. I think one of the important things for anything, both the public and the staff is predictability, and this will be predictable. And I think that that's a really good step in the right direction. So if this I'll vote for the amendment, and I do hope it passes. And I think if it does that we have a reasonable meeting schedule coming up potentially. Thank you.
147 Thank you. Councilor, I want to note two things. There's been a lot of conversation about cost. And I appreciate, councilor Clark, that you brought that up. I do believe, and I'm waiting to hear back, that having two meetings that day. Could increase costs because of the length of the day. What I've heard from staff is that if we go from 930 in the morning, and we've discussed this when talking about committee schedules, so I hadn't talked to them about it in the council context. But I'm I'm taking that information from talking about committees to council. If we have a day that goes from 930 in the morning until 9:00 at night, that's about a 16 hour day for staff when you include the prep and wrap up time. And that creates a fair amount of additional cost for some of the teams that support us. I am very supportive of narrowing down to one evening meeting for a lot of reasons, including the impact on our staff. I had put in our budget and was pleased to see council support to evening meetings in our budgeted for, thinking that one of those would be for committees, but that we would have one evening council meeting. I'm very supportive to moving to back to one evening council meeting. I do have some concerns about the long day of the morning meeting still being scheduled on that day. Councilor zimmermann, I hear your argument about predictability, but I just want to raise those cost and staffing concerns so that we're making an informed decision.
148 Point of order, madam president. Is there something in the charter that says we have to have one night meeting? Where do we get that from? It's in the charter.
149 It is not in the charter. I believe that it was added in code around our schedule.
150 Okay, okay. Perfect. But I'm willing I'm willing to accept a friendly amendment that would put it on another day. So we don't have a 19 hour day, but I just I just think that whatever day we put it on, it's going to it's going to still extend that day, even if we change it to Thursday or Tuesday or Monday.
151 If we were to not have the morning meeting that day so that our support teams could come in later that day, essentially work with their supervisors to flex their time. So we would have, depending on if there were 3 or 4 weeks in a month either. Rather, if there were 4 or 5 weeks in a month, have either 3 or 4 morning meetings. But the day that we had an evening meeting not have a morning meeting, the trade off is we would lose the consistency that councilor Zimmermann has mentioned that would address the concerns that I've raised.
152 Yeah, it would be great to hear some more discussion about that and what that would look like.
153 Councilor Clark.
154 Well, I would just say it's a long day. If we could start that day at 230 or something like that. We've done that in the past. I think our others. Maybe you should. I make a friendly amendment to that. I just would you accept a friendly amendment to your amendment.
155 Just to not have a Wednesday morning meeting and just substitute it with a evening meeting?
156 No, keep the keep the evening meeting. But I'm not start in the morning. We start in the afternoon.
157 On the third Wednesday to not have a morning meeting.
158 Exactly.
159 I I'd be okay with that if that's what people believe is good on the staff.
160 Councilor Clark, can I recommend that we here because there are a number of folks in the queue from others, and have you come back and offer that friendly amendment after we hear a little more discussion? I'm very supportive of it, but.
161 That's not why I got myself in the queue. But it was just a spur of the moment. What I really wanted to ask you about, madam president, is just you made the comment about evening meetings for committees. I'll be interested in that, that we hold that option open for committee chairs to have evening meetings. And I don't know how that factors into our budget or how we get permission to do that, but I just want to say that I think we should have that option. Thank you.
162 I'm happy to discuss my thoughts on that more when we talk about committees. Or we can wait, get through, see where we land with committees and then figure out implementation. Thank you, councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
163 I also am interested in what it looks like for one of those two evening council meetings to be subbed out for a slot for possible evening committee meetings. I'm not saying that I'm one way or the other, but I'm interested in what that looks like in the cost difference. From my understanding, it would be a lot less. More. I do think while I am a morning person, we do see higher engagement and attendance in the evening. If it also is to support our committee work, that could also make sense to me.
164 Thank you councilor. Councilor Novick.
165 Yeah, I'm. I agree that we shouldn't be having anybody work 16 hour days. I rather like the idea of having. We're always having Wednesday morning meetings, so I would might be comfortable with having the night meeting be on a different day, like Thursday evening. That means we have have more overall meetings, but it might help us use the night meetings in a more targeted way for topics which we know are going to have lots of public discussion. I mean, I think that maybe we could do just fine having the one meeting a month, being a night meeting and not having it every every Wednesday morning. But so I'm sort of teetering between those two. Do we have three morning meetings and one night meeting in a different night, or do we have four morning meetings, plus a night meeting at a different night? As to the idea of starting the meeting, councilor Clark's idea of starting the meeting at 230. I do not like the idea of our meeting from 230 to 9 at night. I don't think that we function well when we're meeting seven hours straight. Okay.
166 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor. Avalos.
167 I think that when it comes to evening meetings, for me it's more about what the goal is. And to me, the goal is increasing the participation of the people in our council. I obviously understand the logistical restraints, the feelings of. I definitely agree that there's no way I could support this amendment that currently, as it states, would be a full day, right? A whole morning and an evening meeting. I think that's more untenable for both staff and for us. But the broader goal of this amendment being reducing our amount of council meetings from two in the evening to one I do not support. I understand and respect the staff impact, but also this is a new council. We have new expectations, and I don't think that our desire to increase the people's voice and representation in council should be prohibited by staffing issue. So I will not be supporting this amendment. I would like to continue to have two evening meetings or I would like to, I guess, start. Since we don't currently have that. I want to increase the amount of opportunities people have to engage with us in off hours.
168 Thank you councilor. Councilor, councilor Zimmermann, have you spoken to this amendment?
169 Brian?
170 Okay, perfect. Councilor Ryan.
171 Council president I like the consistency where I've for portlanders with council meetings on wednesdays, with one Wednesday being an evening meeting. I think that would simplify this. You like that friendly amendment? Yes. Councilor Smith likes that friendly amendment.
172 Is that the same as the amendment councilor Clark was proposing, or are you proposing something different?
173 No, no. It's different.
174 So okay, why don't you.
175 Consistency is we have a council meeting every Wednesday, one Wednesday a month. We have council after dark. You know, we have an evening meeting. Sorry. College football starting soon. Yeah.
176 So, councilor, that would be instead of a morning meeting that day, we would have the evening meeting that day.
177 And then I think that provides council meetings are, are on wednesdays. And then once a month we have an evening one.
178 Excellent.
179 Okay. Are you offering that as a friendly amendment?
180 I am especially okay.
181 And councilor Smith, I believe, has accepted that. And who was our second on the councilor Ryan, you were the second on councilor Smith's original amendment. Correct? Perfect. Okay, so this has been changed. This proposal has been changed by a friendly amendment to be one evening meeting a month. And we would not have the morning meeting that day. And I believe that this has been proposed for the third Wednesday. Is that correct?
182 Yeah. Whatever it was, there was a third. Yeah. This offers consistency for portlanders, offers efficiency for our staff. And also it's cost sensitive.
183 Thank you, councilor Zimmermann.
184 Thanks I, I think that's a fine friendly amendment. I think it brings up an important piece here. And this is this is why I care a lot that we have one night meeting and it really gets to we can either talk about supporting the employees who support us, or we can take action to support the employees who support us. And I think that taking action to limit the number of night meetings is one of those actions that reduces strain on a pretty significant apparatus to keep this animal alive. It also really matters there. I just want to highlight there are a couple of expectations that I'll have of the presiding officer moving forward with this many consistent meetings in every Wednesday. We have got to have a clear stop time on more days. We have we have blown the finish line on more meetings than we have met it. I feel like and I think that that that trend has reared its head in this document alone, just by outlining the 9 p.m. Stop time that was highlighted. There's obviously an appetite for that, which if the presiding officer is able to hold these times and be consistent on that, that's part of why I was okay with both a morning meeting and then a night meeting, because I think it would be unhealthy to go from 930 until nine at night, but three hours and then many hours later, starting at six hours later, starting again, that that felt palatable. But I like the change that's been made, but it still has this underlying piece of. I think, reducing chaotic schedules, recognizing that a lot of folks keep us working and keep this dais alive and that. We in the way we the way we do or do not find the end of a meeting and think we have to get through it. Most of the time there will always be another meeting. There are very few things that can't be tabled until the next meeting if we've blown through it, and I recognize that that will happen. But to some other councilors points, we're going to have so many more opportunities for this. I think we need to lean into it and do our our best to apply the principles about the nighttime meeting of finish up the last item or finish up the item that is open, and then call it and apply that as much as we can stringently. And I and I'm not in favor of putting it in code, but I think it is a presiding officer's prerogative to help us stick to those timelines. It's about a three hour, maybe a four hour at most when we have these daytime morning meetings. So I think that we should take seriously both in this conversation as well as when we get into committees, the impacts that we're having on the rest of the support staff who keep this council alive. Thank you.
185 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith, we'll get right back to you. But we've had two people join the queue who haven't spoken yet to the amendment. Okay, councilor Kanal.
186 Thank you, madam president. I will be voting no on this amendment. I appreciate that it has been improved, I think, by councilor Ryan's friendly amendment to the amendment. But I think the underlying point that councilor Avalos raised is still compelling to me. So I just want to step back for a second. We budgeted in the budget for two evening meetings of some part of the council per month. That's already approved. It has been funded. There were some parameters on that that needed to be created around not having a 6:00 meeting end up going to 1113 like our first one did. That the point that the portion of the document which councilor Zimmerman just mentioned, the soft stop, addresses. The question here is not whether we have two meetings a month or one, because it's not about that's not the underlying question. The underlying question is whether that second evening meeting is for the full council or would be reserved for a committee. Either way, it's funded and it is going to be staffed. That's already approved in June that there would be two meetings of some portion of this council in the evening. Whether it's the full council or a committee is yet to be determined. Secondly, the consistency argument, it is equally consistent to say morning, morning, evening, morning or morning, evening, morning, evening. If it's the same thing every month, neither is more consistent than the other. So I think as long as the adoption of this ordinance in some form will create that consistency in a way that improves upon the current practice, which I appreciate from the council president of augmenting our additional schedule with special meetings. So given all of that, the real question here is fundamentally, do we want a second meeting in the evening to be for a committee which would be inconsistent? Which committee? It would be right. That would change over time, which would be not necessarily. We have no understanding of what the process for determining that would be because we haven't built one yet. Or do we want it to be for where the people come, which is a council, which is the full council, as it has been for decades, and it should remain, and I have seen the patterns of who comes and how many people come in the evening for the full council versus the daytime meetings. And it is very, very clear that there is more appetite for the evening meetings on the whole. And I in particular, after, as the council president has noted, her choice to schedule, I think in a really good way. Those items that are of public concern primarily in the evenings. So with that said, I'll be voting no on it. I think we need to retain the idea that this entire purpose of this enterprise is to feed, is to serve the people. And we've already addressed much of the staff concerns, but fundamentally, we've lost the fact that that having people be able to come and testify here before their elected representatives, all 12 of us, is the underlying purpose of this entire enterprise. Thanks.
187 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
188 Councilor Kanal actually answered most of my questions. I was going to ask, logistically what it's going to take to adjust the budget. If we were to have two evening council meetings. So hearing that we have already budgeted for that makes me feel better about this. I completely agree that we do need to have more evening meetings, because there are very different types of people that are able to attend in the middle of the day versus people who are who I've seen come at council at evening meetings. I am also perfectly fine with councilor Ryan's friendly amendment to this. I think it was common sense. And I agree with councilor Zimmerman as well, that there we do need to have some limits so that people are at their best when we're on the dais, and that our staff can also, you know, have lives that they are organizing around work and they know exactly when things are going to end. But overall, we do want evening engagement for council meetings and ideally one day for committee meetings as well. So I'll be supportive of this. Thanks.
189 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Novick.
190 Yeah, I just I think that the number of items where it's people want to come in the evening to talk about them is limited. So I just intuitively think that having one night a month is going to be enough to satisfy that desire. And I'm curious if councilor Avalos or councilor Kanal can come up with examples of, in the past six months of an item which should have been heard at an evening meeting, but was heard at a day meeting, and therefore you think that that limited what would have been robust public input.
191 Mr. Councilor, would you like to respond?
192 I don't want to use my second attempt, but I.
193 Okay. Councilor Avalos, would you like to respond briefly?
194 I don't have a specific example. I don't think I need one. I don't think we've even gotten we've even scratched the surface of the types of topics that are going to be coming to the council that will require more public engagement. So I'm looking to the future of how we're setting up a system for people to engage with us. So I don't think that an example is necessarily relevant. I don't have a specific one other than I guess the second councilor Kanal to say this one is probably the best example I could come up with on the spot.
195 Councilor Novick anything further, councilor Koyama Lane.
196 I'd like to start with saying I do appreciate council president, how you've been intentional about putting items that seem to have a lot of public interest for evening meetings, scheduling them then. I like the idea of having the option to be able to for the public to meet us, come meet, come before us two times a month in the evening. I it's we don't necessarily have to use both of those, especially as you're very intentional about scheduling there. They could always be taken off the schedule. It's always easier to take something off the schedule, cancel it, than to try to fit it in. As this is now, I do not plan to support it without seeing that it's in writing, and it's clear that the public could meet us in the evening two times a month.
197 Okay.
198 Councilor are you referring to having a committee slot in writing somewhere, or are you referring to council meetings? When you say having something in writing.
199 Having a committee slot and having a real clear outline of what that would look like and how committees would sign up for that, I know that part of the next item will be touching on that. We'll be touching on committee structure. So I understand that that is also part of the equation.
200 Thank you.
201 Councilor Smith.
202 Thank you, madam president. I think it goes back to what councilor Zimmerman said. If we start taking things off the agenda, then people don't have a sense that this is a regular occurrence. So putting things on and off as we feel that's that's not a that's not a good option. We need to be able to give the public three days, three days a month when we're going to meet, and then that one day for the evening. Now they're going to be some extraordinarily special meetings that may not be a committee meeting or may not be a council meeting. That is a public interest that we might need to have a an evening meeting that all of us are here for. So it may be a work session that people are highly interested in that we have at night. So I think we need to have the flexibility to do that. But I think as councilor Ryan said, his friendly amendment is probably our best bet to keeping things very simple and having a routine so that people can, can, can get used to a routine of when we're actually meeting because right now we don't have that. It's all over the place.
203 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Dunphy, I don't believe you've spoken to this amendment yet.
204 I have not, thank you. You know, colleagues, I am going to be supportive of the Smith amendment as as changed. I am not right now inclined to have two evening meetings a month. I don't think that we have yet demonstrated as a body that that is necessary. We have the budget in order to have two evening events happen, meaning a council meeting and a potentially a committee meeting, potentially a special hearing. We can always change our rules. We will inevitably change our rules in the next six months when we decide that what we're agreeing on today isn't working for us. I don't feel like we have yet reached a point in our flow where that is quite necessary, so I will be supportive of having one evening meeting. I also am very supportive of the idea of intentionally building in space for committee meetings in the evenings, especially because I think as we progress this conversation further, we will see the definitions of why we have committees being a little bit more clear. And so I will be supportive of this amendment.
205 Thank you, councilor, councilor Clark.
206 I'm sorry, did you call me? Okay, good. I just want to remind people that it's not just the council clerk's office. It's not just pts. And it's not just security that is supporting us. It's all the people in the bureaus. And we have seen them here. We don't always see them here because they're over in the Portland building, listening to us and being on call in case we have a question. And we forget that those are costs to that, all those, I'm afraid we're going to burn those people out. And that's an ongoing concern I have if we haven't already burnt them out by our endless debating about things. But I'm pro the one meeting. Just just be clear. I just want to remind people.
207 Thank you, councilor, for bringing that up. I do think that that's one of the places where there the impact difference between committees and council is clear. Councilor Morillo.
208 I just wanted to push back on the idea or maybe answer councilor Novick's question regarding matters of public interest, because I think that there have been quite a lot, but we haven't always had an opportunity to do an evening meeting. The top three that came to mind for me were the zenith resolution, the algorithmic price fixing ban, which I will be bringing back. Anything regarding ice right now is going to be a huge matter of public interest. The Portland street response resolution, the albina settlement, any of the police settlements. I'm sure we will have a lot of people coming in if we have it more publicly available. So I think that there are a lot of matters of public interest and what I have seen in my committee meetings, even with people who I agree with and like, is that the people who can come and testify generally are either wealthy, retired, or they tend to be lobbyists for organizations and they're paid. And again, those could be people I agree with and like, but you get a different type of person that comes in in the evening meetings. And I think that that's really important and valuable for us as a council to hear, because during our committee meetings, too, it's different when the full body of counsel is hearing the testimony than it is when someone is reading off to you, hey, the staff summary says that 12 people testified and they were all strongly in favor of this because of x, y, z. That doesn't have the same emotional impact for us as legislators and leaders as it does when you are face to face with your community and you have to answer them and you have to look them in the eyes and say yes or no on something. So I think that overall, having two evening meetings that we have already budgeted for is reasonable. I think there will be lots of matters of public interest as long as we choose to be exciting with our work.
209 Thank you councilor. I hesitated to get in the queue, but I do think that it's important to note that as we talk about accessibility of meetings, evening meetings are really important. There are people who can come, who can't come during the day, but we shouldn't assume that people who work are better off coming to an evening meeting than during the day. We have members of our community who work shift work. We have members of our community who work in hospitality and entertainment industries, for whom a daytime meeting actually can be better. And I just want to make sure that we are not making assumptions about who has access to what types times of day, thinking only about people who work 9 to 5.
210 Well, yes, I think I was.
211 Talking councilor It was a broader comment. Councilor Smith.
212 Yes, I do have a written up amendment, and I'd like to move to amend this ordinance by replacing a one and a two with the following number one on the first, second, on the first, second, fourth and any fifth Wednesday of each month beginning at 9:30 a.m. Two on the third Wednesday of each month, beginning at 6 p.m, and amend the ordinance by inserting a new section a point three and read numbering the current a point three to a point. For any regular meeting that is recessed with unheard agenda items will continue at 2 p.m. The following Thursday. That is just the housekeeping rule that I didn't have in before.
213 Thank you counselor, and if your team can share that with everybody and get it to the clerk, that would be helpful.
214 Thank you.
215 Counselor canal.
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216 Two things. Thank you, madam president. First, I appreciate the point you made, madam president and I it gave me an opportunity to mention why? Because I was asked earlier, why is it alternating first and third, second and fourth as opposed to some other form of configuration there? And it relates to your point about shift work. And I remember I've worked retail, I've worked hospitality, I've had different schedules. Ordinances are generally heard in two successive meetings. So having the opportunity for one of those two meetings to be in the evening allows for at least those, regardless of schedule, to take part in some way in part of that conversation. And so I do think that that variety, as councilor Morillo brought up, is vital to ensuring that everyone can participate. The other thing I'll note, and I was not aware of this until counselor Smith just read the new text is that we would be eliminating the Wednesday afternoon recess meetings in the text that was just read. And so yes, because the third part, the new a3, says that any meeting that was recessed with an unfinished items would be resumed at at 2:00 on Thursday. Right. Which means that the 2:00 that you can see currently in a1, as currently read recess session of a Wednesday morning meeting, will be held at 2 p.m. On that Wednesday. So that that that Wednesday meeting for the 3 or 4, however many wednesdays a month in which there is a morning meeting would go away with this amendment, which is another reason, I think, that that it should be voted no on. Thank you.
217 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith, are you raising your hand with a correction on your amendment right?
218 We would still even on the on the morning meetings if we need to if we need to recess, we still have the ability to do that on Thursday at 2:00.
219 Right now. And on the proposed calendar, ideas that have been sent out. Councilor Smith, we have the option of a Wednesday afternoon recess or a Thursday afternoon recess that's in code. Currently. We haven't generally used the Wednesday afternoon recess, but I could foresee us using the Wednesday afternoon recess after a morning meeting. We would not use that Wednesday afternoon time after an on weeks when we had an evening meeting. On those weeks, we would obviously just use that Thursday afternoon time. So I think the question is whether you are intending to limit those options or whether you're intending to maintain the status quo option of a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon recess, except on weeks when we have an evening meeting.
220 Yes, that that sounds good. Councilor Zimmerman, can you enter this conversation? Because I think that that what is he for a point of order.
221 I so I think that your amendment with the Thursday option is the important part here. I mean, I think that this what we're getting at here is the Wednesday option, basically two hours after maybe we took a break on a Wednesday is not a great practice, right. It turns into an all day meeting. And I think that's part of what we're solving here. It allows the presiding officer to say come back on the Thursday. And I think that's a healthier rhythm. Instead of take your half hour, because we never seem to end when we should and then come back 30 minutes later. That is where we're we're in these all day meetings when they should have just been a morning meeting. And so I think councilor Smith's option of Thursday is the important piece here as the rollover and not this doubling up on Wednesday piece.
222 Right. Because it says any regular meeting that is recess with unheard agenda items will continue at 2 p.m. The following Thursday, whether it be a night or a morning meeting.
223 I think that's a healthier rhythm for everybody involved. Councilor I also would like to my the reason I really had my hand in there was I don't even know what we call it anymore, but limit debate to anybody in the queue and let's move on to a vote.
224 Thank you councilor, I think that it is important for folks to see this in writing because it's making more changes councilor Than you had originally.
225 My staff is listening. Please send that to the clerk.
226 Okay. Do we have that in.
227 The and send it to the entire council?
228 It sounds like we may.
229 Have.
230 Just sent that out. Thank you.
231 Okay. Thank you to elijah councilor.
232 Okay. That's that's it. No, this is the.
233 Same thing. Okay.
234 So let's give everybody a minute to look at what is in writing here. I believe that everybody has had at least two opportunities to speak to this.
235 Can I.
236 Councilor Kanal do you have.
237 I haven't finished this. This was I got interrupted at the end there with the information. So can I finish the thought, please? In 2024, this council met 36 or 45 hours a month. This is assuming the normal cadence of three hour meetings with the recesses built in. And that was the maximum. Sometimes it didn't take the recess meeting. In 2025. We met 15 hours a month. This proposal, the underlying ordinance, would go back to 30 or 39 hours a month. So it's still fewer than in preceding years. And that's because there's no opportunity for two recess meetings. On an evening meeting. And the amendment that's being proposed right now, given that reduction of the Wednesday recess time, would reduce it to 24 or 30 hours a month, which is a significant change from all of the underlying numbers we just discussed. It reduces we'd be adding only nine hours of full council a month, which I think, given that we have increased the number of filers from 6 to 14 people who can initiate a document here, and we've increased the number of people who debate and discuss those proposals from five councilors, including the mayor, to now 12. There is a need to ensure that we're not going so far lower than what we've had in the past, not to mention the underlying needs that was brought up in the testimony around public testimony. Thank you.
238 Thank you councilor. Colleagues, are there any other comments?
239 I would just. Counselor Smith.
240 Correct the math on that, because if you add the Thursday meetings, that's a that's another three hours and three times four is 12 with the other four meetings. That's 24.
241 27.
242 And but we do have the ability if we need to, to go over on the Wednesday morning meetings. So.
243 Thank you, councilor, seeing no one else in the queue. And I think we have all, well, more than exhausted our two speaking points each. Rebecca, could you please call the roll on councilor Smith's amendment, which I believe we now all have in writing?
244 Sorry, I'm pulling it up.
245 Koyama Lane.
246 No.
247 Morillo. No Novick. I Clark,
248 I.
249 Mean. No Zimmerman.
250 I.
251 Avalos.
252 No. Dunphy I.
253 Smith I.
254 No, no.
255 Ryan I.
256 Pirtle-guiney I.
257 And the amendment is approved with seven I and five nay votes.
258 Thank you. Councilors, colleagues. I believe councilor Koyama Lane had proposed an amendment which has been seconded to the underlying ordinance. Councilor Koyama Lane, would you like to speak to that amendment?
259 Sure. Thank you, madam president. So as part of the discussions that we're having around streamlining committees, possibly adding council meetings, I'm proposing an amendment to section 3.0, 2.020 titled council agenda to change the deadline for items being heard to be moved from three months to 45 days. There have been concerns raised about the length of time council items take to come before council. Once out of committee, I hear some of these concerns. For example, as the timeline plays out, attachments may become irrelevant as well as losing urgency and momentum can be lost on the issue itself. With this proposed council regular meeting schedule that we're suggesting today, we may no longer need the full 90 days, so goals for reducing that timeline include increased transparency and efficiency, and limiting the amount of time needed for staff to track the status of any individual item and be ready without notice to present. So I look forward to this discussion around what you all think around this.
260 Thank you councilor, and we do have a second on that already. Colleagues, is there any debate on this motion? Councilor Green?
261 Thank you, madam president. To me this seems pretty straightforward and sensible. We've doubled the amount of we will doubled the amount of council meetings. We should be able to schedule those within 45 days. So I will plan to support these. Thank you.
262 Councilor Clark.
263 I'm not so certain, I guess, that we need to do that. That maybe we need to implement the additional council meetings first and then come back and reevaluate this. So I'm torn. I think I'll probably vote against it and hope that we have time to really see if our new council cycle works to facilitate rapid movement. I don't know that we need to zero in on 45 days.
264 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Ryan.
265 Thank you, madam president. My concern here is that have you had a conversation with michael jordan or the dca about your amendment?
266 I have.
267 Not that's that's thank you. And the reason I would want to talk to them about that, because what I keep hearing is the workload challenge. I also know council president has reason to weigh in on why, as council president, she's made some of those decisions. But I really think what I'm experiencing is sometimes we're not connecting with the staff who fundamentally have to implement what we're passing, and if we don't have time to socialize it and then work with them, I it sometimes takes more than 45 days. Yeah. So right now that's why I hesitation why I vote.
268 No.
269 I hear that. And I know that as governance leaders, we've talked about this idea and that was something that you brought forward, which is something that makes a lot of sense. So I know my team has reached out and started to ask about those conversations. I haven't gotten to have them yet. And what you're saying is very valid. Thank you.
270 I so appreciate your candor. Thank you.
271 Thank you, councilor, and I'll note that city administrator jordan is out this week, but acting in his stead is. I believe we have sarah this week acting in his stead. I apologize, I was thinking through the schedule because there's a few different people I'm seeing if she's available to weigh in on that. Councilor councilor Smith.
272 Thank you, madam president. And I would say ditto, ditto, ditto to councilor Clark because we don't know the flow. And then we have to add this extra layer of if we're changing the committee system. So it's going to be harder to get out of committee. We're going to be in committees longer. So that's going to be a strain. So I would suggest us getting into the flow of what we're going to be doing in terms of our infrastructure. So we know if 45 days is the actual timeline, we may need to expand, expand it to 120 days. I don't know, but we need to figure out how to how to manage what all this, all these new changes and look to see if our levers that we're trying to put in place, if it's going to be appropriate. So I, I agree with councilor Clark. Thank you.
273 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Green.
274 Yeah, I just wanted to note that most of what we'll be doing when we do policy development is pre referral to the full council. And so when we engage with the bureaus it is important to engage with them early as we develop our policies. And then that gets referred to our committee. And then we pass it out of committee. And so I don't think we're shortcutting the engagement with staff by moving the referral from committee to full council to 45 days. And I think it gives us an opportunity to clear some bottlenecks that we have in the city right now. As you know, many of my colleagues have said we want to be the city of yes. And it's hard to imagine being the city of yes if we have a really long lead time in passing policy. And so that's why I support the 45 days.
275 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor canal.
276 Thank you, madam president. I I'm confused by the conversation around whether or not we would need to ask someone if they want something they filed to be on an agenda faster. I am confused because once something has been filed, the filer, whether it's a part of the administration or it's a city councilor, obviously wants it to be discussed. And so having this backstop of it can't be longer than however many days it is, is a protection for that individual and for the content to ensure that it happens. But I think what we're hearing here is really the tools of status quo bias, because the tools of status quo bias are using process to impede progress. Did you run this by someone that's not material to the conversation is one of those things, and I'm just baffled by the idea that if the administration or a councilor is putting it forward, they wouldn't want it to be on the agenda faster. So I'm that's not about the number of days specifically, but it is about the conversation. I'm just very, very confused by that. And it's applicability here as it relates to councilor Koyama Lane amendment. I appreciate this conversation because we are talking about this in the context of how many hours of counsel we have. We can't act at the pace that the people want us to act right now. And that's not primarily because of this. It may relate to the number of days I think it does to some degree. As we saw with councilor Dunphy's proposal on changing the noise code. And that was the only reason that that ended up getting on the special meeting agenda that week. But primarily it's because we move slower than the mayor, and we're unable to be as responsive to the needs of the people as we'd like to be part of. That's by design. The mayor is designed to act faster, but part of it is because of the underlying needs for this entire ordinance. And I think because the day count relates to that, this is relevant to that conversation. I'm not 100% certain where I'm at on it. I'm likely to vote yes at this moment. But I do think it's worth saying we should be looking at a council agenda that reflects the needs of the people, as council sees it, and I feel like we've had a lot of time go towards the mayor's proposals and the administration's proposals, which are important and have had the other part of our government meaning councilors have to wait to, to have whatever the gaps, whatever the scraps are left at the table on the agenda from the mayor's side. Thanks.
277 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Zimmermann.
278 That was quicker than I expected. Okay. I guess I, I have said multiple times when we've written code, when we've written council rules that I'm not I'm not a big fan of putting a lot of specifics in what a presiding officer or what a chair or vice chair does, because I value the decision making of that person, and it's part of how I judge them in their role. And so and I know there's differences of opinions about how much authority or what the role of council president is that exists on this dais. But I am counting on the presiding officer of this council to have an idea for the breadth and extent of all things coming to this council and making the best decision for what comes next. And so by adding this 45 so to be clear, I was against in December and January, I was against the 90 days. And that was a compromise. And now this 45 days is just that much more of how much I would be against it, because 45 days in our work, given the nature of everything that comes, I think eliminates my ability to say the presiding officer has decision making abilities on this, and it means any person could do the role because you just say, oh, we're coming up on 45 days, this thing has to go forward. So I think there are times when a perfectly well-meaning piece of legislation is going to bump up against that 45 days. But given what we're in the midst of, it may be a bad time for council to take it up. And I use this topic specifically that we're on today. If this had hit its 45 day mark on may 23rd, I think it would have been chaos for us in the midst of a much bigger mission which was passing a budget. And so I think 90 days gives gives a great deal of flexibility and still gives us, as councilors, a serious backstop that is not too far in one direction. And so I want to just caution everybody in that I think the presiding officer has a role, and that role is a little bit of a bigger picture and awareness of a bigger picture than maybe we all do from our foxhole. And so for that reason, I think 45 days is well meaning, but actually in implementation could cause us pretty significant problems down the line. So I hope that we don't support this amendment, and I hope that we lean on the presiding officer to give us a reason or to help us politic or something if we need it to come more quickly instead of continually using the rules. Because I think we are inherently in politics, and we are in the business of convincing other humans to get a thing we care about, past or at least heard, and.
279 We want.
280 To listen.
281 We will only use the rules if we're not good at the politics. And so I just I just offer that up.
282 Thank you. Councilor, colleagues, we have dca morrissey stepping in. Who's our acting city administrator this week and dca morrissey of dca oliveira in the room as well. If you want to phone a friend, the question for you both that was posed by councilor Ryan. What we're discussing right now is whether the current requirement that a presiding officer schedule something at council that has come out of committee, which is a 90 day requirement, something has to be scheduled at council within 90 days, should be shortened to 45 days. And whether I'm paraphrasing councilor Ryan. So if I paraphrase incorrectly, please step in whether something that is coming from a councilor, so not something that the administration has brought forward, but something coming from a councilor Coming out of committee and then being heard and presumably passed out of council within 45 days is a requirement that would work for the administrative side or whether there are times where you all would want us to take more time in order for you to have more time to prep for that presumably being passed and coming to you for implementation.
283 Thanks, councilor.
284 Was that an appropriate summary?
285 Okay, so for the record.
286 I don't believe it's on. Is it Green now?
287 It's on now. So for the record dca sarah morrissey. She her pronouns. My response would be that it depends on the context, and it is highly dependent on how the staff have been engaged. If the council office needs to develop policy, if it is impacting a budgetary element that needs analysis, it's just highly contextual, dependent on the volume of work and complexity that the item has. So whether it's I'd say, right, if a council member is bringing forward a resolution, I feel like that would be fine in the 45 days or less. I think if it's an ordinance, any type of land use, any type of major budgetary impact that would take a more coordinated, significant time. And so I think it just depends on the scale of the impact of whatever council is working on. And then also I would say, how much have the teams on the administrative side been involved, whether it's providing analysis or developing code? Again, just depends on what the ordinance would be.
288 Thank you.
289 Councilor Smith.
290 Thank you, madam president. Thank you. Assistant dca. Sarah, I was just getting ready to say that that we have two things at our disposal as a commission and the reason why we would need to talk to the administration and the mayor's office is to ask them whether this is a resolution, an ordinance, if they could get things out quicker. Because what I find is the issue is that there are all these emergency ordinances that we should have had earlier, and if we had that time earlier, that 90 days would have been really nice to have. Secondly, we always have at our disposal the 9/12, if there's an emergency, if there's something that needs to go on the big council, then we have that ability to put those items forward and I think we should use that. We should use that lever sparingly, but we do have it at our disposal. That would help with this, this 45 day thing that that folks may think that we need right now in code. I just don't think that we need it. Thank you.
291 Thank you. Councilor, colleagues, I want to speak to this just from the experiences that I've had as the presiding officer over the last seven months, when we have had some things that have come right up to the deadline, the reason that we have had that has been the combination of less frequent meetings and for the most part, the budget period when things were coming right up to the deadline was during and immediately after our budget process. And my intent is never to drag things out to the very end unnecessarily. I am looking forward to if the underlying passes in some form. Having the flexibility of more regular meetings so that we can be more thoughtful as a body about what is at a night meeting versus a day meeting, what is paired together and not paired together. We had an unfortunate pairing of agenda items recently that I would have liked to avoid, but because of deadlines, wasn't able to. And my hope is that things don't come up against the deadline. I worry that if we shorten that deadline, which I understand, having that backstop, in case you have a presiding officer holding something, I worry that by shortening the deadline too much, we end up when we're in the middle of the budget process, or if we have a really meaty item that takes up time in a number of council meetings to get through the full debate, that we could end up in a situation again where our presiding officer in the future has to arbitrarily move things around in a way that isn't what the body was hoping for because of the deadline. So I just. Want to share that perspective. I think I and future presiding officers can work with whatever this body wants to choose, but not having that flexibility, while a backstop that I think provides folks a guarantee that presiding officers won't play games with their measures does limit our ability to be thoughtful about how we bring things forward. Councilor clerk.
292 Thank you, madam president, and thank you, dca morrissey, for the clarity. I'm I'm quite concerned about the impact that we have on the staff and all the different bureaus, particularly the ones I work with. We do so much work. And thank you, council president, for reminding us about the kind of backlog we had during the budget process. I think it's a good reminder, and there's nothing that says that we can't bring things forward more quickly now, especially that we're going to have more meetings. And I guess I'm lucky that you waited a little while to call on me, because I was feeling a little heated about some of the comments that were made regarding how the people want us to act and the needs of the people. I think the people want us to provide some leadership on economic revitalization in this city, that they're waiting for us to deal with those larger issues and affordability and homelessness and those kinds of things. I think we're we're way behind in offering leadership on economic revitalization. I just want to put that out there that I think that's what the people are waiting for us to do. But that's just a side comment. Thank you.
293 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Koyama Lane.
294 I really appreciate this great conversation. I think a lot of really good questions and concerns comments have come up. I just want to remind everyone that currently it can take three months for something to come to committee, and then another three months for it to come to full council. So that is six months. I think we need to ask if that feels right. I've seen some of those concerns pop up with different items from many of us up here wanting our agenda to come to full council. And I saw that. I saw conversations around cip where folks are really wanting that to get on the full council around the noise code, around a few other things. I really found my colleague, councilor Zimmermann's point interesting around the timing piece, especially with budget. That does make sense to me that we do want to be able to maintain flexibility, and I have seen some ways that council president already has been able to be flexible. And frankly, reasonable. If you have a conversation with her about an item that is in the queue, being able to talk about that, and also when it's getting close to the 90 days, there are some workarounds. I've seen items that are close to the 90 days, and we can put it on the agenda and take it off, or we have a conversation. If the members who are introducing it are open for that coming later. I hope, and I invite everyone to really zoom out and think about this as politically neutral as possible, and think about how long do you think it makes sense for legislation that you might want to bring to come, to make it through? I also am reviewing code and seeing that I mean, when something is coming to the full council, it has already passed out of committee. So there's been debate, it's passed, it's met the administrative requirements in coordination with the auditor. And so for me, part of this really is math. If we are going to be meeting twice as frequently, there should be an expectation that the that our that portlanders expect that we are getting through business faster, which is something I'm hearing from staff also that we need to be getting through stuff faster.
295 Thank you councilor, councilor Novick, I don't believe you've spoken yet to this issue. Actually. I'm pausing. I'm sorry. I don't believe councilor Dunphy has either. Councilor Dunphy, go right ahead.
296 Thank you. Yeah, I am going to be supportive of this amendment. I know, council president. I think you have done as great of a job with the situation as we could. I think that you're exactly right. That meeting frequency and the budget has screwed everything up. I am also the author of two ordinances that this body has passed that both approached the 90 day mark, and we had very limited tools to be able to adjust with that. I'm also noting that the written testimony, though it is anonymous. One third of the testimony in the on this item, is specifically that this council has not acted with the urgency that the moment calls upon. So anything that I think we can do to increase the turnover time for these things is going to be a leading towards the valleys that we are going to. I firmly believe that this council president and future ones, well, I don't know about future ones. I know this council president is working with the best intentions towards getting things scheduled. And the we are doubling the number of council meetings. So I think building in some additional urgency in our time is reasonable. So I will be supportive of this amendment.
297 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Novick, had you wanted an opportunity?
298 I just wanted to see the actual text of the amendment in context again, and I think councilor Kanal said she'd send it to me.
299 Yes. Okay. Teams, I don't see. Thank you.
300 I'll let you two figure that out, councilor Avalos.
301 I agree with the framing that councilor Dunphy just shared. I think that if we're making all of these changes to increase the amount of time that we have to do our business, it only makes sense to decrease the amount of time it takes for our business to get on the agenda. I obviously understand the challenges of agenda setting, and yet the urgency that everyone seems to want, I think can only really happen if we are pushing ourselves through our systems to ensure that we're moving our items more quickly. I get that there's a level of discretion that any council president needs. And yet, you know, again, the combination of adding more time and the fact that we need to be moving more quickly, I think it's important that we make this change right now and we're setting up our future. Right? Because all of these things that we're describing, that we've experienced in the first few months are, I think, in a lot of ways, an anomaly. They are a product of a growing new, growing our new government. And so I'm looking at this amendment by councilor Koyama Lane as setting up our future and what a future process will look like. I do not expect that the budget, for example, process will look the way that it did last year. In fact, I better not. And so I think that we need to take into consideration that we're making a lot of adjustments right now to ensure that we are working with both urgency but also working in collaboration through our committees to vet these policies. So I don't see why we can't shorten that timeline from committee to council. I think all of the extra layers of working with the bureaus and all those other variables that were being discussed, I think those variables get worked out in committee. We specifically have a structure in committee that things can stay in committee as long as they need to, to get the work done. By the time it's done by committee, it needs to get on the council agenda. Waiting 90 days is way too long. I think with the addition of more time of council, we should approve this amendment to ensure that things coming out of committee are moving through our body more quickly. So I will be supporting it.
302 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith, I apologize.
303 That's okay. So we're changing our structure and we're having twice the amount of meetings. Right. So this particular amendment is solving for a problem we don't have yet. Let's let this work through the next three months to see what these new. Excuse me.
304 Sorry.
305 What these new meetings will give us. I guarantee you that we'll see things come up on the, on the, on the big council quicker. So I don't like to solve for problems that we don't have right now. We've changed our structure. So let's give this structure an opportunity to work. If after three months, it's still a long time before we get to the big council, then this this is an appropriate amendment. And I want to say for the record, I'm a chair of the labor and workforce committee. It has never taken three months for anyone to get on on my calendar. Never. So let's let's just give it a chance, you guys. Let's stop solving for problems in nuance.
306 Thank you. Councilor. Acting administrator. Is that what we're using? Morrissey, did you have anything else to add? It sounded like there might have been some other details.
307 Yeah.
308 Hi. Thank you. So I also wanted to share that for. Specifically, I would like to flag just from a staff capacity standpoint, it is already pretty challenging to make sure that we have the ability to really have the we need the time to have the accuracy so we can give you correct information and ensure that we can implement with accuracy and be effective in the ordinances or the rules that you are all making. I will also share that title. 33 so that is a really hard one to have a 45 day time turnaround, especially that's around planning and zoning. If there are anything that have to require updated findings, we do need more than 45 days to do that work. And so I would just urge for the for staff who are really working hard to ensure you have as much complete information and that things are done on time and with accuracy that we take that into account. So I would I would just vote voice that to help support the staff's work.
309 So just to clarify on those code changes, the reason that staff need additional time is about creating the record in case those are appealed. Is that correct? So you're.
310 Creating updated findings is especially with title 33 staff definitely need more than 45 days.
311 Thank you. Councilor I'm looking at my list. I'm sorry, councilor Green. I don't believe you've spoken to this yet. Go right ahead.
312 Thank you, madam president. Acting dci or dca. Morris, you raised an interesting question for me. In your view, does staff need more than 45 days between the time that an action has passed out of committee to them be considered at full council, or do they need more than 45 days, just in general to develop this policy?
313 Thanks for the question. I think it depends on what the action between committee and council is. If you do have to do, like I said, updated findings related to land use and zoning. They do need more than 45 days. I think, again, it would just depend on what the direction was from committee to council.
314 Okay, that's very helpful.
315 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor councilor Kanal, did you just leave the queue?
316 Yeah.
317 Okay. Councilor Ryan.
318 Thank you. Council president, I want us to keep this in mind. You know this better than anyone. Council president, there are demands that come from the administration, from the executive, that are time sensitive, to keep the operations of the city moving forward. So I know that you have to factor that into the calendar. And so I just wanted to make sure that we lift that, because those are urgent. And dca morrissey, would that be a fair statement?
319 Yes.
320 Thank you. And so I just don't that's another reason why we need that flexibility on new items coming in to the to the to the city's operations. Thanks.
321 Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal.
322 Thank you, madam president. I think that this is a point that's been raised a couple times. And when we talk about staff, what we're really talking about here is bureau directors and above dca's city administrator and all of that. Most of the time, the people doing the filing are not below that level. And there may be a deputy director, I suppose, as well, or that has to have approval. So we're talking about who who's dealing with the filing timelines and waiting here. Obviously there's a lot of other staff that work on it too. But I want to I want to just be clear that we're not talking about rank and file staff doing the filing without it already going through a large process to get to that point. I think what's interesting here is the assumption that what council puts forward is not urgent. That's what I'm I'm struggling with, is this implication that only what the administration puts forward is, is urgent. I do not question its urgency or its importance. What I question is the implication that what council puts forward, generally informed by the people that we talk to in those town halls and evening meetings and in our emails, are not urgent to and I'm concerned that, you know, we're going to be in a situation we're talking about. Let's wait 3 or 4 months. We're going to be in a situation in the next 3 or 4 months where we're going to have hopefully, some sort of legislation about ice. I do not want to be voting on that in 2026. I would like to be voting on that in 2025. And there's going to be a need for us to address those things and everything that councilor Clark mentioned, to which I agree with completely on economic development and homelessness and all those issues too. And those might be filed by us. They might also be filed by the administration, and both are urgent. And this is implication that what we file is not urgent. That really is troubling me with this whole conversation. It's less relevant to the number of days. And I, I really appreciate council president's comments because your experience, madam president, is relevant to this in a very direct way. And I would love to know, because you mentioned that you wouldn't want to limit it too far. If you have another set of days, another number of days that might make you personally more comfortable with it. Thanks.
323 Thank you councilor I, I actually am in the queue specifically to reply to that. Yes. I just want to clarify, because what my colleague just said was that the deadlines that are are acting city administrator was talking about would only affect directors and above. And my understanding from what I heard, and I want to make sure this is accurate, is that what you were describing? Acting administrator morrissey, is that on land use and code items where staff need to have a record before we pass something that our attorneys can then use if those code changes or land use items are appealed through the land use system that can stand, that can hold. If there are changes that are significant, that would require staff, frontline staff, who are the people who write those documents to make changes to those documents. We would need enough time for those frontline staff and the attorneys to work together to change the documents before council debated, to make sure that the record could hold if those were appealed in a land use process. So we're actually talking about the needs of frontline staff and our non-management attorney team to do work so that the findings accurately reflect what council has asked for in an appeal so that we can actually win in court is that we're talking about frontline staff. Is that accurate?
324 That is accurate.
325 Okay. Thank you for clarifying.
326 My comment was not in response to the dca's comments. My comment was in response to earlier colleagues who were talking about who is the burden being placed on staff who are filing the item. I agree completely with everything you just said.
327 Okay. Thank you councilor.
328 Councilor, councilor Ryan, you've spoken twice, so I want to make sure we hear from others. Councilor Zimmerman.
329 Thank you. I you know, in listening to this conversation, I'm not getting the sense from, from other councilors that that anybody is conveying less urgent, more urgent. And so I'm not I'm not hearing that, but. If we have a 90 day backstop, which we currently have, we have a presiding officer who can always put something on the agenda. Day one. That window to me is serving an important role right now. And I'm not I'm not bothered by by going to the end of that window. But I would also say in terms of urgency and flexibility, as was noted earlier with the 9/12 option, if something is so urgent but the presiding officer is so against it, or against even getting a scheduled. I guess I have to debate whether or not there is enough consensus around an item being urgent that one cannot get nine people to say, we must hear it now. And I think that that is a healthy debate. And a lot of this council is split and a lot of this council, we're going to have these debates that that are are important debates even when we disagree with each other. But for the things where we are united and that they are urgency is there. And if we have a council president who is the one stick in the mud who doesn't want to move it, I think we still have the tools to do it. So to councilor Smith's point, I'm not sure of the problem we're solving here. And for those things that don't have nine people saying they're urgent, then healthy, timely debate is important. And 90 days to me seems very reasonable for that. And so. Yeah, again, I think, you know, this this amendment to the overarching baseline document would be pretty concerning. Thank you.
330 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
331 I just want to address a few things that I heard earlier. So for one thing, 90 days is not acceptable when people are suffering and we have to get legislation passed as quickly as we can. For another thing, there were some comments about this is politics, not rulemaking. And so therefore you have to build consensus. I would say that we are a pretty, pretty split council on many issues. And actually, councilor Zimmerman, you and I are probably on the opposite ends of the spectrum. So the irony of that coming from you is not lost on me, but the value implication that we need to have a majority vote to pass things for the people when we are representing very different types of people, is not a value that I necessarily think is needed. There are going to be times where I'm going to pass things with seven votes, and that is fine with me, because actually passing legislation that is going to help people who I am choosing to represent, who happen to be the people at the very bottom of the ladder, that is my priority. I don't care how it gets done. I don't care if it looks pretty. So the 9/12 vote only has utility to a certain degree to rush something through. Sometimes you just need something to be on the agenda, and you know that you're going to get seven votes and you're going to call it a day. And we are absolutely required to move with urgency on some of these issues. I have heard every single person here at one point or another, absolutely berate the council president, or be extremely angry that they could not get their item on the agenda because we did not have enough time. And the idea that the administrative side of council gets to completely bog down our agenda so that we can't, as the legislative body, pass legislation, is a huge problem. Everything that councilor Kanal laid out means that we are essentially forfeiting our power as a legislative and. Budget body to the administrative side, and we are the people here who are representing every single district, every single type of person in Portland. We have a wide variety of perspectives on this council for that very reason. So the 45 day limit is not unheard of. This is, I think, very reasonable given that we're going to have more meetings. I understand the concerns about certain land use issues or different code changes that staff need delays. Maybe that can be an amendment or something to the code, but overall this is we are required to act with urgency. So I hope that we can get on board with this.
332 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Novick.
333 So I have to say, I don't feel prepared to vote on this today. I was just looking at the existing language and I'm probably dense, but it's not clear to me that it sort of assumes that something that you have something has to have a chance to come through committee before the 45 days starts. So I'd want that to be clear. I also think that it should be if we adopt this, it should be at the option of the filer, because if the filer, after consulting with the administration, realizes, yes, it's going to take 60 days to write up findings on a land use issue, then the filer should be able to say, okay, then I'm waiving the 45 days and maybe that enough. I mean, it seems to me that it's sort of a question of who do you trust? Do we trust the filers not to rush things when they shouldn't, when there's issues like, you know, a complicated land use issue? Or do we trust the council president to bring things forward in a timely manner? And I, I think you can argue it either way. So I just want to say that as of right now, I'm kind of confused.
334 Councilor was there a motion there for us to do anything different, or just expressing your thoughts on where we are right.
335 Now.
336 Just where we are right now? I don't feel prepared to vote today. Okay. I want to think about it more.
337 Thank you. Councilor colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, councilor Koyama Lane.
338 Yeah, this is likely not going to pass. I understand that dca morrissey, I appreciate you sharing the needs of dca's and bureaus. I know we've had many conversations as leadership about ways that we can work on the flow, make sure it's clear who our primaries. I think it is known that we need to figure out how we're working in tandem a little bit better, and how to collaborate. I hope that this can come up for another conversation. It's clear that it's very controversial. I see staff members running around and talking to dcas, and some of you might want to be careful because I sit right next to council president, I can see exactly what you're sending to her.
339 Councilor Kanal are you in the queue for debate? Okay. Seeing no one else in the queue for debate. Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
340 Koyama Lane? I Morillo. I.
341 Novick a worried. No, I mean, I might be a yes tomorrow. I just don't feel prepared to be yes today.
342 Don't let them shiver your timbers.
343 Clark.
344 No.
345 Green.
346 Yes.
347 Zimmerman.
348 No.
349 Avalos. I Dunphy. I Smith.
350 No. Canal I.
351 Ryan.
352 No.
353 Pirtle-guiney.
354 No.
355 The amendment fails with six I and six no votes.
356 Okay.
357 Colleagues, there were no other amendments that were put on the floor prior to debate. So we are now at debate of the underlying now amended twice ordinance. And the queue is open for comments, debate questions or further amendments on the underlying ordinance.
358 With the meeting's good, let's vote.
359 I'm going to mention one thing first. Just because I want to make sure we're all aware in a three, there's language that says when a meeting falls on a legal holiday, the meeting will be held on the next succeeding business day at the same hour. I just want to note that depending on how we set up our calendar, there could be some complications there. I don't think that it's enough to vote against this, but I wanted to note that that is something that we may have to come back to at a future time.
360 We have.
361 Done amendments.
362 Okay. Seeing no one else in the queue. Rebecca, could you please. Oh, councilor Avalos.
363 Sorry for the last minute. I guess I just want to make a broader point. I think what has emerged in this discussion is something we've been talking about since the beginning, which is what is the purpose of the council? How does the how do the people interact with us? What is the way that our policies move through? And ultimately, how are we demonstrating that we are being responsive with urgency to the communities that put us here? I am just overall concerned that we do not share a similar value, it seems, in increasing the people's voice in our chambers, and I just want to put on the record my disappointment. I think that we continue to look at systems as being neutral when they're not. In fact, we redid this entire form of government because the way of being was very exclusive to the very communities that we now have represented on this council. So I would encourage us to look holistically at our systems and remember that we instituted this new form of government to increase the people's representation and making decisions, to not add more night time, to not increase the urgency in our timelines is antithetical to that overall outcome. So I hope we continue to reflect on how we meet that goal. I will continue to push us to do so. Thanks.
364 Thank you, councilor, and I moved to call roll for momentarily thinking that we were on an emergency item, but we're not, so we will hear this at our next meeting. Councilor Kanal did you have anything to add? Okay, seeing no one else in the queue, we are going to move this to second reading at our September meeting and close this agenda item. We do have another agenda item open today. Colleagues establishing the new committee council structure. This is an item that we debated in a work session. And following that work session, a number of councilors asked that our colleagues who had brought forward proposals on our committee structure, sit down together and try to capture what those proposals were. Councilor Dunphy has put forward an amendment that captures that, which is kind of the most boiled down version of what folks thought they heard from our colleagues. There are also amendments to that, as councilor Dunphy mentioned, to build back up, I have put in an amendment with an additional idea for fewer committees. Following conversations with a few people, as well as with some of our staff around how we might set up a structure. The idea of having four committees seemed like an option that we should also consider. So I tried to capture how we might get there based again on the conversation that we had heard. And councilor Novick has an amendment which is now posted, described earlier around how chairs or co-chairs might meet with our presiding officers. Councilor Dunphy, how do you want to go about taking on the amendments that you have put forward?
365 What I'd like to approach them individually. I have four separate issues that I think require each an up and down vote from this. From this body, I can briefly outline all four of them if that's helpful, and we can discuss them in order. Or we can go through one by time. I think that there is. I am noting a potential conflict between. Dunphy amendment a and Novick amendment just in terms of language. And so we may need some some clarification as we get further into this process. But however you would like me to approach this, I'm happy to.
366 Why don't we do them one at a time? And colleagues, I just want to note also that there are some calendars posted as supplemental information I mentioned in an email to everybody, but we'll just put on the record as well. None of those are meant to be an official calendar that we are adopting, but just a way to give everyone an idea of how our workflow might look, as informed by staff in council operations and the clerk's office on what workflows would would fit best for our supporting teams. Depending on some of the choices that we might make today. Councilor Dunphy, why don't you go ahead and introduce your first amendment?
367 Sure. Well, I'm also wondering whether or not we should take your amendment first, because to some extent, my some of my amendments do speak to there being five committees. And so I'm happy to well, I guess whatever the body thinks. But I'm happy to start us off. Or unless you wanted to take yours first.
368 Let's I'm looking at what you have. I think other than c, we can probably move forward with your amendments.
369 Okay, great.
370 So at least do a and.
371 B let's do a and b. So Dunphy amendment a this is us calling the question on whether or not to have a co-chair model or a vice chair model or a chair vice chair model or maximum flexibility. For the purposes of my amendment, I am proposing that the city council have a chair vice chair model for the committees with the responsibilities outlined for each of the chair and vice chair, and the responsibilities for both. I'm happy to read it out loud, but folks also can read it all right.
372 And councilor, can we pause for one minute? Did we? I think that previously I hadn't taken seconds on these since there were multiple in this document. So I want to make sure as we go through these that we do get a second on each of them.
373 Sure, absolutely.
374 Just briefly reading Dunphy amendment a, it reads that d two each committee shall be administered by a chair and vice chair, subsection a the chair's responsibilities shall include I leading each committee meeting. Two I guess representing each committee on the leadership team and communicating updating upcoming topics from the administration to the vice chair and other members of the committee. Section b the vice chairs responsibilities shall include chairing committee meetings when the chair is absent, chairing temporary or joint committee subgroups as needed to tackle subject specific subject areas. Section c both chair and vice chair shall be responsible for tracking policy implementation within the administration to ensure policy goals are reached and collaborating on committee agenda topics and coordinating with councilors and staff to bring salient issues to the committee. And I would entertain a second second.
375 Okay.
376 Moved by councilor Denny, seconded by councilor Koyama Lane councilor Canal, are you in the queue to debate Dunphy amendment?
377 Aye.
378 No, madam president, I'm in the queue to ask a question. Just a clarifying question.
379 Go right ahead.
380 What is the leadership team? I didn't see that anywhere else in this entire document except in a.
381 Whereas that's a good point.
382 It seems like a foundational piece of information for this one, so I just wanted to understand it better.
383 That is a good point.
384 Councilor.
385 Councilor Dunphy, do you prefer to leave this as is? Do you prefer.
386 Sorry, I think that's that's sort of implied. I guess it would probably need to be in section e. I think that is section e. It's not referred to explicitly as a leadership team in section e, but the committee chair shall convene with the council president to coordinate agendas, priorities, overall strategy, and on convening ad hoc workgroups as needed, which is in the underlying. It is not explicitly called a leadership team, and I'm happy to omit the language or add it back in.
387 Councilor Dunphy, do you prefer to add the term leadership team to e, or do you prefer to take that out of Dunphy?
388 I think I would prefer to take it out of Dunphy. Aye.
389 Okay. So it would read.
390 Representing each committee and communicating upcoming topics from the administration to the. Oh, gosh, that doesn't read right. Okay.
391 You could say representing each committee. In. Councilor.
392 Sure. I will just omit two two sub a sub two.
393 Okay.
394 Just keep communicating upcoming. Right.
395 Like yeah sure. Yeah. Actually that's a better option. I would omit the words representing each committee on the leadership team. And so the chair's responsibilities include communicating upcoming upcoming topics from the administration to the vice chair and other members of the committee.
396 Yes.
397 Okay. Omitting the first half of the sentence.
398 Got it. When councilor Koyama Lane comes back, we'll make sure that that's a friendly. But in the meantime, let's move forward there, as is. Colleagues, is there any debate on the amendment? Councilor Ryan?
399 Yes, thank you, madam chair. Madam president, councilor Dunphy, I want to hear from you. Why? You like the chair vice chair model as opposed to the co-chair model? I've experienced both. And I experienced them a bit differently. But I find a lot of value in the one that I am a co-chair in. And I think what we're getting at here is there's a direct correlation between. This is my assumption in reading this, that you like the chair vice chair model, because it supports this leadership team that we're learning about.
400 I on the one hand, yes, I think that the ability for us to have a greater ability to coordinate with the president and vice president and the work that is happening in the committees in a structured way makes a lot of sense to me. I think that the co-chair model is confusing to the public in a lot of ways. I think that in a lot of circumstances, I'm seeing it work very well for some of our colleagues, but I don't know that that is necessarily a sustainable model. Depending on future. Councils. And I, I think I think it's just broadly, generally a confusing model. I think that it to some degree, I just think I think that a hierarchy makes sense with regard to communication and leadership within a, a, a committee. I also. Worry that to some extent it is not. The co-chair model isn't inherently for the health of the body, but rather for the health of egos of elected officials. I think that if everybody is a leader, then nobody is a leader, and it doesn't matter at that point. And I think we aren't able to move forward with any sort of strategic vision for the broader body.
401 Okay. Thank you. I think what I need to hear from maybe, perhaps council president is the value proposition of this leadership team.
402 I'm in the queue. And why don't I address that then, just so that I don't cut in front of others? Are you comfortable with that, councilor?
403 I think I'll just end with the statement that we're clearly, you know, divided. It's the media's picked up on this of late. Of course. I think it's really important to have balance no matter where we're going with this. And if there's a room where it's happening, which is this executive team or this leadership team, then I'll be the new fight would be about ensuring we have some balance there. Just had to put that into the record.
404 Councilor Novick.
405 We talked about this a bit in a previous meeting, but I like the co-chair model. I think it works well where it's being used, and so I don't want to remove that as a possibility. I also think that, you know, it might be about egos, but I think that it's going to be a lot more difficult for people to vote for a new committee structure. If only five people are going to have gavels. And there's a reason. I mean, avoiding a bloodbath is a reasonable thing to think about. I also, as I said earlier today, I don't think that I don't see the value of a leadership team. For one thing, I think that this is a council that doesn't consist of people who generally follow leaders. I think they're more aligned with bob dylan's line don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters. And I think that having a mysterious leadership team making decisions that they, by definition, couldn't share with other people because that would violate public meetings law, would be a problem. So again, my amendment proposes that we just sort of I don't even know if this is necessary to write this down, that we can have the have the function of information exchange being done by individual committee chairs and co-chairs talking to each other, and the council president and vice president being part of that.
406 Thank you.
407 Councilor, councilor Smith.
408 Thank you, madam president and councilor Dunphy. I'm trying to figure out I was looking at your Dunphy a now, does that include that? There must be only you said at least one chair from each committee. Is that a part of your of your proposal?
409 Yeah, there would be a chair and a vice chair for each committee.
410 Okay. And from each district.
411 That is. That is Dunphy be we.
412 Will that's Dunphy.
413 Be go to that in.
414 A second. Okay, so that's what I was wanting to talk about. I just want to say, for the record, I think that in terms of. Condensing confusion or less confusion, that changing this whole committee system, whether it be to your Dunphy a or b, I think we should actually wait to do these kinds of things until the top of the year, because we agreed not to change presidents every six months. And I think making all these different changes is confusing to the public. I like the idea of where we're at right now, and then we change it at the top of the year. If there's going to be a change in president or otherwise. I think we just confuse the people too much. And if we're talking about our bureaus now, our bureaus have to go through another level of understanding new, new chairs, the whole nine yards. So I. I'd like to stay where we're at. Thank you.
415 Thank you. Councilor. I think I'm next in the queue. So I'll address councilor Ryan's question and wanted to mention one other thing as well. Councilor Ryan, in terms of the leadership team, I have foreseen using that space not for substantive conversations about what we want to do on items in a way that councilor Novick has suggested, which might absolutely violate serial meetings laws if people talk to each other, but as a space, for example, to say, if we have an evening committee meeting, allow chairs to come together and talk about what items they have coming up on their agenda, where they might need to use an evening meeting space to take more public testimony, and who has things coming up more quickly? And how do we figure out who could use that time this month, next month, the month after those more? Administrative items? Things like how are folks managing testimony in their committee, and are there new practices that we want to put in place where it's helpful to have everybody in the room and having it really be a more administrative space than substantive space. So I think that it would be very helpful to have for those reasons. I think that as council president, I have run into a number of situations where I would have liked to be able to very quickly sit down with all of the committee chairs and say, hey, here's a an idea. Hey, here's a thing that I think we should be doing differently in terms of how council and committee work together when we have backlogs of items, to be able to sit down with everybody and hash out some of those things would be helpful. Right now, I try to do that in one offs when they come up with specific committees, but I think it would be fantastic for me as a leader to have that space. If we decide not to have that space, that's okay. We haven't had it. I can move forward without it. But those are the types of reasons that I would like to have that space. Sure.
416 Okay. I appreciate what you just said. My question is also about the composite, because you seem to be in favor of a chair vice chair, not co-chairs. And if shared leadership of the co-chairs can figure it out on who to bring to that meeting, say it's monthly, why would there be opposition to that? And my point is also that I really think it's important that we have balance in that group. And I would worry if all the chairs were from one side of this aisle. That seems to be emerging.
417 Thank you, councilor, and I'll move into the other things I wanted to say generally and why I joined the queue. And I think that that might address some of what you just raised. Colleagues. I'm not supportive of this amendment because when I first brought forward to you all a committee structure with some co-chairs and some chairs and vice chairs, I said that I was doing so very intentionally to create the precedent that we could have either one, as we think about changing committees, I think it's very possible that we could have a situation where we have only chairs and vice chairs, but I don't want to write that somewhere, because I think that that undoes the precedent setting of saying, we are okay with having either of these things, and I want to make sure that whatever this council needs in the future and whatever a president of this council needs in the future, they can bring forward as a proposal to the body as a whole to vote on. And I don't want to arbitrarily say we shouldn't do one or we should always do the other. In terms of balance. I want to address that point, which is not something that's here. This is just about do we want to change what our committees are, and if this passes, then our code would require me to bring forward a proposal to this body on committee membership, which I would intend to do at our first meeting after the recess. But this change would create winners and losers. It certainly would, decreasing the number of chairs means that, or the number of committees means that we would decrease the number of folks around the dais holding gavels. And I think that's a point that we all need to go into this knowing we need to be open eyed about that. To councilor Dunphy's point, when everybody leads, nobody leads is perhaps the right approach to councilor Ryan's point. When you give everybody an opportunity to lead, you have more voices. I think that those are both very valid points. I do, because I have heard away from this dais from a number of people concerns about how I might approach leadership moving forward. I just want to state, for the record, for all of you and for others listening, that I have tried to approach this work from the start, and I shared with some of my colleagues before any of us were seated, before my name was out there for council president, that it's how I would approach my work in any position here, trying to make sure that many voices get heard, because I generally think that when you listen and respond to your opposition, you come up with better policy. So I hope that as we go through this, I don't have folks impugning my values and the way that I would approach things by suggesting that I would intentionally, politically create a system where we have all chairs from one perspective or another. I don't believe that there are only two perspectives on this council, but I certainly would not pull all from one or the other for a leadership team that I was creating at a time when I'm leading this body. Councilor Kanal.
418 Thank you, madam president. First, I, I agree completely with everything that councilor Ryan said in his previous comments. So maybe we're not as divided as we might say. Council, I have a question. Just to clarify, madam president, your description of what you would use a theoretical leadership team for. I my understanding, and I'm going to use a very specific quote here, is that that that would not include, quote, any determination, action, vote or final disposition upon a motion, proposal, order, resolution, ordinance or measure on which a vote of a governing body is required. And that is because you're talking about administrative uses. And that's my understanding. I don't want to hold you legally to it, but my understanding of your your thematic approach to it, I think that's squares, as those are two separate ideas. Right? We wouldn't be using that to deliberate upon things that whether or not to pass or fail an item.
419 My intent would not be to bring forward items like that. I don't want to speak to what somebody might do in the future.
420 Fair enough. I appreciate that distinction. I quote that that's from the public meetings law, state public meetings law. And it it is my it's my way of saying, I'm not sure that a leadership team needs to only have six people on it, because I'm not sure the public meetings law applies to the idea of sharing information in the first place. That's immaterial to my reason for opposing this amendment, but I do think it's relevant information too. And that's a rs 192 .610 section one, part two, as retitled in the most recent update to it. So I think that that that's one framing piece of information. Bless you. And so what I what I would say is the five co-chairs, who are the five councilors who are currently co-chairs, all spoke in favor of the co-chair model last time when we did the work session. And I'll just point out that working with councilor Novick has been very a good experience for me. And part of the reason why is it forces us to actually subsume our egos in some ways to talk with each other, because we have different approaches, we have different networks and knowledge bases. And so that that act of creating, of co-creation, of an agenda is actually, I think, healthy for elected officials who I don't know if anyone out there might might guess this, but it occasionally happens in an elected official has an ego. So I think we're in a good place with that particular thing. And I agree with the approach that councilor Smith brought up around letting this kind of play out a little bit until on at least this specific issue, until new years. And also councilor Zimmerman's previous point about not over limiting the role of the council president, because that's what this would do before that second resolution that would have to come up. So those are my reasons why I'll be I'll be voting no on it. The other point I'll make is that even if the goal was to achieve a six person or fewer group, the only distinction that seems the only two distinctions that seem to be happening here between a chair and a vice chair, one is whether or not they're a part of this leadership team or not, and the other is whether or not they're they're swapping the gavels or one is always the primary and the other is always the secondary. If the first person is not present, and that latter one does not appear to be a high priority to anybody, I correct me if I'm wrong. So even I even think the goal of that could be achieved by just designating one of two co-chairs in that scenario as the person who goes to a hypothetical leadership team, should one be created in the future. And I'm very open to councilor Novick other comments on whether or not to structure it that way as well. And I'm looking forward to that amendment, but I'll be voting no on this one. Thank you.
421 Thank you, councilor.
422 Councilor Morillo.
423 Thank you, council president. I was going to say that I also agree with councilor Ryan. So maybe we can start a tally sheet of when we agree and maybe make a bingo game out of it. I think that co-chairs are really important. I don't think it's about ego, though. I agree, a lot of elected officials run for office because we think we're so special. But the co-chair model I have found actually creates a much more balanced committee because you can have a wide variety of perspectives in a way that you wouldn't be able to have otherwise. And what, for example, I've had a really great time talking with councilor Novick as co-chair of the climate committee. I think we have different relationships within community, within government, with different experts and who we choose to bring to the table. And I think that that has strengthened our committee and made it really just brought a wide array of voices to the table that we would have, we wouldn't have had otherwise. So I have found that the co-chair model brings a lot of balance and nuance to the work that we do, and I think it's really important. I also just firmly disagree with the idea. Like at the end of the day, when you have a gavel, you have power over what gets heard, you have power over who gets a seat at the table, who what gets put on the public record. It is a huge power to have. So I think that good leadership is actually being able to learn how to share power, and especially under a new government structure where we have different districts that we're representing and such a wide array of voices at the table, we have an opportunity to share power in a way that we never have before. And I think that we should seriously consider that. So for those reasons, I'll be a no on this amendment.
424 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
425 Thank you, madam president. With many of these things coming up, I am trying to balance what might be best for this body and our needs in terms of how we're working together and our culture and our flow. And then what I would imagine would be best down the road, put in place for many years. That's a tension for me, just to be transparent, this idea of how to bring in more councilors, whether it's leadership team or just in general into some meetings, I don't think that's controversial between us. I think it's something we're talking a lot about and maybe have some different ideas of how that could look. On Monday mornings, we meet with the mayor and all of the dcas and do some sending of committee sending of their items to different committees. Maybe that's a place where other folks can step in. Maybe not. Maybe part of this is having primaries for dcas, which is something that I heard from mr. Jordan. That could be helpful. I'm not sure about what that looks like. I'm not sure if that actually should be in code or outlined in code. I think that's something that we want some flexibility with. And I feel similarly with chairs and co-chairs. If I'm being honest, what I think is best for down the road for clarity is chair and vice chair, and I'm leaning more for the health of this body for there to be some more flexibility, especially as we are trying to build some trust and figure this out. So right now I am a no.
426 Thank you.
427 Councilor, councilor Green.
428 Thank you. I, I went into this not really knowing where I was going to land on this because I it's such a hard one for me because I, I see I can see it both ways, I really can. It's quite efficient to have a pretty expected hierarchy. And sorry for my leisure where I wanted to wear western shirt. Today I realized that now I'm on the camera. But. But I've been convinced by this argument. I mean, like the co-chair thing and council president. You sorry for the levity, council president, you raised some really important things for us to think about, which is that the job that you have is to balance things and to think about what is for the best health of our governing body. And based upon who gets elected to these positions, you're not necessarily going to be able to solve that equation in a rigid model. So some years it may be maybe all chairs and vice chairs, some years it may be all co-chairs. But I think there needs to be a degree of freedom to kind of wiggle in that space. So I think at this point I am leaning I am I am prepared to vote no on this, to keep that flexibility. But I also wanted to say another thing was, was I, I don't think that we should impugn the council president's motives on who gets assigned to these seats. I think I think she has tried to balance things. I may disagree with the theory of change and balance for the sake of balance is what's for the best of all of us. But I but I see the balance nevertheless. And I think that if I was ever in a situation where I didn't think that my politics were represented by a gavel, I know I can find three councilors to bring something straight to city council. So I so I don't, I don't. So I felt that there and I just wanted to acknowledge that as well.
429 Thank you. Councilor.
430 Councilor Novick.
431 I just wanted to say that I think that the theme of we don't have to write everything down is one that we can apply to a lot of the issues here, like in terms of what councilor Vice president was saying about youth being useful to have or what you, madam president, were saying about useful sometimes to have chairs in meetings with the executive. It doesn't necessarily have to be all the chairs all the time. I mean, if they identify what the issues they want to talk about, you could ask a couple of the chairs of a couple of the committees to come to that meeting. So I think that instead of like saying there will be a leadership team that will do this, I think you could achieve the same goals by being a little more freewheeling.
432 Thank you, councilor.
433 Councilor Avalos.
434 Coming in, I think that my feelings towards this amendment were of support, and I do generally still think that it would be good to have a more clear. Clear delineation of leadership. And part of it is because I'm still grappling with where are we headed as a body as it relates to that leadership team. So I think that's why this vote is complicated for me, because I think I was coming in feeling that this would be the best option, so that it would clear the way to make more sense logistically for what a leadership team could look like. Because I don't think that this whole like co-chair. And then we pick one. I don't think that that's equitable or I think that would be a little bit messier. That being said, I, I think in the beginning, when it was originally proposed as a like, we should keep it flexible so that each committee could have its own structure. It's clear that councilors are experiencing that in different ways. And I think that's okay. And I definitely agree with councilor Morelos points just around like what shared governance looks like. And I can see that argument. I see both of the arguments. And again, I kind of came in leaning towards this, but I guess now I'm leaning away from it just for the sake of what I'm seeing is the spirit that everybody is bringing to how they're seeing the flexibility. And I guess I'm, you know, still curious how this all lands as it relates to a leadership team. So that's a big reason why I wanted to support it in the first place, but I guess I will not support it now due to where the discussion has headed. But thank you, councilor Dunphy, because him and I have talked a lot about this, and I definitely agree with the spirit of what you were doing. I think based on what I'm hearing from my colleagues, I'm inclined to not support it.
435 So thank you, councilor. Councilor Clark.
436 Thank you, madam president. I support the amendment. I think it's very confusing for the public to have co-chairs. Who do we contact? You know, I know we're in the process of birthing a new government. I don't want twins. I just want one one council chair. So thank you, councilor Dunphy.
437 Councilor canal, just one.
438 Quick point here. In the earlier item, I guess it was testimony for both of these. We had a piece of testimony that said that we don't have committee emails, and I think that this would help a great deal with any potential confusion that exists with the public, alongside some of the other work we're doing to shorten the urls. So it can just be caps instead of council dash. And, you know, all of that. I think having a single point of contact might assist with the ability for a community member to or frankly, anybody to reach out to co-chairs by saying, here's an email, goes to caps committee at and it forwards automatically to councilor Novick and I. It's not a real email address, but I'm suggesting something like that to assist with the ability to contact co-chairs together. Thanks.
439 Thank you. Councilor. Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue. Rebecca, could you please call the roll on Dunphy amendment? Aye.
440 Koyama Lane.
441 No.
442 Morillo.
443 No.
444 Novick.
445 No.
446 Clark.
447 Yes, I.
448 Green no. Zimmerman I Avalos.
449 No.
450 Dunphy I.
451 Smith.
452 I.
453 Canal.
454 No.
455 Ryan.
456 No.
457 Pirtle-guiney no.
458 The amendment fails with four I and eight nay votes.
459 Thank you. Colleagues.
460 We are scheduled until 130 today. I think we have time to do one more amendment and end then, or very close to then. I'm going to challenge us to do that, and then we will pick back up tomorrow where we leave off today. Councilor Dunphy, would you like to move your next amendment?
461 Absolutely. Thank you colleagues also. That was great. I'm glad we all got on the, you know, got to have the conversation. Dunphy. Amendment b is really very straightforward. I would like it that it regardless of how many committees we have, that each district is represented as a committee chair in some capacity. Now that we have a co-chair model as a as a option, it should be certainly easier, but I think that it will be harder. You know, I have heard repeatedly, I think, you know, partially because of the structure and too many committees before that, we couldn't have every district represented on every committee. This resolution will move in that direction. But I think that it would also be important to designate a councilor from each district as a chair. And so Dunphy b adds subsection four that says each district shall have at least one chair of a policy committee. And I would entertain a second if anybody is interested.
462 Is there a second?
463 Second? Thank you.
464 Councilor. Councilor canal.
465 Thank you, madam president. I have a. Question and then a comment. So and the question may also be a suggestion. I'm not sure you mentioned that now that we have co-chairs available to us, that that may change the way that this is interpreted, but this still uses the word chair. Would it be friendly to add in the parenthetical co. So it could be either a chair or a co-chair, depending on how that plays out?
466 It doesn't offend me, certainly.
467 So that would be a prior to the word. It would be.
468 Well, chair, a co-chair is still a chair.
469 Are we interpreting it that way? Is that.
470 I want to.
471 Look to our attorney to make sure. But my interpretation in implementing this would be that this could be a chair or co-chair. The way it's written legally. Does that check?
472 I think that's a fine interpretation.
473 I'm seeing.
474 The most emphatic.
475 Two attorneys.
476 Thumbs.
477 Up I've ever seen.
478 To that. So let's just state it clearly. For the record, two of our attorneys have given us the thumbs up here that this could be interpreted as meaning a chair in any capacity.
479 Okay.
480 Chair or co-chair.
481 Thank you. That addresses one of my underlying concerns, as I think everyone may recall, I voted no on the original committee's, not because of the part of their creation, their number, or their purpose, but the specifically the district representation as a membership. And I really appreciate councilor Dunphy for bringing this whole thing forward, for putting in the. Each district shall have at least one member, which is outside the scope of this amendment, but relevant here, because I've been debating whether or not this is required to achieve that goal. I do think that with four committees, at minimum, we'd be talking about eight co-chairs at maximum or four chairs at minimum. And in that scenario, it is definitely possible to achieve that without sort of manipulating the system to achieve it. And so as a result, I'm I'm less concerned about it here. I don't know that it necessarily. I'm concerned about it's being implemented in the future in a way that is serving that goal primarily as opposed to serving the need of the committee as part of serving the need of the council. But I also know that this isn't code. So I I'm less concerned about it now, but I'm looking forward to hearing the debate. Thanks.
482 Thank you, councilor.
483 Vice president Koyama Lane.
484 Thank you, madam president. I appreciate the intent behind this. Similar to membership of each committee, having someone from each district represented, that makes a lot of sense to me. I do have some concerns around where this could be challenging. Taking away some flexibility. I'm wondering if you would be open to or have thought about changing this. So it's says each district shall have at least one council member holding a gavel. So that could mean it's not necessarily a policy committee. If we end up with a finance committee with a or role as council president, that each district has at least one person holding a gavel.
485 Can I respond.
486 Real quick?
487 Yeah.
488 Yes.
489 Sorry. Right ahead.
490 I would prefer to leave it in the way it's written coming from the east side. I want some guarantee in some capacity with language that we are using consistently throughout the rest of the document, that we will have some geographic representation in leadership. And I do appreciate that there could be situations in which an ad hoc committee or a subgroup workgroup may be sufficient, but I want to make sure that we have broad representation wherever possible. So that is my preference to keep it as it is.
491 Thank you. Councilor.
492 Councilor zimmermann, I'm sorry, did you have any follow up, councilor?
493 No, I was going to say thank you.
494 Councilor zimmermann.
495 Thanks. So this positions us to have to have at least four committees. I think that's important to note. We haven't made that decision. It also, I think there's a big difference between getting elected to represent your district, which we've all done, and we're all equal in that sense. But the skill set then to run a committee is different. And I don't think that that is inherently given to you simply because you were elected. And in this, in this theory that could occur in a single district where we could even have three people who do not want to chair something. And this would say, now they must. We are all equal in representing our districts and having been elected to represent our our folks. But I don't think we are all equal in our right to have a gavel or to be a chair. I think that is a different decision by the presiding officer to make those choices. And so this this amendment would complicate that in ways that I don't, you know, I'm just just sitting here quickly looking at it's like two chairs. It currently exist from district one, two co-chairs and a president exist in district two, two co-chairs and a vice president exist in district three. A co-chair and two chairs exist in district four. So from a geographic representation perspective, I'm feeling like we've hit the mark. And so for that, I'm not looking to add more complicating or more restrictiveness to this. I also think that. We can be respectfu, that we're all elected from different parts of the city, and there's a difference to this next level of leadership, which is why we take votes for things like council president and vice president. So for that reason, I don't think I'll be supporting this. While I do believe it comes from a very genuine, transparent place, I'm just I'm not there on this.
496 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Smith.
497 Thank you, madam president. I agree with councilor Zimmermann, I this is confusing. And because we haven't taken a vote on the number, I'm not clear how many committee members are going to be on each committee, whether it be 4 or 5. So that's also concerning to me that it was not identified. So I agree with you saying councilor.
498 Thank you. Councilor. Before I say anything to this, I just want to acknowledge the awkwardness of me weighing in on something like this while sitting in the president's seat. I try to think about these things for the future, not for me in this seat now, but I acknowledge that it sometimes comes off as a bit awkward. I am a little bit concerned about this requirement. I have heard loud and clear from folks the concerns about not having people on some committees. And in response to that, I've tried to share the various criteria that we were looking at in making those committees. And we heard just a few minutes ago the need to balance values when thinking about folks who are chairing committees. We have heard in this debate the need to think about interest, both in chairing a committee at all, but also interest in terms of what issues people want to work on. We are now hearing a need to include in the balance of how we pick chairs and the proposal I put forward and that we vote on geographic representation. I've heard from many of my colleagues comments about how just because somebody is in the same district doesn't mean that some of you feel like you represent the same people. I think it's my job to represent everybody in district two, but I know that that isn't shared by everyone. And so I'm struggling to think about how I take all of these different needs overlay skill sets, because I think about not just does somebody have the skill set or not, but in the future, when we've had a number of years of elections and we have councilors who have served for longer or less long and who have more experience in our system, versus not just that understanding of what, as a committee chair, one needs to do. And when I think about holding all of those things, something has to give. So I am probably a no on this, but I would ask colleagues that if you are a yes on this, you have some thoughts for me. Not necessarily here today because we're running up on time, but in the future of what you think should give instead. Because I can't put all of those things as the top priority in figuring out who should chair what committees, it is just literally not possible. Councilor Green, you've not spoken.
499 Yeah, I was just going to raise a question for the carrier. Councilor Dunphy, given the sort of sequencing of how we're considering resolutions and amendments, would you consider withdrawing this at this stage and being ready to reintroduce it after we've adopted a resolution that specifies the number of committees we have?
500 I think that's fair. I'm also I will also note that if we had, for example, three committees, which I can't imagine, we could get three committees, but if we had three each having co-chairs, that's six. We could pretty easily meet at that point. But I do hear that perhaps there is an underlying question that we should answer first. And so, and in the interest of time, I'm happy to withdraw for now with the is it a withdrawal or a table? What do I do?
501 I believe you would table the amendment, which normally would mean we would go to your next amendment. Except that I'll note it's 125, so if you do so I will probably have us end the meeting for today and pick back up at your next amendment tomorrow.
502 I don't want to, knowing we have five minutes left, and there are some folks in the queue who may still be interested in speaking on this. I don't want to preemptively table it, but I am absolutely willing to table the amendment conversation until later.
503 Thank you, councilor.
504 Councilor Koyama Lane.
505 Thank you, madam president. This is helpful to hear more about your intention behind this. At first, I was thinking about it as making sure that there was really balanced throughout the city and as you were talking about it, it sounded to me more also or also or more. Not sure you can explain that. This was about making sure that district one isn't left out and is part of the conversation, and that is compelling to me. I'm wondering if you have considered the idea of putting in something specifically around. District one.
506 You know.
507 I certainly feel special about district one, but I don't think that for the health of the body, it makes a lot of sense. And I think this was the closest that I could get to making sure that my constituents east of I-205 are represented and in some circumstances, east of 82nd. I don't don't forget about you Lents and sumner, but I didn't want to necessarily call out district one as though it is something precious, even though it is.
508 Thank you for that suggestion, councilor Councilor Kanal.
509 Yeah, thanks, counselor. Zimmerman and council president, I think your your arguments convinced me. So I do think I'll be a no on this, but I do want to point out that I think this is something we should just have be a part of the conversation when we do have that second document come up around what the what the, the members and leadership might look like, not as the only goal. And I think at that time it does make sense to give input to you, madam president, on how we might individually think that those items should be weighed, not items criteria that you used. So thank you.
510 Thank you councilor.
511 And I hear I hear that I'm now put on notice to make sure that I can explain all of that.
512 That's great.
Procedural episode · turns 513–517
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513 Colleagues, there is no one else in the queue. Councilor would you like to take a chance on a vote on this, or would you like to make a motion to lay it on the table to come back to later in the debate?
514 I'd like to make a motion to lay it on the table for a later date.
515 Given that that motion is coming from the carrier, is that something that we need to vote on to close debate on this amendment? Okay, so we need to vote to close debate on this amendment. You'll then have the opportunity to bring it back up further in the discussion tomorrow.
516 Second.
517 We can do it without objection. Fantastic. Colleagues, is there any objection to laying this matter on the table? The carrier will be able to bring it back up at another point in the debate. Okay. Seeing none, I am going to. Carry over debate on this agenda item to tomorrow's recessed council meeting, which begins at 230. And we will continue debate on amendments and on the underlying motion. This meeting is recessed.