The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-05-19
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (20,628 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Finance Committee met on Monday, May 19, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance of the committee's members. The sole agenda item was a Budget Amendment Package discussion, framed as a non-decisional working session intended to help identify areas of potential broad consensus among roughly 60 (with an expectation of possibly 80-120) submitted budget amendments ahead of a scheduled May 21st council session. Discussion covered numerous specific proposals, including funding for ADA compliance positions, Prosper Portland's Restore and Repair grants, a policy reserve tied to permitting staff (PDD), a rideshare/TNC fee increase and its use for PBOT programs, Bureau of Community and Civic Life administration cuts paired with restorations to neighborhood coalitions and diversity programs, a proposed loan from the Portland Clean Energy Fund to address a parks maintenance shortfall, urban forestry staffing and tree code enforcement changes, a golf fund reserve transfer proposal, and a one-time-to-ongoing budget swap involving police overtime. Figures cited for several items, including Prosper Portland reserve needs and golf fund amounts, were stated inconsistently across the discussion. Participants also discussed process matters, including the distinction between the approved and adopted budget, upcoming readings on June 11th and June 18th, and the possibility of using budget notes for unresolved policy questions. No votes were reported in this session; any subsequent votes and outcomes would be recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next committee meeting set for June 9th.
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 Yeah, okay.
1 Good afternoon. I'm going to call the meeting of the finance committee to order. It's Monday, may 19th at 12:02 p.m. And with that clerk, can you please call the roll?
2 Good afternoon. Pirtle-guiney here. Novick.
3 Here. Here.
4 Avalos.
5 Present.
6 Zimmerman.
7 Here. With that. Claire, can you read the statement of conduct, please?
8 Good afternoon. Welcome to the meeting of the finance committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council agenda slash finance committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person, testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent and virtual testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
9 Thanks for reading that. With that clerk, we only have one item today, and if you could read the first item and then I'll talk a little bit after that.
10 Budget amendment package discussion.
11 Thanks, colleagues. A couple of things just about today. So city budget office is here and eventually she'll have a share screen up with a list of amendments that have come in by last friday's deadline. And today's conversation. And I and I say that pointedly for a reason, which is we have no decision coming out of today from finance, but it is an opportunity for the finance committee to have some open discussion amongst ourselves in a way that I think can help some decisions that are coming in front of the council president, and I'm going to give her an opportunity to talk about her intent, but just to kind of course set a little bit. I think the sheet that we're seeing shared now, and I've placed one in front of everybody's desk, you know, we've got upwards to looks like 60 amendments that have been made thus far in this process. Some of them are. An action and then a counter action. And so I wouldn't say they're 60 distinct items, but in order to make sure that we cross our t's and dot our I's, about 60 items, that could certainly take up a lot of time on the 21st. And I think if there is a way for us as a body representing the rest of our council to kind of guide toward some decision making or broad support, that that could be helpful to the council president. And so that was my intent amongst today's conversation. And with that, I do want to give vice chair and council president a chance to just frame that up a little bit more as well. Thanks.
12 Thank you. Chair. Colleagues. As chair, Zimmerman said, there are 60 amendments that have already been submitted to our cbo office, and I suspect by the time we get things preloaded, amendments that have been pre filed, we will be upwards of there. I suspect by the end of the day Wednesday, we will have heard somewhere between 80 and 120 different proposals. Some of those complement each other, some are duplicative, some compete with each other, and we don't have time to debate 80 to 120 things on Wednesday. So my hope is that I can bring forward a president's amendment, which is a package of proposals that fit together in a balanced way that could have broad support. And I've been paying attention as we go through our work sessions to how we all react to each other, where there seem to be people who are proposing very similar things from a number of different places on council. But I really value all of your input as the people who have been sitting with our budget and our budget decisions for probably the longer period of time compared to some of our colleagues starting these conversations a little bit earlier. And so I would really value a conversation today about what might have broad consensus and what might not, what might have further complications that we haven't thought about yet, where maybe it needs a little bit more discussion versus what is relatively straightforward and we might be able to include in a package so that between now and Wednesday morning, I can put together a package that can help us move more smoothly on Wednesday, if we can get a few things out of the way that will have that broad consensus are relatively straightforward in terms of their policy implications, will have more time to spend on some of the more complicated or controversial amendments that will be before us.
13 Great. So I guess in a way, to set this up and, oh, I'm seeing folks come in, I want to go to counselor Avalos, please.
14 Thank you. So how are you defining broad support? I'm asking. I mean, that's what you said. You said a package of support. What is how are you defining that? How are we going to get to a broad support package?
15 You know, I think it probably looks different on some of these, but I think there's a gut test where we could all say this is something that may or may not be unanimous, but we suspect that a lot of our colleagues support it and that it it has. There's a lot of ways we could define that. Right. Is it across districts, is it across backgrounds? Is it across philosophies? But that generally this is something cross-cutting for council? Again, may not be unanimous, but generally that kind of cross-cutting support as opposed to those things that we look at and we all scratch our heads and say who? This one's going to be pretty divisive.
16 And then therefore, with this president package is what I'm hearing, how it's being described, like how how will the rest of the councilors engage with that package? Like, is it that they are presented this and they're the I mean, everything is always going to have dialog, I suspect. But I'm just trying to understand, how are you how are we presenting it to the council? Like, this is a package that we believe the five of us believe have broad support. Are you? Because I'm assuming part of it right is to ensure efficiency. So if it's like presented and then we start taking it apart, it feels like that's counter to what the goal is. So help me understand how you we expect our colleagues to engage with the package as a whole, you.
17 Know, so you got.
18 A memo today about how the flow of the day will likely go on the 21st, and I'll bring this amendment forward. And I'm not asking you all to cosign on it. I don't think that would be fair to ask of the four of you, but just to give me some discussion and guidance for putting it together, and I'll bring that forward as our first amendment. Not to your point, pick apart, because that would then take equally as long. Obviously, if I've missed the mark and there are 1 or 2 things in there that shouldn't be in there, we'll need to have that discussion. But generally a discussion that is about the package as a whole, as opposed to discussing each individual piece.
19 Councilor.
20 Madam president, I think you're being way too optimistic. I talked to a couple of my colleagues right before coming here, and they said that most of these amendments, they have no current opinion on them at all because they've only just seen them. So I don't think there's going to be many, very many things that there's any consensus on. And I don't know how we're going to get through this without going through all 80 of them. So I mean, one thing that occurs to me that we could maybe do is say, all right, let's try to figure out which things that raise revenue or save revenue that we think might have broad support. And how much money does that give us? And then tell our colleagues, okay, depending on how you stand on this, we might have from x to y amount of money to use. Now go through all these amendments that you and your colleagues have and rank. Which of them to you would get some of that money. And then maybe one we could start on Wednesday by going through the things that save or raise money and figuring out how much that is, and then just say, all right, now let's vote on things that we spent the money and withhold your vote on something. If that's not one of your priorities.
21 That's certainly a place we may end up. And I certainly it certainly wouldn't be the first time I was called naive. I am going into this optimistically. I think that there may be some things that that had broad appeal. And if, as we have our conversation today, it looks like it's only 4 or 5 things, gosh, that's at least 4 or 5 things that we can package up. And if as we go through today, that's 10 or 20 things, all the better. Though I know that that's going to be a lot harder a number to get to.
22 Okay. Thank you chair. So just to make sure I'm clear, the purpose of this committee session today is for each of the members of the committee to say, this is what I think the broad positions are, or this is my position.
23 Councilor do you want me to take that or.
24 It's your package.
25 Yeah.
26 Okay. None of us can know exactly where our colleagues are, but we also all are smart enough to do a bit of a temperature check on where we think people are. And we all sit in different places on this dais so we can see different facial expressions and body language during the work sessions. So I had one of our colleagues who was concerned that having this session would be essentially a second bite at the apple for folks on this committee. And my intention is not to give this committee a leg up, if you will, by having us express just our own opinions and then carry those forward as though they have more weight than our colleagues opinions. But rather to get all of your take on where things sit. And that could be your own opinion that something is more complicated or less complicated. Certainly we all are really smart people who can offer those opinions, and it could be your note that you've heard from some colleagues that there's a lot of concerns in a place. I think either of those are valid. What I wouldn't want it to be is an opportunity for the five of us to have our, not our thoughts on is it complicated enough? But our personal policy opinions hold more weight than our colleagues? That's certainly not the intention.
27 Great, I agree, and what I will do is make my comments based upon my observations of what I've seen the other people say and think. Thanks.
28 We're off to a start. It's clear and clean as mud, right? So I appreciate it, but I want to use one of my amendments as an example that I'm and another sponsor is in the room actually in the audience is councilor Kanal. And I think he and I, for example, have an amendment I think has some pretty complimentary intents when it comes to engagement and civic life. And I think that that type of situation exists in a number of places. I think there are a number of places where we see multiple offers for at least backfilling part of park maintenance. I think we see multiple. Amendments, or at least I feel like I've heard multiple people speak about reducing or changing the way police overtime is used or the budgeting there. We have some amendments that have something missing from an id, whether it's the amount the bureau it's coming from or the bureau it's going for, and those types of things I think could also be helpful here and where there could be power. And for me as an individual councilor, to seek a co-sponsor because we have similar intent. And I don't know how other folks are feeling about that, but that might be a way to reduce the overall number of amendments if they start getting packaged together, because we can make some slight adjustments and get a similar outcome. Councilor Novick, do you want to speak again? Are you is that a legacy there? Okay. If we're okay with just having a little bit more freewheeling, I, I had a question for you on, on one of your amendments and just its intent and what we're trying to achieve there. You have an amendment that I think it's $350,000 to preserve two ADA title compliance positions. And then in the notes, it says this amendment would preserve the two ADA compliance, one in pend and one in the office of equity. And the reason I'm asking the question is I generally feel quite supportive, but I wasn't exactly sure what was happening and what you were trying to fix and wanted to have a conversation.
29 I was trying to restore two positions that were cut.
30 They are being cut already. Yeah, okay. And what does the those are pretty different bureaus. What does each of those positions do in those bureaus do you know.
31 I don't have a good enough answer? Okay. I mean, I know that those are being cut. We had input from people in the disability world warning against it. We also had michael jordan saying that the these will limit our these cuts will limit our ability to be in compliance with ADA. And I ask him, is that an acceptable risk? And he said probably not. So I should have a better answer. But that's I mean, this is the thing that I added at the end.
32 Great. Okay. Thanks for that. Councilor Green legacy or another comment.
33 Well, I'm in the queue to if we're starting to talk about the things we. Okay.
34 I'd like this to be freewheeling. I think that if there's a person who has a question directly to steve's answer just now, then it'd be better to pop up at that moment than waiting 5 or 6 people. So I'd like to be freewheeling if we're able to. So please go ahead.
35 I'll just jump right in. So there's an alignment between a number of amendments here that intend to beef up the restore and repair grants that prosper Portland administers. There's one from councilor Kanal that's $550,000, and there's one from councilor Ryan that I think it's items 20 and items 22 in the spreadsheet. I think those could potentially be packaged together. Councilor ryan's is a larger dollar amount than councilor Kanal, so we might have an opportunity to be like, well, if this isn't acceptable, maybe we default to the other one out. I think I see that opportunity, and I also think that councilor Dunphy had said something similar, but I haven't gotten far enough into the spreadsheet yet, so I would just flag that for the committee.
36 Councilor.
37 I thought I remembered in this committee, and perhaps folks can help me. When we heard from prosper Portland, I asked them a question about how much money they had had previously and when it had ran out, and I had written down that the equivalent of a full year's worth of resources would have been 1.2 million. Do you remember that conversation and what the final number from them was?
38 I actually remember the ideal number being something like $2.5 million. Okay. But I think 1.5 million sounds probably where councilor, I think I think councilor Ryan's amendment was kind of responsive to that conversation of like, we're not talking about minimum viable. We're talking about sending a signal to our business community that we're standing ready to fund them during a time of need. So I think 1.5 might be the sweet spot on that.
39 Okay.
40 Councilor Avalos.
41 Yeah, well, I was looking for it in here. Here we go. I wanted to talk through the amendment. You have councilor Pirtle-guiney, so I guess I'm looking at line 21 here and it says allocate 4 million to be kept as a policy reserve, yada yada. But what I wasn't clear on is where that 4 million was coming from. Do you already have a source for that?
42 I didn't list a source for that. And we are going to have to have a conversation generally about when we set policy reserve is our general approach to be allocating out portions of the general contingency, or is our general approach to be adding into the contingency? That's a conversation that we, as a finance committee hadn't had. We as a council hadn't had, and I wasn't sure what approach we as a body would want to take. So I didn't set a, a, a place for those funds to come from. I am happy to find a place. I am happy to have it as part of a larger package. I'm happy to have that conversation about how those types of set asides relate to contingency. My intent here on a on a policy side was to say, we know that there's that ramp up period where we get more permits in, but we haven't had enough more permits in to hire people to process the permits. There's that gap between when permits go up and when revenues go up, and I wanted to have dollars available to fill that gap so that the city doesn't become a barrier to the speed of permit approval. When our economy starts to take back up, which I hope will happen soon.
43 Thank you. I bring it up because I just at a quick glance and I need to do a more thorough glance. I am interested in saving some of those pad jobs, but I don't. I don't have a number. Exactly. I did ask david kuhnhausen to provide us a what? A five, seven and 10 million increase or put back I guess would give them and like what they feel they need. So you know, when I was drafting my amendments, like my amendment around pad, I wrote like I will support your amendment. But then when I saw it, I was like, I wasn't sure that there was a source. So because I. Does that make sense? So I guess what I'm saying is I want to work with you on that because I want us to save some of pbt. But also I wanted to ask because I think part of how yours is structured maybe a little different than what I was thinking, because is it am I interpreting this, that regardless of where the 4 million come from, that it would be about them later adding those back in? Because I think what I'm trying to accomplish is saving some before they get laid off. Whereas I think how I'm reading this is they're all going to get laid off, and then you have this 4 million that they could add people back. Am I reading that right?
44 So I had asked.
45 The service area folks what we would need to do to make sure that we that we, the city, were not a delay in permitting, and these were the triggers that they suggested to me. We also had a conversation, and I'm noticing that it's not captured here, and I don't remember and need to find out if that's because I wrote it elsewhere that just isn't on this list, or because the folks at community and economic development said they didn't need it. But we also had a conversation about whether they could use some of their set aside to fill the gap for three months until the first review, because we would have our first review of whether the economy was improving in September. So it would be a three month period there where they might need to retain some people. So let me check and see if we needed to take action to do that, or if what they had said was that by having this, this amendment on its own, that they would be able to float some of their folks, not all, but some of them for those three months.
46 Yeah. And I think thank you. And I think broadly like as far as like what I've heard from my colleagues, right. Our colleagues, I do think there's energy around some kind of saving of ppe indeed jobs. But so it would be good to maybe find a way to whittle that into one package. But how you have it currently structured, I'm supportive with the caveat that I want to figure out, like if there is a prevention of layoffs that needs to happen, as well as a having a pot of money for them to staff up later so we could work through those details. But I think generally there's energy around it. I'm curious what other people think or if they have proposed amendments around that. Great.
47 Really?
48 Yeah. I'm at the same question and I'm still a bit confused. I mean, allocates 4 million to be kept as a reserve in the general fund contingency. Does that mean that we're going to take $4 million from money currently allocated in the mayor's budget and put it there, or does it mean that we have the authority to just say money that's putting contingency in the mayor's budget we can use at a certain time? And if we can do that here, why can't we do it in a lot of other places?
49 I think that I think I need to separate that question into two answers. And I'm going to look to ruth to fact check one of them. We will need to pass a balanced budget. And we have many amendments that have the puts and takes both there and many amendments that don't. On this one, I didn't tag a revenue source. I put it forward as part of the discussion. Generally, I believe that we can, in contingency, have money set aside for policy reserves. I'm going to look to ruth to talk about what the requirements are for how much we have that is not set aside in contingency for specific programs versus how much is set aside for specific programs. But I would also note that ruth will tell us what the bare minimum is, and we probably ought to be thinking about more than the bare minimum in this budget.
50 Yeah. So. So I guess I'll split this into two parts also. So yes, you can put you can add money to general fund policy reserve in the adopted budget. And you can either have a budget note or make clear through the amendment what the intention is for those dollars. And then the bureau for whom it's set aside would have to come back to council to actually allocate those to the budget, similar to, you know, the, the, the overtime funds that were in the policy set aside for public safety this past year. So in terms of how much is in policy set aside and whether there's extra money there, there's not extra money there right now. There is kind of what is required for specific purposes. So the total general fund contingency in the proposed is almost 23 million, but that is made up of 3 million of unrestricted contingency, which is our financial, which is the amount set by our financial policy that we put in there every year that we strongly recommend not touching unless something happens for which you need it. There's about $17.7 million of salary of what we call compensation set aside. We that is how we have historically managed a number of salary and benefit related increases. So those come back to request their compensation set aside for cola and health benefits and the like. And that we also, I expect, very much need next year for a number of reasons. And then there's $2.1 million of policy reserves that I'd have to get. Sorry. A separate spreadsheet that I can follow up on what what those are for. But they were there for a reason. So all of that is to say, if you want to use that, I would strongly recommend, if you want to have policy set aside for paddy to access, I would strongly recommend adding to general fund contingency for that purpose.
51 Which means cutting from something else than the mayor's budget.
52 Correct. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be done through this amendment. It can be done any any way. Council desires.
53 Related to this. Yep. Go ahead.
54 Colleagues, I, I have one I support some kind of version of what's here. I don't want to go too deep into the weeds because we've got a lot to cover. But I think I've heard from my colleagues that they broadly want to reverse some of those deep cuts. So I would just propose that we earmark this as going into the president's amendments, and then we can maybe argue about how to change that unless we want to use this space to change it now and answer those four questions. I think there's a trade off there.
55 I certainly have a question because I, I guess I'm just not understanding the purpose of this, not only the 4 million, but in fact, the other amendment that you sent this morning, the 450, as basically a band aid through September, that one makes more sense. The 400, I guess I just. It looks more like a values signal that will never get used. And so I would be fearful that we would use $4 million set aside in the contingency fund to do nothing, achieve nothing, when it could have been $4 million used on a city service. And so I think this sounds great. And in implementation, I'm not sure that it is worth taking additional cuts somewhere else in the budget to create a contingency that is larger than the restricted, unrestricted contingency that we already set. So I'm not understanding your drive here.
56 So I and.
57 Thank you. I just pulled up my full list, and I'm not sure why the first part of this didn't make this other list. So apologies there. I had reached out to community and economic development service area when I first saw the budget cuts. To say these cuts to pad look like they're going to be a problem as construction starts to tick up, especially at the at a time when we know that the mayor is trying to figure out how to get housing starts increased pretty quickly here. So how do we make sure that doesn't happen? And the answer that I got back from our our dca there was allow them to pull from their reserves for three months to delay some of those layoffs. Not all the layoffs, but a portion of them. The number that I have is that a $450,000 monthly draw would allow them to retain 31 fte through September, so about 1.5 million out of their reserves, their reserves, and that by September we would have a better sense of whether the economy was looking up or not. And at that point, we would have money set aside in reserves in policy reserve that they could draw from, depending on how much the economy was looking up to cover, maintaining those 31 fte through the point at which the money coming in from permits could carry their staffing level, and that if we put aside 4 million and said that a portion of that would be released if the economy was looking slightly better. 3 to 4.9% increase in in the economy and economic growth, that we would release 2 million of it. And if we saw a 5% or better increase in economic growth, they would ask for us to release all of it, but that they would come back to council to ask for those releases, which would then again cover the rest of the gap in time for those positions until permitting fees were coming in at the rate that it would continue to retain them through permit costs, which is how pad is usually funded.
58 Okay. Can I ask a follow up on that and a follow up on what you said? Chair, did you say that there was a 400 and what was the 450 thing? Can you say that again?
59 If you don't mind, I'll hand this. Came out from council president's office this morning and that was what she was referencing somehow was not in this document, but it's a $450,000 draw per month through September, which is about a 1.5 million. And so I was asking how those two relate in that point. So I appreciate that answer. I, I will struggle with this in terms of that is a significant amount to. To put in contingency or to allow it to be drawn. And I've just said continually from the dais that I don't think that our city administrator was aggressive enough in his restructuring, and it seems to me that this is another like we're going to do the big scary thing in the for months ahead of the budget, but then we're going to ask the council to bring this thing to save it at the last second. And so I'm having a little bit of issue here that as the service area is talking. So I would say I'm a medium lukewarm cold in this area. But do you have another question, councilor? Go to councilor Green.
60 Thanks. I know I said we should move on and include it, but now I ask a question because we kept talking. I just think I understand the spirit of what you're trying to do, but I think the triggers, the economic indicator triggers may may work against the kind of counter-cyclical work that we're trying to do in the city right now. Like, I don't think there's a good odd that the economy as a whole is going to improve by, by this percentage. But we do have the mayor and the governor's sdc waiver. So if council decides to pursue that, that could potentially trigger an activation of some construction boom. And there's some other amendments in here that provide some support to move faster on zoning and coding changes. So.
61 Councilor, I'm very.
62 Open to the triggers. These are the triggers that were recommended to me by the folks at pnd, which is why I decided to move them forward, because I figured rather than overlay my thinking on it, I would put in what the department was recommending. But if there are triggers that you would prefer, let's have that conversation probably offline so that we can get to other pieces here. So happy to.
63 Thank you.
64 Okay, one more thing. So then do those amendments go hand in hand. Right. Because the first one of the 450 is so that they are not laid off. Essentially it puts it until September where they if that runs out, they would technically be, but then combined with your other amendment would be then the, the drawdown or whatever. Right. So because I think what why I ask is because my intention is to save some of the jobs now, not have everyone get laid off and then rehire them later because we're trying to stop the brain drain or whatever. So is that how they pair together?
65 And I want to be clear, this doesn't prevent all of the layoffs. This would prevent about half the layoffs, delay them for three months so that we can reassess. Where are things moving and councilor to your point, it could be that that reassessment is about economic conditions. It also could be that that reassessment is about countercyclical work that we're doing, but it gives us three months to figure out where things are actually headed in the city. And do we need to retain half of the staff who are going to be laid off, a quarter of the staff who are going to be laid off, none of the staff who are going to be laid off, depending on what the need is.
66 All right. That was helpful. Hopefully that provides you some information as to how people are feeling. I'm looking to colleagues. If there are other areas that you'd like to jump in with, or I can suggest some, but councilor Green.
67 I actually think that we should go down councilor Novick road and start continue this conversation on the on the. From the standpoint of what creates new resources, whether that's through a fee increase or a cut without an add, I agree.
68 They're happy to go down that road, but there are some things I'd love for us to save time to talk about that are on some of the changes or the policy adds also. So just hoping to reserve some time. For example, I think there were a few different approaches to what we should do around civic life and support for community through some of those programs that were taken up in very different ways, but that a lot of people seem to want to talk about. Sure.
69 Let's we'll do that. And let's it's I'm just noting it's 1235. Let's spend a few minutes in where councilor Green discussed and councilor Novick suggested on the revenue creation. And I know I've seen one in here from councilor Morillo about increasing the ride share fee. I know you spoke to it from the dais, but I'm not sure if I have seen yours or if there's a number you can point us to. Are those the same competing or complementary?
70 I think there's four of us co-sponsoring that with councilor Novick Dunphy and Morillo.
71 Okay. And this is the uber and lyft fee going from what the mayor proposed, that we increase it from 65 to 130. And you all are proposing to taking it to $2 per ride. Is that right? Okay. That is one of the bigger new revenue ideas that's been proposed. Is there you guys want to have some discussion here? Councilor Novick.
72 My assumption we don't know if we've talked about this directly is that that's not something that we want to use to help balance the general fund budget. That's just something we think is something that should be done in any way. That helps a little bit. With pbot's massive needs.
73 I would just counter that in general, yes, but I think that there's going to be a new amendment flight from councilor Koyama Lane to restore some cuts to vision zero. And I think you could potentially use this for that. And I think there was about $2.5 million from the general fund that was transferred to PBOT to support some of the mayor's priorities. And so to the extent that this new revenue could support those priorities, we could potentially have and I think council Dunphy has an amendment in this list that moves those general fund dollars back for us to. So it's indirectly potentially.
74 So this leaving aside my personal opinions, this is potentially a source of $2.5 million for the general fund.
75 Vice chair.
76 So it sounds like source of 2.5 million to the general fund through a shift in dollars. But these dollars would be used specifically within PBOT programs. Thinking about both this budget and long term, how are those dollars used? I know that there was a conversation at one point about, legally, how these dollars have been used in the past, and I don't want to go down too far down the road of legal opinions. And. Counsel that we may or may not have received. But have there been conversations from the folks who are bringing this forward about whether we need any additional. Any additional work to make sure that we can spend these dollars if we are retaining them solely within PBOT programing.
77 Councilor Morillo is not on this committee, but her staffer has done some pretty extensive work on the use of funds from this very question. And so I think that's why you don't see a lot of amendments that are specifically saying, I want to use this fee increase to fund this, that the other thing I think it's to councilor Point, it flows into the general transportation revenues and supports the I think the wording is a safe and functional transportation system, I think is what these funds are supposed to support.
78 Okay, I'm a little confused. I committed to go. I thought we were saying that we could free up general fund by doing this, so I assume that that would be general fund that could be used for parks or whatever else. Are you now saying that it would be general general fund to be used for other PBOT things?
79 I think those are separate things. Right. This would the bulk of the funds, because this would raise more than 1 to $2 million, which is the general fund that was put in PBOT the bulk of. So these funds would stay within PBOT. But part of what would happen is that would give us the flexibility to back out the general fund that was put in the mayor, put general fund into PBOT in order to ensure that we could meet basic functioning and that we would pull that general fund back out because we would be able to meet basic functioning within PBOT dollars if this moved forward. Is that a correct summary?
80 Okay.
81 So the I think that question remains about cost recovery and how this fee originally was, was crafted and what it can be used for. I just want to comment in terms of. I am cautious on this, not just with the amendment that was proposed, but I similarly was cautious with the mayor's. Given that, you know, when you when you ride on one of these apps, this is a fee that's passed directly on to the rider. And while there are some folks who've said, you know, tax the big company, we see this one directly passed on to a rider. And I think just using my own experience, that is an art tax several times over for, for me. Right. And so we talk about these little things that nickel and dime portlanders every day. There were 8 million rides last year in terms of what got told to us by the presenters. And so I, I, I'm pretty cold on this increase by such a large amount. And I felt like I was willing to compromise on that smaller amount. But now we've gotten quite a bit higher than the current fee. Not not really in love with that. And but I am sensing that there is a at least a good third of the. Obviously, with this many co-sponsors, but I would put that as a everyday portlander type of impact. At the same time. Right. There has been a like a business licensed exemption number floated that would affect in the comments here. By the councilor, 9000 businesses. And I think it was to raise a similar amount of revenue. And I just kind of am weighing this. And like I don't think that that's a bad idea. But then on the backs of individuals and their everyday use of fees, I just do think that this one has a tendency to. Affect an individual, a way that I'm a little bit cautious of, but I, I recognize I got a couple of co-sponsors on this here on this dais. So happy to have you chat on that. Councilor Novick.
82 So first of all, I just wanted to note that my chief of staff just texted that there has to be an ordinance change for the tnc money not to be used for regulatory work, so we can't do it just through the I mean, we can't do that just through the budget process. I think the other thing and this maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I wanted to sort of get a rundown of the see if I'm missing the rundown of significant revenue generating things. I mean, what I'm aware of is there's this there's several of us proposed cutting the police budget in one way or another by $2 million. And I think most of us who've done that have said that money should go to parks maintenance. There's councilor Morillo $5 million from the golf fund. There's cutting $11 million from prosper Portland. What else is there that's significant that I'm missing? Yeah. In new dollars or cuts. Oh, I'm sorry. There's also councilor Zimmermann's. Tree code proposal for some amount of millions, but not quite sure how much of it is general fund or fungible or how much it's not.
83 So I wouldn't consider. I guess I'm not considering a cut part of the new, I mean, new revenue or or a cut would be a. For instance, councilor Dunphy has made an amendment to change the exemption belt, and that would reduce the amount we bring in as a city. My cut was cutting from one bureau to another. I wasn't considering that as part of the revenue up or down, but.
84 I don't think that there's I mean, maybe I'm missing some actual revenue things, but I was sort of thinking of what are the substantive, significant cuts that people have made that could free up money. And I thought that yours was one of those, because you were going to get rid of 32 positions. So that would save money.
85 Sure. Okay. I absolutely, and I've made two sizable cuts that are upward to $8 million combined. And those are freeing up general fund funds. But when I think about revenue increases, I'm thinking about the golf fee proposal. I'm thinking about the uber and lyft fee proposal. I'm thinking about the reduction of the business license tax because of the exemption going from 50 to 100, and then the whole host of there are other fees that have increased. And, you know, we've heard about those, but not those haven't been brought as amendments. That's where my mind was going. Now, if we want to have a who has made cuts packages, I think that's where there are a few of us who have made some. I think certainly mine are probably the largest so far that are just freeing up general fund to pay for a significant amount. In fact, the ones I've made still have a. Not a deficit. What's the opposite of a surplus? Thank you. I'm lost of words here. Have a surplus. Right. Because I did not indicate spending for all of them. Most of the amendments that I've seen come in have not been in that. They have not been made with a direct offset or they've not been made with a, an offset in the same, you know, there's a second amendment to them.
86 I actually forgot, embarrassingly, I forgot another proposal, which is my proposal to cut council budgets by $3.3 million. That is only sort of a general fund cut, because council budgets are largely overhead. So unless we give the money to another overhead bureau like pbem, we only get to use about half of what the amount of the cut is. So it's a between a freeze up between 1.6 million and 3.3 million inches new in money, depending on where you send it.
87 That's right, that's right. And so has the council president as well. Not quite as large as yours, but similarly vp or vice chair.
88 I just I'm taking us backwards for a brief minute and I'm sorry to do that. Councilor Novick said that his staff had mentioned on the tnc fee that there would need to be an ordinance change, and I wanted to ask ruth if that was the case at the mayor's level of increase also, and if so, if we have that ordinance prepared for Wednesday, and if not, if we are okay to pass that follow along ordinance between Wednesday and the 18th, when the final budget is passed, as long as we have the fee increase captured on Wednesday.
89 Yeah.
90 A process question. I'm sorry, councilor, to take the time for that. It just seems pretty important.
91 Speak to that. I will just say I'm fine with. I mean, I think it's okay from a process perspective for it not to come on Wednesday. If you it it's I think it's a choice.
92 If we have to increase captured on Wednesday and we know and say out loud as a council that before we pass the final budget on the 18th, we'll need to pass this other piece of it.
93 Yeah, but jeremy can speak to the.
94 Yeah.
95 Jeremy, please.
96 Yeah. Good afternoon, jeremy PBOT. So in looking at the language that's in code right now, we just think it would be much cleaner if we made a few minor adjustments to make sure that those funds, we were very clear that those funds first pay for regulatory. And then anything above and beyond can go to general transportation uses. We just feel it would be a lot cleaner in the code if we made those changes.
97 Okay, great. Thank you, I appreciate that.
98 Councilors. I just want to note that we've received an email from one of our colleagues just regarding the fact that we're working off a spreadsheet that has been abbreviated for the sake of size, and there is more substance included. And so you have that email in there, and those pertain to item number two, canal administration and item number 35. Canal. And right now it's labeled in the housing and homelessness section on on the spreadsheet that you have and you've got those in there. For more additional context. Where he indicated some some gives and takes, so to speak, with that, looking at other colleagues who are in the queue. I had a question actually for two of the members on this one who have have proposed something I think is complimentary but slightly competing, and is the regarding the everett street lofts that's in our district. Councilor Green, you and councilor Avalos have both made an amendment. Would you mind both speaking to that, or are you planning to make an adjusted co-sponsored one? Are they exactly the same, but just based on numbers? And I was unclear about what what the need was and what occurred in the situation.
99 Yeah. Good question. We're going to combine and we're going to co-sponsor. You know, we've had some conversations with the director of the Portland housing bureau about a specific regulatory agreement, specific building a set of tenants. And so that money there is designed to honor the original commitment from the Portland housing bureau to these tenants. And so I think it won't all be spent out, I think, over the course in one year. I think this is kind of in some sense a reserve that the housing bureau can use to, to address the issue with these tenants. Do you want to clarify anything further on that?
100 I don't think so, other than maybe we're still looking for the source, I think I don't think we've identified the full source yet, but yeah, we're going to combine them.
101 Have you guys landed on a number that you had 100 grand and you had for 50 or something along those lines?
102 I think 400,000 was.
103 Part of why I had 100 was because it's going to be over four years. And so I was like, well, maybe we're only budgeting for one year. But then we decided to just do it as a reserve. And so the full amount is the 400, whatever it is. Okay.
104 Yeah. Thanks for clarifying, vice chair.
105 I'm hoping for a little bit more information here. We're talking about a reserve for needs over four years. I know that there was some disagreement around what rent and cost rent increases would be for this group. Was that a four year commitment? And we're talking about four year rent costs. Why are we looking at needing to offset these changes over a four year period? I thought this was just a one year. Concern about agreements that weren't made correctly. Help me understand what's happening here.
106 Yes. There is, I think four years left on the contract that the Portland housing bureau has with this landlord for this building, for affordable housing. You know, I think you're aware maybe you're. Well, I'll just say the Portland housing bureau had given them one rent schedule that was more closely aligned with HUD. And it turns out that we made a mistake, and we've now had to renegotiate that. And their rents have gone up to market. And so we've been offered a solution. But I think the idea is to $400,000 now gives them the space to negotiate with the landlord and figure out a plan for the duration of this contract. But I think the idea is you need the lump sum to have that negotiation, not a year by year. That's the intent.
107 I wanted to take this opportunity to describe my civic life and community engagement amendment. I know that was a question asked about it. In particular. The reason I want to bring it up is that I have also made a number of, I'll call them related amendments to use the general fund dollars that my first amendment, which is eliminating the administration of civic life. I've then outlined the restore of the diversity and leadership program from the cut that was proposed in the mayor's. I made another amendment to and also put that in the communications, centralized communications, because now they don't wouldn't have an overhead. If this was the case, the amendment I made was about the immigrant and refugee program. It only has a single employee and adding them to the second, adding a second employee. The third was restoring the operations and the small grants that the neighborhood district coalitions have. They took a pretty significant cut in the proposed budget, and another part of that is that there was 500,000 that I had indicated in the, I think, in the fourth amendment for sending to pmo to continue and expand their their basic neighborhood cleanup services as those problem areas arise. And so I know that councilor President had announced had asked about that. I, I know that councilor Kanal and I are going to have a conversation about what parts of ours are complementary. And so from that perspective, what I would like to do is talk to my fellow councilor and see if we have a, a co-sponsor situation that maybe we bring to you and say, we'd like you to consider this as a, as a for something for the package. But that's where they were coming from. And I and I, I wanted to go through it because in this list, because we've split things out by service area, things aren't exactly always coherent. If somebody has laid them out in on the dais what they went to. So I just wanted you to know my diversity, my pmo, my immigrant and refugee. My neighborhood thing was not those were not made necessarily separate. And if the civic life cut did not come about, I would likely pull those because I'm not looking to debit the general fund even further. I was trying to use it more directly.
108 I have a follow up on that because I, I also have that and I wanted to talk with you, I do, I but I don't have a source yet. So did you identify a source for that?
109 It's the elimination of the bureau of community and civic life administration. It's five fte and it's about $1.35 million. And so the rest of what I indicated is slightly it's about a million bucks that I indicated in those other amendments.
110 And you are wanting to restore both the district coalition office money and the dcl, which I forgot, which stands for.
111 The grants. Yeah. They took. Yeah, they took a hit in the, in the small grants program that they have and also in their district coalition operations. Yeah. And together those would represent about 310. So I just rounded them and said 310 restoration to the neighborhood coalitions.
112 And you're also but you're also includes hold on where's mine.
113 On page one I believe of the.
114 Kind of spread out.
115 But councilor Avalos is I think number ten line item.
116 Number ten. Okay.
117 And that's I was going to ask councilor What that is in your line. Item is also in councilor Zimmermann's. And what is different.
118 That's what I was. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to get at. So because it's I definitely have I share the one around the district coalition office money which comes out to about 298,000. But then I also have the diversity and civic leadership program, which is about 180,000. And I thought you included both. Right. It is both, yes.
119 So the difference actually. So this is great. So this is one of those where maybe you and councilor Kanal and I can have a conversation because you used the exact numbers. I just rounded up and gave them a little extra cheddar on top. That was it. But the diversity and leadership was a separate one. Neighborhood coalition money was a separate one. But same numbers. Yep. And the source in yours is not identified in the source. And mine was identified as the admin overhead.
120 Counselors. Is anybody heard from colleagues that there's concern over doing something in this area? It sounds like there's a fair amount of interest, but I'm wondering if there's also a fair amount of concern or if this is something that might sit well in a package.
121 I haven't heard anything at all.
122 Okay.
123 Yeah.
124 I haven't heard any opposition. No. Have you? I don't think so.
125 Constituent wants to do the opposite of what you're proposing. But I didn't bring.
126 That fund everything. But make the administration of civic life enormous.
127 Get rid of the coalition offices and beef up the office of civic life. But that's not an amendment on the floor.
128 Okay, okay, counselor Green, you are in the queue. If you wanted to add any further comments on this one at all. No, no. Okay. So with that, I think maybe after this, madam president, I'd like to work with my colleagues and see if we can't come up with with something in this range. And I think it would tackle at least the five I made, and I think 1 or 2 from councilor Avalos and 1 or 2 from councilor Kanal, that there could be something that is complimentary and we could reduce our number of separate amendments. Councilor Green, another topic.
129 Yeah, I'm just scanning through this and trying to make sure that our colleagues are I don't see anything from councilor Clark on this list. And I wonder if is this is this already a skinny down?
130 Councilor Clark has made an amendment. She noted some budget notes, but I don't know that we have a fund amendment that has been made by that councilor.
131 I. I think she read one to me verbally the other day, but and it was very similar.
132 Sponsor to one of mine that I read.
133 Is it the one about the grants to the trails? I was thinking about what you just talked about with restoring grants to these dcos. I thought, I thought she was trying to do something similar. So. But if it's covered by your thing, we can. I just want to make sure we don't have colleagues who are not having there any amendments being represented.
134 Councilor, can you check with her when you pull together? Councilor Avalos and canal.
135 Happy to happy to.
136 To that end, I know that we also don't have anything on this list from councilor Koyama Lane and councilor Green. I think you mentioned that she's bringing some things around vision zero. So as we have that PBOT conversation, I'll make sure that we check in with her about what she has that might tie into the tnc and the PBOT pieces.
137 Councilor Novick.
138 Councilor Green, I wanted to ask about what you think would be done with money saved by cutting prosper Portland general fund. I mean, obviously we can make the cut and we don't have to do what you say, but with it. But I'm just curious, what's your vision of how you would prioritize that money?
139 It's a great question. I, I had thought of that, that as being a common pool resource because I knew going into this, we were going to 12 counselors who have different priorities based upon their constituencies. So the idea was do that, cut and then backfill it with the strategic investment fund to make those programs whole. To be very clear, we're not cutting the programs, but I think the relief to the general fund, I had always envisioned being something that we can bargain over to, to fund our general fund adds, because there are some general fund adds. I mean, I'm in the interest, of course. I think it makes sense to sort of prioritize things like councilor Ryan and canals. And I think I also heard something from Zimmerman at the dais about the broken windows and supporting direct business. So I think that would make a lot of sense just from the spirit of alignment and of course, a plug for my james beard thing. But but that's that's the answer to your question.
140 But what I mean, like, as councilor Zimmerman mentioned, I think one thing a bunch of people expressed interest in is avoiding cuts to parks maintenance. And some of us have proposed taking money from the police budget and putting it into parks maintenance. But that's about $2 million. And parks maintenance is $6 million cut. Were you envisioning that the common pool that you're talking about would be used for that? In addition to the sort of economic development specific things that you just mentioned?
141 Yeah, I mean, I think the common pool should be used to fund things that the broad set of portlanders have priorities over. And we heard that they wanted parks. I also think there's a nexus with the permitting aspect. You know, there's an economic development, so there should be an economic development nexus. I think if we have to think about making tough choices. But parks, to me, is a core piece of all that.
142 Can I ask a follow up on that? Because I think what might be worth discussion, because I know from my some of my amendments around parks, I'm not restoring the 100%. It's like 2,000,002.5 million. And I've identified the exact places. But I think it would be helpful to get an understanding of how much like our some people proposing the full 6 million are some proposing little chunks. I think that would help, because I think definitely there's consensus on council that we want to save some parts of park, but I don't know that we have an idea of how much and then therefore we would know, you know, if we don't, if we feel like, okay, of the 6 million, we can restore three and we can shoulder that other three, then we should figure that out, you know.
143 Thanks, councilor. Council president.
144 Happy, before I move us to a different conversation to take on that question that councilor Avalos just asked, I would just say to the conversation that councilors Novick and Green were having, there are a fair amount of adds under economic development that are listed here. So if your intent was for that to be used to things that have a nexus to economic development, I haven't added up all the numbers. But I do think that there are a couple million there. If that's not the intent, then I think that's a different direction. Do we want to talk about the parks conversation before I steer us to a different topic? It feels like an elephant that should be addressed more.
145 I'm sorry. Okay, so there's something that's not in here, but it is something that councilor Novick and I have been working on as a potential tool based upon the outcome of this discussion this week, which is a potential revenue and bridge loan concept that we have run through the Portland clean energy fund committee, and that would provide $10 million in the next fiscal year. And that's about what is being cut from parks. And it is backed by a new revenue source. And so that is I think what feels awkward is introducing that in the budget amendment process without ordinances that create those, those things. And that's why we didn't go down this road and also wanted to hear from committee more or community more. But that's if we find ourselves in a situation where it's like we still need to address the parks question. That is something that I'm prepared to offer as a budget note, as a direction to introduce before the finance committee sometime after may 21st. So with that.
146 And I appreciate the parks aspect of it, and I appreciate that use of pcf part of it. What I'm struggling with is when PCEF has such a large contingency, which is 50% of its yearly operating, why you're proposing a loan, because I would assume that a loan means that at some point, the general fund needs to pay that back to PCEF when there is so much in parks that is already funded by PCEF, like the connection between the climate resiliency is rooted in in funding in a way that I think is indisputable. But I'm not understanding that. I guess I'm cautious about a loan when that encumbers us later on when there is literally cash sitting there, and there's no other fund that we allow to have a 50% contingency. So you guys went toward a loan, and I would love to know a little bit more about why that versus just a cash direction.
147 Yeah. Great question councilor. The climate investment plan obligates $1.6 billion and the total fund balance, plus the projected revenues, I think is maybe not sufficient even to meet the $1.6 billion, the $100 million in reserve that we've been presented on. So there's the contingency and then there's the reserve piece that is there to shoulder a five year period of volatility in revenue. Like for instance, I think next year they're expecting something closer to $160 million in revenue because of some carryover credits. So there's a cash flow timing because they do it on a cash accrual basis. And so the idea, the intuition behind borrowing, rather than saying we're going to amend the climate investment plan is to say those funds are going to sort of leverage that borrowing action. But but we're not introducing a plan to change their intended use. So that's the spirit. We you know, we have a city policy on interfund loans that limits us to a very short time horizon. And I think when I initially introduced this concept on my own, I was floating much higher numbers to address a much larger budget gap. But the feedback I got was one, you can't go that long. And then two, there was a lot of concern from the Portland clean energy fund committee of doing a loan concept. So you're not alone. Without an associated revenue to back it up. And that's where councilor Know that comes into play, because he likes to raise taxes here in the city of Portland. I like to borrow, apparently.
148 So. Yes, between the two of us, we're like marvel superheroes. Mitch has the power of borrowing. I have the power of taxing. At least I think we do.
149 Can I ask a long term question about this? I.
150 I think.
151 It is not been a secret that I've been struggling with the way that some of the big decisions are put off in this budget, because I am expecting that our budget next year will be equally or more difficult. So when I see a proposal to borrow money, which we will then under this proposal, or would then I guess I should say, raise revenue to pay back, that still leaves us with the same hole next year. So what is the and I should say the revenue would be there in out years to help cover that. But in the years that we're paying back the loan, we wouldn't have the revenue available for this cut. So help me understand why you're shaking your head. No, that that's not true. Help me understand what this looks like in year two.
152 So the proposal that I have would raise $27 million in 26, 27. So I was envisioning that 10 million to be used to repay the loan and 17 million to be used to cover some of the one time money, like the state 15,000,001 time money for homelessness that we know we're going to lose next year.
153 But what about the parks budget? That this gap, the parks budget gap that this would fill? What happens to that in the second year?
154 I. That's I mean, you could use you could continue to use money from the increased revenue to cover some of the parks parks budget.
155 Rather than some of those other one time.
156 You could you could. Okay. But yeah, I mean that's that that we need to think through. We might want to make a commitment that, okay, let's spend 10 million I mean, what what it would be is next year we'd have to pay a $10 million loan. But the year after that, we'd have 27 million unencumbered. So we could decide, all right, we're going to try to restore some of the general fund parks. I think we've cut general fund parks by about 11 million in the past, like six years. So we could say we were restoring our general fund commitment to parks. And that means that we'll have to ask the citizens of Portland, the residents of Portland, for a smaller property tax increase for the levy, and basically tell them, we're getting these big corporations with overpaid ceos to shoulder part of the burden, and therefore we're asking for less for the parks from Portland property owners.
157 Thank you.
158 That's partially my also struggle is not really understanding where the parks levy fits into this larger budget conversation, because we're not doing that until later. And from what I'm understanding, you know, if we go to the 160, so it's at the 80, if we go to the 160, that that would just make everything neutral. So anything that is currently being know I'm wrong. Everything that was currently being cut would be restored.
159 Know that. So this here I think I know the I know the numbers. I'm sorry. So what park said is that you need a 160 levy in order to cover the $23 million. That was jordan's original proposal in February. In addition, preserve current services. So and I think it works out to be about $6.2 million for every $0.10. So since the mayor actually only cut parks by about 11 million, then that means that the sort of keep us whole levy I think, would be about $1.40, which is obviously dramatically, you know, it's lower than 160 and still a lot higher than 80. So what I was thinking was that if we are covering, you know. If we are. I mean, the more money we can add from the general fund, the lower we can get that down. So if we're going to increase the ongoing that we're funding from the general fund by $6 million, that cuts another $0.10 off it.
160 And I think my broader question here, I'm curious, is just like the timing, I guess I don't understand, like if we're not making the parks levy decision until later, but it could, right, if we did decide to make it 160, let's say, and then therefore there's a little extra, I guess I don't know how to grapple that with like now, I don't know how to do that.
161 I mean, the way I see it is. Obviously I mean, maybe not one for one, but the odds of the higher the levy goes, the more difficult it is to pass it. So I think that what we should be thinking of in terms of now is what can we reasonably do to limit the amount of increase that we're asking for? And you can do that in two ways. You can do it by increasing the general fund support or planning to or taking some cuts. Now that we plan not to restore.
162 So do you want to hop in?
163 Yeah, I think there's a few other just as we talk about parks variables here though, I, I want to just say because council, I don't think you put quite a fine enough point on the first piece you said there, which is if we raise revenue in other ways, maybe we don't have to talk about as high a parks levy. And I think that's an interesting note for us to be noodling on as we weigh all of these different things. I would just say all of this conversation is within an assumption that we keep park services where they are now, and we keep parks oversight where it is now. And my hope is that as we move forward, we continue to have conversations about oversight for parks, how we can do things at parks more efficiently. I talked about a budget note to ask parks to come back to us with a plan for how they're going to maximize outside funding, which they used to do to try to help boost the programs that we put forward, because ideally, we get to a place where we're saying to portlanders because of a combination combination of our general fund and your generosity with the levy and being really diligent about making sure parks is using every dollar to maximize services to portlander, and seeing where we can bring in outside funds, maximize volunteerism that councilor Clark is looking at. We can actually provide better services to you all portlanders through our parks system. And I hope that we get to a place where we're talking about parks with all of those different levers and talking about how we can do better with our parks system. And this is, I think, the first piece of that in a more functional level. I think that we need to make the assumption in this budget that we are going to the voters for a renewal or an increase of the levy, and make the assumption that we would have at least that 80 cent level. And then if we do make the decision to ask portlanders for a bit more, we can start talking about the things we would like to do in our parks system that we can't do otherwise, as opposed to having a scarcity conversation about our parks.
164 Councilor Green.
165 Thank you. I just I want to offer my last comments on the question that the council president has raised about, you know, what, in the context of borrowing or shifting funds, how do we deal with the fiscal cliff that that might potentially create? If I'm paraphrasing your question correctly, there is a dynamic interaction between what we spend in this budget and how the public responds. And we're sort of in this risky moment where, you know, it's been described as potentially being close to a doom loop. But I think a big piece of and I don't want to reinforce that language, but I think a big piece of, of that is making sure that we're showing this community that we are preserving the things they cherish. And we heard very loudly that they want us to not cut any parks maintenance. And so I my, my thinking and my logic is if we can do something to restore and not cut those parks maintenance and maybe not make that decision to move to Clackamas, or not make that decision to move to Washington county and stay in and stay Multnomah county. That is a sort of kind of counter-cyclical investment concept to I think that doesn't get us off the hook for making structural changes to our budget. And there's some amendments here that do that. And I think your budget note is a really good example of sort of direction on how we need to think about some of the oversight and regulatory stuff. So but again, I think that if we can get people to stop moving away and actually say this is the best place to raise a family, then we're going to grow our way out of this, this deficit. And frankly, I don't think that, you know, for the future, we should be committing to picking up the county's tab for all of these shelters. So I see this period as short term, frankly, in terms of that budget. Thanks.
166 Councilor greene. I've never agreed more with an entire statement. You've said, and I agree with you a lot.
167 I'm going to hop in here, I guess reluctantly, because I do appreciate we're talking about a lot of people's amendments. But one of mine is, of course, very related to park maintenance. So I think I've got to represent mine if we're going to talk about the elephant in the room. So. I, I have read the memo that was sent out by, by parks and by that service area with respect to the urban forestry amendment that I made. And I think that I have become quite clear about what I can only use is a shell game amongst several divisions within urban forestry. And it's really unfortunate because I think that one, one bad apple of that operation is causing a lot of situations or concern in the broader urban forestry. And so I just want to be I want to clarify some amendments on mine in terms of because we're talking about the levy, if there are any levy dollars used in the tree code enforcement, based on the stories that we've seen come out of the media over the last year. Plus, I think we should lose the levy because I don't think any portlanders wanted to stop maintaining parks while adding code compliance. People who make you get a permit after a tree falls on your house. I just think it's out of whack. But there's also a lot of good that happens in urban forestry. Now, they presented to this committee and they told us that they have not actually increased the tree canopy in this in the since they've existed, which is a huge concern for me given the amount of money that we put toward them. But them taking on street tree maintenance, them taking on the ability to maintain our our heritage trees, them taking on the overall canopy growth in the parks. These are positive things and most of all, them working with portlanders to understand a healthy tree canopy and those other two divisions. That kind of work can continue. And my amendment doesn't attack any of that, but they have also braided some of those activities into the tree regulation, which is part of the 37 fte that I have. I have identified as a concern, and I have asked them now, and I've told them that I am open to I. What I did in my amendment is I sent five five tree inspectors to pnd, which is supposed to be the permit holders for all things city right now. And I've said I'm open if that, if that right number for that is for the right number for that is eight. I don't have hard feelings about it. What I looked at was the amount of permits that come in and the amount of work that can exist there. So I'm open to that. I've received no additional suggestions from parks yet. The but I want to I want to bring it up relative to the pcf conversation. And the loan is that even with some slight adjustments, if the council adopts the amendment to move title 11 over to rp and to reduce the footprint of that division and restore the 5.8 million in parks maintenance, it also it doesn't touch any pcf right. It allows urban forestry who is already being funded significantly by pcf to continue their pcf dollars, which I think got a little bit misquoted out there. It allows them to continue their pcf mission and allows the parks levy to continue their maintenance mission in in park maintenance and retain those employees who show up to the parks in the mornings and clean up everything before any of our kids ever get there. So I just wanted to highlight that and say to council president, she's considering a package that I am currently trying to slightly adjust or craft it to the right size, but because this has been such a shell game of an operation, and because their funding was so shadowy in terms of what comes off the page and what duties they have, this is an example of bureau reform through budgeting operations because of how awry this program has run. And I recognize that that makes some folks uncomfortable. And what I would say is that I'm I'm comfortable with that discomfort. I am comfortable speaking and saying that I had had pretty big concerns about how we are going about our permitting for people to just do basic care and maintenance in their own yards. I think we have a chance to get a lot better this summer, when the title 11 code reforms come forward, but this is not an area that I think we should take a back seat. I think we have to be the drivers, because I think that this section has been driving full speed ahead and nobody has told them there's a speed limit. So I just want to offer that. I know it is more bold than most amendments, and I'm open to slight adjustments. If we think they we can round out some duties. I will also say most of the duties that they're saying, they're concerned about leaving the parks bureau with my amendment are things like coordinating when someone else shows up to your house to chop the tree out of your front yard, coordinating when snow happens, coordinating. And these are things that already happen in other bureaus. This is a duplicative service right now.
168 Councilor, thank you for thinking about rightsizing this. And I'll flag just on the record today that I've also asked parks for some more information about the policy implications of different cuts. I know we received a memo from them, but I felt like the memo did not actually give me a true understanding of what those positions do. And if I get that information, if it's helpful, I'm happy to share it with you. This is a place where it would be really helpful for me to have a bit more of a gut check on what we're hearing from our colleagues, and I think because we are in a public meeting on the record, if we've all had different conversations with different people and share that, that actually means that we don't have a quorum issue. So if folks are hearing strong opinions about yes if no and less, I think categorical yeses and nos are less helpful than what some of the criteria might be from your colleagues. That would be really helpful for me to understand, and probably for our colleague to understand if he's looking at some changes here.
Procedural episode · turns 169–177
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169 So unfortunately, I don't think that I've had substantive conversations on this with any of my colleagues except the ones that were here. But, I mean, in terms of the way I'm looking at it, what I was as I looked at the same memo and they did sort of break down who does what. And so like it seems to me that what I code compliance and private tree support investigating code violations enforces replanting requirements. That's nine staff. But I kind of thought that was probably what was most in your. Crosshairs. Councilor Zimmerman. But then other things like non-developing development, permitting and inspection handles permits for tree care and properties under development. I think that's where they say, well, you know, somebody has to process the permits. And they used to take 12 weeks and now they take two, so that it's kind of a customer service thing. And then.
170 Can I use a quick example because that was an area that I picked up on as well. To that end, my question on that is why are the permits not moved over to p and d, which is the design of we should be moving. But the second part is even more concerning for me because we have three, three branches, three branches of urban forestry tree regulation, the science and outreach. But then we have tree maintenance. So my big question to the one you just raised is why is supports maintenance utility projects manages the heritage tree program. Why is that in the regulation and not in the tree maintenance section. So I would offer that as one of those examples. If they came back and said you're right, and all they do is maintain trees and they're just in this division for a span of control reasons, then I'm open to the cost that goes with that being somewhere else. But the other idea is that they said the impact of proposed reduction is the majority of title 11 requirements would be suspended. I'll just say that's not a terrible incentive for me, because I think even the author of this has pushed back about how far it has gone. But anyway, I was thinking about this is one of those is why is this even in this division?
171 But I guess I'm. I'm a bit worried about policy reform through budgeting when we have so little time. So it's actually kind of the same reaction to the prosper cuts that I am worried about making big policy changes to prosper, which I haven't looked at all that much through the budgeting process. And so although I have the same reaction you do to a lot of the stories we've heard about urban forestry, and I understand your frustration, I'm just a little hesitant to I mean, I'd feel better if you were, like, able to. I mean, of course, if you think there's barriers to this, that's a problem. If you're able to say, okay, I figured out there's nine of these people that just beat up on people and are mean to them. So I want to cut four of those. Thanks.
172 Councilor Green.
173 Thank you. Chair. I appreciate you being really candid about how you've evolved a little bit during this conversation. You've looked really deep into this stuff. I don't know if I agree with you all the way, but I've heard some mixed responses on this. My views have changed on this, but I think this is one of those areas that should make it into this omnibus, because. Yes, it's controversial, but it's raising some important points and it's creating some important resources that we might want to consider. I just I actually think it's appropriate to do as a budget committee some transformational work and call the question on certain other processes. I think that's what a budget committee can do. So I think I support that. I know, I know, it's uncomfortable, but I'm also doing an uncomfortable thing too. So but that's not the same as like, you know, sometimes it's compared to like elon musk or something like where it's like you got to sort of unelected. Well, you've got like a sort of not a legislative body going in with a chainsaw and slashing things. No, this is a council committee. This is a committee of council. And then we will adopt a whole budget council, and we're legislators. And the whole point is to craft policy through legislation. So I support moving it into this. I don't know if I'm going to vote for it, though.
174 Can I ask a clarification there? Because I'm hoping we're crafting something that most people can feel good about voting on. So you just said you support moving it into a president's package, but you don't know if you're then going to vote on the president's package because it's in there. And I'm, I'm, I'm hoping that's not what you said, but that's what I heard.
175 No important clarification I have my expectation is we're not going to vote to accept your package without some amendments. Yours is going to be a starting point. It's the goal is to sort of cut this decision problem way down. But I know that there's going to be some discussion on some of these issues and some some argumentation and some bargaining. This is one that I expect to have. It's going to get introduced whether it's in your thing or not. And I think that if we're looking at how to balance this, this is a big mover on the resources. And so it should be part of this. Otherwise we're going to have all this work that you're going to do ahead of time, thrown off by the fact that this has to come into play. So I'm going to vote for something. We're going to approve a budget on the 21st. But I just wanted to flag that. It's, I think, very unlikely that 12 councilors are going to approve without much discussion and change of your of your president's amendment.
176 And I just want to make sure I'm being clear. I expect that we will pass other amendments besides that one. I expect that there are things that I don't put in that president's amendment that we will likely move forward and vote on. Also, councilor Avalos.
177 I wanted to take a moment to speak a little bit more high level philosophically about the budget and everything because of some of the things that I'm hearing, because I, you know, I have some mixed feelings. And so I'm just putting them out there. So one of the things is, as we know, we are operating under a really unrealistic timeline for us to be able to make, you know, some of these policy decisions. But I will just say, because I've gotten some feedback from, you know, random community people who are like for my amendments, for example, as it relates to the policy set aside for police overtime. But there's other things that are similar in type where it's getting categorized in this bucket of you can't do that because that tells the mayor to do something else, or it's a policy change or it's a whatever. So let me just say, my opinion is that we absolutely can in general, as a council, we can say like, we're moving these dollars in this way because it is a policy decision, or we're asking or we're making a change in how a bureau is structured. So I'll just first say that, like I do think that's within our powers, because I've gotten some feedback from folks who are like, you know, of course I'm always the you did charter stuff and I always field all of those like charter hate trolls, but I think most of it is like, people are like, you created this, you know, system so that the mayor is separate. Agreed. The mayor is separate. The mayor has their own powers, but it is intentionally in our hands to make budget decisions. And budget is policy. So I just want to say that as a larger picture, big picture thing, because I think that's what we're going to be grappling with a lot on on Wednesday. And part of us grappling with that is just that we don't have a lot of time. Right? Because I think a lot of the things that are being proposed are very worthy policy discussions that we need to have alongside a budget discussion. We just don't have the time right now. So I think that's where a lot of my tension comes on, the things that I don't feel comfortable supporting, not because I don't think we can do it. Does that make sense? So I think some of the things that I'm struggling with, like I, you know, I'm struggling with the prosper thing because I am concerned about the timing. I think that the intention is correct. I think that we absolutely need to figure out how we are changing our economic development engine and yada yada. I'm concerned about the timing for it, but not because I don't think we can do it. So I just wanted to say that because I feel like a lot of my decisions are less about me feeling like you can't do it, and more about like, have we done our due diligence? Have we included community in a way that feels meaningful? Are we being really thoughtful about a decision, and what are the long term implications? Whatever. So that's just kind of how I'm looking at it. But I just wanted to put it on the record, because I've been getting a lot of feedback from folks of trying and trying to understand what is our role at this point, because I've also heard people be like, you should just trust the mayor and you should just, you know, accept the mayor's budget. And it's like, it's not about trust. The mayor is a nice man. And also, I was elected to do make decisions about the budget, too. So anyway, I kind of just wanted to raise that philosophical thing because it affects how I'm looking at some of these decisions. But I do think as we discuss after we're done here, I think we need to have a good discussion about that so we can prepare ourselves to be able to do that next year, because we just simply don't have time. So I'm also kind of in my amendment. So I'm like, the last thing I'll say is as far as the amendments that I have, and I don't know how the process is going to go exactly. I think some of mine, I'm probably going to turn into budget notes because they're going to be like, I can't find the dollars for it, frankly. And I just want to state that this is an intention that I'm going to be working on next year. Right. So like the health care money is a good example of that. I don't know where 50 million is going to come from. I'm not going to fight for that. But I want to signal that that's a policy discussion that we want to have prior to the budget discussion. And so, yeah, I'm also kind of just gauging for myself, like what's worth fighting for. And I think we're all doing that, but that's just how I'm approaching it. So that's it.
178 Thanks. Councilor councilor Novick.
179 I just wanted to say I totally agree. I mean, yes, we can make policy decisions with the budget. I just worry about making policy decisions. I'm not quite sure I understand. And also, I just wanted to note that I got an email from an old friend of my mother the other day saying, why don't you just trust the mayor and go with his public safety budget? So you and I appear to be hearing from similar people. The other thing I wanted to say, though, is that we can make pretty significant changes in June. And I mean, 10% is big. So I mean, these two things, the I mean, two things at least, the prosper budget and these tree personnel discussions are things that I think I might know more about in three weeks than I know now. So I'm okay with making decisions based on what I know now, understanding that we might make different decisions in three weeks.
180 So as a recap, what what councilor is referring to is that our vote on the 21st is to approve the budget. And the most layman's way of saying that is that is the council approving the size of the funds that are going to get used for city services in our next fiscal year. And then the after the 21st, we can change and make amendments to anything on that budget, as long as it does not violate 10% of any one fund. So those are real numbers. Those are big numbers. It's hard to violate it. In my career, I don't think I've actually seen a government or been a part of a government who violated the 10% rule after approving. So you're exactly right. We'll have. In fact, we even have more work sessions, including another psa, excuse me, public safety work session that will come up again after this. So I just want to give the finer point to that, because it is a confusing part about municipal budgeting. And what does the word approved mean versus the word adopted. And the final enchilada is on the 18th of June. And so I think that that's just an important point. We do have a little bit of time and getting as many of the things off the docket as possible in this one is something I have a goal for. But knowing we have a we have additional conversations. So thanks for highlighting that.
181 Councilor can I ask a follow up real quick? That also means, though on the 21st it does have to be balanced, right? Yes. Okay, 100%.
182 It has to be balanced. And so I'm going to use a little bit of privilege. We're at 135. And so I just want to we can go as long as people need want to use a little bit of privilege here to just highlight what that means for us. And I anticipate that the 21st could be a hard day. And I would ask each of the five of us to kind of do a gut check in terms of how we want to show up, because I appreciated your comments a lot, councilor Avalos, about we're all going through this, this process internally for what am I signaling? What am I going to fight for? When am I going to get it into the package? Am I going to propose it as a separate amendment? And I'm having the same. And I think that the five of us, we have this great privilege of being able to have this conversation today in a public manner, but we may also have to have some. Polite nod of that that might not just be able to get solved. On the night of the 21st, we may have to just table that for a later date. And that is not a defeat necessarily, but it is a it is a it's setting a direction that we're generally okay, even if we can accept we want to do a few changes later so that we can do our obligation of sending a balanced budget to the tcc, which is an important step for us. But our council is new, we all comment on everything. We could go very late into the evening. I am planning to be here very late. My staff is planning to be here very late. I hope that each of us, with wherever we have influence can help. Have the. It's not all done on the 21st, and there's no reason that it turns into a huge midnight debate in the middle of this room. Take take that advice as anybody will. It's just coming from me.
183 To that end, if I may. I in the memo about what to expect on the 21st that's in everybody's inboxes. I said, we're going to take this all on by topic area, which is how we have it before us today. Ruth and her team have very graciously bucketed things by topic. For us to do that, we might get three quarters of the way through a topic area and have discussed the big things, but still have a fair amount on the table. And I might say, let's move on to the next topic area to make sure that we can get through all of the big things. And then at the end of the evening, if there are things we can come back to, great. And if there are things we can't come back to, we have that June conversation where we can come back to them. I do want to just note that the 18th is the second reading on that budget, so I would encourage folks to be ready with your additional information and learning about things by the 11th, which is the first reading, so that we can have that additional debate on the 11th and not be making amendments at the last second on the 18th, when the hope is that we're doing a vote on things that we have pretty much polished a week before that.
184 Yeah.
185 What are you saying about the 11th? Sorry.
186 That's the first reading.
187 So for the what we do on the 21st is pass the adopted approved, approved I'm sorry, the approved budget. I'm mixing up the a's, which is where councilor Zimmerman said we're essentially approving the size of the funds, and we're doing a fair amount of the work. We're getting through as much as we can so that we can give tsk, which is the oversight board for local government budgets, the ability to look at our budget and say, yeah, they're staying within what they need to stay within. On the 11th, we will have the first reading of the adopted budget, which is where we take that approved. We make any last minute changes that we need to within funds. We can't grow funds by more than 10%, but we can make changes within them and get to what is hopefully the final. And then on the 18th we have the second reading on the approved adopted and pass it. So councilor Zimmerman had used that date, the 18th as the date to do your your further learning by. And I'm asking us to back that up to the 11th.
188 I see also though in my what time is it at because I see that we have council from 9:30 p.m. To 11:30 p.m. That can't be right. So what time are we actually meeting on 11th?
189 Believe that that is.
190 It's like an irregular council evening. I guess what I'm saying is what is our start time on the 11th? Is it the 6 p.m?
191 We'll get back to you. It should be. It should be different than that.
192 It should be. I'll clarify in a memo.
193 So it's going to be like another long day.
194 It'll feel like the 21st.
195 Okay.
196 Hopefully less.
197 Than that. Hopefully less than that.
198 Yeah I want to do.
199 What we can done.
200 That's fine.
201 I want to go to councilor Green.
202 Thank you. I know we're running out of time. I'm aware that councilor Kanal is submitting a number of amendments that transfer between one and ongoing that are neutral. And I would I would hope that those could be considered as part of this, because they don't have a budgetary impact on balance.
203 I had actually written down a couple of other things I had hoped we could talk about in the last few minutes, and that was one of them. So I would love if there are folks who are hearing concern about those from colleagues, to hear that this was a piece that stood out to me as something that I want to make sure I have a good temperature on, because it it did seem like there was no budget impact, but could be some important program impacts.
204 Councilor Novick.
205 Well, first of all, I was very sad when that when it turns out that we're talking about the approved budget on Wednesday, because otherwise I would have thought that we could refer to your memo about what to expect. Wednesday is what to expect when you're adopting, but.
206 Happy to send out that memo titled as such leading up to the 11th councilor Novick.
207 But actually, I was worrying about the converting one time to ongoing, and I actually wanted to ask ruth, what's the I mean, what is the implication of that? Does that mean that I mean, does that have the potential to unbalance the five year forecast, or is it just can we change things from one time to ongoing for free, or is it more complicated than that?
208 Yeah, it's a good question. So in general, we are balancing ongoing to the number that is essentially in peter's forecast. So I should have pulled it up. It's about $760 million ongoing general fund. That is the basis for the five year forecast that starts next year. And so he assumes inflation to that number. So the entire budget, all of the allocated general fund discretionary ongoing has to fit within that number. What this amendment specifically doe, is it at least and I know he's here. So I don't want to butcher it too much. Swaps. It swaps where the ongoing and one time occurs. So instead of having ongoing of 2.5 million in pb for over time, it switches that for one time. And it takes the on that ongoing and puts it into a cross chat. Boec and ceasefire. So it is neutral from the perspective of ongoing discretionary dollars because it's just swapping who has ongoing and one time from a programmatic perspective, the impact is that the police bureau in 2627 would experience a decrease in their base budget, essentially because that one time funding would go away. On the flip side, those other programs that would have without this amendment would experience that decrease, would continue that funding in their base budget going into 2627.
209 Thank you.
210 Thanks for that. I on this one, I just I have worked in a lot of agencies where the overtime budget was one time only, and I can see how that can seem like. Let me say it this way. This city is aggressive in saying things identified as one time come off of the next year's budget knowing full well we're going to end up putting them back there. I'm wondering what kind of indication or even if it's like a financial policy, to say that we will budget overtime expenses every year as a one time only expense instead of using general fund ongoing, having no dollar amount change on the agency because I, I look at this and I and I see generally no change in operations for the agency in question but but some certainty for the agencies who are moving from one time to ongoing. I had similar questions as councilor Novick about that five year forecast, but I just. I'm thinking out loud about how to send an indication to future budget officers, meaning the mayor and others, and to bureau leadership that this is not the end of overtime, just by putting it in a one time only category, right? Whether that would be a budget note or a policy, a financial policy of like, we're going to shift the city from doing overtime from general fund to always being otto. I'm just thinking through that. But generally, I think I'm I'm comfortable with this amendment council president, and I appreciate the clarity to from ruth.
211 Sorry you're comfortable with which amendment are we talking specifically about? Councilor nils amendment to switch.
212 Okay.
213 Yeah. So councilor Nils was was that conversion of the two? It wasn't new or old, it was just converting it looks like so appreciate that. So with that, counselor Green, do you have some comments on this?
214 Well I was just going to say that I think that kind of budget note and that conversation is worthwhile having you do have the forecast for it, but we can have a conversation about are the metrics driving the need? That's why I kind of think it pairs really well with your your 75% set aside in the council check in. I don't know if everyone's comfortable with that, but I think it's in the same spirit of oversight. So I just wanted to flag that.
215 Is it worth getting a temperature check on that piece that you just brought up, or do we have other things that are more pressing right now?
216 I would like I think there are a couple more. I think I'll put it this way. I feel like the 75 has gotten a lot of attention. It might be more controversial than I expect you putting in a package, but I am. And because of that, not for any other reason, but for that I kind of want to. I know I saw on your paper you had a couple more you wanted to get to. I know I certainly had one.
217 I'm fine.
218 Is that okay? Yeah. Thanks.
219 I mean, unless you have questions, you want to ask me about it, but I'm fine not talking.
220 I think I understand it, and I think I'm hearing that it might be more controversial than we should do in a package like this. Okay.
221 So they're.
222 Both agree on that. Then I will put it in the probably not a package category.
223 There were a couple that were regarding legislative council. And I'll just say, madam president, I, I think that is worthy of a larger conversation. I'm not sure I would be supportive of that kind of thing being in a package yet. I feel like I will be supportive of a legislative council at some point if I don't see what I want to see come out of the city attorney's office in terms of how we how we have competing advice. But for me, that might be a bridge too far in the package, and I'll just state that where I'm at. The other one that I wanted to bring up, there's councilor Morillo has, I think, a really important amendment about some cbo backfill. So for the budget office, some analysts, I'm supportive of that, but I'm also more interested in a reorganization from a city administration that starts removing certain analysts or the size of analyst teams, budget analyst teams in the bureaus and centralizes them. So I would say for councilor Morillo amendment, I would be supportive if I thought that the city administrator is not going to make any structural change. So for that, again, that's one I would like to maybe wait on until June to get a better understanding of it. But I think it's a really important indicator of some of the structural problems. And did you have others that you also or if other people want to comment.
224 On.
225 Can I just ask real quick, what is legislative counsel mean?
226 So it's like a separate city attorney's office just for us.
227 Oh, okay.
228 Two proposals on the table, plus a third that I didn't put on the table but have had some conversations about. We have a counselor who wanted to set aside funds for outside counsel. We had a counselor who wanted to build a legislative counsel office for us within counsel operations. And then I had had some conversations about whether we should have 1 or 2 of the city attorneys who were dedicated to drafting and policy work with our counsel, but sit within the city attorney's office. So there's a few ways to do that.
229 I did I.
230 Would just say I'm interested in having that conversation really fully with our first permanent city manager or city administrator. And so I'm feeling like it might be a little too early for me, but.
231 Okay.
232 So you were going to.
233 I wanted to ask a question about the cbo proposal from councilor Morillo that you brought up, because you expressed some concern over doing that yet. And I'm wondering if this is a place where it is worth, if you know, and we'll have the full debate if we don't put it in the package. But I'm wondering if this is a place where it's worth having a conversation about budget notes to get the work started or a policy set aside. If positions aren't retained so that there is some movement. And obviously we're only five people, we shouldn't make the decision about whether it's the full amendment or something like that here, but I just wanted to put that out. Since you expressed some concern that there may be some action we do need to take.
234 Yeah. Councilmember and I very briefly have discussed maybe a note that would complement that. And I don't want to speak for her here, but I, I do want to indicate directional support, but maybe not timing support yet for this. And it's interesting because I think actually councilor Morillo experience and my experience through this are both identifying a need but from opposite directions actually, which is, I think, telling that we've got some, some we've got some structural issues just in terms of how budgets are built and how people access information that we can have some shared. Cause for here. Councilor Novick you in the queue again? Yeah.
235 Two things, two things. One, I don't I actually don't think I'd support changes in relationship with the city attorney because I think the service we're getting now is pretty good. But also, I was curious as to whether people had understandings of where our colleagues fall on councilor Morillo golf fund proposal, because that's a big chunk of money. So that's kind of a game changer. So just wondering if people know whether yourselves or colleagues are leaning forward against that.
236 I ask a question that I should know the answer to, but I don't. What is the current golf fee which the mayor added a dollar to? And councilor Morillo is proposing, adding even more to what is what is this on top of the peregrine fee?
237 Ruth sorry, I don't have that off the top of my head. I can find it pretty quickly.
238 We've got a couple people looking.
239 There was a golf fee before.
240 You have. To pay to golf. Yeah.
241 It's just I'm a golfer, Eastmoreland. Right now it's about $35 for 18 holes off season.
242 On top of that.
243 35 at heron lakes. It's more expensive. Sort of depends upon the quality and the time of the year.
244 Okay.
245 Just to be clear, I was referring to councilor Morillo proposal to take $5 million out of the golf fund and contingency.
246 Oh, I'm sorry, not an increase in golf fees, but the redirection, right?
247 Both are on the table.
248 I do believe both are on the table. I'm happy to speak to my concern there. And if everybody else likes it, my concern doesn't necessarily mean it stays out of the package. But we have a fund that is self-supporting right now, and if we draw out of their reserves, then I suspect when our golf courses need major maintenance, we will be asked to fund that because we took money out of the reserves, rather than it being a self-sustaining fund that can pay for their own major maintenance. And that concerns me down the line. But again, if everybody else overrules me on this, it can still go in the package.
249 I mean, I have a concern about it that's slightly different, which is what santner brought up in the email she sent to a bunch of us, which is that the golf folks were sober and responsible, and they started putting money aside to deal with maintenance issues, which is what we want people to be doing and take was we're kind of punishing people for being responsible. So although I'm perfectly fine with raising golf fees in order to help golf pay for city services, I'm uncomfortable to sort of a matter of principle with taking this reserve that they built up because because they were diligently doing what they should do.
250 Councilor do you want to talk on this? I know you proposed some as well.
251 Yeah. I think it's an interesting question. I'm supportive of it because I think the policy, the reserves policy for this fund has that at about $2 million. Currently it's at $7 million. So it's above the sort of recommended policy level to the note on to councilor Novik's point. I mean, I get that argument, but, you know. We don't have a bunch of little enterprises inside the city. We've got one city that has a collective financial need. And if we think there's a transfer that could be made to fund maybe parks, that's sort of in the same spirit. And if it pairs with the increase in the golf fees, then we've we've created a revenue stream that can that can service that fund. So I think I think we need to think a little more flexibly around the sort of like golf enterprise view.
252 I want to I want to use your comments, counselor, just as a what what comes off as such a difference in how we're approaching PCEF. Right. So the golf fund is raised by individual portlanders going to play golf. And they've they've managed their asset in a way that, you know, it's between, you know, 25 for nine holes, 43 at glendoveer for 18. And they, they pay for that. And I'm a person who learned to golf on these courses that were naming Eastmoreland and glendoveer and other Portland owned courses. And as a kid, you know, it was an accessible course, which was unique, frankly. But I think we were always comfortable knowing that our money was going to keep that that thing alive. I am also a person who every year I get a deer and elk tag, and I pay some fees to the odf and w for game management and environmental management and habitat management just of that program. And I'm comfortable with those fees because they go to pay for that program and that you know, I think I just try to get my license and it's about 100 bucks a year or so that, that, that costs me. But then. You know, using what you said, applying that then to the pcf side where we, we say we can't touch their reserve or their contingency, and it's not being built by people who chose to participate in the pcf mission. It's been built by an extra tax that we have on, on non Oregonians on their bottom line of these large corporations. But it's not we're not allowed to touch it there. I, I can see both sides. But it is as the guy who has said we should use some pcf for some more parks related stuff, I've certainly taken a lot of incoming from folks who say, don't you dare touch this sacred fund. And I would say, I think I respect the fund that's been built by everyday golfers and users of portland's stuff, more than the one that was just built on the backs of a large, large tax. Meaning if I'm going to use one or the other one that is self-sufficient, which is the golf fund to me is more sacred to protect. And I say that with the scar tissue of just a few years ago, we had a counselor who said we should turn all the golf courses into massive homeless shelters, and I disagreed with her at the time, and I still disagree with her today. And I feel like this seems like a path of like, let's start gutting the golf fund again. And I just don't get it because I it sounds silly, but portland's public golf courses are a gem and I don't want to take away from that. I'll leave it there.
253 If I may. This is this is a good discussion. I think in principle, I want to move away from specific taxes, funding specific things going forward. I think that has left us in a situation where there's an 8.4 billion, $8.5 billion budget, and we are haggling over $400,000. That's that's what's happening here. Now, I'm I'm on the other side of the pcf issue with you on this specific thing because of the ballot measure language and what voters voted for, they wanted that to be a very strict ascribing of use to this fund. I understand the arguments about it being a gross receipts tax, and it's not linked to climate activities, but I don't know how you fundraise off of climate activities. A golf fund is an enterprise fund. It's easier to do. But going forward and we can't do that in this budget, we need to have a conversation about what our future revenue looks like and how we want to put policies around how we treat the fungibility of funds across our enterprises. So just leave that there, colleagues.
254 I just I'm going to we've got a couple more minutes and I just want to give it to the council president, since this conversation ultimately is informing her package. Council president.
255 I want to thank you all we got through. I think most of the topics that I was hoping we could touch on today, and I heard a lot of places where there might be some consensus, a couple of places where I heard clarity from multiple people across the dais that it shouldn't be part of a package that we hope to be able to move, not without debate, but relatively quickly compared to other things. And then some pieces that are still up in the air. And as I try to put this together, if any of you or any of our colleagues who might have staff listening have pieces that that you are working on that fell in that last category, let me know how those conversations are going, because I am happy tomorrow to have somebody come to me and say, hey, we got some agreement here, let's put this in the package. I'll note that the one thing I was hoping to ask about that we don't have time for today is workforce, which is something I've heard a few of our colleagues talk about, but there's not a lot in the amendments on, and I wasn't sure if there was anything we wanted to include there. So I'll just hold on that and let folks come talk to me if that's something that they have strong feelings about one way or another. I my hope as we move toward Wednesday, knowing that there are some limitations to the conversations we can and should have, because portlanders have asked to have more transparency in the work that we do, is that we can at least have some conversations within those bounds around folks working together, folks coming in with some joint proposals so that we can move quickly on Wednesday. Quickly, of course, being a relative term. So thank you for the work today. I really appreciate the time everybody's putting in to this really important task that we have before us.
256 Yeah. Similarly, it was a little risky to just say open it up to the, to the dais and the floor. And I just am very appreciative to this committee and how we were able to get through all these. I'll also note, I'm hoping that we can support the president on the 21st as we go through what will seem at times a little scripted because we have some very by the law things that she has to read. Specifically, we have to vote on in exact order, and it will seem orchestrated. And that is exactly what it is. There will be a time for arguments and there will be a time for budget amendments. But I just if the five of us can help her not add to the chaos until it's time for the chaos, I think her her job will be much more successful. And so with that, ruth, thank you for joining us today. We didn't rely on you a ton, but it was very valuable. So thank you. And with that, the next meeting of this committee is on June 9th. We are out.