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Council session — 2026-02-10

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (20,081 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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So just go in through teams. I'm sorry.

Good afternoon. I'm going to call this meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, February 10th. Excuse me at 2:30 p.m. Sorry for the late diana. Will you please call the roll?

Good afternoon. Smith here. Morillo Novick here. Oh, apologies. Zimmerman here.

Kanal here. Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?

Welcome to the meeting of the community and public safety committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance in the committee agenda at wwe Portland. Agenda slash community and public safety 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. 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, state your name for the record for your lobbyist. Identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.

Thank you both. This meeting we have four items on the agenda. We're fairly certain we'll get through the first three and not as certain on the fourth. We will first hear three updates, first receiving quarterly updates on Portland police's use of overtime. Overtime. Second, receiving quarterly updates on 911 call allocation times. Third receiving updates on Portland street response call allocation types. Sorry. Third receiving updates on Portland street response and resolution 37709, which was adopted by city council back in June. And then if there's time, we'll continue consideration of the nuisance property ordinance from our last committee meeting. Diana, will you please read the first item.

Item number one, quarterly update on the prioritization of Portland police bureau overtime.

Thank you. Colleagues. Last year, we passed a budget note Kanal ten that instructed PPB to prioritize overtime on community needs. Specifically, PPB was instructed to prioritize overtime hours for retail theft, stolen vehicle operations investigations, gun violence reduction, street racing, human trafficking, and traffic priority projects, as well as sexual and domestic violence and property crimes. The budget note also instructed PPB to deprioritize overtime spent on demonstration, response and crowd control events and community presence. Today, we'll hear pbs's quarterly report on overtime usage in line with this budget note, and we have here budget and strategy manager for the public safety service area, nathan lemi. Thanks for being here, nathan.

Indeed happy to be here. I will share my screen. And we can get started. So. As the introduction, I'm nathan lemi. I manage a budget, strategy and performance team. This is our quarterly update to provide a little bit of context for the update itself. I got a few more questions from councilor Kanal office yesterday, so there are some additional slides here that the other councilors may not have seen. So first off, categorization, there are many ways that we categorize overtime within the service area. We've developed a standardized format that has these four major categories for overtime, with subcategories that are under each of those. So training, whether it be for new officers or for existing staff personnel, backfill that will eventually be sort of divided up by what's causing that backfill need programmatic overtime, things that the bureau does as one of its core functions, things that they can sometimes plan for, or major incidents that may be unplanned, and then event response, whether those are events that are driven by the public, and unanticipated things like demonstration response, annual events like response around elections or response to community need for something like the rose festival. So in terms of the reporting that we're asked to do, councilor Kanal sort of highlighted a couple items that he wanted to be hearing about in this budget. Note when it was written, one category was subsection of those planned responses we have. There are nine different categories that councilor Kanal read out that are part of that planned response. That's part of programmatic overtime. And then on the other side, there are things that you want to encourage the bureau to limit time on around demonstration response, planned civic demonstrations, and community engagement activities. So with that as context, the categorization this slide shows in Green with the spots this fiscal year July through December. So the first six months, first two quarters and the blue immediately underneath it. You can see last fiscal year for the same time period. So overall we've had a reduction of about 15% in overtime hours from last year to this year. You can see the difference based on those four categories relatively even for event response, personnel backfill less programmatic over time and about even on training overtime. Councilor Kanal asked that we also divide it up by the quarter, just the most recent quarter. Rather than looking at the whole of the year. So this is same information divided by the quarter. So you can see the scale is changing between those of the top being 45,000 hours versus 90,000 hours. So generally sort of same split that we see with between those two periods of time. Then sort of further looking at those requested types, looking at the demonstration and election response versus community engagement. This is again looking at this year versus last year, this fiscal year in Green, last year in blue. You can see the reduction in overtime. That 15% is in the sort of other types of overtime. I was shocked to see how remarkably close we were in terms of demonstration election response overtime 17,000 417,006 71 for those two years. Community engagement both around 1000 hours. Another request was to sort of pull out how these compare for some of the same information, then put a different way. So those part one in the budget note looking at retail theft, stolen vehicle, the other priority projects that the councilor Pulled out about 4% of overall hours. Part two those demonstration community response about 13% of time. If you're looking just at October through December. So just the most recent quarter, you can see that number goes up for the demonstration response. That's largely in response to increased demonstration activity that's been at the ice facility over this past quarter. So that walks us through the numbers we have. Are there any questions.

Yeah. We'll have counselors. Feel free to get into the queue. If you have any questions you would like to ask I'm just going to make a quick clarification. I have some questions, but I'm happy to wait for others. The when you look at the items that are capitalized in that list, you know you see retail theft, you see the how, the title casing and there those are not ideas that that came out of my head when I wrote that note. Those are ideas that came out of pb's budget request, specifically around the the June budget. I literally copied and pasted that over so that we made sure that those needs were being met and then the non capitalized ones, sexual and domestic violence and property crimes were something that was said verbally during the budget process that was typed in there too. So just trying to make sure that those were prioritized. Nathan, I'm not seeing anyone else in the queue, so I'm just going to jump in with a question. Can you speak to do you have this graph or anything like it for the preceding year? I'm not sure what how to judge. Relatively speaking, the implementation of it from prior to the budget note taking effect on July 1st to after.

Yeah, I mean, this would be the closest I've got where I compared just the demonstration and the community engagement. I didn't pull last year's numbers for those priority projects. It's good to know the priority projects are from the police bureau components, I guess. One question for future reporting. Would it be useful to pull all priority projects, or would you prefer just to keep the subset there? Additional. When we look back at this programmatic line and we had some things that are divided out things like warrant service or rv towing. Those are other priority projects that didn't fall within the categories listed, but in some ways are akin in terms of programmatic response that the bureau plans for.

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. That will probably end up discussing a little bit more through the budget process this year. Could you go back to that? The that? No, the middle one there. Thank you. The so adding this up this is 140,261 hours of overtime at pb in the first six months of the year. Are there other categories beyond this, or is this literally everything that exists?

Yep, this is everything that exists.

Thanks. And then if you go, it's a little hard because this one is July to December. And and I'm looking at the I'm going to use a slide numbers. Just to be clear here, that particular bar graph is slide eight and doesn't have a the categorized breakdown. But if you look at the July to December, the next two slides, slide nine and slide ten, you see that over that time frame between the. Just sort of by necessity, the third quarter of the year, July through September and the fourth quarter of the year, you would see a jump in the blue, which is the part that's supposed to be deprioritized and a reduction in the pink, which is the part that's supposed to be higher prioritized. And I'm just curious as to how that came to be, if you have any information on that. I know it wasn't. You're not making that decision directly.

Yeah, I will say I don't make that decision directly. If there are representatives from the police bureau who'd like to talk about operations, generally, the bureau deploys staff resources as needed to meet operational demands. My understanding is there have been changes in the operational needs, especially around the ice facility, which impacted the number of hours that the bureau was putting towards demonstration response. We saw a big spike at the beginning and saw we didn't do it by pay period here, but it slowly decreased up until the end of December. And I know we're not reporting on January yet, but then it increased slightly in January after the killings in minneapolis and then has been decreasing since then. So a bit more of a story there.

Thanks for being here, chief.

Thanks for having me. Hi, folks. For the record, my name is brian hughes. I'm the assistant chief for the operations branch of the Portland police bureau. And if I could just maybe augment a little bit about what nathan just said about the overtime. I did see those two time frames that you have up there. And if you recall from that first slide, I don't know if it was a slide 8 or 9. Yeah, that one right there. July to December. That's going to encompass some of the overtime that was spent with the initial unrest that happened down at the ice facility. There were some very busy, busy weeks down there. And the bureau paid a lot of overtime to to to respond to that and ensure that the neighborhood did not get further out of hand than it already did. And I'll acknowledge that things did get out of hand down there and the police bureau that their presence down there was necessity to to calm things down where we could as, as you know, you know, the ice and the federal police down there do what they do. But I'm incredibly proud of the work that the men and women of the Portland police bureau did down there to keep the neighborhood calm and keep tensions down in that area. And then the next slide, October to December, but that's going to also encompass is christy gnome's visit to the facility down there. That drew a lot of interest, and we weren't quite sure what that was going to look like. We weren't informed about all the things that were going on with that visit. So we had to prepare and the city had to be ready, and that comes with a cost. So that's where I think a lot of those costs are going to come from. As we went on throughout the month of or throughout the end of 2025, we were able to take some of those costs away from the overtime bucket and adjust personnel so that we were being as fiscally responsible as possible and manage it with on duty resources as best we could. And that's the posture we had gotten into at the end of 2025. Some things happened at the beginning of 2026 that resulted in some more heightened focus on the ice facility down there, which also is in line with some increases in overtime back in January. But since that time, we have been able to reduce our overtime footprint with regard to demonstrations and the part one category there, in line with service area guidance on limiting discretionary overtime.

Thanks, chief. You might have another question, but I'm going to pass it over to councilor Novick at this time.

Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. Chair. Do we have any idea what percentage of the demonstration shrunk this past eight months or whatever is is attributable to the activity, the ice facility, even like a ballpark guess.

Ballpark guess, probably 90%.

90%.

Yeah.

And do I recall correctly that our court case, keeping the national guard out in part, relied on the testimony of officers in the who've been around the ice facility outlining what they said was happening there, as opposed to what the feds were saying was was happening there.

Councilor was the result of testimony from three people. I was one of them, and I was the commander of central precinct at the time. Was also then commander, excuse me, assistant chief greg dobson and commander for all three of us, had extensive knowledge and experience around the ice facility. Yes.

So, I mean, if the police hadn't had a presence at the ice facility, you wouldn't have been able to give that testimony. I assume.

It's my opinion that the city would have faced significant exposure to the potential deployment for the national guard had we not been able to testify, and have we not been able to respond like we did?

And your testimony was based on what you were seeing yourself and hearing from the officers on the scene?

Yes. It was.

Thank you.

Thank you, counselor Novick, I wanted to ask about the the increase or I guess, the decrease here we had last, I guess, two weeks ago, we had a meeting of this committee where we had the human trafficking unit come in and present. And this is really about the sort of opportunity cost that's the basis for the budget in the first place. They noted that they only work on straight time and are not authorized for overtime in that meeting. And this is the public meeting that was on January 27th, but that they used to have overtime a couple of years back. And so I'm noting that human trafficking is on this list in the pink. Again, I'm looking at slide, I want to say 11 and ten, sorry, as well as nine. But that that amount went down. So I'm trying to understand why, given that the budget note specifically asks for PPB to prioritize, the use of overtime on human trafficking is, if you can speak to it as to why that didn't happen.

So councilor, it's my understanding that we've restricted all discretionary overtime in line, in alignment with the public service area guidance to, you know, for budget related reasons. Currently, I don't know if at the beginning of the fiscal year, if we were running human trafficking missions, I think we were and I think we were able to run other missions. I know certainly I ran missions down at central precinct back in 2025, you know, the beginning of 2025 with regards to rose festival activities and things like that. So as we've gotten further into the fiscal year under budget constraints, we've limited the amount of missions we've had. And I can't speak specifically as to whether or not there were human trafficking missions. I believe there were early on in the fiscal year.

Okay, I guess maybe put another way. And, nathan, if you could speak to how this would show up in the data, my understanding of what it would look like to prioritize in general, but also in the context of the overall reduction that that you just said chief of, is that the slides that we're looking at, nine and ten, which have the percentage, even if the overall pool was decreasing, we would see the percentage of the pink piece increasing and the blue piece decreasing if the budget note was being followed, is that an accurate statement? We would see de-prioritization meaning reduction in the share of the blue, and we would see prioritization, meaning increase in the share of the pink. I'm going to slides nine and ten because it's a little hard with the actual raw numbers, because the amount is being reduced as, as chief hughes just said. But in terms of as a percentage, that's what prioritization would look like. Is that is that correct?

I think I mean, going back to the earlier slides, because, you know, a majority of the overtime that the bureau uses isn't related to either of these two categories that are called out by the budget. Note most of the overtime that the bureau is using is towards personnel backfill. It is towards training, and it's towards other types of programmatic response that's generally warrant service, court time homicide investigations, things that are fairly required to be done. So there is a big opportunity cost and there is a portion of that that is likely that demonstration overtime is edging out time that could be used for other discretionary overtime. But, you know, there are limited hours. The bureau currently is in a place where it is both has a shortfall in dollars and in people. It doesn't have the resources it needs to do what it wants to be doing in either category. So as much as those are lower than one might hope, I think it is probably because it's being edged out not exclusively by demonstration overtime, but by some of these other required types of overtime that are going there. Agreed, though, with the general sentiment, if one were to prioritize one exclusively over the other, you would see more of that pink and less of that blue. My understanding, and as assistant chief has talked about, the bureau has largely responded to demonstration overtime when it felt like there is an emergent threat and there is a need to be showing up, it is decreased significantly. I think last I checked was about a fifth of the overtime one pay period versus the one prior because they'd scaled back significantly, noticing that there wasn't an operational need there. So, I mean, I think in terms of where those hours are getting decided, my understanding is that the administration decides on a daily basis where the need is and puts those hours towards them there.

Thanks. And I would love more information on three things. And I'm going to pass it over to councilor. Morillo. But because you mentioned resources, we were asked for a $21 million increase as council that was given to PPB last year. You mentioned staffing. I'm very happy to see that that number has exceeded 800 as as you know nathan, for many years now I've been talking about the need of filling those. We still have 60 something vacancies, which I know councilor Smith is talking about, but I'd also love to know a little bit more about the secretary nome visit and how that influenced it, because I could see with a small sample size, that sort of being a blip in the data that would really look bigger than it was in a single quarter. I'd love to get that information from from you both. Councilor Morillo has her hand up.

Angelita Morillo: Yeah. Did you want them to answer your question first?

I was asking for for it in the future. Not necessarily right here, so please feel free to go ahead.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation. This is helpful I was curious, this is a bit more specific on how overtime is used. So for the protest responses. Obviously I think there's been a lot of discussion around macadam and federal responses, and I fully comprehend that our police cannot directly engage, or that it would be very difficult for police to directly engage with federal agents if they're breaking the law because of the supremacy clause and all of those factors. I am curious if there has been any direction for when our officers are at macadam or they're addressing the protests. Is there anything being done for our officers to monitor record information about when, you know, uses of munitions, if that's being excessively used, especially with the detention facility impact fee that just passed and is soon to be implemented, is our our officers sort of helping with any of that investigation or data gathering for the sake of supporting our residents with the powers that we do have.

Councilor direct to your question, the answer is no. We aren't going down and documenting every single time they do that. There are some state laws that prevent us from being down there and engaging in police action. When the federal agents were down there deploying gas, and we had to be very careful not to be there when they did that, so that we weren't that wasn't a third party using gas on our behalf. And so there was hesitancy to be down there at the time that they were using the gas. And so we went down at times to de-conflict things. I've talked to some of the peacekeepers down there that really appreciated the Portland police bike squads coming down and doing that work. But no, the incident management team, though part of that overtime also pays for an incident management team that we stand up during major protest incidents and the the incident management teams prepare after action report, not after action reports, but summaries of the evening's events and they try and capture where they can when gas was deployed. And I know that our partners over at the Portland bureau of emergency management also keep track of when gas munitions are deployed. Also for, I think, in regards to some of the environmental concerns and having staffers go down and and sweep the streets after particularly busy night with munitions, but they are keeping I think they are keeping track of that.

Thank you. And I think, yeah, I have also heard positive things about some of the police that were down there. We also had footage of some of the police, frankly, having arguments with protesters about whether or not renee goode should have been murdered. So it's a little bit more complicated as far as how that response is being handled on the ground. What I'm saying is that if our officers are down there and we are spending overtime on this, what I would like to see is for our officers to also be doing things to help portlanders, because if people only see our police in opposition to the protesters and not doing anything to help with the federal government's overreach when it comes to excessive use of munitions, if federal agents end up abusing people beyond what is legally appropriate, that sort of thing, then we are going to have a very difficult time with people trusting our government and our law enforcement locally. So. What? There are things that I would like to see our police doing if we're going to be spending on money, money on overtime and then being down there. I think being helpful in tracking munitions, being helpful in documenting incidents so that we don't just have to rely on citizen journalists is important, and that needs to all be happening in collaboration with the district attorney and making sure that we are all working collectively to hand over evidence so that those cases can be prosecuted if necessary. I guess that's what I would like to see, because right now, it seems like we're spending a lot of money on overtime for our police to only address Portland residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo. We'll go next to councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Yes.

Could you explain to me? Because there there are certain things that we can do and we can't do as it relates to. Let's just use the ice facility. Where we're not there to police ice. That's not our job. That's I don't think that that is our job. Our job is to keep our residents safe. But in in doing so, there are certain things that we can do and we can't do on behalf of the residents of Portland. And so if you could just and I don't know if, chief, if you can explain the things to us because I hear what councilor Morillo is saying, that is a a different world in which we live in, in terms of our police. But can you just identify or the dca identify what are the uses of the police? What are our what can we do and can't we do? Because tracking munitions and all of that, I don't think that that is in our scope of work. So could you please identify what that is.

So councilor. Yes. So the, the, the safety of of our Portland residents is paramount to us. That's part of our mission is to ensure the safety of the citizens of, of the city of Portland. And when we are there, we are there in a de-escalation fashion and do everything we can to de-escalate. And I take councilor Morillo comments to heart. I also saw the video and we have done things to address that. So I do hear what the councilor Saying there. But as far as policing the the federal officers that are down there, that is not our role. And there are avenues to do that. Our role is to be de-escalation and to address crimes that occur out on the streets of, of the city. And so that would be our role down there. In fact, during crowd control there, if you look at our body worn camera camera directive during crowd management incidents, the majority of those cameras are not on. And it isn't until that there's a belief that there's a criminal act that those cameras are on. So that would have a chilling effect on free speech, I think to have the cameras recording everything that's going on down there all the time. So the policy prevents that from being on to record those things.

I know councilor Morillo said she'd like to. Sorry. Councilor Morillo said she'd like to just clarify something and I'll pass it back to you, councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Yeah, I just want to clarify, because again, I understand that our police officers, it would put them in direct harm and danger, and we don't want that. If they were to directly intervene with a federal law enforcement agent, and the laws of our land have to apply to all people who are breaking the laws and to all people who are causing harm to portlanders. And so what I am saying is, there are things that we can do that aren't directly intervening or putting hands on a federal agent, and that includes helping us gather evidence for how these agents are operating in the city of Portland and giving that over to the dea or to the attorney general. I am asking us to expand our political imaginations of what's possible and what our duties are in this moment, because we are facing extraordinary times, and that requires extraordinary responses. So I want to be very clear. I understand directly putting hands on a federal agent that would put an officer in harm's way. I'm failing to see how gathering data to help us in these cases is something that would directly put a police officer in harm's way. I think that should fall under public safety of portlanders when these agents are attacking our civilians. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Morillo gathering data. That's not our job. Keeping us safe. That's our job. If folks want add meds down there, I think dca cully you can figure out how to put administrative folks down there to collect data. If that's the mission and the scope of the work. But I would not send a police officer to training for 18 months and then tell them to become an admin to what a federal agency is doing. That's not what my expectation as a council, my expectation of a counselor is. So that is great and that is wonderful. But I have a question about the overtime. Are you actually shifting the overtime into the priority areas? Council directed like the retail theft, stolen vehicles, gun violence, street racing, human trafficking. Or did you make specific changes in the deployment to ensure that that happens? I wasn't quite clear as I was looking at this.

Councilor, mr. Leamy highlighted that we have a limited amount of police officers and a limited amount of, of, of time in the day. And so with the limited amount of police officers, at times, we have had to take the police officers and put them towards response demonstration overtime. But we have run missions throughout this fiscal year, I believe, touching every single one of these categories that are on here. So I want to highlight that we are we have done these missions. It's just as we get further into our fiscal year and the budget, and you all are familiar with some of the budget shortfalls that we're foreseeing. We have to be very fiscally responsible with our money. And so that's where the restrictions on discretionary overtime have come in most recently. So we're not running as many of these, if any, that aren't grant funded going forward.

That's that's understandable because those are those are real issues. The other piece is will you all be auditing this quarter in terms of the overtime? Are you going to be collecting the data this quarter as well?

Yes. The budget note is to come back on a quarterly basis okay. So okay.

Perfect. And then the last question about the welfare check pilot, what are some of the changes in real operations, especially the scenario you flagged like the vehicle traffic and private buildings? What's the plan to reduce risk while improving response time?

Councilor I think we're going to have another presentation on on that.

That's I want to make sure I got that in there.

Okay.

Thank you.

Dca thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thank you chair. Going more. Not in any of the specific missions. I'm just curious in terms of overtime decision making at what what level in the organization, what rank, if you will, or position makes the call, so to speak, that, hey, if we're going to accomplish this, we're going to have to do it with overtime. I've got, you know, x number of officers who, if they're on this mission, will be overtime. What rank does that happen at. Where's the decision making authority?

Councilor I'd say that resides primarily at the level of the chief's office to approve missions.

That's a lot higher than I thought you were going to say.

Well, let me let me let me back that off. I would say, now, where we're at now with our budget guidance from the service area and, and the city administration, then now it would be more, I think, at the level of the chief's office, because I'm thinking back to my time as a commander and I ran missions. We were provided with with the the psa keeps very detailed notes on on overtime spending so that we always knew where we were at with overtime targets and very careful on the amount of money that we spent going forward. So I think I think previously, I think commander would be probably the level and then and then nowadays would be would be assistant chief or above.

Okay. And that also goes for. I'm getting kind of goes to my next question, which is I think that the mayor directed a change in the maximum amount this year in terms of how much an individual officer could work a given week or a given month. If it was, he noticed some members of the force with just very high levels of overtime. And I think he cited that he was concerned just from a worker safety standpoint of like, if you're really doing 40 hour shift a week plus another 80 hours in in overtime, is that a reasonable expectation? That might not be the right number. But the point being made there, I didn't take that so much as his injecting into mission based overtime, but that seemed to me to be more about who picks up the shift when someone has to be up, spot has to be filled because someone's sick or is on leave. If central precinct you coming from previously as the commander of that on a Tuesday at 10:00 at night. How many officers have to be on? And what's your decision making for pulling somebody from who's already worked a shift or is going to put them into overtime? Can you talk a little bit about what that process is on the on the patrol and the basic manning of posts versus specialized missions? So we're going to we're going to conduct a thing.

Yeah. So usually when we're going to conduct a thing the it's known ahead of time. And so we can budget and plan and hire accordingly. The the other bucket I think you're talking about is when, for example, on a Tuesday night at 10:00, the night shift minimum would be 12 officers for central precinct. And if somebody were to be sick that night and maybe we're down to 11, the sergeant could hire somebody to fill that shift and and pay for that on overtime for another officer to work. That person could be on their day off and come in. We have some bargaining, collective bargaining rules that apply to how we do that. Okay. And so seniority based, but on a short notice like that, they would be able to to offer it to anybody. And it wouldn't be uncommon for maybe somebody on the previous shift to stay late or the next shift to come in early. As far as managing the amount that officers work, we do pay close attention to that. It's just a from a management perspective, it's an overall care for your employees and working with them to it's it's just it's a management thing. It's an overall care for your employees and keeping an eye on things and making sure that they're not working, you know, 40 hours straight. Like, I don't know if that ever happening. I would put a stop to that if it did. But these are these are demanding jobs and they require a lot of focus. I've in my career worked many double shifts and it's tiring. And to go three would be a bit much. So we are monitoring that in accordance with the mayor's guidance.

Okay, great. And I'm just curious now from your you've been at the at the precinct commander level now as a, as assistant chief of operations, I feel like you've got a good handle in terms of that. The the mayor being concerned about some members maybe having too much overtime. What's your what's your assessment of the impact of this focus in this last fiscal year in terms of. Well, I'll leave it there. I don't want to say good or bad. I'm just what is your assessment of the impact on on operations or on the precinct given this last year and this this focus?

Well, I'm very happy to that. We are maintaining our authorized strength. As councilor Kanal pointed out, we are over 800. That's great. When you see the numbers start to increase in hiring and less in the retirement and resignations. We had a net gain last year. I think it was somewhere around 20 ish. Those are great years for us when we're in a net positive and that addition of additional bodies, as counselor Smith mentioned, it does take 18 months. She's accurate when it comes to having an officer fully trained and ready to go on their own. But even before they're ready to go on their own, when we consider them phase five, they're out on the streets and they count on that minimum. So that 12 number of officers on night shift, if one of them is in training and they're in the last part of their training, they count as one of those 12. So we're seeing a little bit of an alleviation in that pressure by having those new trainees come off. And we're we're glad to have them and eager to hire the next group to continue that path forward.

Okay, I appreciate it. I come from the camp of, you know, the less vacancies, the less reliance on on overtime. I'm very strong in that. I don't really confuse the two. It's it's simple math for me. And the last time I said the math is math, and my math teacher from high school was watching that day and really liked that quote. So I like it when the math is math on that. And I say that just because there are those two pots that you're describing, missions or event based and covering shifts, covering shifts are the people who are taking our 911 calls. And I recognize that sometimes overtime gets conflated in our conversation, and there could be competing topics about that. But but I, I know that we have officers every day who are deciding to stay on for the good of the city. For an extra, I'm just going to say for ten, 12 hours. And that is hard work. And that is that. Certainly. You know, is not always optimal. If that's the standard operating right, that should be the exception. And so I appreciate your efforts there. I also think that the hiring net positive is a good direction. Being over 800 makes me happy. As a person who's been around the city for a little while now. So thank you for that. No other concerns here. Thank you chair.

Thank you, counselor Zimmerman. Councilor Novick and I are last in the queue. It's our second time, so I'll try to keep it brief. I'll ask you to as well.

Yeah. I have one statement, one sort of a question that you might have the answer to today, and one question that I hope you have the answer to today. The statement is in response to what councilor Morillo said. I'm not actually sure that there should be no circumstance in which police officers do not lay hands on federal agents. And this is the conversation I've had with chief day that I'd like to have, that I think he and I are going to have in public at some point, which is are there circumstances like when a federal agent is slowly beating a Portland resident to death, that the police actually do move in? I mean, it might be an unusual circumstance. I mean, if they're shooting somebody, you can't put yourself, you know, in between the officer and the bullet. And if they just knock somebody down and then run on, then that's already happened. But I can't imagine circumstances where physical intervention might make sense. Other thing is, I think it would be useful if you could say, here's how the bureau is operationalized. Chair canales budget note like since because we were told to prioritize one thing over another. Here's like an example example. And, you know, July 28th where there was a demonstration going on and there was a street race going on. And in the past we might have gone to the demonstration, but not the street race, but because we have this budget note, we now went to the street race. Just some indication of how that was operationalized. The specific question I had was, I think, chief, I think you said that under state law, the police shouldn't be there when the feds are using tear gas. And I was just wondering, what is that state law and how can you even operationalize that? Because unless the feds announce to the police in advance we're about to use tear gas, I don't know how the police can arrange to be away, so maybe I misheard, but I was just confused.

Yeah, I don't have the state law right here in front of me. Councilor. I'll research that and get it for you. But I'm told by my crowd management incident commanders that they they do try to be very careful when it comes to that so that we're not accomplishing maybe a city police mission while the federal government is doing what they do with regards to tear gas, because we have some pretty clear limitations here in the state of Oregon about our our policing when it comes to with gas and don't want to don't want those two to overlap with our mission. So I'll get that to you.

Okay. But it's not a matter of the police can arrange to be away when the when the feds deploy tear gas. It's a matter of what you can do while they're in the process of deploying tear gas. Is that right?

That's my understanding.

Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Novick. I have two questions, and I think they might be similar to each other. First, it seems like you're making the argument, chief, and I'm referring to your response to councilor Smith's question that you have these emergent events that you have to respond to in terms of the demonstrations category. And this is sort of prevented us from being able to fully implement the budget. Note in terms of the prioritization, relatively speaking. But I'm confused by that response, because the items that the budget note says to prioritize, again, relatively speaking, also have emergent components. And I understand that some may be known in advance, in advance. You obviously have some knowledge of some of the street racing events, for example, that's coming up, but investigations is on this list, and there may be a need for high priority investigations of event because an incident occurs. I'm thinking of the shooting on Clackamas, of which two police officers were wounded in. And so that might be an emergent event where overtime might be necessary. So I'm trying to understand because if those were treated the same, we would we would see the relative proportions remain constant, but we're actually seeing it move in the direction of a higher percentage being spent. So I'm trying to understand why that's not the case, why the emergent threat argument applies in the context of a demonstration, but not in the context of some of the priorities, the events, that or types of responses that are supposed to be prioritized in the note.

Councilor I think the best answer is just the life safety threat and the direction that chief day gives when it comes to spending that money. And it's a limited amount of money, it's not unlimited. And so when it comes to 30,000 people, Portland residents coming down for a March, it makes it makes me incredibly nervous as the precinct commander, knowing that many people are marching in, that cars are also involved. We don't always know the route of the March ahead of time, and so to pay traffic officers on overtime to come in and ensure streets are blocked, that's where we get into that kind of emergent sort of a situation and spending the money when it comes to that. As we continue to do that throughout the year, that constricts our overtime even further as we go. We have, you know, the events from June, July where things were real bad down at the ice facility, then the kristi noem visit, things like that. It was interesting to see the slide that showed the two protests and demonstration overtime, but it's similar for this year versus last year. And you remember last year we had an election cycle, and that encompassed a lot of police overtime related to protests. And I think we had 3 or 4 days where all of Portland police bureau members were working around the clock. So it was interesting to see those buckets are the same. I look forward to a year when those buckets are empty and we're starting to get there. I'll highlight the the protest demonstrations where 30,000 people come down in the past. The people that cork familiar with coworkers, that would be it was an awkward thing to have that come into play and for the police to be involved in that where like we usually do that. But we have found over time that by building relationships and being transparent and gaining trust with with the caucus and then with the police officers as well, that they're able to go down and do that effectively. So we're we're not having to go in as much and do that work. So that's I think when mr. Leamy was talking about our overtime budget with regard to demonstrations coming down, we're seeing more of that here in the latter half of the fiscal year, where we're spending less and less on overtime. I would rather spend on on all your budget notes, I do. But for me, to you as a precinct commander, having that many people and the safety and everything that went on and the threat of a national guard coming in to be able to to have our Portland police officers go down and perform admirably and keep the temperature of that down, in my opinion, has prevented this from becoming far worse than it could be.

Thank you. And I'll ask a clarification, because I think you mentioned guidance from the psa, the dca or the chief, as well as the mayor and administrator. But I also know council's the budget authority. So how are you prioritizing the council direction relative to guidance on the administrative side? Because it sounds a little bit that last response sounds a little bit like saying we wanted to do this, but we prioritized the guidance or the the higher up the administrative side's guidance instead.

Yeah, I can speak to that. For the record, bob cozzie, dca, public safety. And you know, this is a great conversation. One thing that I want to make really clear, councilor Novick you had, you know, kind of asked how the bureau has operationalized this budget note and you can see, you know, spending early on with protests was really, really high. And chief de and I had a conversation about this budget note about the the overtime spending bureau wide and how we might be able to rein this in a little bit. And in that conversation, chief de has been very upfront saying, you know, early on the the response was was very large and he was trying to be as creative as possible to bring that down to a manageable level, which he has done. You can see in the in the slide there that it councilor Kanal. I think I used kind of a funnel analogy with you in a meeting where early on the overtime was was this big, and through the chief's efforts, he was able to bring it down over the course of time to where it really is relatively a trickle compared to what it was. It doesn't stop, though, and that's what's challenging about this budget note in particular, because pbb wants to accomplish all of those other good tasks, yet recognizes right now there is a moment where it's important for dialog officers to still be present when there are crowds forming, and try to be as peaceful of a presence as possible. So, you know the direction that I gave to the entire service area as we started seeing the budget constraints that the city is facing, is really be mindful about discretionary overtime. So in that the the chiefs and directors across the service area are looking at overtime across the board and really trying to be as judicious as possible to make sure that we're not spending more than we really should be at this point.

I guess I'd say from, you know, setting those limits, you know, our team sends out every pay period. We send emails out to the chief's office letting them know what their targets were and how they performed against those targets. One of the things that's influencing those targets is the overall budget. State budget law says that we're not allowed to go over budget for the bureau. We are currently forecast to do so. We recognize we still have two opportunities to amend the budget with the spring tao as well as the over expenditure ordinance. But we have concern that there may not be adequate resources and comp set aside. And unless there were resources there, the bureau would be over budget. So I think as a budget person who likes following the rules, we are trying to encourage the bureau to spend downwards so that we have more flexibility going forward.

Loretta Smith: Thanks. And I appreciate the work that that you've all done. I'm going to oh, sorry, councilor Smith. And then I'll close it out.

Yeah. So are you suggesting that the money that we took out of comp set aside in the tao, that that was money that you all had planned to use?

The bureau has historically requested its full comp set aside amount in the spring. Tao.

So what? What is your comp set aside amount.

This year? It was around $4.5 million. We're currently forecast to be about $3.5 million over budget. Unless there's comp set aside resources available, there is still five months left in the year to make adjustments. So we have as the year goes on, we have less runway to make adjustments. Yeah, but we've gotten assurances from other parts of the administration that there are plans in the works to be able to find resources so that they're.

Yeah, I do understand because I wanted at least ten more million dollars put back in comp set aside, and I had a Smith one that would have done that. And very much aware that we want to, as counselors, be able to get our money that's in comp set aside. It's not as large as yours, but I may know where you can get 2.5 million that we gave to the Portland housing bureau that they requested. Now that we found out they have 106 million, they don't need that anymore.

Little off topic here.

So no, he's talking about his his issue. You asked him about it, so he he responded and I responded to him. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Councilor Smith. And I share that I also during the the tao talked about the need to keep that that balance aye, Morillo in that particular comp set aside. I just I'll just close by saying my personal expectations, speaking only for myself here is that the next quarter we come here, that there is, that the pink area is increasing in the relative, the proportion of the total, whatever the total may be, and the blue is decreased. I'd also love to see in the slides all four of the fiscal last fiscal year's quarters, and that will be the third. So it would be seven total. We got this at 152 today. So we hadn't had a chance to see the new version as as closely. So I appreciate you walking it all through with us, all three of you actually. And finally, I just want to say I this isn't an all or nothing thing here, and I, I never wanted for it to be don't respond to demonstrations at all. I'm personally very grateful that that you mentioned chief hughes yourself, but also commander dobson and channing were able to be there and to observe enough to be able to testify in that particular court case. I'm personally grateful for that. And I also know that that didn't necessarily need 800,000 hours of dollars of overtime spent at the mcadam facility in the month of June alone. So we were talking about the prioritization and the scale of it, and that's what the budget knows about. Thank you so much for being here. I think you might have some of you may be back for the next note. I'll pass it over. Diana, could you please read the next item?

Item number two, quarterly update on public safety support specialists, call allocations and call response times.

Thank you. So this one was a budget note authored by co-chair Novick to direct re-assignment of welfare checks from police officers to unarmed responders. Today, we'll hear the quarterly update on this budget note as well. The names I have may not be everyone up here because I only have three. So if you could please introduce yourself. But nick mcdonald, psa performance and strategy analyst christian peterson, pbb data research manager and sherry cost, deputy director at boec. I also see nathan's back here. So if you could all just introduce yourself as we go down the line. Thanks.

Thank you. My name.

Is nick mcdonald, performance analyst with the psa. We're here to talk about Novick two. As you said, the title of this slide is a little different to the one that we've been working off. This is about councilor Novick budget. Note to look at reassigning the approximately 12,000 welfare checks that currently go to PPB to unarmed responders. If we could have the next slide, please. The next one. So we are going to report this quarter on a study that boec and PPB conducted of a period between September and October, and the welfare check calls that took place within that period. Christian is going to present on the preliminary data out of that. And then we're going to talk about the next steps for the study and the anticipation of reporting policy recommendations in April. Thank you.

For the record. My name is christian peterson. I'm the police data research manager for the Portland police bureau. And so first part, thank you, nick, for setting it up. So PPB and boec in conjunction with psa, worked together to develop tracking codes, five specific new codes to be added to all welfare checks. Throughout this process. We then boec provided training to all dispatchers and call takers. This. This coincided with their annual in-service and was and was started in November. The ppv developed at the same time a roll call video and provided this information at all roll calls. This information was to make it so that they were correctly identifying what what they should be be the final call type. If there was any kind of changes, then dispatchers added this. These codes for the next 45 days or 46 days after that, ssd, a part of the PPB in conjunction with boec, reviewed welfare checks calls and made sure that the coding was getting added appropriately throughout this whole process. We then set up weekly meetings with boec and psa to go over and audit the entire process to make sure that we were seeing that. Next slide. Throughout this process, approximately 3000 3112 welfare checks were were taken by the PPB or called into the. Sorry, we're called into boec throughout that there are two predominant types of welfare checks welfare check cold and welfare check. Priority. If you need an explanation of the welfare check, I can go into that, but the main differentiation is whether or not the situation is occurring now, or there is a reasonable belief that the suspect could be in the area, which differentiates the two different types. The breakdown of the low, medium and high or breakdown of priority level low is anything below level five, and high is one, two, or three. You can see that for the most part, 6,062% of the calls are welfare check cold.

Next stop.

So the five call types are code types that we add that boec added to their breakdown into a couple different categories. The first section is 42 alpha, which is aggressive or violent behavior. This represented 605 of the incidents, or approximately 20% of all the welfare checks. Then there was 42 w, which is a weapon specifically identified. That was only 1% of the calls. Then there was 42, which was psr was unavailable or otherwise could have. Otherwise they could have handled those calls. And then I was really, really proud of the work of boec only 71 calls that didn't have a code added at all. So we really were consistent with making sure that we were adding codes when they're appropriate. The two, the two largest groups were the areas where we have identified as the most opportune, and that represented about 70% of all the calls, 42 b, which is that they are occupied in a private building, or 42 t, which is some relationship to trafficking or vehicles.

So what's next? We've worked really hard, as christian said, on getting accurate data and analyzing it into the numbers that he just provided. Now we're going to dive into those 42 tes and those 42 b's, 913 calls that involve some type of welfare check involving a traffic hazard, 1200 calls that involve some type of a welfare check inside a non publicly accessible building. We are already well underway into reading each and every one of those calls and further breaking them down and assessing them. We'll be meeting, not quarterly. We'll be meeting weekly to review the data and engaging potential opposite responders in those discussions. So specifically, again, looking at calls involving vehicles, calls involving traffic calls in private buildings. And we're also going to be talking about how best to address the needs of our 911 high utilizers, which often end up in this welfare check category. We expect to meet the goal of providing our operational recommendations to you, as promised in April, and we'll turn it over to nick for questions.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

I'm waiting for the queue to get going. I'll pass it to councilor Novick first.

Steve Novick: Thank you so much for this. This is fascinating, sherry. I actually was surprised at the numbers because we talked at one point last year, and I somehow came away with the impression that we thought that the majority of the calls were like somebody lying on the ground, and that there were rather few of them that involved people in a residence. So it seems like actually people in, you know, people in a building is a pretty big chunk. And I know that there's a concern with psr. I mean, going into a residence because you don't know if the person is, you know, armed or dangerous. Et cetera. Et cetera. So I think that one of the, you know, question is, does it make sense for psr to just go knock on the door and if somebody responds, then that's okay. But they don't try to get in. I mean, are you thinking along those lines that maybe it is okay for psr to make an initial or, or the ps3 for that matter, to make an initial visit to a building with the understanding that if nobody answers the door, then you call the police.

I don't think we're prepared to answer that question yet. We like you. I was also surprised to see that there were more calls for people inside non publicly accessible spaces than in traffic. We are reading every single one of those calls. I personally have read all 913 of the calls involving traffic, and we're breaking them down. This week I will start reading through all 1200 of the calls and non publicly accessible spaces, and further breaking those down so that we can have those kinds of conversations and really understand. It's great that we have these buckets. Now we need to know what's also inside this bucket so that we can make those recommendations to you. We're just not prepared to do that yet. But we will be in April.

Another big question is does traffic include somebody lying on a sidewalk?

Let me answer that. Lying on a sidewalk? No, that would be a psr call when they're available. If they are lying half on the sidewalk and their legs are in the Lane of traffic, then that would involve that, okay.

But it seems like then there there weren't a large percentage of calls that were somebody just lying on a sidewalk, which I thought would have been a lot. And to the extent there were, those are mostly captured by psr. Is that right?

Yeah. So operational hours expanded and they are now open from 6 a.m. Until midnight. And so those calls would be captured under the psr call type now.

And do you know sort of the breakdown of person in a vehicle versus person in a Lane of travel?

That is part of the assessment that I just did, breaking down those 913 calls. We haven't had a chance to actually analyze that data and review it, but that will be part of the information we provide to you in April. We are looking at that specifically.

And what.

Are the sort of person into vehicle circumstances is sort of like somebody walks by and sees somebody in a vehicle and is worried about them. Then they call in and say, hey, this person is in their car, seems passed out. I mean, what are they? What are the vehicle calls like?

Are they encompass all of that and more? It could be somebody who stopped at a stoplight and didn't go when the light turned red and they're still sitting there. It could be somebody parked in a parking space or on the side of the road that pulled over to take a nap because they're too tired, but somebody just sees somebody unresponsive in the vehicle. It could be somebody that somebody thinks is up to no good, or they hear somebody screaming or they hear a loud noise. It encompasses so many different things.

So again, I mean, there, as with the residence things, you're going to be sort of going through and figuring out, are there circumstances where it makes sense for a ps3 or psr to knock on a window, or other circumstances where you know that's not appropriate, etc.

Yeah, that's our objective. We're really looking to try to drill down those. For example, the traffic calls 913 into much smaller buckets where we really understand what those calls were. So then we can have those really productive conversations about who the appropriate response should be.

Thank you so much. We're looking forward to the update.

Thank you. Councilor Novick I see councilor Morillo is next in the queue.

Angelita Morillo: Hi, thanks so much. This is such a helpful presentation. I completely agree with councilor Novick I just had a quick question. I was wondering what other apps or cps or 911 centers have we engaged to understand how they're dispatching their other responders in a crisis response? Or if we did look into that.

I can speak to this. This varies quite a bit. Nationally. I spent quite a lot of time in the last couple of weeks looking at what other cities do with regard to vehicle welfare checks. Specifically, I was talking this morning with someone from la. A lot of their vehicle welfare checks end up being medical. If someone's unresponsive in a vehicle, that would end up being a medical response, often with a police co-response, it wouldn't typically end up with what is their closest analog to psr. So there's a lot of different approaches. It depends what the particular capacities of the cities are and the particular needs. So I think we are certainly looking at that. We're certainly drawing on experience of other cities. I don't think that there's going to be a drag and drop solution from the the literature around the country that we can copy because our, our circumstances, our capabilities and our needs are different to many of these cities.

Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. I mean, yeah, that makes sense. A lot of that would make sense. There'd be a lot of variants city, city to city. But I was also wondering for these 12,000 welfare check calls that we have, what would what do you think it would take to move these to other responders?

I think I mean, that's primarily the work we're going to dig into over the next few weeks. I mean, I think just very clearly it's going to take expanding capacity of those responses and expanding the capabilities of those responders and the specifics of that I think we need to dig into. But, you know, the 10% calls here where psr is unavailable and clearly to move those over, we would need to make psr available during that time. Currently, those responders are not allowed to go into buildings, so we would need to thrash out what capabilities and policy changes that would need to make us feel confident that those responders are safe doing that. And that's that's really the work that we're going to be digging into.

Okay, I appreciate that. I look forward to maybe before committees are changed or when they are getting that information later on down the line. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm next in the queue. My question this this slide that we're looking at. It talks about psr unavailable but it doesn't show. There's there's other data beyond what's on here about when psr was available and responded. Right.

So could you explain what.

Yes there is time when psr is available. They would not be taking these call types because these are specifically restricted to welfare check call types. Psr has their own call types. So everything that would have been potentially been a welfare check that they were available for would get sent over to them already. So the specific to the psr unavailable is during the hours of operation when they're not available, but would have met all of their criteria for a call that they could take, but instead falls under the welfare check call type.

And so because psr is unavailable, it is not categorized as psr. And it is put into the welfare check call type.

Yeah that's correct psr is called calls are managed under our fire dispatch cad welfare checks are under police dispatch cad. There are two independent systems. And so we can't utilize the same call type.

Right. And I guess the reason that that might be a little bit strange is because I and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's I know it's one of the few. I think it might be the only category that is based on the responder, and not based on the type of incident being responded to. Is that accurate?

That is correct.

Is there a parallel project that we're not going to get into today, but that we should know exists on separating that call type out into the relevant types for psr?

Yeah, I don't have any specifics on it, but that is certainly part of the conversation. We've had preliminary conversations with psr that as they take on more and more calls, we're going to have to delineate that. Looking at how they're going to be dispatched is going to be part of that conversation. All of that.

And I know you specifically deputy director costs, have been involved in a lot of the call allocation conversations, along with many of the other folks up here and in the back for a long time. So I know we don't have time to get into all of it today, but appreciate you talking about that. I wanted to also just float. We've talked about calls that might go to an amr type of situation. We talked about calls that could go to three or psr. We've talked about calls that might remain with police. We haven't talked about chat yet, and I just wanted to also mention that in the context of nick, your comment about some of these being medical in scope, and I know in la you mentioned specifically, but that that's a conversation that I'd like to talk about as well. Obviously limited hours for now, but we'd like to to get there as well. Councilor Novick you're back in the queue.

Yeah. I just realized that I might have been making some improper assumptions in terms of the private building situations. I was under the impression that psr just doesn't go to those at all. But but is that not true? They do. They do go to some of them.

They don't respond in a non publicly accessible spaces okay.

So they're not they're not at this point they're not going to knock on the door and do nothing more than just not going. Correct. What about and I hadn't thought about that in terms of traffic or vehicle that does psr. Is there any rule about whether psr does or does not respond to a welfare check about someone in a vehicle?

There is if somebody is in traffic and there's an active hazard, it's we. Psr does not respond for their own safety. They don't have the lights and sirens, they don't have the vehicles. Many other things that we still have to discuss that would allow them to respond to those calls in a safe manner. So those are police call for service right now. We'll be discussing those and figuring out what our recommendations are for you.

What if somebody is just like in a vehicle, not actively in traffic?

You mean like on the side of the road?

Yeah.

It's still going to be a police call for service right now. Those are the things we're going to be talking about moving forward.

Okay. So my my assumption happens to have been correct. Right now they're not going there okay. Thank you.

And we'll have.

Psr up for the next presentation immediately after this. I have one other question I forgot to ask. The budget note specifically directs bhr to begin bargaining with relevant labor unions, to reassign or to start that process. Can you speak to that side of the budget? Note I know no one hears from bhr, but if anyone has that information is bhr here.

I don't believe so, but I can speak to the fact that we are still evaluating the data. So which different parts would be involved in bringing to the table, whether it's psr chat or any of the other alternative responses? We have not identified all of those obstacles and barriers and how we would move that forward. So we're still evaluating the 42 teas and the 40 residences and all that information.

We're certainly aware that this involves bargained work, but absent specific recommendations to bargain, it seems premature to engage in that at the moment.

Okay. Can I just follow up on that and say where where would one receive where would you receive specific recommendations to bargain from? Are you saying from council or from psa leadership?

So so if we once we make recommendations on which workstream we're recommending gets changed, we would then need to approach the relevant bargaining units both on the unit that would potentially be giving something up and on the unit which would be taking something on and get into with bhr the specifics of that bargaining process. But absent something specific to bargain it, it's difficult to start that now.

Thanks, nick, I appreciate that. All right. No one else in the queue. So I'll just say thank you all for being here for the presentation. Look forward to hearing more as it develops. And thank you for the work you've done so far.

Thank you.

Our third item.

Item number three updates on Portland street response and resolution 37709.

Thank you colleagues. In June, council passed a resolution to support and expand psr as a co-equal branch of the first responder system. That resolution asked for quarterly updates on several items. Today, we'll hear the second quarterly update on psr resolution. We're joined by bri brown, as well as stephanie howard, director of community safety at the psa and psr program manager. Thank you all for being here.

Thank you so much for having us. And good afternoon, everyone. Stephanie howard, for the record, as the councilor Kanal mentioned, I'm the director of community safety and I oversee Portland street response, the office of violence prevention and Portland ceasefire. We're really happy to be with you today. We've provided a written report, our second quarterly report after the passage of your resolution that overviews some of the high level updates that were requested in that resolution and provide some those updates. So with that, I think some of the key updates we wanted to highlight for you today were an update regarding the permanent program manager recruitment, give you update updates on hiring, training and operations, some updates on community engagement and our communications. And then I've got a couple of other miscellaneous updates as well related to the psr evaluation, medicaid funding, and the psr committee. So with regard to the permanent program manager recruitment, I'm very, very pleased. We've we have we have how do I say this? The recruitment was open and closed in January. It closed January 19th, and we had an incredibly strong response to that recruitment. We had over 120 applications initially, and working with bhr, we're we've just finished the review of those for minimum qualifications. And as I outlined in the report, we've got a hiring committee assembled that includes representatives from each of the labor unions that work within Portland street response. We have a representative from the Portland street response committee, a community representative, representative from boec, from project respond, and myself. And so we've got a large hiring committee that will be working to score those applications, schedule first round interviews, second round interviews. And then our vision for this process would be similar to what we did for the office of violence prevention program manager recruitment. We went through that process and then held a community meeting. We had a town hall in the case of the office of violence prevention, where the top 2 or 3 candidates presented their vision on a question that the hiring committee will determine. And then we solicited community feedback from the attendees, and it helped to inform the decision making and and sort of assess the candidates performance. And lastly, those those top finalists will meet with the dca, the city administrator and mayor to walk through those presentations as well. And so my goal is to have this settled in March. And that's perhaps ambitious with as large a hiring committee as we have in terms of availability and as large the hiring pool as we have. But I recognize the priority on this and want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to move that forward. All right.

Hi, April. For the record, interim program manager, Portland street response. Our hiring, training and operations, psr began our second quarter with 18 vacancies. We held a academy in October. This included three new staff. We also promoted two staff members during that quarter. We also opened three recruitments and those were for community health worker mental health crisis responder one and our peer support specialists. As a result of those recruitments, we had five candidates that were ready to begin our academy in January. So those aren't represented here on this report. Our five positions filled are, again, those three new staff and our two promotions. We had anticipated trying to fill nine positions from those open recruitments, but we lost some candidates during the hiring process and ended up with five. We had really strong applicant pools and we just didn't have time to revisit those applicant pools before our academy started in January, so we're in the process of doing that with those three recruitments right now. I do want to highlight our. Field trainer program. We did add seven new field trainers. The goal with this is hopefully to be able to increase our capacity to be able to hire more folks and train more folks. We still are very limited when it comes to vehicle space. Next slide. I wanted to talk about our retention here. Separations by calendar year. As you can see 2023 we had 24 separations. We also had a lot of hiring happening that year. But it with that we were losing a lot at the same time. 2024 we lost 18 and in 2024 we weren't hiring. So that's part of what has led us to where we are right now, 2025. As you see, we dropped that significantly to seven. Of those seven, three people did not complete probation. One was reinstated this January came back and one was hired by PPB. So we've I feel like we're on the right track. I do attribute a lot of this to our training, that we have built out, our support that we've given our staff. And I really think that we're seeing the results of all of those efforts. Next slide. I wanted to talk a little bit also about our increased call volume. As you can see on this slide, our 2024 or 2025 saw 24% overall increase in our call volume, ending the year at 15,353. Significant to see that 2024 was 12,425. So that councilor Novick when we talk about 12,000 calls, that was all the calls that psr had in 2024. Shuttling. So these numbers, 234 bus passes, 120 cab rides and 50 shuttles. These numbers are both for initial 911911 call response and our after care teams. As expected for this time of year when it gets colder, our numbers have increased from the previous quarter, but I wanted to just note that our transportation needs can't always be addressed in the moment of the 911 call. And I know there's a lot of, you know, I think we've increased our shuttling capacity and staff are getting used to this option, and we're using it more, but sometimes it's we're connecting with somebody at 3:00 in the afternoon and asking where they're going to be spending the night and providing the best pass so they can get to the shelter when it opens or after care teams are providing a bus pass. So for somebody who may have an appointment the next day to get their id so they can meet whatever their next goal is. So that's why we see a lot of the bus passes that are happening there. Also, with the cab rides I want to talk about, like our vans, and I don't know how many of you have done a psr ride along and saw the shuttling space in the back of the van. It's not always a place people want to go for a ride, so part of our procurement that we've been working on is our new ADA accessible van that will have windows that will be a little more friendly as far as shuttling. So we're hoping that that will be a more comfortable experience for some of our clients. Next slide.

Our communications and engagement in this quarter also has just continued on the path that we were on previously. Again, we've instituted town hall, quarterly town hall meetings, and we had our second meeting on November 18th, which was a hybrid meeting out in east Portland. It was a very interesting meeting. We had some great conversations, and in that meeting we wanted to highlight our after care team so that people could ask questions about what they do and what their role is against the broader services that psr responds. Our next will be March 18th, and we're looking to hold that in north Portland. So we're working to identify that spot, and we'll make sure that we're sharing that information with all of you. And I'm not sure that we've honed in on a topic on that one just yet, but we're open to suggestions. So if there are any, any areas that you or you're hearing from constituents they'd like to learn about, we would welcome those suggestions. And as you can see, our community engagement folks are attending a lot of different meetings to help educate about Portland street response, to help share information about it, promote services that we've got and build relationships, which also just helps with our sort of service and referral flow and being able to connect people with more resources. Next slide and my miscellaneous updates here. So medicaid funding updates. The saga continues. Excuse me, we have a workgroup meeting this week with partners at the county and the city that are we're eager to to try to move the ball forward. As I understand it, the county has a consultant, I think, that they have hired to do some more number crunching that may help materialize a little bit more concrete answers that we could provide, but learn more about that this week. One big update that you'll hear about in the next quarter, but I'll mention it here because it's relevant to the medicaid update. Is that our agreement that we negotiated with Portland state university to create one of one of a kind training that would meet the requirements of the cahoots act. We just finished that training for the whole program last two weeks.

Responders.

Sorry.

Aftercare is coming in may, but yes.

For our responders. So so that is is moving along very well. We're that's chipping away one big obstacle in access to cahoots funding. And so we're working really hard to try to make progress on this every single day. But that's a huge piece I'm really, really proud of the team for. And something that I think is really kind of pushing Portland street response back to the forefront of leading in training development and, you know, being on the vanguard of what that particular funding source was intended to provide for mobile crisis responders. So we're very excited about it. With regard to the evaluation, we April and I met with some of you and your teams earlier in November to talk about the the proposals that we had received up until that point about evaluations to make sure that we were aligned with you on scope, timing, budget, all of those things. And I think we had a really productive meeting and determined that the next step should be done through a competitive process. And so I've developed a scope of work. I'm working with your teams to get feedback and make sure that's reflective. My goal is to get that procurement out in the next month, so that we can get that evaluation underway. And then last but not least, certainly, and April and I will have to skedaddle right next door to this. But we've got a psr committee now. So the committee, as you all know, you appointed them and they had their first meeting last month, which April and I were there. I know councilor Kanal you were there to welcome them as well. They are meeting this afternoon, and so we are eager to support them and help them be successful in serving their their purpose for all of you and making recommendations. So we are very happy to be working with them and doing everything we can to get them information they need. I think with that we will open it up for questions.

Thank you so much and colleagues, feel free to get into the queue. I had a clarification question and then I'll open it up. There's a slide right before shuttling that has the the call volume by year. And I just given what we just heard from the previous presenters, does that include that's that's the calls that were actually taken by psr. Right. Not necessarily the calls that would have been taken if the hours were longer.

Correct.

So we both are seeing an increase and then we should expect to see more given the increase in hours as well. And I think that's where that separation starts to happen towards those last three months. Is that correct?

Yes. Part of that, part of that I think, is also attributed to going inside publicly accessible areas. So that opened up some of our call volume. And just for example, for January this year compared to January last year, we're 11% increase right now. So we're we're still on that trend. But yes, the hours I'm sure are also playing a part in that.

Great. Thanks. We'll go to councilor Novick and then Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thank you, mr. Chair. Stephanie, on the medicaid issue, I just realized that I should be circling back with you and some things like, I don't know if we talked about the fact that at the legislative breakfast, I raised the issue of medicaid for psr and chat, and a couple of the legislators were sort of engaged. And so we need to talk to evan mitchell about do we owe them anything? And also. I'm having dinner with bruce goldberg and a few other people in a couple of weeks. And I think that he's working for the governor now. And since he was the one telling us, hey, there's a oha should just get on the stick and rejigger some of their codes so that we can. Bill, I might gently ask him if he's had an opportunity to make that point to the governor.

That would be wonderful.

Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Zimmerman and then councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you. This is a great update. I really appreciate it. It looks like a lot of the levers that you've had to kind of institute change are, are helping and are happening. So that's awesome. I think that we should expect to see these call volumes continue to increase. There are few county or city meetings, community meetings that I go to where somebody doesn't talk to me about their desire to call psr, right. And they still have some, you know, they're not sure if they can call 911 and connect into psr. And so I'm always trying to correct that. But but the point there is that it is a regular part of our community's dialog now. So just just a lot of nods in the in the right direction. I appreciate everybody's work and I'm so happy to see the staffing levels stabilizing. You know, those numbers are really good. And that tells me at least something about culture too, in any work unit. So I appreciate seeing that. Thanks for sharing it. The one area that gives me pause, and you probably read it on my face because I saw you look at me when you, when you were talking about it, was in the shuttling area. If I think about 12,000 calls in 2024, I think about 15,000 calls in 2025 and 230 some odd folks were given a bus pass, 120 were put in a taxi. We took another 50 via our own shuttles. I don't know that calls represent interactions. I think you probably get some calls that don't actually turn into an interaction on there, so I don't want to use that number as this is how many people you talk to, and this is how many people moved to a different location after that call. But it remains. My area of concern is that a lot of people are calling for psr, whether it be the direct number or the 911 system, for an intervention, because someone is in crisis and it you know, based on those numbers, the grand majority of people remain where they were at even after that call. And I think that that's an area where. It's going to take us some time to figure out what that looks like. There are going to be times when that's super appropriate for the person, that they stay where they're at, and other times where. How we articulate to the public that that was the right thing for them. And other times when this shuttling question comes up, how do we have that intervention? Because my hope is that we see less of these interventions where interactions, where a psr is the first interaction, and then just shortly later it turns into a police call because, quote, nothing was resolved. And I'm trying to figure out ways to talk about those interactions on the ground so that we see it as a fabric. But that remains a big challenge because there's still thousands of those calls that didn't end up in in a taxicab or in a, in a shuttling. I do appreciate your buying new, new vehicles. I think that's super important. I think shuttling should be a major part of of the operation. And I get that. That's going to be a slow roll there. But a lot of calls, I'm not sure how many contacts and then how many of the contacts turn into a meaningful interaction that diffused a situation or made a situation better, or got somebody to a place that's a better situation for them? That's a little hard to tell in that shuttling number.

You're right. And I appreciate you bringing that up, because that was part of what we were trying to identify when we updated our charting. So one thing historically, when we were under the fire bureau, a person a patient treated was only capturing ems, medical treatment, intervention. And part of what we have been working on in this latest update with our charting that happened in October, is now capturing person treated along with our behavioral health interventions. So we should be able to identify what intervention happened at that point of the call and may not necessarily an intervention doesn't mean that we've given them a ride somewhere, but we should be able to identify what that intervention was. So we should be able to have better data to provide to you to show the work that psr is doing. And it wasn't being captured appropriately before.

Okay. I'm looking forward to it. I, like I said, everything. I just appreciate the update. The the the levers you are pulling are working. And I'd say keep doing that. And this is just that one area. I'm looking forward to learning more about it. As I came into office, I said very clearly I thought that shuttling was one of the important hurdles to get over. And even before I was in office, when I was working at the county, that was going to be an important hurdle for ssr's future, because I just see such a connective tissue there. So that's the one area I'm hoping to learn more about, but everything else, you're on the right track. Appreciate the update.

Thank you. If I could just also.

Say councilor and to everyone I'm hearing. Request for more data. April nailed it. Will we can provide more that demonstrates what those outcomes look like. So we can do that in our next quarterly report. And if there are other areas that you'd like more information. Happy to do those in future reports, so please don't hesitate to let us know.

Just as a quick follow up, the as you learn more in the data, right as it comes to shuttling in particular, I'm also interested in the narrative that goes around that the experiential learning right numbers are one thing, but what it means on the ground is actually more important to me as a person trying to figure out like, what's the what's the model that works for the people who are the point of contact, the people who are calling because they have a concern and have a need that needs to be met. And then for our employees. So data is great. And I invite the the bigger conversation for like, what does it look like experience really. What was it feel like to to go through that or are we having better, similar, worse outcomes that would be helpful to know as you get that data too? Thanks, thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman councilor Smith.

Eric Zimmerman: Thank you, co-chair. Thank you for the presentation. How many high acuity calls did you all have in district one? Do we have it broken down?

So Portland street response does not respond to high acuity calls. They only respond to low acuity mental health calls. High acuity would go to they would go to project respond essentially to respond to those.

Okay, okay. That's what I was I was trying to I was looking at my notes here and I was like, okay, let me see which one of these are it? In terms of those you said you had about 28 positions. Was that 25, 28 positions that that you still have to fill?

We started the quarter with 18. We filled five of those in the last quarter. We just filled five more. And we're going to have another recruitment. We're working on more recruitment. So I think we're down to 12. We lost two more. So you know it's kind of a moving target. But I, I think we were down ten from the 18. So that put us at eight. So we're back up to ten.

Yeah okay okay. So the question I have for you is you all are going through the realignment. Correct. The realignment process. So do you all have to give up some of those some of those positions in the realignment?

There's perhaps one community engagement position, I think, that is being considered in that realignment. But otherwise I don't think that there are realignments happening that impact the responders or aftercare.

Okay. So everybody's not doing like a 20%. Yeah, right. I see dca calls you back there shaking his head. Okay. Thank you, thank you.

Thank you, counselor Smith first. I'm next in the queue first. Thank you for the information. This is both comprehensively describing the the situation and it is good news on the whole. So I appreciate both parts of that. I had a couple clarification questions, but given that this came up, I do want to make a pitch to keep that community engagement position intact, especially with the new needs and recent needs of not just the town halls, but also the committee, which I think just started meeting. So couple questions. I was happy to hear about the interactions with the call restructuring project, the welfare check pilot, all of that. I just wanted to make sure that that was part of the the part of the conversation was also reviewing the mission critical partners study from 2023, and just wanted to understand if that was something that you were engaged with, with in this context, with the folks who were up here before. I'm seeing a thumbs up behind you, so I'm going to call that. Good. Thank you very much. I don't know if the camera, but thanks. Thanks, nick. The I you have a huge hiring committee, so I'm not going to ask if about adding any more to it. But you mentioned this town the sort of final candidate pool for ovp just wanted to make sure that that's going to be something that if you are able to do it, that council can can boost and be at.

Absolutely.

We will once we get scheduled, we will make sure that you all are aware and can participate and boost as much as possible.

Great.

And then this. So if the net is about five positions being filled. And by the way that that separations chart is so great. And I just want to express my gratitude to everybody who's worked at psr, but in particular the people who've stuck it out. I know, and I've heard from so many of those folks how hard 2023 in particular was for them. And then obviously 2024, without having new staff come in to backfill that, that's a whole different set of challenges. So thanks to everybody who stuck that out and is still here. Given that it's about a net of five a quarter, does that imply that we're on track to get this first phase of getting a 24 over seven done over the next couple quarters? Is that is that a realistic expectation for filling those vacancies?

I think we're a little behind. I'm hopeful that we can make it up. We've got some good plans, but I I'm hopeful.

But yeah, I know that takes time to get folks trained up to. But the same way that, you know, you mentioned that it's not in this report, but that there's five more coming in. If that's by the end of this fiscal year. I think that sets us up well for the second stage that we've all talked about, that will enable once that group is hired and trained up 24 over seven. So I appreciate hearing that and the honesty there. I am going to pause here and pass it to councilor. Novick. I have a couple more after that.

Thank you, mister chair. So I have an obvious question which I forgot to ask, which I should have asked the previous panel about ps three, which is are psr staff aware of this discussion about welfare checks and are they, you know, do they know that they might potentially be asked to go to private residences or to vehicle incidents, etc. Is that mean? I was just wondering if they are. I mean, obviously nothing formal is being done. No recommendations have been made, but I'd like to know that they just know the conversation is going on and they're thinking about it.

They do. I've discussed it at our all staff meetings. You know, that I'm committed in, you know, talking about what expansion looks like. I think it makes sense to talk about the where and not the what we're responding to right now. I think that's the logical next step. So, you know, with that they they've heard a lot over the years. So they're like well let us know when it's real. But I do want to keep them aware and prepared for when those changes do come.

Yeah. And I would like there to be some way for their opinions to be taken into account too. Like, you know, if the reaction of every psr staff person is, are you crazy? You want me to knock on the door? Knock on the door of a private residence? That's something you should be taken into account. Or if they're like, sure, I can knock on the door, you know, why not? I mean.

Yeah, absolutely.

Very important to us. And I think that's also something that we are very open to. If the psr committee just wanted to be part of those kinds of conversations and making their recommendations, I think that's another opportunity for our teams to engage with them directly. And they can hear from the staff on that and, you know, any other issues. But I think there's a lot of opportunity for discussion around it.

Thank you. Thanks.

So there was a hiring freeze implemented at the beginning of this fiscal year. And my understanding is that psr was not immediately exempted from that. Can you speak to how that. Because I realize my previous question might have implied that there was something going on within psr, even the division that delayed that. And I understand that there was also this external factor of a hiring freeze. Can you speak to how long from July 1st, until you knew that, that you could hire?

It was.

Pretty immediate. I think the the so I don't think there was any delay from administration really. I mean, maybe a matter of days just to confirm our assumption that we were being held harmless in that hiring freeze. But I think what one of the things that and many of you know, the hiring process, that the city takes a long time when we're talking he , that, you know, that the council granted this program. So I think there was a lot of time that was needed for those those processes to get completed before the recruitments could actually start.

Got it.

Yeah. To that note, we were getting our new positions at the end of August and beginning of September, and we had an academy slated for October, and we couldn't make that. The people that did start in October were from a recruitment. We started before the fiscal year. So it that was our big delay.

That that makes sense. And thanks for walking through that. Second to last question here, I'm hearing and I've seen the peer support specialist line hearing a lot about it elsewhere. Can you confirm one of the comments we got was that peer support specialist used to be part of responder teams and are not currently. And I have a sort of related question about how we've valued the work in terms of the pay. And if there's a conversation going on around the classification structure for that role.

Great question. They were initially on the response rates, so they were staffed with three folks. We can't train people and do field training. That's that's one. But that wasn't the reason that they were pulled. What it was is we were trying to restructure to where we're making the use of all of our classifications in all of the areas. So while they're not responding on a response rate and they are also doing case management, we are also staffing what we are calling a our aftercare support unit. Currently the unit numbers psr 87. So that's what we refer to. And that's staffed by peer support and community health workers who are available to respond to any scene because they're not always utilized on every call. So we're trying to make the most with the staff that we have. And so they're available for response units to be able to call and say, we we need you here. They can take over the scene from from response unit, get them back in service. And then if it's a call that's, you know, more resource heavy really needs a lot more emotional support. They're available to spend as much time as they need to do that. So I look at the next iteration as staffing more of those. So we have more of those available and can make the most use of everybody's time. And then between calls, they're able to then do some of their follow ups as well. So we're trying to maximize their usage, not downplay their usage, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So would.

It be accurate to say they're a little bit additional capacity for calls a little bit. Kind of like the chat aftercare rig.

Right. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for clarifying that. And then my last question was around the supplies. Well actually first has there been a classification conversation around support.

Part of the bargaining with protech has been reviewing all of the class specs, and that work is happening through the bargaining process.

I am very, very interested in that conversation. Thanks. Can you speak to the supplies? Is the third question around what is currently being handed out? I think there's some misperceptions that we hear from community about what's allowed to be handed out, what's not, and and also what supplies are useful for for building trust and kind of helping the conversations that you are having go better.

We have quite the variety of supplies. Some of the newest things that we have added are some mobility devices, because our staff have identified that that's a gap. One thing that we really work towards is making sure that we're bridged to supplies and not the resource, but we also know for developing. Rapport as well as meeting basic needs in the moment, if that is the crisis to, you know, help alleviate that crisis. We do have limited food supplies. Cup of noodles, applesauce. In the summer we have electrolytes. We always have water, coffee or hot cocoa that goes a long way on a cold on a cold day. But food supplies are limited. We did just add, especially with when the snap benefits were possibly being affected. Our after care teams were we created food boxes for them to be able to utilize, and that's something they used to get from the sunshine division. We were really trying to be cognizant that sunshine division is going to be overrun with need, and us trying to help alleviate that need, if at all possible. So they now have some smaller canned goods boxes that they're able to give out along with it. A lot of supplies we still get from it's not called the office joint office anymore, but we do. Yeah, we do still get some limited supplies from there. We've upped how many blankets we are actually purchasing. The big win is our relationship with the wash house, which they take clothes that have been unclaimed. They wash them. We're able to go and get clothes, blankets, shoes, different things that they've pulled aside for us that we can then reuse. So we're reusing a lot of clothes that would have been donated elsewhere. So that's been a big win for sustainability for us and being fiscally responsible. So we're trying to meet as many needs as we can.

Yeah. Thank you so much, counselor Smith. Is that a legacy hand? All right. Seeing no one else in the queue. Thanks so much for the presentation. To all three of you. Thanks for being here. I'm going to ask before we get into the fourth item, councilor Novick. I'll give you three options, but feel free to hybridize them. If you'd prefer us to just wrap up. If you'd prefer a full conversation that may be short, or if you'd prefer to just give us a status update on the or anything in between those.

But just kind of a status update which might generate some short discussion. But we definitely getting out before 30.

Great. So then diana, could you please read the fourth item.

Item number four, amend chronic nuisance property code to address human trafficking, gun violence, and administrative challenges.

Thank you, councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. Chairman. Just wanted to refer to some things that I don't think got covered as much as they could have. And when we first heard this item and also give some update on possible possible amendments that are being considered, one issue that was brought to our attention by taryn patel with hotel owners organization is that not just our amendment one of the current law? Theoretically, a property could report a nuisance activity on their property, and that could count towards their being designated nuisance property. And that obviously is a problem. So we're going to propose an amendment saying no, if you're the one reporting the problem, then that doesn't count against you and making you a nuisance property. One thing that we didn't get to last time, and I don't know if we can arrange for it, but I think that there was some testimony saying, well, if you move activity from one place, then it'll just show up in another place and hopefully we can. That's not always true, but even if it is, I just wanted to note that, for example, we've heard from people around mcdaniel high school, including the principal, that kids walking to mcdaniel high school go through like a gantlet of of sex trafficking, and kids are actually approached by pimps to recruit them. And so that's an example of a situation where if through nuisance law or any other, you know, measures we take, we could move some of the activity away from mcdaniel high school, even if we can't end it. I mean, the parents mcdaniel high school would appreciate that. Also, I don't know that we had enough discussion of the relationship between the advocates and groups like safety compass and the and the police human trafficking unit. So I just wanted to actually read an email I got from esther garrett with safety compass about how that works. She said, we go on missions with PPB, and we offer a confidential, community based advocacy and follow up. We refer people we meet to domestic violence, emergency shelter and housing, population specific therapy and self-sufficiency support through programs like empower her network, omega and northwest. And for minors, we can refer them to village for one house or a myriad of detox or inpatient treatment options. So just wanted to I think that there were some people who testified that were concerned that the police, when they interact with sex workers, are arresting them. That is not what they what they do. They might refer customers to like john schools when they can. They go after the traffickers, but they're not arresting the sex workers. And in fact, they have advocates going out with them to refer them to services. So that was just something I wasn't sure that we really addressed last time and just wanted to get it on the table and councilor Kanal some other amendments I know we're going to we're going to talk about, and we didn't want to get into like a full throated discussion of possible amendments, you know, here. But I just want those were just a few things that I thought worth bringing up. If we had a few minutes.

Thank you, counselor, I don't know if anyone else had any brief comments on this item. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you on that. Councilor Novick, as well as all the different groups that are involved in it. As you've noted several times, it's there are a lot of different folks who have a stake in this particular topic in a lot of different ways. So I appreciate that we're going to start wrapping up this meeting here then. Sorry. Go for it, counselor.

I didn't come because I thought you were introducing a no. I do have some things.

Oh, yeah. Sure. Absolutely. Counselor Zimmerman.

Sorry about that chair. I was waiting to hear your amendments. So. Councilor Novick and co-chair Kanal, I appreciate the deliberateness. I said that last time. I'm happy that we're taking this through some some gates, if you will, to to keep checking. So. I thanks for the some of those clarifications. I think in everything I mean I think probably going back for what counselor Smith and I are experienced in the county. I mean, we've been on or around this topic for quite some time now, and I certainly think making sure that hoteliers are are at the table is a really important part of it. Both our big hotel chains and our smaller kind of, you know, along 82nd type of hotel chains, motel chains or individuals, it is super important. So thanks for noting that. And and it goes along. The idea of like self-reporting is not going to initiate the nuisance is helpful to hear the. I was wondering during last time's presentation, I keep wondering if some of the listing of things that could happen is is giving people more pause than what you intended. As I as I kind of think through some of those, but I really took serious some of the testimony, and I'm still trying to think through that. And I and I have not yet. And I'd like to talk to j.r. From the da's office, just in terms of some of the. The the implications by those who are engaged in sex work, who are not in a trafficking situation. We heard some of that testimony. I know some people who fall in that category personally, and that is where I'm trying to really make sure we're not exacerbating, exasperating a problem, or creating a problem in an area that is very delicate and, and, and, and challenging. So I just want to I just want to be appreciative to you for helping us. You're giving us some time to work through that. And I wholeheartedly. If there is a strategy, whether it be at the policy level, the operational level, the police level, the county level, that would help us move a certain activity away from mcdaniel high school. I'm all I'm all on board. I'll I'll run a mission with them, whatever it takes. So if if there are specifics that you're talking about, I hope we can get into those as well. And. And I'll just I'll leave it there. If there are conversations or stakeholders, you think from your chair that you've been in crafting this that you think would be helpful for us to hear from, maybe not in in open session, but just for us to have a kind of a deeper conversation with. I love those suggestions.

Thank you. Counselor Zimmerman, would you like to respond?

Counselor Novick yeah, just trying to figure out how to navigate these discussions with more than one other committee member with the public meetings law. But maybe one thing I could do is sort of suggest to some of the folks that we've been talking about that without telling them what to say, that they should meet with the other members of the committee and sort of go through, I mean, like, have the behavioral health unit talk you through, you know, the issue of, are we going to have a unintended impact on truly voluntary sex workers and things like that?

Yeah, I think we've identified a few folks who it would be probably helpful. And I feel like we can say this part in public, as you pointed out, that there's everybody that was a presenter last week and some of the groups that testified and noted their their affiliation are people worth mentioning. I'll say that councilor Novick and I went to a convening of the asian American hotel owners association. That's a group that's worth talking to. There's a group that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head that represents some of the massage businesses as well. So there's definitely some people there. And just to clarify, I am not floating amendments today because they're not developed yet. That's just in process. Some very not even bullet point level ideas at this point. So yeah.

Can I, can I add one specific area that I as I go through my notes from our last meeting, I cited number 14. And the question I wrote in the moment was how proven or and it was loitering to solicit and. The reason I'm highlighting that one and and being specific because I think in this we're talking so broadly, I think being specific can be helpful, is that when we're talking about nuisance, often nuisances, all the things that come along with an activity. And so loitering is an important part of it. And there really becomes some interesting. Due process questions in my head for being standing near a building that has activity that is being focused on by a police force, but not seemingly doing anything. Does that make you then guilty? Or at least a suspect? And those are types of things that when we get into this, I want to be I want to be careful because I think we just have some weird histories in this area. This this is an an also a, a spot where making sure that the aggregating of nuisance type crimes is one thing, but then casting a larger net for those who are in and around the area is something that I don't know enough about yet, so I'm hoping to learn more about that.

The the purpose of putting that in was that the previous references to sex trafficking, none of them really affected the potential customers who were soliciting sex work. So I think that the the loitering part wasn't as important as the soliciting. And the idea is there is the customer soliciting.

Thank you. Sorry, chair, for jumping back.

In, I appreciate that. I think that was helpful. And I forgot to mention sergeant robert of the human trafficking unit was also at that event. So thank you for for doing that. Seeing no one else in the queue. Our next meeting of the community and public safety committee is Tuesday, February 24th from 230 to 430. The agenda has not been set, but we do anticipate further conversation on this ordinance, as well as a budget overview of Portland fire and rescue. And with that, the this meeting of the community and public safety committee is adjourned. Thank you all for being here.