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← Recent meetings · September 2026

The record · Transcript

Council Session — 2026-09-23

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Wed, Sep 23, 2026 · meeting length 2 hr 17 min · council salary-time ≈ $1,759

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Key points

Where the council disagreed

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0 I'm calling to order this work session of the city council. Following in my tradition of trying to defer to subject areas for the chairs of the appropriate committees, I'm going to be turning the running of this work session over to councilor Kanal.
1 Thank you, council president. Just pulling up my notes here. So I'm going to be kicking this over to councilors Zimmerman and Green in a second. So I might need to pause for that part of it. But thanks, everybody for being here today. We're here because we've recognized that our city's financial situation is in crisis. And it's not solely that we've had 1 or 2 bad years, but that there are structural, long term issues that need to be addressed. This is something that our cfo, jonas biery, has been talking about for a while and working on for a while. I'm thankful to him, as well as to councilors who have been working on a workgroup on this for a while, and to provide recommendations for how to address it and stabilize our city's financial outlook. So what we're going to hear today is the result of many months of work from many people, including cfo biery, councilor Zimmerman, councilor Green, and some community members. And I'm sure he'll have a list of everybody who's here at this point. I'm supposed to hand it over to councilor Zimmerman. I think he's running a minute behind to provide a framing remark or two. So, okay, you're you're we rang the bell and you are here. It's about to pass it over to you, councilor Zimmerman, to slowly finishing the sentence, provide some framing remarks.
2 Hi, how are we all doing? Thanks for letting me walk in. A couple minutes late it was. Are we just doing our opening remarks or councilor Green?
3 You're going first and then then jonas and then.
4 Great. So, you know, this idea really stemmed from my time as the chair of the finance committee in the in the last iteration and looking at the challenges that we had with both last year's budget and getting ready to craft this year's budget, is that we are and oftentimes a reactionary government. And these last several years, since 2020, have I would classify as a reaction, right. 2020 on has been a reaction. And it's time to be more deliberate. And I asked councilor Green his interest and we both thought, it is time to start thinking about how can council work with the administration to see what what a stabilization, out of crisis, out of fire at your feet mindset could look like. And at the same time, our cfo was certainly having those conversations and these kind of we married up at the same time. Councilor Green and I represent very different sides of the ideological spectrum on this council. We both sat on the finance committee, but we're both finance folks, and we felt that we could represent a good, forward facing perspective from from our chairs to give the to give the body's work some credibility with our council and to aid wherever we could for our cfo, for the finance team. And then all of our volunteer members. To try and deliver something that can land in this, in this council, get get thoughtfully discussed and not maybe from one ideological side or another. And I want to just give a lot of appreciation to the cfo, mr. Berry, the entire team that he worked with, because in the recruitment of volunteers and in working with us, the amount of work that's gone into this stabilization project has been it's been a big lift, and the volunteers that sat this group with us, I am just so deeply appreciative to coming from a variety of walks of life, a variety of parts of our town, a variety of organizations from which they either have worked, retired from or currently working and, and the neighborhoods and so their, their effort on Friday afternoons for these last few months have been quite welcome. And I'm, I'm happy that some of them are here and happy to lend my time to anything that jonas and his team needs. So with that, I'd turn it over to my co-chair, councilor Green.
5 Thank you so much, councilor Zimmerman. I remember when I got the call from you, it was like, I think coming out of the christmas recess and you had gotten advance notice from incoming city administrator lee, who first thing you have to do when you walk in the door is like, oh, no, we're in a financial crisis. So I was like, yes, I'll serve. You know, I'll help. I think this is a great idea. And really, you know, jonas, you put in a lot of work personally, but also kind of making sure that this table was set with a range of voices from our community who span the the private sector, the labor, the, you know, our labor, you know, the house of labor, as it were. You've got you had community based organizations. And so really some intentionality there to make sure that this wasn't just a thing that, you know, you and your team cooked up over a weekend or a week. This wasn't just the thing that councilor Zimmerman brought forward or brought forward, but really trying to be what I think is what this new government is supposed to be doing more of, which is sort of reaching into our communities, pulling some good ideas from there, and then sitting as leaders to see how we can shape it and move it forward. And, and I agree, this is the effort here is to lend some credibility to the exercise. And so there's no decision that we have to take right now. What we're going to do is we're going to see some really, I think, thoughtful set of priorities for us to engage on. And I encourage my colleagues to keep an open mind and just know that in those Friday workshops. There was a lot of candid discussion and not not necessarily agreement, but a shared understanding that if we don't tackle these things together in some kind of a way that our our city will suffer irrespective of your priorities. And so I'm really eager to, to hear from our cfo. And I would just ask my colleagues as we work through this, over the process is, is just know that we're all trying to build something together that that provides more resiliency and soundness to our, to our balance sheet, which we owe to portlanders. So thank you.
6 Thanks. And so just before passing it over to cfo biery, I did want to note, because this is a big topic and we've been approaching the budget, as has been pointed out, primarily in a reactive way. And this would be reframing that conversation. We asked for a lot of information from cfo biery. And so this is a long presentation. And that's not his fault. That's that's how we set it up. But I just want to get that on the record first. We're going to do that presentation. We'll probably take a break. And then the ideas at the second half of the conversation is led by this side of the dais. So just wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that first. And with that, our city chief financial officer jonas biery.
7 Great. Good afternoon councilors. Thank you, councilor Kanal, for that. And thank you, councilors Zimmerman and Green for for the tee up, I think you'll hear some reinforcing of some of those same points here today. And yeah, just thank you in advance for listening to what will be an unusually long presentation for me today. Councilor Kanal possibly is partially my fault. I prepared the presentation, but appreciate appreciate that acknowledgment as we begin. I wanted to start by just a couple of introductory comments. I believe that development of a comprehensive financial strategy is among the most critical things that we can do, and something that we have rarely, if ever, had an opportunity to do under the prior limitations of the prior form of government, our financial systems underpin everything we might hope to achieve, and we cannot effectively deliver basic services or meet policy objectives without stable and reliable financial systems and strategies. Also, I can't begin today's conversation without recognizing and appreciating the city's financial professionals who do this work every single day, often under difficult circumstances, difficult circumstances, and unfair criticism to quietly keep the city moving forward as best we can. Thank you to the individuals who enter and verify the accuracy of financial data, who collect incoming revenues, who answer phone calls and assist portlanders with billing questions, who process payments to employees and vendors, and to everyone throughout the entire organization. Who plays a critical role in keeping the city's financial systems up and running. As you'll hear today and you've heard previewed, it's been a massive lift to get this to this moment, but I do think the value of the process will be seen in the outcomes as we get there. When I presented this concept, I think I called it an impossible dream to deliver to you in spring. I was right, but it was really important that we be more patient and let the roots grow and foster some less traditional paths, traditional to the city. Anyway, for input and dialog, two primary outputs that I'm going to share today. The first is a set of broad recommendations that were developed specifically by the financial stabilization work group. And then the second output is a set of potential implementation actions identified by myself, by me as chief financial officer that respond to and flow from the recommendations. And as the next step in the effort. I look forward to sharing with you today how I believe we can continue moving to improve our financial condition and meet a wide range of council, administrative and community objectives via a city wide action plan and financial strategy as the ultimate decision makers and the direct connection to portlanders, it's essential that city council understand and support the city's financial strategy. So, in addition to receiving your feedback and suggestions, I hope that the information shared today will offer you and offer portlanders some increased confidence that we have the collective ability to navigate the city back to a path of fiscal strength. So just to run a show quickly as we move to the next slide, first, I'll provide a little grounding in the project itself, the work group, and the process. Second, I'll give you a summary of the recommendations developed by the work group, and also note that that information was provided to your inboxes on Monday. It's included, I believe, as an attachment to today's agenda item and the recommendation report and this presentation are also posted online at Portland.gov/backslash financial dash stabilization. And we intend to use that page to update information as that becomes relevant as this work moves forward. And then the third piece of the presentation today is I've used the workgroup recommendations to translate into 44 potential implementation actions. I don't expect we're going to have space to review every single one in detail. But these actions and the action plan that comes out of them are where I recommend focusing most of our attention today. And then lastly, of course, I want to hear from you so we can refine approaches as needed and move to rapid actions. Again, there'll be a lot of me speaking, certainly more than I'd prefer, but thank you ahead of time for for giving that space. I think getting through the content will maximize the value of the time for questions and discussion. I'm going to get through this as rapidly possible. I don't want to shortcut too much because there's a lot of high value content. I think the background context is really important, but each slide really here is going to be a building block that will make the action plan at the end, I think, more clear and understandable. All right. So just a reminder of the big picture context. Why are we here. As was previewed, we've come from a place of kind of being a legacy reactive organization, having repeated budget challenges, having repeated mid-year budget adjustments. And so really started this project to think more strategically over the long term, not just budget to budget aligned to expectations of 2024 charter reform and really develop a strategy to get through this moment of financial crisis and to stabilization and recovery. While there are signs of improvement, sort of some some Green shoots starting to appear in the data and financial condition. I do anticipate that we'll still be in a financial crisis mode for fiscal 2728 budget development, but with defined action today and hopefully a collective intention, I do believe we can move start to move forward towards stabilization. All right. Before we move into the details, just a little bit of background and context on the work group and the recommendations, which is what I'll present to you first. And in particular, I wanted to preview what the work group is and what the recommendations are and what it and what it is not. The work here of the work group is acknowledgment of a need to think differently. As mentioned, it was convened by the co-chairs myself and councilors Green and Zimmerman. But the conversation largely driven by the work group. It was an evolutionary process. It's intended to be a framework and a guiding document and a starting point for the conversation, which I think we'll see. It is what this work was not it's not indicative of unanimous agreement. As was mentioned, there was lots of disagreement in the room and acknowledgment that that was okay. It's not intended to be a single path forward. It's not a prioritized list. It's not executive recommendations for action or implementation, although those will be the second part of the presentation today. And certainly it's not a complete or final answer. So just a background on a little bit of how we structured this. The highlighted box in the middle is the workgroup that was the primary forum where this work occurred. And the participants, as was mentioned, were really an amazing group of portlanders who committed to spend over 20 hours together on multiple Friday afternoons doing this work. And I'm deeply, deeply grateful to every one of those individuals for their expertise, for the honesty in the room, and their shared passion for making Portland a better place. As was previously mentioned in by councilor Green, I believe the conversations were robust, were deep and were very engaging, I. While they were Friday afternoons, I always walked away from every meeting. Energized by the conversation and reminded of the collective care that portlanders have about restabilizing the city. I also do want to acknowledge councilors Green and Zimmerman, who agreed to participate as co-leads and. And co-facilitators I do. I did experience and believe that their direct participation, their direct support, having that input directly from the legislative branch was extremely valuable to the conversation, to the workgroup members. And I'm personally thankful to you both for your ongoing commitment to this effort. In addition to the workgroup meetings, which was the primary forum, we also facilitated space to collect input from some other voices to bring as much input to inform the conversations as we could, and then also to inform the eventual action plans. Those additional input points were engagement with an interagency support team. We met twice with that team that included financial representation from our governmental partners at the county metro port of Portland, Portland public schools and TriMet. We'll talk a little bit about maybe some of the outcome of that, but really valuable input coming in from there. Also met twice with a group of city labor leaders and separately met twice with the city wide equity practitioners group, including an additional smaller focus group of those members, and pursued some additional kind of one on one dialog with community members to supplement that. And I expect you'll see input from all of those groups incorporated here in the recommendations and in the actions. As I mentioned, this was sort of evolutionary. We operated this process from a place of really allowing the work group to drive the direction. This wasn't the traditional exercise of saying, here's some administrative recommendations and give us a thumbs up or thumbs down the expectations of the work group evolved as the discussion progressed, which was often uncomfortable and sometimes left us a little bit unclear about where we might end up. But I think we have ended up at a really, really good spot. I think this was an approach that was both unique but also really healthy, and again, kind of got us to a good place here of, of being open about receiving that feedback and then being able to translate that into, into actions. And for awareness and recognition. I wanted to share here the specific wonderful humans who committed their committed their time to the workgroup and the recommendations. I won't go through every, every name, but you can see them on the screen. And if you see or know these people, please join me in thanking them for stepping up and stepping in to take on this challenge. I wanted to just flash a couple slides up here quickly about the flow of work and the kind of general methodology to get to the recommendations. I don't won't read the details here. You can see them, but I did feel it was important to kind of flash this on, just to provide some context and give a flavor for how things were generally discussed, the types of topics that came up during those those seven workgroup meetings. I also think it's just really valuable to note that the workgroup pretty quickly identified that that financial instability is, is maybe more of a systems issue and not just a math problem. And so you'll see that perspective reflected throughout here. And then akin to the prior slide, this just provides a different kind of lens on, on the flow of that conversation and the key topics that were addressed at each of those seven workgroup meetings. All right. So moving on to the second section of the presentation, I'm going to share information about the recommendations that came out of the workgroup effort. And again, these are reflected in a 15 or so page report that's that's also available. A few notes as we begin. The recommendation report was largely drafted by nick strategies, who played a really important role in helping manage the meetings, helping guide the discussion, although often letting the room drive the discussion and then independently synthesizing the input into suggestions back to the workgroup and refinement into the final report. These are not recommendations from the cfo directly. They're not recommendations from the city administration, although we are indeed largely, almost, almost completely in alignment. And I'll highlight a few examples as we go through that clearly illuminate where I think the workgroup added deep, deep value and led to suggestions that likely maybe wouldn't have been brought forward if not for receiving their direction. As previously mentioned, these recommendations aren't prioritized. Something showing up first or second in the document doesn't suggest it has any more or less importance than something at the end of the report. And and again, to just lean into it while there was general agreement in the context of the recommendation report, nothing in the recommendation should be interpreted as indicating consensus. There was absolutely disagreement and differences of perspective and opinion, which the workgroup I believe accepted, is a really healthy reality of the complexity of this work. I do think there's a few common themes that show up throughout and will be reflected in the actions as well. Those are the way I would group those is around improving financial literacy both citywide and within the community. The criticality of data and communications and support of building public trust, maintaining not just an operational lens as maybe we're used to, but really leaning into a community outcome focus, engaging with community and frontline workers, and valuing regional coordination. So let's move to the recommendations at the highest level. This is how those recommendations have been bucketed. And I'll go through each of these individual lines a little more closely, but I wanted to kind of bookmark this page as we'll reference back to some of these categories as we go through the recommendations and into the action items. And then also just preview that, that many of these will lead to connect to actions that are already in progress. And so we'll talk about that when we get to that point as well. I think more than anything, these recommendations are really helpful framing of the problems and desired outcomes. So we can continue to putting put putting actions in motion. And I believe you'll see that. I think you'll see these recommendations respected and reflected in the proposed work. Additionally, excuse me, you can already see value from the workgroup input and at least a couple of items at this high level. For example, I would venture educated guess that biennial budgeting and regional coordination probably wouldn't have hit the top ten in the conversation if this would have been something that I personally brought forward. And so I just think those are kind of obvious examples. We'll go a little deeper here, but obvious examples of things that these workgroup participants were able to elevate in importance to explore. And so again, I want to highlight, highlight that and elevate that. Before we dig into the details, I just want to also give a last reminder that I am not for with regard to the workgroup recommendations, I'm not editorializing or modifying the information. I'm simply reporting out on the content in the report to frame up the more specific potential actions that will flow from these. So let's go. The first recommendation is around within the bucket of financial strategy. And discipline is around developing a more stable, sufficient and equitable revenue strategy. Much of the energy around this area related to looking for durable and less volatile revenue streams, but also expanding additional flexibility within additional within existing revenue streams. There is recognition that for any revenue the city collects, somebody down the line ultimately has to provide that revenue, whether directly or indirectly. There was robust conversation about avoiding regressive impacts and being mindful of where changes in revenue sources may have impacts that are disproportionate to the resource availability of payers, including pass through impacts. I'd also note that the workgroup's recognition that also note the workgroups recognition that the city has a legacy, and indeed a habit that we're still trying to break of more siloed thinking around revenues, where one revenue stream may change in isolation without adequately connecting to the impacts of other of other costs or community income realities. The second recommendation area is to reorient financial policies toward long term sustainability. Many of the city's financial policies are in need of a refresh to align, to post charter, change expectations, and to be more responsive to recent changes in economic conditions. In particular, the group identified a need to look with fresh eyes on policies around reserves, use of one time resources, transfers, set asides and fund balances. The workgroup also recommended enhancing policies that may be open for variable interpretation and those that result in frequent exceptions or noncompliance. In addition to policy development itself, it was suggested that the city explore ways to be more accountable for ensuring awareness that these policies exist and why they should be followed. And again, I'm a lot more detail on this slide than I'm going through here quickly so we can come back if there's questions about this next section was related to biennial budgeting. The recommendation here was to adopt biennial budgeting. And while there was some disagreement about the details and potential pros and cons that might exist within a pathway towards biennial budgeting, there were strong opinion that shifting to a two year cycle could avoid surprises, increase predictability and strengthen financial planning and coordination. Also, recognition that that's a heavy lift. And so it's probably not going to be a flip, a switch kind of a moment. And again, we'll see that reflected in the actions. In addition, the workgroup acknowledged here the need to increase involvement of frontline workers, improve equity analysis and financial analysis into the budget process, all of which, frankly, are things we should do regardless of whether we shift to a biennial cycle or not. The second primary bucket here decision, support and governance. The first recommendation within that bucket is to define core services and establish service expectations. This recommendation was rooted in the general idea that it's difficult for the public and for city decision makers to decide and communicate budget values without clear understanding of service priorities or expected outcomes. The workgroup identified some key considerations, such as legal requirements, I.e. What are we mandated to perform by charter or statute, what are the city's priorities or other formal commitments? What are the actual needs of portlanders, and what role can non city partners, I.e. Other local governments, nonprofits or private partners play in supporting service delivery in existing. In addition to evaluating existing programs and commitments, suggestions in this area were around establishing formal service level expectations and performance measures, and clearly communicating the commitments and trade offs of the choices the city makes with regard to service delivery. The next recommendation is to ensure citywide financial data reliability and visibility, which centered on ensuring that information about financial realities is adequately assessed and communicated. Important considerations here were to improve inputs and outputs related to equity impacts and potential differences of impacts at a more micro, localized or neighborhood level. More specific suggestions related to formalizing a single point of information for financial truth. Improving financial and revenue impact assessments, and emphasizing clear public communications that balance appropriate detail with accessibility and ease of understanding. And the third recommendation within decision, support and governance is to strengthen council's decision making support as a governing body. The primary objective of this recommendation is to ensure councilors and council offices have adequate access to information, and also have shared understanding of how to use and interpret that information. The group suggested that perhaps there's a model where council offices can more intentionally share analytical resources, rather than dividing those resources among multiple offices. Additionally, this area again emphasized the potential value of having district level financial analysis along the citywide impact assessment. The third general issue area is regional coordination and advocacy. The two recommendations within this area were around the three general concepts. One is that there can be confusion and misinformation about which government entity provides which service. Two is that when governments are not in coordination and cooperation, there can be overlap or gaps in service. And three is that regardless of the questions of service, regional decision making and advocacy could be strengthened by improved intentional and strategic collaboration. The first recommendation in this third category around regional coordination is to coordinate regional service delivery and fiscal strategy, and you can see listed on the slide the specific area, the areas the workgroup recommends for collaboration, and noting also the recommendation that the city take a leadership role in organizing those efforts. The workgroup also called out the importance of involving community in the conversation, as well as looking to collectively streamline opportunities for efficient coordination between community partners and intergovernmental partners. And then the second flavor of recommendation here is to lead advocacy for state fiscal reform, specifically around revenues. This recommendation recognizes that many of the challenges that limit our ability to grow revenue streams or increase flexibility of revenue streams is not isolated to the city and similarly impacts regional partners. In particular, the workgroup discussed the statewide impacts of property tax limitations, measures five and 50, and other state fiscal policies that impact the city's finances either directly or indirectly, and the final area and recommendation was to reduce administrative burden and improve operational effectiveness. This area includes a bit more of the technical recommendations, including review of rules and systems for efficiency improvements, reviewing span of control, assessing contracts and contractors, and involving frontline workers, all of which are things that are currently being prioritized. As we'll see in the actions. So as we wrap up the workgroup recommendations, I wanted to also note that the workgroup did also identify some really important specific issues for further analysis. And so these have been considered. I think you'll see these questions reflected in the upcoming implementation actions and other follow up items. But certainly these are not the final answers to the questions, but wanted to be transparent about the questions that were kind of left here in the workgroup report. And then lastly, there were a handful of implementation considerations. And so again, these are things that I've attempted to start to seed and reflect in the actions. But just note there's a whole page of important questions identified for considerations in the report. And so I wanted to highlight that. All right. So I think I'm rocking and rolling through this and staying ahead of schedule. So this will be wonderful. I'm going to take a second to drink some water. Thank you. All right. So moving to. The part of the presentation that I think will be of greatest interest, which is moving from the recommendations to specific implementation actions. What I'll present over the next 15 or so slides are potential actions. Again, from my perspective as chief financial officer, and I've attempted to translate these directly from the recommendations as written from the broader workgroup conversations and from input that I received from outside the workgroup, including intergovernmental partners, labor equity partners, and others. I'll also have a couple slides here that are actions that I think are of critical importance, but there were maybe not as directly reflected in the workgroup report. And so we want to fold those in as well. I certainly expect there will be other perspectives that supplement or modify these suggestions, including hearing from counsel today.
8 Cfo biery are you going to give us the color code on this one?
9 I will give you a color code. Yep. Thank you for thank you for that. Your your three sentences ahead of me. Thank you counselor. So for each of the following slides, just to set up what, what we're kind of going to do here is I've attempted to identify within each of the recommendation buckets for each action, a potential timeline, who I think will be best to lead the effort. And one or more key supporters also want to just acknowledge it's sort of assumed that, well, it is assumed that council has the ultimate decision making authority, and it's assumed that folks like the city administrator, myself as cfo, communications support, community engagement, equity support those will overlay all or nearly all of the items. But, but we're really just looking to call out here where there's specific connectivity or direct participation in action is likely to be needed. I also say these actions have been developed with an intention of being sort of universally good, by which I mean that they're actions that I believe are good and valuable for. For council, for the nearly 8000 city employees on the operational and administrative side, from top to bottom, and ultimately for the portlanders that we all serve. To your question, councilor, I've attempted to add some color dots to indicate kind of how implementable I think an item may be. These are not to indicate a thumbs up or a thumbs down judgment, but really more as a guidepost to help inform potential implementation strategy. So as we go through these, a Green dot is reflects an action that to me seems fairly clear and ready to go a yellow dot, or is reflective of something that maybe there's some outstanding questions, some expected challenges, or we need to do a little bit more due diligence. Orange dots are things that I think will be very challenging. And so we'll see a few of those, not many, but a few. And then there's a few that are kind of clear or blank. And those are intended to signify areas where I think just need some additional specific direction from council or others in order to really identify a course of action in some of the details around timeline and responsibility. So again, I'll walk through each, each set of recommended actions within a recommendation area, and then we'll come back after that. And I want to summarize all of that into a more strategic fashion with items suggested for immediate action, future action, outstanding questions. And again, as we did with recommendations, don't expect to go through every single item in great detail. You know, we are short cutting for the presentation. They only have a sentence or two, maybe a phrase. And so there's a lot more probably under the hood that we can unpack, but want to get through as quickly as we can here in the first half of this meeting. All right, item one. So this is within the first bucket. Develop a more stable, sufficient and equitable revenue strategy. The first item here is provide education of financial facts and regular council updates. This is largely in development and under current work in progress. For example, we're currently enhancing information gathering and our ability to report out on contingencies, reserves and fund balances. And we've recently had a separate work session to discuss continued major improvements to budget processes. But it would be valuable for sure to have feedback from council on preferred formats, forums, cadence, etc. If we do wish to formalize additional ongoing reporting structures. Item two is to prepare a report regarding current revenue sources. Some amount of updated revenue reporting is already in progress. We're improving our revenue forecast, communications and other information improvements in the context of budget planning, work sessions, budget development, etc. But this specific action would be to produce a formal report with a standard and consistent set of measures and trade off considerations that assesses major current city revenue streams, including things like fees and charges within assets related to economic development, other fees or funds that sometimes might fly a bit underneath under the radar. Item three would take that a step further to look at prospective revenue streams and the note. Our ability to execute that action will largely depend on working with council to identify which revenue streams should be included in that assessment. So this is on a somewhat different timeline with the current revenue current revenue assessment coming first, and then the prospective revenue report coming somewhat later, but hopefully using a consistent format and. Et cetera. And then the last potential action here is a little less clear as to how to proceed. Ergo the clear dot. But this action could be to develop an actual policy or formal guidance document that frames the desired structure, characteristics and utilization goals around city revenue streams. It's potentially a pretty, pretty thorny path. I'm sure that'll be a robust discussion, but one that perhaps could be pursued. All right. Moving quickly along, the second set of actions is around financial policies. Item one is to improve education and education of and compliance with current financial policies and practices. So we begin here with another education focused item, which is really to ensure that stakeholders across the organization have greater awareness and clearer understanding of existing financial policies. Frankly, over the last few years, as we've been scrambling to just maintain basic functionality and we've been experiencing significant staff turnover, we've lost some of that historical understanding of the whats and wherefores of financial policy, in addition to elevating education about the policies, we should consider what enhancements may be viable to improve expectations and accountability for actually following those policies. Then items two, three, and five. The Green dots here on this page are all pretty closely related, but divided up to differentiate a few important details. I expect that items two and three, which are updating financial policies and creating potential new policies, would travel together, and I would hope to bring back that first package of policy change in early 2027 in advance of next year's budget conversations. Examples of critical updates here might include updates to things like fin 2.03 around financial planning, 2.04 around budget process, 2.07 around reserve funds, and things like cleaning up legacy references to the old office of management and finance, or other inconsistencies or language that's inconsistent with our current alignment. Examples of new policies might include things like creating new fund specific reserves might include forecasting specific policy details around fund management responsibilities, or other high priority items we might identify. And then the second phase, item five. The second phase of those policy updates would include things that are going to be much more complicated to pin down. That might include things like pulling asset management out into its own policy item, might include things like cost allocation and general fund overhead, or other other items that require a lot more dialog than we expect to have space for over the next few months. Excuse me. And then the fourth the fourth item is to kind of going out over here on this one. But fourth item is to perform a comprehensive evaluation of one time funding, including programs and pilots. And really the goal would be to assist with clarity of information and decision making about what might continue as one time funded versus looking to shift to something that's not one time funded, ongoing, or something that should be prioritized. And again, hoping to execute that before in alignment with budget conversations. The next one section under under financial strategy and discipline aligns to the recommendation around biannual budgeting. And I will editorialize a little here. I have some personal skepticism about whether biannual budgeting can result in meaningful improvement to fundamental stabilization of the city, but there is certainly strong passion about exploring the possibility, and these actions respect and acknowledge that suggestion. And I certainly don't disagree with with doing the analysis. So the first two recommendations relate to to biennial budgeting, specifically, the initial action would be to undertake a feasibility and readiness assessment, which would examine things like potential charter and legal provisions, readiness of the city's current technology and human systems to support that switch, counsel and public engagement expectations around a two year timeline and other timeline and operational considerations that would need to be examined in order to inform a potential decision to pivot to that pathway or not. I think here we see the first appearance of an orange dot. It's not red because it's not impossible, but but orange and prioritizing and implementing biennial budgeting. Obviously, any future decision would need to be based upon that readiness assessment. And so that would be of somewhat uncertain timing until we can do that work. And so that's why that's identified as a as an orange dot here. And then the last item on this slide is improving organizational structure and alignment for forecasting. This is on the front edge of being in motion. And it's something we can and probably should do. This work would likely need to occur over multiple years so we can define appropriate practices and expectations, establish communication and identify pathways for for communicating and sharing information that align to ongoing changes in the budget process. So I think you'll see some of this improvement happening in this year's budget cycle, including in the upcoming forecast in December, but a little bit in progress, but going to be a long tail to get that work done. All right, moving to actions related to the second category of recommendations around decision support and governments kind of a mishmash of different actions here. The first is to use strategic planning to define core services. And in this context, the term core services is meant to refer to what are the essential services expected by portlanders. So thinking about things like transportation, utilities, public safety, etc. I'll fill in the blanks. You can likely already see a little bit of the connectivity with the recommendations here and the upcoming, and the recommendations and upcoming actions related to regional coordination. This is a potential difficult and heavy lift, but I do believe potentially achievable over the next 18 or so months and is likely to be aligned with the responsibilities of the newly created strategy and change management officer within the city administrator's office. Second item is to establish service level expectations and to develop performance measures. And this is another one of those things that's always on the forefront of action and is somewhat in early, early motion via the emergence of that strategy officer and performance management office. The action specifically here is intended to be more than just sitting in a room and coming up with measures, but actually doing robust work to identify the right measures and institutionalize institutionalizing the use of those measures in financial decision making. And the last one here again, is already in progress, which is to improve communication of current service commitments and trade offs, especially if and when funding or prioritization of those commitments should change. The details here would include taking a consistent citywide approach involving frontline workers in the assessment of those service change impacts and developing more, more dependable protocols for reporting out, including enhanced use of dashboard type information. All right, next item around data, data reliability and visibility. The first item in this category assess and identify community data resources was really rooted in the acknowledgment from the work group that there are lots of good sources of data that exist in the community, in the world, but the city has a tendency to navigate largely based upon data that's produced by or sanctioned specifically by the city. So the initial action here is to perform an inventory assessment of the data that currently exists and develop expectations to reasonably incorporate that data into the city's decision making. And again, I think this is another great example that really emphasizes the value of the work group's input. One of the things that was really important to me to acknowledge at the front edge of this work was that we typically don't know what we don't know. And so highlighting these additional data resources was really important to help bridge that, that knowledge gap. The second item here is one that I do want to highlight for a second. And that's improving financial impact assessments that accompany council legislation and other budget related decision making. This is an example of of a handful of improvements that I think are of great interest to many and would be a very, very high value. But development of the right inputs and timeline expectations, assignment of responsibility for doing the assessments that won't occur at the flip of a switch. If the goal was to implement the change as soon as possible, this would likely be the only action that we would be able to undertake in the near term. Given given bandwidth and other priorities. So the immediate action that I think we can take forward over the next six months or so, hopefully, hopefully less, but is to convene a workgroup, a small workgroup to assess the needs to consider the right information, responsibilities and process, and then develop an executable timeline and strategy so that we can confidently and consistently put those improvements into practice as soon as practical. During calendar 2027. The third item on this slide to identify and establish a primary access point for financial information, was also something called out specifically by the workgroup. I certainly have an opinion about where the most appropriate access point for financial information should reside, but I would look first to council for your thoughts and desired outcomes before recommending a specific path forward. And the last item under data reliability and visibility is to improve financial reporting systems and communications. The suggested action here is to assemble a team to identify system gaps and develop recommendations. Given the various improvement and realignment efforts currently underway, I think this would optimally begin later in fiscal 2627, so we can proceed with this action with the benefit of understanding how the current improvements have have shaken out. This work would also functionally need to likely begin after the bulk of next year's budget development work is completed in spring, so we can prioritize getting that work done, including the budget process, improvements that we'd like to prioritize. Next slide. Thank you. Two potential. So this is under the strengthened council's decision making support. Two potential actions suggested here. The first is already in progress which is offering resources, enhanced resources and training, plus additional information, access to councilors and council staff. In particular, the city budget office has already scheduling opportunities for drop in conversations, and we're always willing to be invited onto council or committee agendas to provide financial or budget information as council pleases. Additionally, the city administrator's office is improving citywide protocols and expectations in response to the prior budget. Note about information access. The second item is another that will need some input and direction from council before we can move too far forward. The workgroup identified value in having dedicated and consistent analytical access for council, much like we've modeled over the past two years with the partial time appointment of a kind of concierge cbo analyst during the heat of budget budget cycle. But there's multiple approaches that we could take here, all of which will have costs and trade offs. And so we stand ready to support any further council conversation around that potential action. All right. Moving to recommendation area three. Many of the action items on this and the next slide are largely outside of the financial realm directly, but certainly connect to broader service priorities, service prioritization, and clarity of decision making, including the prior action around defining core city services. However, the first two items here are directly financial related and I believe, reasonably implementable. The first item came directly out of the initial meeting of the aforementioned interagency support team. One of the key takeaways from assembling that room was that participants immediately agreed that there was high value in bringing together regional financial leadership to talk about shared challenges, operational practices, and communication alignment. The workgroup also agreed this was important to a healthy regional financial ecosystem, so this was kind of a no brainer. I anticipate looking to set up a regular cadence potentially quarterly as soon as feasible, so we can reap the benefits of those conversations. Second item here is to put some additional coordination and consistency to development of intergovernmental agreements or igas, including developing enhanced training on what makes a good iga, which would be one that balances durability and flexibility, and potentially developing a specific policy to guide iga development. The last two actions here are valid future actions, but really are dependent on completion of our in-house work to identify our own service priorities and expectations. As previously described under the section related to recommendation two a and then the second bucket around regional coordination and advocacy. The actions here are a little more nebulous, at least to me, and leaned heavily on the office of government relations or ogr, as referenced on the slide. The general intent of these actions is twofold. First is to improve our ability to respond to new or proposed state legislation that has material financial impact to the city, and the second is to undertake a coordinated effort to drive and advocate for legislative reforms to address issues that either incur material cost to the city or restrict revenue flexibility or revenue growth potential. While the core of these actions has been driven by workgroup recommendations, the details here have been identified in collaboration with office of government relations and thank you, team for that. The last two items, which are developing a shared regional agenda and advancing reform priorities are obviously going to be very difficult. Tasks indicated here by the orange dots. They'll need to undergo significant dialog among city council with our regional partners and of course, with partners around the state and in the capitol. And then the last slide tied to the workgroup recommendations includes three actions that are related to administration and operations, all of which are currently in motion. The first is to review and refresh procurement rules and practices, including reviewing and communicating out about historical, current and expected use of contracts and contracting. The second is to review management span of control, specifically and administrative process more broadly, and this work is also already in progress. The third is to actively involve frontline workers in identifying and implementing efficiencies, and to formalize the protocols and expectations for doing so. Creating space for these conversations is also a current work in progress, and I hope and expect to see that carry forward. So then the next couple of slides here related to implementation actions include an inventory. Some things that I believe are of really high importance, but were maybe less directly called out via the workgroup effort. So the first slide here is an inventory of key actions that are either near-term initiatives or things that are important to call out is already in progress. The first three here have had or are currently having robust discussion in other forums. Asset management strategy is being discussed at the public works committee, and I believe at an upcoming session. I'm not sure. Committee of the whole or work session budget process improvements received a full work session a couple of weeks ago, so I won't use our time to reiterate those conversations, but we obviously do anticipate progress on those fronts. One area that's under discussion, but for sure we'll need more dialog and direction is determining a new pathway for budget advisory committees. I think we're getting close to completing the work. The broader work on advisory body alignment, but look forward to working with our community engagement partners and of course, the city budget office to put a pin in that plan so we can move forward with reestablishing some form of budget advisory committees. The fourth item here is to develop metrics that we can use to track progress and hopefully, eventual success of this specific financial stabilization effort. Well, that is certainly doable. I do wonder right now, in the crisis response mode, if that's sort of something that should take priority over other actions. But if we did want to prioritize that, I think it is doable and likely important at some point. Fifth item here is maybe a bit of a heavier lift, and that's to refresh a citywide economic development strategy. And my understanding is that prosper Portland is aligned and ready to do that work within their current work plan expectations. And then the sixth item here, assessment of our funding fire and police disability and retirement funding is one that was recently discussed at committee of the whole. It's marked here as an open color item, largely just given the outstanding question regarding identifying a potential funding source to support any kind of alternative funding option. But as discussed at that prior committee meeting, happy to help carry that forward. However council chooses. And then the last item here on kind of other related actions, these are a handful of things that I'm suggesting should be on the radar for bringing in the conversation, maybe next fiscal year and beyond. Many of these are dependent on progress that we make on some of the earlier mentioned or near-term actions. Also, just note that most maybe all of these actions have also been on the back burner of previous priority lists. So I'm hopeful that this conversation can help bring them back to the forefront. One action I'll highlight here is the second item, which is to assess and reconsider general fund overhead and internal service funding models. This has been a recent and recurrent topic of interest, and it's been on my personal priority list since the day I walked into this job almost three years ago. I expect it will happen, but it's a very difficult and complicated task, particularly in an organization that's undergoing such significant and frequent change. I'm optimistic that the organizational changes and process improvements currently in motion will give wind to this eventual reassessment, but also recognize it would be overwhelming at this moment to begin this discussion, given those moving parts on a positive note, we have recently stood up an improved, more coordinated process for information sharing and decision making around internal services in the context of budget development. So in addition to drawing attention to the longer term need, we are in fact starting to put the scaffolding in place to build into this work in the future. Second item I'd highlight here is the third one, which is to refine and realign citywide financial services. And while some city services have undergone currently undergoing realignment, financial services generally remain dispersed throughout the organization. We certainly do not need to reduce our capacity to deliver these services, but I do think there's likely value in streamlining to improve consistency and efficiency. I don't think that transition conversation can occur within the next year, given the massive volume of actions change and basic work requirements, but I do think it would be valuable to pick that discussion up for potential adjustment in the future. And the last thing item I'd highlight on this page is the final action regarding centralizing revenue collection. This item stems specifically from a 2022 recommendation from the city auditor, and I do agree that there's value in evolving to a centralized citywide revenue collection approach. This would be a generationally difficult transition. And so I'm in favor of the ambition, but this will just acknowledge this would be a massively, at least temporarily disruptive to the organization, to the people doing that work and to our revenue collection systems, and potentially to the people who pay revenue to the city. Not to say it shouldn't be done. I wanted to include it because I do think it's important to keep on the radar. I just would recommend that once some of our foundational actions can be completed and we're more clearly in a place of stabilization, that's when I would advocate that we pick up that that very, very large initiative. All right. So that's a ton of potential actions. What do we do with all that? How do we try to move from that inventory of action to something that feels like an actual strategic financial plan? So here's what I propose. The next few and final slides present a proposal about how I think we might do that. This sort of introductory slide displays the big picture phases of what that action plan might look like. And then as I wrap up the presentation, I'll move into a little more detail for each of these phases. The first step would be to acknowledge that there's a significant amount of work that's already occurring, and continue to prioritize that work that's already underway. Recalling back to the very earliest slide about the current moment of financial crisis, the second phase of action, which would occur alongside the work we're already doing, would focus on responding to that crisis with the highest value, immediately implementable actions. The third phase, if we want to be serious about stabilization, is that we'll need to start putting actions in motion now to start to get there. So these are stabilizing intention actions that I would expect. We begin in 2627. The fourth phase would be looking towards the future and starting to bring forward those actions into the queue when possible. And then lastly, just identified some number of questions that still need further explanation. So that's how I've organized the actions on the next few slides to move onward to something that feels like an action plan or strategy. And again, this is just repeating the actions I just went very quickly through, but realigning them and maybe a little bit more of an implementation plan in order. All right. So again, good news is we're already doing lots of important things to respond to the financial crisis, to think ahead toward stabilization and to be responsive to known priorities and requests for improvement. The many actions that are already in motion are listed on this slide and the next slide, and they're placed in order that they showed up in the prior actions inventory. While all these are listed as in progress, they may be in different states of progress, some on the early end and some nearly complete. And some of these actions, such as those related to education, training and communication, will never really end and require ongoing effort and attention. The actions currently in progress are education of financial facts and regular council updates. Improve education and compliance with current financial policy and practices. Improve organizational structure and alignment for forecasting. Improve communication of service commitments and trade offs, and provide training and improve information, access to council and staff. And then page two continues that list of actions currently in progress, and those include review, procurement related rules and practices, review span of control and administrative processes involve frontline workers and efficiency and coordination efforts. Develop a coordinated asset management strategy, develop community engagement and advisory body direction, and implement budget development process improvements. Because primary responsibility for the actions in progress is somewhat dispersed throughout the organization, I'm hopeful that we can continue to rapidly demonstrate success on these fronts. So the first phase of new, so to speak, actions that I recommend prioritizing are the 8 or 9 listed here. These are actions that I believe can and should be prioritized over the next nine months through summer 2020 to focus on continued crisis response. These actions are organized on the. On this slide by the estimated time frame for completion. The one concern that I'll note here is you can see a common thread regarding the proposed lead. And I'm not complaining. I'm obviously committed to doing this work and putting it forward to you here today. But I do also want to be realistic and transparent about how much is reasonable to take on, especially given other things in motion that will require attention. That being said, I do think that the first four items are among the highest value immediate exercises, and I do intend to carry them forward as rapidly as possible. Those four things are to bring forward the phase one policy updates and high priority new financial policies, to convene a regional financial coordination forum and to develop a plan to improve financial impact assessments. And as previously mentioned, prosper Portland should be aligned to deliver a refreshed economic development strategy. The last four items on this page are also of high importance and would be the next in the queue. At least that's my recommendation. Next in the queue for action. Depending on how much we can accelerate and achieve the items in progress from the prior slides and the top 4 or 5 items here on this slide, and then the next list of actions are things that I believe support movement towards longer term stabilization, but also have high value to prioritize and begin in motion during the current fiscal year 2627 should be no shock that these are all yellow dot items. They typically will have a little bit more complexity, will certainly require more robust coordination, and likely have longer timelines to do the work. And or they may have some some mild outstanding scope questions. Mostly these items are about building the bones for longer term improvements, which include evaluating options, identifying new resources, processes, opportunities, etc. Future actions. So this is kind of the inventory of of capturing the dozen or so items that I think should be on the radar for next fiscal year for 2728. That's only nine months away. And these are certainly still relevant to the city's financial stabilization effort. But perhaps at least in my assessment, have a little bit lower immediate value, have long timelines, have very high complexity, or require other foundational work to be completed before progressing to these actions. And so I'll just pause for a quick second. I won't go through them all, but just wanted to at least acknowledge this is sort of the next in line. If we can get through the items on the prior prior slides. All right. And then I promised there was sort of some outstanding items. So lastly, here are the potential actions that definitely have some questions, either uncertain timelines, unclear lead responsibility, kind of missing information, or a need for deeper conversation and input from council or other stakeholders. So friends, we made it almost 60 more seconds. I hope this afternoon's presentation provides a reasonably clear picture of actions and activities that the city can undertake now, and in the near future, to put an end to the financial madness of the last few years to rebuild trust in the city as a responsible steward of the public's dollars to improve information, transparency and decision making, and ultimately to effectively and efficiently deliver services to portlanders. As we move to the last slide, thank you for your attention. And now I would love to hear from you. I'm not sure if we want to go ahead and go to questions or take a break. I think I'm a little bit ahead of schedule here, but I've attempted to cede a few questions for conversation. What are your initial reactions? Are there items that need further clarification? What resonates? What, if anything, do you think might be missing? What refinements might you suggest to timelines, responsibilities, or scope for any of the proposed actions, and how do you advise we can collectively carry this work forward? And while positive affirmations are wonderful and appreciated, this work is also too important to not be honest. So I'd be happy to receive any of your thoughts and feedback. Also noting we do have at least a couple other subject matter experts in the room to assist if needed. So thank you again. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support in this work. Defer councilor Kanal back to you to guide us forward.
10 Thank you so much. Cfo biery. I think we were going to see if there was anything additional that councilors, Green or Zimmerman wanted to add before we open up the queue, but I think you both. Okay, great. So just giving a run a show here. We have about an hour and 42 minutes, including, you know, if we take a break with 12 of us here, that's about eight minutes per person, including time for for responses. Just giving that framing here. So I'm going to take probably 2 or 3 folks. And then whenever the first pause is after 320 or so, we'll take our break and then come back. And if you are following along online, you're seeing it. If you are here, it's the third to last slide that has the reactions, refinements and moving forward. These are the questions that cfo biery raised. So feel free to say whatever else. But I think what would be most helpful is to help ensure that we're giving answers to those five ish questions. All right. We'll open it up with vice president Clark, followed by council president Dunphy.
11 Thank you. Councilor, this is the first time I've seen this. So this is my initial reactions. First of all, I just want to say thank you to my colleagues for all the work and the time you put into this, and the people in the audience who are here. That also put a lot of time into this. I really appreciate it. I think jonas did a great job getting through. The whole thing was super. Just a couple comments. I'm going to have to leave early, so I'm just going to give you a few comments now, and I'm happy to do more offline. There are a couple things that popped right out at me that are my priorities, and I'm clearly you included asset management, which everybody knows I care about. So that's cool. But there are a couple of things you have on here that are really your future actions that I feel are more immediate, at least from my perspective. And that's the audit city facilities, costs and usage, because that involves also the disposition of assets. And we need to eventually figure out what we do own and what we really need to own as a city. And then secondly, I am very concerned about where did it go? The core services definition. I talk about core services all the time when I'm out and about, you know, what is it that are the basic services that we should be providing as a city and getting down to the nut? And I'm hoping that I know that kelly has talked about a strategic planning session. Perhaps we're going to be doing that in the not too distant future so that we can wrap in really what are our our core services that we have to focus on. And I think that's going to help us if we can define that sooner rather than later when it comes to the next budget and what we're going to do about the next budget. And that goes back to, at some point, working with the public on like a conversation with Portland or something along those lines to help people understand the nature of our budget. It's huge. But all those funds are most of those funds are dedicated. And we're really only talking about general fund when we're talking about cuts. And those are core services. So that's my greatest concern is getting to trying to identify what those core services are, what are the basic things that we should be doing and focusing on, particularly when it comes to the next budget. And then the audit city facilities, costs and usage, you put those on your future actions. I think they're a little bit more immediate from my perspective, but I'll just leave it at that. I don't that's not eight minutes, but that's plenty for me. Thank you.
12 Thank you counselor.
13 Feel free to jump back in the queue later if you if you think of stuff to add council president Dunphy followed by counselor Smith.
14 Thank you very much, jonas. I think we're certainly on the right track. And also, I'm not a numbers guy. And so I'm going to trust that you are on the right track because it sure looked good. But I gotta say, some of these things seemed less financial and more just sort of like good things that this city should do. And so I'm wondering why some of these things are on your list versus just like, honestly, city administrator's list, like an organizational structure and understanding. Defensibly why we have this org structure that seems like it should be a big city wide thing, but not a financial stabilization thing. Similar. To, well, some. Yeah, that that one in particular developing iga protocols, really good policy. Is that specific to financial stabilization. I don't that doesn't seem like it to me. It seems like it's just good things we should do to get our house in order. I have real concerns, and I think you properly arranged the sort of prioritization of the recommendations. I have deep concerns about biennial budgeting. I have been lobbying the state legislature in different capacities since 22,009. I was there for the first legislative a short session when the. In 2013 2012, however, it was. The voters and the lawmakers all agreed that the biennial budgeting is not. You know, without some ongoing touch point is not a great thing. And that leads to some problems. And I think there are still some problems in how the state does their budgeting. I agree, don't prioritize that. That doesn't seem like it's a thing that's actually going to lead to financial stabilization. With regard to regional coordination as a recommendation, do you mean this as coordinating to have the same sort of language and maybe even excel spreadsheet formats as the county and metro? Or do you mean actually sitting down with the housing bureau and saying the housing bureau is going to spend x and then the, you know, the counties homeless services division or whatever they call now is going to spend y. Is it internal facing? Is it externally facing? Is it a tool for us to say like, oh, that's not our job. That's the county's job. And by the way, here's how much they're spending on it is what did you say a little more about that for me.
15 Yeah. Council president thank you. And maybe just to your your very first observation. Yeah, you're right. Some of these don't feel like they're directly financial related issues. Again, there are issues that that the workgroup identified as feeling like it was connected or important to that work. And so I wanted to be, you know, mindful of carrying that forward. And, and I do think that there is always some connectivity, right? I mean, iga is an example where it came up in the context of it's hard to understand for, you know, a community member what happens in an iga if there's someone who is a party to the iga. But but I do acknowledge that some of these are again, not what I might have if I just sat in a room with with a couple of my financial friends might have come up with, with regards to the regional coordination, I think there's to answer that question. I think there's both flavors, right? I think that the action and the thing that I would prioritize around the regional regional coordination forum with the sort of financial experts, is not around the details. It's more around, you know, here's a problem I'm seeing in my financial system, help me peer respond to that, right? Or just having awareness of things that are going on. A great example could be if the city knew we were going to be putting forward a geo bond in one of our regional partners knew that they were going to be putting forward a geo bond. It's an opportunity to flag that maybe two years ahead of time. So we have space to collectively navigate those kind of conversations. So that's what that forum would be more about, the broader forum, the kind of the third bucket around regional coordination is, I think that bigger, broader conversation that's really outside the realm of the cfo and really more a citywide, you know, city administrator, government relations lead conversation.
16 Excellent. I think my last question, you said, what is the primary access point for accessing financial information? And I don't really know what that means, is that is that in the terms of like council accessing to understand it, the public understanding, I don't what how do I access any of this financial.
17 Yeah, my understanding from the conversation and certainly be welcome to hear from co-leads who are in the room as well. But my understanding is there was just some, I'll say, anxiety in the room about hearing different things from different authority points in the city that conflict. And so being really clear and intentional about when the city says this is a financial fact, knowing that that's the official mandated source right now, it's never going to be perfect, of course, but that was sort of the genesis of that feedback is, you know, how can I, as a community member, understand which of maybe 3 or 4 different realities is true?
18 Thank you. I will leave with just my one last comment, which I say a lot in every different context. Portland loves to reinvent the wheel. Please don't. Please just find what works elsewhere and do that. Whether it is with regard to potential prospective revenue sources or regional coordination, or any of the internal controls that we have, please don't build something new. Let's just double down on good practices elsewhere. Great.
19 Thank you, thank you.
20 Thank you, chair.
21 Thank you, council president. We'll go to councilor Smith followed by Morillo.
22 Thank you. Cfo biery don't we have a place we can go to now? I noted on your presentation that spring of 27 that you were going to put together something of all the revenue resources, but don't we have something right now that we can go to to see all the revenue resources that are there?
23 So yeah. Councilor. Thank you. Yes we do. I mean, certainly the budget, the the annual audit lists numerically and has maybe some narrative about financial sources. The action here would be to, to do a little bit deeper analysis. So something more than would show up in just a budget document or a spreadsheet. But that really does a little bit of kind of maybe more widely opening to the door around what are the, you know, we just say, here's a number and here's the source. But let's be consistent about talking about is this sort of a, you know, 1 to 10 volatility? What is the sort of impact. And so it would be putting a little more color to, to, to each of the revenue streams. And I think importantly not neglecting. Right. We talk a lot about the general fund, right? We maybe talk a lot about things like pcf or blt utility revenues, but there are a lot of other revenues that don't get that level of attention that we also end up talking about and not having clear, clear understanding of. So that would be really what that action is, is producing a little more robust body work session.
24 On it. Yeah. Because in our budget that you delivered to us in the beginning, it shows all the, the different revenue sources, right? Did we leave anything out?
25 Nope. That's correct. Okay. Yeah.
26 I was just trying to make sure it's like, okay, that's weird. We already know that.
27 Yeah, yeah. No, that's a good point. I mean, it certainly the, the very base information exists, the numbers exist, but it doesn't often have. And we've encountered this in this room, a lot of the necessary context to both inform decision makers and for the public to understand what's what's underneath those numbers as well.
28 So will that include things like the opioid monies, because we're expected to get that for the next 20 some odd years. Is that also line item?
29 I think it could. Yeah, yeah.
30 Those those are the kind of things that I want to know about that we have revenue sources that are not in that we don't see line item, but should be considered ongoing money because we're getting it for more than five years. And so, and then have a deadline date of when we stop receiving it. Those are the kind of things that I want to see. Yeah. We can. I think, you know, understanding those different pots of money before spring is more important than in spring, because in spring we're in budget cycles. So it gets to be a bit much if we want more information. I think that information we should understand a little bit better in our forecast in December. When peter comes and gives us a forecast that should be, you know, some sort of work session to tell us about all the different sources and also include those resources that we don't generally put in, but should be considered as ongoing money, like the opioid settlement. So I appreciate you putting that up there, and I'm looking forward to having that conversation.
31 Great. Thank you councilor.
32 Thank you, councilor Smith. It's exactly 320 councilor Morillo would you prefer to go before or after the break?
33 I'm fine to go after if that's okay.
34 Cool. Then we will take a break for about 13 minutes. Let's be back at 334 and we'll pick back up where we left off. And I have, just because I know the things going to change the order when we go out of the share screen. So. Morillo. Novick. Ryan and then. Pirtle-guiney. Thanks. All right, we're gonna pick back up. Give it a second while folks get. Resituated. But I'm going to pass it to councilor Morillo and then to councilor Novick.
35 Thank you, chair. Thank you for joining us again. I hope you had a bit of a break since you had to give us such a long presentation. We appreciate it. That was really helpful. And I really appreciate genuinely just getting to learn more about our broad financial stabilization plan and hearing about what I know folks have been working on for a few months on this. I have only one very simple question for you, because I know we have a lot of people in the queue. And that's just, you know, you've been having you've been doing a lot of outreach with our offices and you've been getting a lot of feedback from us on the budget process. For us as councilors, how we get information, what we do moving forward. And I'm wondering what progress you and cbo have made on integrating that feedback into the next budget process and what that's going to look like.
36 Yeah, councilor, thank you for the question. Thank you for the acknowledgment of the break. I did appreciate that. So yeah, we're still, I think, working through that. I think the next place we'll see that really materialize that that progress on the budget improvement, budget improvement process items in is in the discussion. So part of that will be incorporate, you know, potential calendar schedule. And so I think that'll be the next place. And I think we have a work session just in a couple of weeks here around that. And so that's the next place I think you'll start to see some of the. Action happening around taking that feedback and putting it into motion in the context of the schedule.
37 Gotcha.
38 And certainly happy to explore. I know ruth and I had a budget director or ruth levine, and I had a conversation about, is there a way that we can actually do kind of a report out assessment? And so we haven't lost that. We just want to make sure we're actually getting the work done and prioritizing that over, over the reporting.
39 Yeah, I agree, and sometimes I don't, I don't think we need a whole a full blown bureau report or anything like that. Just getting to hear updates on how that our feedback is being integrated into the new process is helpful. So when you're able to come back and give us those specifics, that would be helpful. But that was my only question. I think this was a really thorough presentation. It was very helpful, and I agreed with a lot of the stuff, especially. I think the thing that stood out to me is making sure that when we're passing any revenue policies, that they're not regressive, that they're not impacting the very people that we're trying to help with the services that we're changing. So just really appreciated seeing that in there. And yeah, thanks for all of your time and councilor Green and Zimmerman
40 Well. Thank you.
41 Thanks. Councilor. Morillo. We'll go to councilor. Novick then. Ryan.
42 Thank you, mr. Chairman. I just wanted to take this opportunity to. Since span of control and contracting out were on the list. I just want to reiterate that I think that we should have thorough discussions of both of those topics in the next couple of months, either in the committee of the whole or as a part of a council work session. If councilor Green brings chop from the top back next year, I want to either feel confident voting for it or more confident than I did last year voting against it. So having a thorough discussion about span of control level, how much additional have we really added? Tons of additional managers the last several years. And what about those 50 people that supervise fewer than few people? I think that's critically important. Also, I was pleased to see the discussion of one time funded things on the list, and I just wanted to put in a plug that I think that every year we should review that every everything that we're spending one time funding on and have a serious conversation about, do we really think this is one time or and we're prepared to let it go when the one time funding runs out? Or do we think that we're probably going to want to keep this and have to compete with other things in the budget that are right now are not listed as one time? So I think that's going to be a really important discussion. Thank you.
43 Great. Yeah. Thank you counselor. And I think what you just described in regard to one time funding is, is exactly the intent among the intents of, of doing that additional elevated work. Thank you.
44 Thank you, counselor Novick we'll go to counselor Ryan then. Pirtle-guiney.
45 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Thank you, jonas and your team and all the volunteers who showed up to give us this work at this time. Just some context setting in the work group. Recommendation one a when they were studying, if you will, and their inquiry phase, did that include how much how far back did we go? Was it just the last year, last two years or was it ten years?
46 No, that's a good question. I mean, we look back in most cases, five to 5 to 10 years or in some cases even farther if we had that consistent data.
47 I think it's good when we look back before 2020, 2020 is an anomaly, a be most people were more satisfied with the services of the city in 2015, if you will, in that era. So I think it's always important to look at why that was. Like, how much were we funding proportionately and and such for each bureau. So that's why I asked that question. Thanks for understanding the intent with that. Another context one is on staffing and structure. I think we often just look internally to our efforts of the city. I think it's important that we look at how many of our bureaus partner, especially with the nonprofit partners and how much is going there. And and also to the course, the contracts, they tend to be more procurement around bricks and mortar and such. But I think that the public's wanting to see that accountability as well, since I think if you look at a like a 15 year look back, you'll see that proportionately a lot more money goes out to partners. Not a good or bad statement. It just it's, it's a what is. And I think it's important that as we look at where we were and where we are today and where we're going, that we have that type of context. That makes sense.
48 Yes. Yeah. Councilor. Thank you.
49 And then I had a theme of yellows that I couldn't believe weren't greens, and I couldn't wait to ask that. Then when I fast forwarded to your very efficient but long presentation that you did a really good job on, I noticed that some of those same yellows were in your recommendations, and maybe I just want to underscore a few of them that there actually that I read that right. The first one was prepare report regarding current city revenues. And when that was yellow, I really couldn't understand why for the life of me. So I hope that that keeps moving towards a Green. I think that I've experienced on this council that there's a level of. Confusion around that, that very basic idea about where revenue comes from and, and how that's flowing on that same regard. I know the county is more dependent on revenues from property taxes, but when I continue to read about the deep devaluing of properties downtown and the foreclosure list, which is longer than anyone wants to talk about that, we really factor that into the equation. The cuts coming to county government based on that are going to be quite severe. If we look at the x's and o's that we've been accustomed to, and that has a large impact on our general fund as well. So I want to make sure that when we go into budget season, we have eyes wide open about this. That makes sense.
50 Yeah. Councilor, thank you for acknowledging that. If I can just responding to your question on the current revenues, just to be clear that a the colors are an art, not a science here. And I indicated that item around revenue sources is yellow, largely for the reason that councilor Smith highlighted, which is I think there's a question to be determined about how deep does that go? Right. So the yellow is not it's good, bad or indifferent. The yellow is just it's a little. There's some questions around how what are the characteristics that we want to communicate and how gradient do we want to be. So I just want to be clear. It's the Green. Yes I agree, I agree we should.
51 Do all of it. Like the designation ones which we had some civics lessons on this morning. But I think it's also really important that we look at the general fund bread and butter revenue, because that's the that's what's been dropping dramatically of late.
52 Yeah. And and to that point, the other just quick response I'd make is that we will have, I think I don't know if it's been scheduled yet, but looking to have before the end of the year, a work session or a moment for conversation around the general fund forecast. And so that will be a moment to have dialog about those realities that you're describing on the general fund side.
53 The other ones I just wrote that on real quickly is when we looked at strategic planning to define core services, and that remains yellow. Is that because like, that seems to me to be a bright Green one and so is it yellow. Why is it yellow?
54 Well, I think again, yellow does not indicate that it's, you know, should or should not do. It just means it's a fuzzier how we how to proceed. Right.
55 Dealing with the 12 of us. So it's fuzzy. But the fact is.
56 No comment.
57 The 12 of us are elected to be grown ups that show up to try to figure that out, even if you don't agree with everybody all the time. So we you need some guidance from the council on that. That's our responsibility. And I know we had to take one on it. And I think I hope we have a a take two that goes a little bit deeper. I could see raymond lee so well now, because I'm only two slots away from him. You're you're nodding. And so I look forward to your leadership helping us do that exercise this year in a new and improved manner. I hope data driven on potential action, access and identity. Identify community data resources. We talk about that a lot. We continue to struggle in the government. The government input. How much money we're spending for something as opposed to what the public wants, which is the outcomes of those investments. And we struggle with that. And then we move goalposts when we don't like it. And everyone's on to that. So I think we just need that type of transparency to our voters and taxpayers. I will end with one more. I have more, but I'm trying to pick one for time. The one that was yellow, the last one that I hope is Green is the refresh, a coordinated citywide economic development strategy. I can't think of anything more important for us to be seen as hopefully going from the 80th out of 81 across the nation on where someone would want to invest to going much higher. And I think one reason we could start to move up that that ladder is if leadership shows that we actually have an economic development strategy. I think the body up here is really struggling with that. And there's partizan nipping at this, and it's getting in the way of how we can provide some clarity for the marketplace and which goes well beyond Portland. And I hope that we take some more time to get more clear about what the dreamers of this city want this city to be. This was a city that was built upon a lot of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurism. A lot of people that built small businesses that became larger. And right now, when I listen to people talk about their kids not moving back, their kids are now in their 30s. It's because they don't think portland's a place that they can do that anymore. And so we have to not allow that to be the story, unless we want to be an isolated island and the rest of the nation. So I hope that we can really get down into those conversations. And I hope that the people that showed up in that group had some understanding of that. We had about half the people there, those that want money from the trough called government. And then we had a few that are generators of revenue. And I hope we continue to listen to those who generate revenue for the city so that they continue to want to do that here. I will always be a champion for trying to create more revenue for my hometown, and I want to make sure I got those out as I glance through this.
58 Thank you. Thank you councilor.
59 Thanks, councilor Ryan councilor Pirtle-guiney. And then we'll go back to councilor Green, actually.
60 Going back to councilor Green first. Okay. Thank you. I missed the word then. First off, thank you for convening this group. Thank you for putting in the work. I know this is something that we talked about a lot over the first year that we were all here. And it's great to see some tangible items come out of it. And thank you to councilor Zimmerman and Green for really shepherding this through and making sure that you are able to both hear what the other folks on that group were saying and bring that to us, and also kind of read the tea leaves on how you thought we might react to things and bring that into the group. Jonas had a couple of questions as you went through this, and it it felt like there was a lot here. The way you divided it out is really helpful. There's also a lot that I think we need to dig in on where there are some policy choices. And so I have some questions about how we get to those policy choices. But the first thing that I would love to hear a little bit about is how this fits with the other conversation we're having, which is we need to change our budgeting process. We need to make sure that there's more transparency. We want some of those processes backed up and to look differently. I've asked for us to have a tool that allows for more engagement from portlanders in the budget development process. So how does this work, which I think you rightfully pointed out, says cfo and cbo all over the lead column fit with that less long range look work that we have also asked you to do. And how are you balancing those two things? What should we expect in terms of trade offs, in the timing of getting both of those done?
61 Yeah. Councilor, thank you for the question. And yeah, so certainly these actions were developed with awareness in some cases deep awareness and the example of budget process and other cases more less active awareness of lots of activities that are going on around the city, around improvements. And so largely the time frames that are identified here, the are artful decision about what, what color dot to indicate the leads. Those were identified with some knowledge of those other overlapping efforts. I mean, there is a very there is a specific item implement budget development process improvements that I would say encompasses all of that that we talked about previously in the work session. Obviously, they're kind of overlapping efforts. But but my expectation in the context of this action plan would be that all of those budget process improvements that we've talked about previously and are in motion are embedded within this work.
62 Okay. Near term, the dates are right. We can do everything medium, long term. The things that are on that crisis response list, we might need to start thinking about some trade offs. Is that a fair way to interpret what you just said?
63 With one minor caveat I would say we can we can try our damnedest.
64 At perfectly reasonable. So on that second list, the crisis response list, where we get into needing to think about some timing trade offs are these things that if you don't hear concern from us, we should consider. Assumed things that you are going to do. Or are these things where you are waiting for direction from council to put them in motion?
65 Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, my assumption is that that and frankly, my recommendation is we need to do these things. And so if unless I hear from any point of authority, absolutely do not do this, I would intend that these carry forward.
66 Okay. And that's through the crisis response and stabilization lists. Both.
67 Yeah, I think so. And I would even argue, I mean, largely into the future actions to the extent that that those are are implementable.
68 Okay. I want to note that I do agree with councilor Clarke that audit city facilities piece. We've had a number of conversations amongst this body about the importance of understanding our assets better and what we would need to do to address asset management in a more holistic way. I know there's work already happening there, but this piece around auditing our city facilities feels like an important part of that. And so however, we can make sure that that is part of the work that's moving forward, you know, not the immediate, not the now list, but not the we'll get to this in 2 or 3 years list either. I think that's a really important piece for stabilizing not just our near-term finances, but our, our assets and our longer term responsibilities as well. I also just want to note on the revenue piece, I think it is really important to have those. Identifications of revenue, prospective and current revenue sources on the crisis response list. I want to make sure that whatever we identify as a potential prospective revenue source is not limited to what we can do in the near term, but also goes through a filter of what the. What the possibility is there and what the impact is. I believe councilor Morillo talked about being aware of regressive policies moving forward, and I think there are some really important screens we need to put on that piece before we get too far. So I think that the report, the identification. Great to see that on a near-term list. I don't want us to move faster than we can evaluate things, though, that come out of that report. I hope we get more time to give you feedback on each individual thing. I don't want to go deep into all of these right now, but wanted to get a little more information there about what you were looking at in terms of the timeline. I also will just pull out that piece around support for council and budget actions that you have on here, and I think it is really important if we move forward with some changes from what we've had in the past, that that position still stay within cbo and support us with the full knowledge and access to resources that the rest of the team within the budget office has, so that we are operating from the same information that the mayor is operating from, that the city administrator is operating from as we move forward, I actually think a lot of what you have before us gives us the opportunity to see our budget work as a centralized asset that serves the work of the administration, the executive and council, and many of these changes could allow you all to be that central point of expertise for us. As you look at what is the clearinghouse for budget information? That is one of those as well, and I hope that we maintain that as a central point again, so that we are getting the same information that the other branches are receiving.
69 Great. Thank you councilor.
70 Thank you.
71 Thank you councilor. We'll go to councilor Green and then council president Dunphy.
72 Thank you councilor. Thanks again. Jonas. This was a slog, but you laid out a lot of really important stuff. And thanks for kind of teeing up. And thanks to my colleagues for engaging with it with openness. And, you know, I think productivity that's really important. I just want to pull out a few things that I thought about a lot during the process. And then I was glad to see your part of the, the sets of actions and themes that emerge. I want to speak first to the span of control piece. Councilor Novick. Thanks for. You've brought that up multiple times that we need to have that discussion, and that's good. I just wanted to let you guys know that I, in my check in with the city administrator just yesterday, I got an update on the state of play of the Green seven budget note, which is doing some of that work. And what the city administrator is going to do is go further than the positions that were envisioned in Green seven. And I, I'm really encouraged by the direction I'm seeing. And I think what mr. Lee indicated was that the intention is to have that information and those learnings available as part of the city administrator's report. Do you want to say briefly, any more than that on that?
73 Yes, councilor Green, as we continue to kind of look at overall kind of staffing span of control where we stand as an organization from a leadership capacity. And we know as it relates to staffing span of control contracts, these are all things that we want to make sure that we do a fair analysis on and assessment of where we stand as a city, and making sure that we are also providing that information to city council. As you are deliberating on the overall city budget within this report, as it relates to staffing, I will want to add some type of analysis on what I see overall for the city, but also some recommendations as it relates to where there may be areas for improvement for us. Or if I'm seeing, hey, the numbers are what they are, I would not recommend changing things in these areas, but maybe in this other area. But we just want to make sure that we're providing a comprehensive analysis of that to the council. But also I want to make sure that I'm providing you my professional opinion on the matter as well.
74 I appreciate that and look forward to seeing that, and we'll all be better off for it as we go into the next budget. So that's you know, I think the thing is, it's connecting the next budget, but also with this longer view, which was the whole point of this stabilization exercise, I'll speak briefly to biennial budgeting. I don't I agree that's going to be probably one of the biggest, the toughest ones that we might want to tackle. And for that reason, it probably doesn't need to be the first. Like we have other things that are low hanging fruit that we want to address earlier on. So I support that being sort of not the highest priority as somebody who is who is sort of advocating for biennial budget in those groups, I just want to make my own case. When I think that we need to move to tier two year rate setting cycles for our water and sewer utilities and our transportation utility fee kind of rate refresh, I think a two year biennium is appropriate for capital project intensive utilities. And I think aligning a budget setting process such that that's either in the off years, you're considering the rate proposal or subsequent or contemporaneously, you're considering that that helps us figure out how the rest of the enterprise interacts with those rate funded bureaus, because there's not a clean delineation always. Right. So that's, that's kind of my main motivation. And also. It may be too difficult for us to do. And there's pros and cons to it. So I'm not going to die on that hill. But. I do think though, there's one area that we talked a lot about, which I'm glad to see in here, which is sort of a refresh of our reserves policy. And that's one of your high priority actions. I think if we're going to think about biennial budgeting, it needs to be in the context of what other policies we adopt to make that workable. And the reserves policies is an inherent piece of that. I see peter in the back. We're always talking about this, but really this is, you know, I know peter's thinking about it right now and forecasting our revenue. We know we know blt is volatile. It's a volatile source of our revenue. And so, you know, I support any methodology that allows us to have some certainty that our budgeted programs over a couple years that we want to say these are council's priorities. These are the mayor's priorities. This is this is where the city should be going, that we're forecasting the revenue sufficient to meet that. But if we're having overages, like if there are tail years where you have like a really good year or a bad year, we're adopting a reserves policy that trims the volatility in those tails, that there's a parallel conversation going on at the state right now vis a vis the kicker. And so I just think you can't control the market. And the market determines blt. So but we can control our what we assume for the blt, I think is kind of where I'm going with that. And we've already started. I mean, the city's already started going down a blt stabilization road. Anyway. We did that in the last budget cycle. So I know we're heading in that direction. I didn't want to miss an opportunity to uplift that. Revenue is actually a big topic that we talked about in this space, and that's going to be an area where a lot of people, I think, have tension and revenue is both, you know, economic development as councilor Ryan is right to point out. But it's also our tax policy. And so in your in the memo that came from the cfo as well as there was there was a there was a memo from labor from like, I think every every bargaining unit at the city of Portland during the budget cycle that laid out a series of suggestions and recommendations, I see lori smiling because you probably had a pen on that. There was one area that said, let's revisit the ceo pay ratio tax, and that was also mentioned in the cfo's report. And I just want to let my colleagues know that councilor Morillo and I today have introduced an update to that tax that we think is going to raise $72 million on average in new revenue, while providing relief to small businesses. So please check your email. You know look for that to come to the committee of the whole on October 8th. And let us know what you think. But I know that's a little out of sequence, but I think that if we don't try to do something to raise that revenue in the immediate term, then we're going to be dealing with cuts budget for four years. And I think continuing to make cuts into the city's core services undermines economic development. And so I just wanted just wanted to announce that. And I think I'll leave it there.
75 Thank you, councilor. And if I can just also maybe acknowledge that a point that I don't know if you intentionally made, but it's a really, really good observation that I want to take a second to lean into. You know, you mentioned the importance of the revenue assessment and the revenue conversation, forecasting, budget, process improvements policy. The point is that they are all part of an ecosystem, right? And so while these are listed out as discrete actions, the reality is it's all extremely interactive. And so I just wanted to lean into that a little bit, that it is really hard to isolate any one of these without impacting and sort of forcing some conversation about, about many of them simultaneously. And that's also why they're sort of packaged largely in the way they are to recognize that we have to do some of that work simultaneously. So thank you for, for kind of the opportunity to call that out.
76 You're welcome. And I just wanted to, before I yield because of that interactivity, because there's like an inherent connectedness between the reserves policy and our budget priorities and our revenue structure. The proposal that councilor, Morillo here, Morillo and I have filed will need to be supported by reserves policy. Like if we were to go down that road as a body, we would need to make sure that we're assuming and recognizing that the volatility in the blt would be amplified, I think, by a change in the upper end of that surtax. And so don't want to sugarcoat that. I think that's that's something that we need to wrestle with if we decide to increase our ability to pay for things. Thanks.
77 Thank you, councilor Green, council president Dunphy, followed by councilor Zimmerman.
78 Thank you. Cfo biery thank you for this presentation today. Thank you for all the work that came into this. But, colleagues, during the break, I actually I learned some information that was not included here, and I think it would have actually helped inform my my position in throughout this work session today as jonas birthday. So happy birthday, jonas, 21 years old. I hope your first legal beer is something pink and shiny for dolly parton.
79 You know, after after being 21 for so many years, over and over and over, it gets better. Thank you, council president. And just as a local government cfo, right. What birthday present could be better than talking about financial stabilization with my friends? So, so thank you.
80 It's the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you for all you're doing, jonas.
81 Thank you.
82 He told me I had two sentences and I didn't know. Yeah. All right. Happy birthday, councilor Zimmerman.
83 I thought we were about to get hit with some surprise there. Dunphy. All right, barry, happy birthday. I actually think, colleagues, it is interesting to hear that both councilor Green and I are reacting somewhat positively to the idea of a biennial budget. And so I want to lift that up because it's one of those ideas that is a big lift. You've heard concerns from our cfo within the work group. There were concerns, and at the same time, it did continue to at least have, okay, say, baby legs. I do want to offer up just because I think I might be one of the only ones who've worked in a municipality that has had one of these. Right? And while I wasn't sure I liked it when I was a deputy city manager in a city with a biennial, there is an attractiveness, given the host of the topics that you saw laid out today, and a timeline that is not supportive of achieving all of those topics, necessarily, that I actually think some of the get ahead of it work maybe more achievable if you're not constantly moving into budget adopted now budget prep mode. And so I do offer that as it's I think this is one of the things that's nice about this work group, which is there were some hard stuff put up there that is worthy of intellectual debate and where we could go. And at the city level in, in one of the cities that I've worked in, I will say it was it was pretty good. And I was surprised that it was pretty good, having come from two municipalities where we were very much we were always in the rhythm. So I do offer that up. And then the overall, what I'm looking at this for is what I've appreciated is the the buckets and the umbrellas kind of the words I keep using and the classification of different items with what I, what I'm taking is this is happening is that there are going to be some things in here that when you peel back the onion a little bit and understand what they mean in the specifics, there's going to be some sacrifices to the to the either the level of service or the type of program. And I guess I'm, I'm signaling that I'm ready for some of that will come forward. And I also plan to take a look at when it comes to amendments or it comes to things that the administration proposes in the new in the new budget pilot programs, those types of things. I guess I'm going to hold this up as kind of like, where would this fit within the within the scope of what this group put forward to help me evaluate a little bit more on the administrative. More of a should it happen, not, not can it happen? And that helps me. I think that the first two years of this government could largely for me, be signaled, as we passed a lot of things that we care about, or we signaled a lot of things that we care about, and part of the job, having done it for so long as a staffer, as an administrator and now as an elected, is there's also a there's also a patience for the things you care about, because there's not everything can be achieved in the first fell swoop. And so there are going to be some good ideas that maybe don't fit into alignment with this. And I will be kind of using this maybe as cover to say, you know, maybe not this year, because that doesn't really fit with our, with our year one, year two, year three aspect of the, of the mitigation plan. So just signaling that for folks. And again, I, as one of the people who was in the room for all of this, I'm not going to debate too much of it. I'm really kind of I'm taking notes for what everybody's saying, but appreciate that. I think everybody's coming to this fairly intellectually and open to the ideas and the volunteers work. So thank you.
84 Thanks. Councilor Zimmerman, I'm next in the queue and I'm last in the queue. So folks, if you have other things, please feel free, especially if you haven't used your your full time to, to do so. Thanks, jonas. Thanks to everybody who was on the working group. I particularly want to shout out noah bernstein d two small business owner. In addition to making a mean bagel at bernstein's. Also thank you for for volunteering here. I also think that I'd like to see more small business owners involved in this, and I understand that that makes it hard to schedule these sorts of things. And I know it's hard to just include more folks. I think that's something that everybody who's not in that line of work and hasn't been in the past, it's good for everyone to experience that because it's hard to schedule as a small business person. I also want to start by saying, I agree generally with the first points that councilor Ryan was making there. I think the first three were looking back 10 to 15 years, looking at money, going out to orgs, non-profits as well as private businesses, and then on the importance of revenue report, as well as what he said about digging deep into the bread and butter revenue, not just, you know, you can go there quicker than to all the other little sources. And I also want to partially agree about the economic development strategy. One thing I haven't heard much of that we talked about prosper, but I think that should be something on the elected side. I'd like to hear the mayor's economic development goals because I haven't outside of commercial real estate. I haven't heard anything about that. So I think that's a worthwhile thing to to talk about getting into the recommendations, really appreciate the advocacy for avoiding a regressive tax structure. On the developing policy guidance. I'll just echo what and I'll echo what my colleagues have said about that being more our wheelhouse and a 2.0 of our strategic priority setting seeming to be the best way to do that on one b, I really want to uplift the one time resources piece. We we continue to have a problem with programs maintained as the funding drops off the balance sheet. And so it's that year two problem when your one revenue goes away, but the program continues. Appreciate everything you said about aligning things to community outcomes. And I think this is where maybe the new citywide performance position in office are going to be very helpful as it relates to analytical support. I think this is the place to talk about a legislative budget, office, a legislative budget, you know, staff really about not having the the same source of analysis that led to the mayor's budget. If that's going to try to inform us potentially changing it. And so I think that independence is really vital for this. On the the piece about regional coordination, I really appreciate the thing about iga templates. I love the idea of making that more transparent for potential partners for the public and to council as well, and also to ensure that the template includes clear at least a default of clear opt outs and regular cycles and cadences for renegotiation of terms as needed. Some of these things that we get into, especially these 25 year deals, at least having a place where we can say at this stage along the way, here's a place to revisit this. The state piece is great, I think. I agree, I think everybody said that they support the idea of going down to the state and talking about at least measure five and 50. I appreciate that the kicker was also mentioned in a later slide. On our internal piece, the span of control. And I'd also add degrees of separation in terms of layers of management, are things that I'm really interested in involving frontline workers and efforts, as mentioned there to my intention is to bring that discussion, which has been on our unscheduled. To the committee, the whole in probably December, at the rate we're going the first week or second week in there. So I just wanted to flag that. And then I thought there was a lot to dig into in the other related actions section. And I really appreciate you bringing that up. Budget advisory committees, loved everything in there, but did want to make sure that council is involved in that as one of the leads on it. I do think this is a place where it's it's we need the same input from the community. And what councilor Pirtle-guiney was talking about with access to information applies to community input, to economic development strategy. Same idea, not just prosper. I think both mayor and council are a part of that. I've been waiting on anything that's not commercial real estate related from them as well. So would love to have that. I appreciate what council vice president Clark and somebody else I can't remember who sorry said about the footprint and reducing the footprint of city buildings. This has been something that has come up in a couple of the contracts. When we're replacing a location with a new place. I think we did this for the community safety folks recently, and I really is supportive of it. I just want to make sure that I'm putting on the record here that we're not just prioritizing our budget, but also the geographical reach of city buildings. For example, if we were if the the next leases that are up or the buildings we have in d1, I think we should keep in mind that we need a presence in east Portland to kind of thing. I know that that's something that's already on the radar, but I wanted to to mention that this is also really important for things like fire stations and community centers, which already have a disproportionate infrequency on the east side. Okay. I wanted to follow up with both you and city administrator lee. There's a piece on collect and share bureau innovations. A while ago, I asked about, is there a place to suggest for employees to suggest things anonymously? So it's not just what's already been implemented at the bureau is being shared, which is vital, but also the ideas that maybe never have had the chance to be tried. And I know that was something that lee had expressed some interest in. Has anything has there been any progress yet on that?
85 Not yet. I think part of the conversation that we'll have as I get some of these other roles in the organization and strategy change management is really taking a look at that. And how do we set something up that when people are bringing ideas, is something that we can actually have an evaluation process on? Just a capacity and bandwidth thing right now is the reason why we haven't been able to really just pick up strides with it yet.
86 I appreciate that. I like how you reconfigured everything into sort of waves in those sort of. Slide 36 and on, and I appreciate that a lot. The, the pieces I wanted to highlight here that I haven't already mentioned are the court community engagement piece is in addition to just the budget advisory piece. I think we have an opportunity now with with the staffing changes there to reconsider how engagement lives in the city. Org chart, and I really want to take that opportunity. I know we funded a position that hasn't been filled yet for that and council operations. That's a part of that solution. Obviously, the civic life and the chief engagement officer position are a huge part of that, too. 38 I've also mentioned the same thing about prosper already. And then the one time resources to me, I like everything in here. I just like to see it earlier because I think it's it's the single thing. Councilor Smith has talked about this a lot too. The idea that we just keep adding things that we don't have a plan to pay for in the future. We have one time costs, sorry, one time grants or funding sources. The shelters are the key example of this, and it's such a huge part of our general fund at this point that I think it would be remiss to not explicitly mention that. So those are all the the sort of run through of, of, of that and wanted to get done. But I really appreciate how you framed this. You said that your goal was to put an end to the financial madness of the past few years, to rebuild trust in the city as a responsible steward of the public's dollars, to improve information, transparency and decision making, and ultimately, to effectively and efficiently deliver services to portlanders. And all I can say to that is amen. So thank you.
87 Thank you, councilor.
88 Colleagues, we have 41 minutes left and nobody's in the queue. So I'm going to do the pause for dramatic effect and give folks a chance, if they'd like to get on, on the queue. Seeing none. That's the the sound, the sign that we've done well and primarily you and the workgroup. So thank you, everybody for that. Thanks, colleagues. And I guess we can wrap up a little early. Thanks so much. And I'll wrap up the work session at 4:20 p.m.