The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-03-12

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (17,832 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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To each their own. Let's. Oh, I got unmarked.

Three seconds, too.

All right. Good morning. I call the last meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to order. It is Thursday, March 12th at 9:32 a.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?

Good morning. Avalos Kanal here. Ryan. Novick here.

Morillo here. And I see councilor Avalos is here. Ashley, will you please read the statement of conduct?

Welcome to the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance at the committee agenda at w-w-w. Dot gov slash slash slash climate resilience and land use committee, or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If a public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals might testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order, disruptive conduct conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberation will not be allowed if it. If disruption. If disruption warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee might take a short recess or reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying and state your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify your organization. You represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls their name. Thank you.

Thank you so much. This morning we have three items on our agenda. We're going to be considering an appointment to the historic landmarks commission. Then we will go over a resolution to expedite plans for zoning the inner east side for all to build more housing. And finally, we'll hear an update from our chief sustainability officer and climate staff on the city and county's climate and energy trends. Diego, will you please read the first item.

Item one re appoint members to the historic landmark commission for a term to expire August 2nd, 2030.

Thank you. And I believe the Portland permitting department awesome is here with a report requesting the reappointment to the historic landmarks commission. So I will turn it over to you to to give a presentation.

Good morning. My name is Eric couch. I'm the director of Portland permitting and development.

Good morning, stacie monroe, Portland planning and development. Give me just a minute to share my screen to get the presentation.

Adam. Did it log me out?

For the record, the city would fall apart without adam.

There to kind. Go 17. He joined the party.

Okay.

Get your presenters notes up.

Oh, I don't have my. Great. Thank you.

Go ahead.

Do you want to.

Go ahead? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Good morning. Thank you. Apologies. We're here seeking the reappointment of a current historic landmarks commissioner. For a second four year term. Peggy moretti will be filling the position of nonprofit management, and she'll continue to bring her valuable experience and expertise to the commission. With this reappointment, it will ensure the historic landmarks commission will continue to conform their perform their duties as a decision making body, and an advisor on all preservation matters.

Where's my next?

Okay, first, just a little bit about the commission. The commission provides leadership and expertise on maintaining and enhancing portland's historic and architectural heritage. They're also decision making body on some historic resource reviews and advisory body to council on some demolition reviews. They provide advice on historic preservation matters and coordinate historic preservation programs in the city. They also actively participate in the in the development of design guidelines in historic districts. The commission's. Composed of seven members with an interest, competence and knowledge of historic preservation. These members are appointed by council for a four year term and with an option for a second term. Not sure why my.

Working.

To learn more about the historic landmarks commission. They are presenting their state of the city preservation report at the end of this month. At their hearing on March 30th at 130. Adam, I'm having some connection issues.

I think my, my zoom also closed out. So let's pause for a second.

Adam, for the record, it looks like zoom workplace is having an issue mine on my computers as well. Let me check into that for a moment. If we could recess for about five minutes while I check into that.

Yeah, let's recess for five minutes. Do I need to use the gavel again? Yeah, recess. We'll be back at 945.

The captions once more testing captions. Testing the timer, man.

No snow day. Guys.

I think some folks up here are having difficulties. If I don't know if adam's around, he's probably trying to save the whole city right now, but. All right. It looks like our technical difficulties are getting resolved. So if folks could finish up their conversations and the presenters come back to the front, I know it's a little bit earlier than 945, but I want to make sure we have time for all our agenda items.

Yeah, sure.

Okay, great. Diego, do we need to wait at all for opensignal or is it rolling?

I believe we are rolling.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you again. Do we need any help setting up the the presentation?

Adam, it's.

Not showing on the screen.

Sorry, I forgot about that part.

It's daylight savings week, so none of this counts.

I agree.

Council, do we need to start over or do we start from where we left off?

How many? We didn't even get through one slide, did we?

I think.

There's three slides.

Yeah.

Okay. We'll just start over.

Okay.

Take it from the top. Thanks.

You're welcome.

I hope you all.

And then you're good to go. I'll get that. It's up.

Okay, great. All right. Good morning again. Stacie monroe. For the record, Portland permitting and development. I'm here to give you a little more information about the historic landmarks commission to support a reappointment that we're bringing to this committee today. Some quick background on the historic landmarks commission. They provide expertise on maintaining, enhancing, enhancing portland's historic and architectural heritage. They're also a decision making body for some historic resource reviews. And they also bring some demolition reviews to city council. They provide advice on historic preservation matters and coordinate historic preservation programs within the city. They also actively participate in the development of design guidelines for historic districts. They're composed of seven members, all with an interest, competence, and knowledge of historic preservation. The members are appointed by city council for a four year term, with an option for a second year term. To learn more about the historic landmarks commission. They are presenting their state of the city preservation report at the end month. At their hearing on March 30th at 130. Council and committee are welcome to attend, and staff can provide a link to that presentation to that hearing, if you'd like. So a little bit of information about peggy. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the commission. She's been serving on the commission since 2022, and she is also currently the vice chair. She's the retired executive director of restore Oregon and has a deep understanding of issues around historic preservation, including the many challenges technical, financial and regulatory facing those engaged in the preservation work. She also has two other active memberships. One is on the drac, which is the development review advisory committee, where she works to increase the understanding and collaboration between these two groups. She's also on the board of directors for the bosco milligan foundation, which is housed in the architectural heritage center. If peggy is reappointed, her term will run from August 3rd of this year until August 2nd of 2030. With this reappointment, the historic landmarks commission will have all of its seven positions filled. We appreciate your support in considering this reappointment for approval and recommendation to council. Peggy is in attendance for any questions you may have as well as our chair, andrew Smith. Thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, diego. Did anyone sign up for testimony?

No one has signed up.

Wonderful colleagues. I'm hoping to end this item at ten or at 955 so we can stay on schedule. But please raise your hands and ask any questions.

Councilor Kanal thank you. I just wanted to quickly ask two questions. One when you do. Reappointments is it an open process? Is it a kind of yes no to the existing person? How what's your process for this?

Reappointments do not go through a new recruitment. There is the option. It's. It depends on the on the current member. If they would like to do a second term, then we bring it to this committee and then to council. We do not do a new recruitment for reappointments unless the member determines they do not want a second term, that at that point we would open a new recruitment.

Okay. And then the other question I had was the term ends in August. Is there. This is great to come early. Is there a reason that it's early?

Yes.

Because we're ending or.

Well, we were told that there is a period of no appointments bringing to coming to council because of the budget season, which goes to the beginning of July. So we thought it might be cutting it close if we waited until July. If the position turns out in August. So we're just getting ahead.

Okay, thanks. I'm mostly asking both of these because the appointments are moving to the committee that we're creating that I'll be chairing. So I'm trying to understand how you're doing this. Sure. While I'm while I have the floor, just I'm very grateful that peggy wants to serve another term and look forward to voting yes in a in a little bit. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Novick.

Thank you, madam chair. My question isn't really about this reappointment, but sort of about the process in general. I think that there's sometimes a tendency in our various boards and commissions that they get stacked with people who are have a particular interest in a particular perspective on a topic. And I'm just, I don't even know how the process works to recruit people to the historic landmarks commission. But I'm kind of wondering, is there any effort to like, strike a balance between people who think that anything's been around for 20 years is historic and people who think that it's lost, it's been around for 200 years. It's not historic.

We do have a diverse membership. We have people that are expertise in the field. We also have people that are just general public that have an appreciation, but maybe not the experience. So we do have a breadth of diversity and opinions on the commission. And I will say that the commission has been with this broadened membership, they have been continuing to focus on more cultural resources than physical architectural. So the the discipline is definitely expanding. And it's not it's not the precious materials as it was 20 years ago. So we do have a larger discipline on the on the commission.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thanks. I appreciate that additional context as well. Colleagues, any final questions? Speak now or forever hold your peace. I always get told you're supposed to wait an uncomfortable eight seconds and then people will raise their hands. But you know what? I like being ahead of schedule, so thank you. I would like to entertain a motion to have the appointment report. Document number 2020 6-015 be sent to full council with a recommendation. It be accepted.

So moved.

Second.

The motion has been moved by councilor Novick and seconded by councilor Kanal. Is there any further discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll. Avalos I.

Kanal thanks for stepping up again, I.

Novick I.

Morillo thanks for your service. I the motion carries and the appointment report. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm reading your part.

Go for it. With four I's and one absent, the motion carries and the appointment report. Document number 2020 6-105 will be sent to the full council with the recommendation to be accepted.

Awesome. Thank you both so much. Appreciate your time today.

Thank you. Council.

Can I assume that we will hear that date in the next week or so? Do you think that council date?

I think that would be a question for the council president. Okay, so I'm not sure, but we can follow up with him.

Okay.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Diego, will you please read the next item?

Item two direct city administrator to develop accelerated timeline for the inner east side area planning project and identify future area planning and zoning actions to advance housing production goals.

Thank you. And I don't know if it's happening for my colleagues, but I see the slideshow we just saw is still on the screen.

They didn't end it up there.

Oh, okay. Now it has been ended. Okay, great. Thank you all so much for taking time to hear this resolution that came from me. Councilor Green and councilor Avalos, the inner east side for all resolution. And I think that what we're seeing across the city is that we are in a housing crisis. We are in a situation where our housing needs analysis says that we need about 6000 units a year for 20 years, and we are exceedingly far behind on that goal. We cannot wait to resolve this. So this resolution, what it does is it directs the city administrator to come back to council within 90 days with a concrete plan to accelerate inner eastside rezoning, including geographic scope, preliminary zoning concepts, affordability, displacement methodology, infrastructure alignment, revenue projections, and lessons learned from past planning failures. The goal is to have council vote on zoning changes by June 30th, 2027. But if this isn't feasible, we want transparency about how and why and what the fastest and legally, most legally defensible timeline could be. Zoning changes won't put up 10,000 units on the ground tomorrow, but there are really critical part of us addressing this crisis. And as you all know, I am a firm hater of resolutions that direct bureaus to do work that they're already doing when we don't have to actually do that, or when council could do it ourselves. This is one of the unique situations where a resolution is uniquely appropriate. This is a formal zoning process. It is entirely in the bureau's hands. There are legal requirements for public outreach to build a legally defensible case under Oregon law. This isn't something that council can just unilaterally do. It's something that we have to direct the bureau to do. And it's a perfect example of using our power as a legislative body to clearly state our priorities and our commitment to building housing when the city to make sure that we're accelerating those efforts and doing it in a legally safe way. So where the city has tried to go too far off the book on land use policies, we have been burned by a lot of those losses. They have been appealed to luba, and that's added months to years of zoning changes that should be effortless. So our job is to set priorities and be clear with the bureaus that this is a top priority. And so I'm hoping that we can get this out of committee with full support to really indicate our commitment to building more housing in the city of Portland. And this work has been directed by community advocates who have spent years pushing this forward, namely Portland neighbors welcome and tons of community organizations that join them in that work as well. So with that, I would also like to pass it over to councilor Green, who's in the audience. And then councilor Avalos, if you would like to add anything to speak to the resolution.

Thank you, chair's Morillo and Novick for recognizing me today. Thank you, councilor Morillo, for your leadership on this item and for the opportunity to join councilor Avalos as a co-sponsor. For the record, my name is Mitch Green, and I represent district four on Portland city council. I talk about the need to execute the vision of the inner eastside for all project. The way councilor Smith talks about cip, whether we are talking about economic development, infrastructure budgets and finance affordability for all portlanders or sanctuary policies, I keep coming back to the urgency of this specific work because it is a cheat code. We have to unlock so much potential. We are in a fiscal crisis. We're facing down a $170 million budget just for this next budget cycle, which is driven by cost pressures both in the public and the private sector and adjacent jurisdictions, offering an easier path to housing development. We have limited capacity to offer direct financial subsidies to development, so it's critical to pursue a low or no cost approach to developing a pro growth agenda. For Portland colleagues. I'm going to put my economist hat on for a second and say that growth is a function of land use. It's a function of local and regional macroeconomic conditions. We have limited to no control over the economic conditions we face, especially the macro conditions. But we do have control over land use. So this resolution recognizes the urgency of the moment we're in. If we change our zoning maps to enable more density per unit of land, then we can spread the cost of that land over more units of housing, which should lower the cost of production for that housing. That is how we build. That is how we grow. It also allows us to form a built environment that enables our transit agency to overcome its own cost burdens and provide some hope for avoiding the death spiral in that critical service. So land use again at the city of Portland enables transit TriMet to to, to do to provide a good service as well. I've received some outreach and testimony from supporters of this resolution that ask why we have set a deadline for receiving a zoning map and a plan for council consideration so far out. I share that concern. So I would ask this committee to put that inquiry to the bureau's staff when they when we talk to them. I'm not on this committee. Councilor Morillo chair Morillo already sort of alluded to some lengthy title, 33 constraints. But my primary motivation today and in championing supporting this resolution is to identify the legally required minimum of process. So I'm going to say that again, what is the legally required minimum process for the city of Portland to move? Not, not not what is our habits of practice, but what is the state legally required minimum process and then execute to that process? That's what I would like to see. We have waited years for this. We can't wait years more to welcome even more of our future neighbors home. Thank you. And I'll just stay up here in case there's any desire to ask me questions.

Thanks, councilor Green, councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Thank you. Yeah, this is an exciting day. As a founding board member of Portland neighbors. Welcome. I've been part of these conversations for many years about how portland's zoning rules shape where and how housing can be built. So I am proud to co-sponsor this resolution with councilors Morillo and Green, and grateful to the many advocates and community members who have pushed for years to move this work forward. Portland is facing a significant housing shortage. As we all know. We know that we need thousands of additional homes every year just to keep up with demand. And yet, our land use system still limits the amount of housing that can be built, and many of the places best positioned to support it. Too often, the places with the best access to transit, jobs, schools and services are also the places where it has historically been hardest to add new housing. So if we are serious about addressing our housing shortage, we have to be willing to examine whether our zoning rules are unintentionally holding us back. The inner eastside is one of those places. It's a part of the city where strong, with strong infrastructure, access to transit, and proximity to jobs and services. And this resolution helps ensure that we take a serious look at whether our zoning framework is allowing us to make the most of those advantages. What this resolution does is simple but important. It asks the city to accelerate work that is already underway so that we can move more quickly towards zoning updates, potential zoning updates that support housing production and housing policy. Timelines matter because land use changes take years to move through planning, analysis and legal processes, which means that the decisions we start today determine the homes that get built many years from now. If we want to see meaningful housing production in the future, we have to start that work now, and we have to approach it with a sense of urgency that matches the scale of the housing challenge that our city faces. And so this effort also has value beyond the inner east side itself. By examining how we can move zoning updates more efficiently here, we can learn lessons that help inform similar work in other parts of the city, including in districts one and two. Ultimately, this resolution is about making sure the city is moving at the pace that the housing crisis demands, and I appreciate the partnership with my colleagues on this work, and I look forward to continuing the conversation as this effort moves forward. Thank you.

Thank you so much, councilor Avalos. And I believe we have a representative from senator khan pham's office online as well for brief remarks. And then after that, we will move into a panel presentation. Erin, are you able to hear us?

Actually, senator. Fine.

I'm here. Councilors.

Oh, hi. Senator pham. Sorry, I saw you logged in as erin today.

Oh. Oh, I am so sorry.

No. No worries. Good to see you. Thanks for being here.

My staff, I think, gave me the link and that probably is what happened.

No worries. Thank you so much for being here, senator. Go right ahead.

Thank you so much. Co-chairs Novick and Morillo and members of the climate and sustainable land use committee. For the record, my name is khan pham, and I'm the state senator for district 23, representing northeast and southeast Portland. And I'm delighted to be here today to testify in support for this resolution, to rapidly advance the plan to build more homes in the central east side. So, so my support from this initiative really is based on my experience wearing a couple of different hats. So first I want to say, just as a constituent living in the jade district, I can tell you that my neighborhood is benefiting from significant new housing construction and that we would benefit even more if the entire city joined us in building new homes as well in 2024. I'm pretty proud of the 860 multi-family building permits that were issued in the entire city. About 20% of them were located in the jade district. These new homes are creating new customers for local restaurants and businesses, new places for elders to live near, grandchildren and for students who live near pcc and new writers on our bus lines. But if our neighborhood is the only place that's building new homes, that puts increased displacement and gentrification pressures on our community, which has one of the largest asian and pacific American communities in the state, the thousands of homes that are expected to be built with the passage of inner east side for all, will lead to less displacement pressure in other neighborhoods across east Portland, and it would allow all portlanders to benefit from cheaper and more affordable rents. Everyone benefits when we build more homes, and everyone benefits when we locate those homes in existing, wealthier, high amenity neighborhoods. I am also testifying to you today as the chair of oregon's senate housing and development committee. I'm speaking to you today, having just wrapped up our 2026 short legislative session, and there are few ideas that engender genuine bipartisan support and collaboration as the notion that Oregon desperately needs to build more homes to end homelessness, to tackle our housing affordability crisis, and to spur our local and statewide economy. I can't tell you how important it is for me to be able to point to bold municipal leadership from the city of Portland, to help inspire legislators to be willing to have difficult conversations with their own jurisdictions around the state. If we are able to implement this ambitious plan, it's critical not just for the inner east side of Portland, but for communities across Portland, as well as across the greater region in the state. I'm so excited to see the city responding to and working with well organized pro homes community advocates here today, and I look forward to passage of this resolution having a ripple effect and inspiring other zoning reforms statewide to build more homes for wider range of families and communities across the state. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much for joining us today, senator pham. And now we will move into a panel presentation from heidi from Portland. Neighbors. Welcome, sam keelan from strong towns pdx. Afterwards, we'll have invited testimony and then we'll open it up for public testimony. And thanks for being here. Councilor Green. Thanks for coming up here. Please introduce yourself for the record. And do you know if sam is going to be joining you in person as well, or is.

Unfortunately, he's not able to be here today, so I'll be taking over his part of the presentation.

Okay, awesome. Thank you. Heidi. Go right ahead.

Awesome. Good morning. Chairs Morillo Novick and members of the committee. I am heidi hart. I'm a volunteer with Portland neighbors. Welcome. And also a registered volunteer lobbyist with the city of Portland. We're here today on behalf of the inner east side for all campaign. Wait, no, this is not working right now. The screen sharing is paused.

Try going clicking on that. There you go.

Okay. Awesome. Perfect. Here we go. Okay. One second.

Could you send me that and I'll share it for you.

Yes. Thank you so much. Sorry for all the technical difficulties today.

I asked councilor Novick if he had any jokes for the technical difficulties portions, but he said no. This is the first time ever.

In my defense, I pleaded daylight savings time as an excuse.

Incredulous I know, right.

Thank you. He said. Next slide. Next slide.

All right. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Yeah. No, thank you so much. Go right ahead.

All right. Back at it. So we're here today on behalf of the inner east side for all campaign. And we're grateful this committee is taking up this resolution. Next slide. Portland neighbors welcome is a grassroots organization dedicated to making sure that every portlander has a safe, stable, affordable place to call home. We work on land use policy because we believe zoning is a significant tool that the city has to make that true. Next slide. The inner eastside for all campaign is simple in its vision. We legalize apartments and neighborhood corner stores in portland's east side for floors and corner stores. These are neighborhoods that already have many wonderful things. They have frequent transit, excellent bike infrastructure, proximity to jobs, and beloved commercial corridors. The only thing missing is more types of homes. For more of our neighbors, the inner east side should be a place where anyone of any age, wage, or stage of life can make a home. And right now they can't because of housing costs. And here's what we lose when we keep neighbors out of these areas. More neighbors means more customers for local businesses. More businesses mean more reasons for more neighbors to want to live there. These are exactly the kinds of positive feedback loops that make great urban neighborhoods. We just need to let more people in. Next slide. This didn't happen by accident. Before 1924, mixed uses in multiple housing types were common across these neighborhoods. Then zoning changed. Over the following decades, apartments were effectively banned across most of the inner east side. In the 1970s, the city downs in the area for racist, ageist and anti tenant reasons. That history is embedded in the map that you're looking at right now, nearly two thirds of the inner east side is still zoned low density today. As a result, new homes get pushed to busy arterial streets or pushed out entirely to neighborhoods in north and outer east Portland, where neighbors already face higher displacement risk. I live in buckman and I love my neighborhood. I can safely walk, bike and take transit for all my daily needs. I also live close to parks, grocery stores, and restaurants. I live in an apartment on a quiet street with very little car traffic and lots of tree canopy, which is possible because the ten unit apartment building I live in was built in 1963. Even with residential infill, it would still be illegal to rebuild my apartment building today. Next slide. The residential info project in 2020 was a very meaningful step. We definitely advocated for it a lot and it's worked. We've seen a significant number of homes built that simply could not have existed under the old zoning. These are homes built by local developers without requiring money from national investors. That's the proof of concept. Zoning changes fundamentally alter what is possible to build and what is not. But you can see on this map that while there are many residential infill projects built in other parts of the city, very few of them are being built in the inner east side. Land values here are significantly higher when you're spreading development costs across fewer units on expensive land. The math doesn't pencil. You need to make it legal to build more homes on one lot in order to make projects viable. Right now, portland's building has slowed down catastrophically. We can't control interest rates. We can't control the broader economy. But zoning is within council's control and it doesn't cost anything. This is a single best lever the city has and we should use it. We talk a lot about revitalizing the central city, but the neighbors who live, work and play in that central city need places to live. The east side is right there. Personally, I love that I can hop on the 15 and be downtown in literally ten minutes. It is fantastic. Next slide. So what is for all actually mean? If you look at these two maps on the left, you see current buildable capacity in the inner east side, roughly 22,000 possible homes under existing zoning, mostly on arterial streets on the right, you see what becomes possible with the conceptual zoning modeled in the inner east side infrastructure assessment that bts presented to this committee in September, over 143,000 potential homes. What are those 120,000 potential additional new homes mean? They mean more living options for all ages, wages and stages of life. They mean more residents to support neighborhood businesses and schools, and they mean more city funds as lots of redeveloped and reassessed. That is what upzoning the entire east side makes possible. The original concept for this campaign was based on bts analysis of mapping, which showed that this is a transit rich, opportunity rich area with low displacement risk. In short, it showed that this is where the city should be building more homes. We are grateful for that foundational work and all the work that the bureau has done on the housing production strategy, the entire eastside infrastructure study, and now on the inner eastside area planning project. We are committed to being real partners and seeing this work through. What we need now is a clear signal from this council that this is a high priority. We need the direction and political backing to rethink, process assumptions and move with urgency. This resolution asks for a 90 day report laying out a path to zoning changes by June 2027. Pass it. Give bts the mandate they need and will be there every step of the way. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your presentation. And now we'll have invited testimony from curtis, jake and sam if you guys want to come up councilor Green, we may need you to vacate.

I'll shift.

Good morning. Thank you guys all so much for being here. Feel free to get started. Introduce your name for the record. And I have curtis listed first, but you can really go in any order.

Sam. Go for it.

Good morning. My name is curtis reistad. I'm a lifelong Portland, Oregon third generation. I'm a native and I'm a developer and I'm committed to building affordable housing. I stand here before you with strong support for build on our east side initiative, for all their mission, is critical to create high density housing in the inner east side ensures more portlanders, regardless of their age, income, or stage in life, receive the aye, Morillo opportunities are in the areas with access to good jobs, amenities and public transit. To achieve this vision, we must do more than just rethink zoning. We need to think of f a r floor area ratios and step down heights because those are artificial constraints to creating that density. So it does no good if you increase the density and the zoning, if you can't actually achieve more density, eliminate, I urge you, please eliminate these artificial constraints on building that allows developers like myself to build. Currently, I have an example of this. I'm building on 33rd and powell. I have a planned 70 unit apartment house that will be leed platinum, will provide car share, use geo exchange to reduce the cost for the tenants. Yet I am forced to purchase f a r to meet the maximum height with the height that I have. I can't build that high because I'm constrained by f a r. I just accomplished building 105 unit on 99th and glisan, which should allow me to transfer density, yet I'm not allowed to transfer it. These are technicalities that put obstacles in front of developers and builders. I strongly agree with commissioner Green. Eliminate our obstacles so more people can develop and build affordable housing. I strongly urge the committee to approve this and also consider a 10 or 20 year ban on f a r for affordable housing. We want affordable housing in this city. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Go right ahead.

Good morning, council members. My name is jake antos. I'm a member of Portland neighbors. Welcome. And I normally work in construction as a project engineer or site superintendent. But today I'm here before you furloughed a casualty of our local industry's recession with building permits at their lowest levels since 2010. It's hard to be optimistic, but I am. Portland is a national leader in rethinking urban zoning and a meaningful portion of the units being permitted and built right now are newly legalized infill projects that may represent my best opportunity to get back to work. A denser, zoned inner east side will open up an abundance of opportunity for local builders like me. Our city will not meet production targets by large apartments on our arterials alone. We need these modest buildings on quiet streets, homes that are cheaper to build and easier to finance with local dollars that will greatly expand the range of walkable bikeable housing opportunity near transit jobs and under-enrolled schools. Why the need to accelerate this project? Officially, we're in a housing emergency, yet the status quo process for this project is potentially upwards of three years, is what I've heard to a worker and a struggling economy, or a family without stable housing. That's a lifetime. During the COVID 19 emergency, we didn't wait years to implement protocols. We acted on the best available info because the cost of perfect being the enemy of the good was measured in lives. Housing is not substantially different here. The the benefits of acceleration far outweigh the discomfort of a shorter comment period, as long as it's legal and the added work for the city administration to more closely coordinate the project across bureaus. This is an all hands on deck crisis moment for our city. Accelerating this common sense project is the city meeting the moment. We can't control interest rates or wall street investors, but we can control the colors on a zoning map and our planning process, our city's housing production crisis suffers a death by a thousand cuts. Please take this and all future opportunities to provide the low cost, high impact healing of those cuts that we need. Let's make sure that when the economy shifts, we are already breaking ground on the homes that are current and future Portland neighbors need every day. Makes a difference. Thanks.

All right. Good morning. Climate, climate resilience and land use committee chairs and members. My name is sam diaz, executive director at 1000 friends of Oregon. We've been the home for statewide, regional and Portland centric pro-housing campaigns like Portland for everyone and anti-displacement pdx. I just want to share three lessons learned as a community organizer and coalition manager for those campaigns, and really excited to see Portland neighbors welcome. And and the leadership here at city hall build on those collective wins. The first is this resolution helps us simulate out scenarios. Community fought long and hard for the anti-displacement protections. In our comprehensive plan. We really need to understand when we do pull these levers in our comprehensive plan, are we helping our community members who are vulnerable to the market forces? Are we helping them? And I think for the residential infill project, that was actually the first time the city did a comprehensive anti-displacement risk analysis, and it showed that overall, it reduced the the displacement risk. But in three neighborhoods, it actually increased it. We need that kind of information coming from the bureaus in order to not stop the conversation, but actually to guide some of the city budget conversations about, okay, how do we do technical assistance? How do we do homeownership assistance? How do we do rental eviction? And how do we make sure as community members, we're canvasing on those homes and door knocking to make sure that those homeowners who may get predatory offers are actually giving the information so they're not swept up into the market forces and displaced. And the second is, let's remember our values in this conversation. I love a good conversation about f a, r and density bonuses, but height density are not the values here. They are our tools. This is about opportunity. This is about stability. This is about affordability. That is the kind of action that it is so great to be here in support of. And I just want to make sure as we talk about those technical terms, we don't lose sight of the values that are driving these conversations. And the last is, and you've heard this, and I hope you felt it, and I really hope the bureau staff feel it is that Portland is a national leader. I think it was week after week. And in 2020, pandemic summer was a blur, but it felt like we were at council chambers quite a bit with how many zoning ordinances were coming before us as a city, whether it was residential infill project, dosa zoning changes that now allow churches to partner with affordable housing developers. But you see and you feel it in our neighborhoods. I definitely feel it in your university park district two, and that's where I see on my runs the cottage clusters and the duplexes and fourplexes and the 30, the 30 unit apartment building right next to the church, right next to greeley. So Portland is a national leader. We actually got a white house nod, and national funders are looking at Oregon and funding. You know, Portland neighbors welcome a thousand friends of Oregon to keep up this momentum, to keep this community organizing. So I know we talk a lot and see a lot of headlines that are doom and gloom, but I actually want us all to be very proud and protective of this amazing leadership that community and the city have been able to do, and really tough times to create housing choices and be able to set a different course. That really opens up opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you so much, sam. Beautifully said. Couldn't have said it better myself. I really appreciate all of you coming and testifying. And for our earlier presenter heidi as well. And now we will move into public testimony. Diego, I believe we have three people signed up.

Do you have my card? That's correct.

That's correct. First up, we have sara taylor, followed by wes ayers. Last indie namkung, who will join us virtually, actually.

I'll be right back.

Well, thank you guys so much for being here. Please introduce your name for the record and then whichever person would like to get started and get us started.

Okay. My name is sara taylor and I live in district four in the linton neighborhood, where thousands of houses were torn down to make the ci hub. So just want to acknowledge that I lived near lloyd center for decades and raised 17 foster children there, most of them refugees. Lloyd center helped me raise those children. I am here to ask you in a brief three minutes to include lloyd center in your study to stop the demolition, stop the throwing it into a landfill and make part of your study be to look at how we can use that footprint of 29 acres for low income housing. Right now it's scheduled for demolition and it's scheduled for 14 towers of housing, not affordable market rate. You are footing the bill for the new roads. And in a transportation crisis, you want to come and say to the people who don't want lloyd center torn down that you're going to pay for the new roads for a new york city stock exchange company. We have 11,000 signatures of people who do not want that. The neighborhood associations don't feel that they've been consulted. I'm just asking you to stop the demolition. Come and talk to me. Come and walk with me and see what's happening. You need housing. That is an indoor walking trail for elderly, for the disabled, for so many people. You are not going to afford another one and a half climate controlled walking trail in the city of Portland. Again, if there's a wire wildfire, if it's too cold, if it's too hot, you can use some of those spaces for emergency housing. You can use, you can tear down some of it. We're just asking how to use that to support neighbors in that in the whole region, not tear down an ice skating rink that will cost you 50 million. To ever replace. You have to look at your housing and provide services for people or otherwise. It's not going to work. And I say this from the bottom of my heart. I don't want to be here. I work on north reach issues. I am here because I have a gallery right there and my heart has been opened by what I see. So all I'm saying is, come walk with me and let's look at how that can be used to support your work on this resolution. Thank you.

Thank you for being here today.

Hi. My name is wes ayers. I'm a district two resident and the principal of ayers design build. I've worked in multi-family housing design, development and construction since 2005. I've served on the aia Portland board of directors, architects without borders, and today I come here in support with Portland neighbors. Welcome. My. My design build firm specializes in helping small investors and developers navigate the design, permitting, and construction processes for multi-family housing from inception through completion. I strongly support this resolution. In 2015, Portland declared a housing emergency. That was over a decade ago now, and portland's own housing production strategy has targeted that. We need 6000 more new units per year to close a decade of underproduction. We're building at roughly half that rate, and that gap has consequences for every renter in this city. We must build more. The inner east side is the right place to act. Adjacent to the central city, transit served infrastructure largely in place. We have a high, excuse me, high opportunity, high value neighborhoods where hard working people cannot afford to live. That is the inequity we're here to address. Large portions of portland's urban core remain zoned exclusively for single family homes. Portland has built its identity as a model of smart urban planning, a city that chooses density over sprawl that drew a line around itself and said, we grow up, not out, and that reputation is worth protecting by allowing buildable density in the neighborhoods closest to our urban core. This is a repairable policy choice, and this resolution brings the effort to connect, to correct it. Interest rates and construction costs are challenging right now, which is exactly why zoning density, the variable this council controls, needs to be pushed forward. We have projects in our office right now. Lots ready to be developed, designs stalled, just a few units shy of financial feasibility. The demand is there. Our investors are eager to develop. We're ready to build. Portland needs both substantial up zoning and zoning reform, not just moderate adjustments. Height restrictions f a r limits, lot coverage limits, outdated stair and elevator requirements, and layers upon layers of well-intended design constraints substantially limit how much housing we can actually build. Bonuses and fee waivers. They're great, but they cannot compensate for the cumulative weight of all of these restrictions. I have been designing and building housing in Portland for over two decades. I know that what the code allows and what it prevents, and right now, it prevents meaningful housing production by keeping portland's urban core at a suburban scale. This council has the authority to change that. And I've submitted detailed written testimony, and I hope it serves as a useful resource for bts to develop and implement. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here today. And, indy, I see we have you online today.

Yes. Good morning, chair. Morillo Novick council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. For the record, my name is indy namkung. I'm here on behalf of verdi. Verdi's mission is to serve communities by building environmental wealth through social enterprise, outreach and advocacy. We're a community based organization rooted in cully. Cully is one of the more affordable neighborhoods in Portland, one of the most racially and economically diverse. And we're not part of the inner east side, but we've been supporting inner eastside for all for years. And we're here this morning in support of chair Morillo councilor Avalos and councilor Green's resolution that would direct city staff to complete the zoning work for the inner east side by June of 2027. And we support this because over the last few decades, many people have moved to cully and neighborhoods like ours on the urban fringe because the rising housing costs and closer in neighborhoods have pushed them out of the city center, away from the services, the frequent transit and the amenities that we see in inner Portland. And that's happening because for decades, our city has been artificially suppressing more homes in the high resource and high opportunity neighborhoods of the inner east side, protecting exclusionary zoning and banning new apartments where previously they'd been allowed. And instead, we've let areas like albina, like outer southeast Portland carry far more than their fair share of burden in building the homes that are growing city needed through the 90s and 2000, while wealthier, whiter inner neighborhoods with more sway in city hall retained their exclusive single family zoning. When the neighborhood's best suited to develop without displacing, people won't pull their weight. That pressure and less affluent residents get exported to the places economically vulnerable people already live. Our 2023 housing needs analysis for Portland identified neighborhoods classified as economically vulnerable as cully. That's foster-powell. That's a really big chunk of district one. And those are the places where people are most likely to be displaced. If we ask those neighborhoods to carry the burden of solving our housing crisis by building our way out. And right now, much of our buildable land is located in those economically vulnerable areas. Without some intervention, we are primed to do the same thing again. But inner eastside for all can be our intervention by bringing more homes to the part of the city that can welcome more neighbors most easily, we can ease the pressure on more vulnerable areas like the one we work in. You've heard from other speakers this morning about why it's so important to keep this planning process moving forward. What thoughtful zoning changes, driven by both data and values, can offer to current and future portlanders who might live in a home that this plan makes possible, or might start a business that serves their new neighbors. And by adding a half century of exclusive zoning and bringing more homes to the inner eastside, you can offer the communities who are most at risk of displacement, the gift of time to stabilize and to develop without displacement, so that we can stick around to be a part of our neighborhoods future too. Please support this resolution and thank you for your time.

Thank you so much, indy. Appreciate you being with us today. And now, colleagues, we have time for discussion. Councilor Green is also here to help answer any questions we have about until about 1055 for this portion. Councilor. Novick.

I have some questions that I'd love to have. Director engstrom. And if they're still here, heidi and sam diaz available to give their thoughts on them if they have them. One question is sam stuckey, who I think is affiliated with Portland neighbors. Welcome, emailed me some, like suggested possibilities to scale back the timeline. One of them was eliminating the concept of a proposed draft of a discussion draft and moving directly to a proposed draft. I wonder about your thoughts about the advisability of that, and who would jump up and down and complain if we just eliminated the concept of discussion draft.

Do you want me to start? Sure, sure, we can evaluate that. And I'll just start by saying bts supports this resolution and we're. You heard a number of eloquent speakers rationale for why this is an important project. It's one of our top priority projects. We're already underway with scoping and working on an engagement plan and working on a timeline. So the 90 day report back is reasonable from our perspective.

I would say that honestly, I'm not sure if it's advisable, but at this point, really our goal is to investigate to figure out what the constraints are. And then once we know those constraints, do our best to try to ameliorate them. So we have a bunch of ideas. We'd love to explore those ideas. We'd love to hear from bts. In this 90 day report, what are the constraints and how can we possibly address them? But yeah, I think we have a bunch of things that we would possibly like to pursue. Maybe some of them are advisable, maybe some of them are not. Oregon's land use law is complicated and we're definitely looking into it. But yeah, just in general, I think any individual thing I would not bet on, but I do think that making our best effort and us as an organization, Portland neighbors welcome and our coalition, we are very, very committed to doing whatever we can to help move this forward as quickly as possible.

This is this did not come from sam. This is my question. Does every jurisdiction and I'm not proposing this, but it occurs to me that the existence of a planning commission adds time. Does. Does every jurisdiction have a planning commission or are there some places. Just like proposals come straight from staff to the city council?

I'm not sure I'd kick that over too.

Yeah, well, so there is a requirement for goal one that local jurisdictions have to comply with. And so local jurisdictions can have a planning commission. Most cities and towns do. Some have a consolidated citizen participation organization as well. So places, you know, like baker city will sometimes have a city county. They have a shared position planning director. And then you have that. I think in this case, we really look to the planning commission. People in Portland are used to going to the planning commission hearings. They're subscribed to the list. I will say the map app is a beautiful tool that was rolled out by the city. That makes it easy for us to track these sort of ordinance processes. And I think to your question, and I really appreciate it, co-chair Novick is is I think it's I defer to director engstrom on the the substance, but I think there does need to be an opportunity for local businesses, residents, developers who are in this area or who want to be in this area to be able to have some meaningful conversations about what possible amendments could look like. I will say, during the residential infill project proposal, there were multiple almost deaths of that proposal. And so I really want all of us to learn from those. But there was a planning commission vote that was five four because of the displacement risk analysis, and it was tense. We had to do a lot of repair work for relationships, for understanding the data, for understanding, you know, what, you know, assumptions were being made about why the project was coming in the first place once that data came to be. So I do think having that opportunity as, as community, as local business and as the city, being able to have those sort of mini town halls, whether the planning commission is the right forum or, or if it's a Portland neighbors welcome hosted forum, I would really advocate to keep that part of the of the timeline.

That kind of leads into another question that I was going to ask, which is one of the findings, one of the whereases. And the resolution is that the council finds that prior public engagement provides a substantial foundation for the project and may be incorporated into subsequent phases of engagement. And I sort of my general assumption is that when you start anything, the first people that you hear from are the people who like the thing, and then you hear from the people who don't like the thing at the last minute when they suddenly hear that it's directed to them. And I'm just wondering, you know, what are your thoughts on the idea of incorporating prior public engagement and limiting subsequent public engagement? Is that feasible or is that like a, you know, a time bomb?

I would say that for us as an organization, Portland neighbors welcome actually reached out to all of the neighborhood associations within the zones of this area in northeast and southeast Portland. And for each, each of them that wanted us to come talk to them, which most of them did. We went and we we talked to them. We have been, you know, trying as an organization over the last couple of years to talk to as many people as humanly possible. If anyone in this room wants to talk to me, let me know. It's we want to make sure that the city is aware of this as possible. And then but our our concern and our, our thoughts on public engagement partially is that asking people again and again and again does not actually increase equity, and it just makes it so that the people who show up repeatedly, for me personally, I'm able to be here because I don't have kids. I have a job where I can easily take a day off. And I I'm partially here as me because I am one of the people in our organization who has the most flexibility to do that when as a city, we keep on asking people to show up over and over and over and over and over again, the people who are not extremely committed land use organizers tend not to be able to show up. And I think that the bureau has done a lot of work to actively reach out to people, especially in the housing production strategy process. I think certainly there is specific work to be done on this project, but there's also a lot of macro work that I think informed a lot of this that I think it's relying on that past work and not saying anyone who's going to show up four times in the course of four years is the people that we're going to listen to the most.

Yeah. Novick, thanks for the question. I, I would just say, I think, again, this is building on momentum of so many conversations that are happening in neighborhood associations and business districts, in city hosted forums, but the residential info project, better housing by design, I always call it the faith based. It is not, though, what you and nan worked on. Yeah, that opened up the zoning change for churches to partner with affordable housing. There were so many conversations out of out of those that a lot of the concerns about how do we get infill right rose up. Some of the main concerns were about affordability, which then turned into an affordable and affordability density bonus. So if you're habitat for humanity, if you're hacienda cdc, you're taking advantage of the residential info project zoning. You can now build 6a6 plex in that kind of zoning instead of just a four plex. The other was infrastructure, especially in southwest neighborhoods, for example, a lot of roads without sidewalks, without lighting, without good signage. And so what was going to happen if you had a bunch of homes being built that then was morphed into a parallel amendment that ended up getting $50,000 per unit as part of a four plex as part of that proposal. I think it is those those moments and those sort of amendments that the city does through those conversations that say this was meaningful engagement. We are hearing your concerns. This isn't happening to you. We are doing this in partnership with community. And I think at this point, the bureau has absorbed those lessons learned. Elected director engstrom, if there are any specific examples out of this proposal that you want to highlight, but I think that that that is where proof of concept is helping us get through some of the fears that can come when we're talking about abstract zoning changes.

I would agree. I think we're not starting from scratch here. The portlanders have over and over again reaffirmed through a lot of our public involvement over the years that they want to grow up, not out. And we've repeatedly reaffirmed the idea of investing housing in high opportunity neighborhoods, for example. So those are well established ideas that most portlanders, I think, support. There is value in having public engagement on a more street by street level when we're doing this kind of project, and we will do that. But the overall concept, I think is, is it's clear that many people support this approach. Lessons learned over the years. One of the key lessons is to make sure that we're well coordinated with our infrastructure bureau partners. So I do appreciate the work that's gone into the infrastructure study last year, and that sets a good framework for this work.

Yeah. I'll also say I know we heard from sara in the testimony about lloyd center. We take those comments as an organization to say, well, let's go to metro and advocate for funding for a permanent, you know, year round indoor ice skating rink together. They have a sports department, they have expo, they have real estate and funding out of their sports program that we could maybe leverage for the capital outlay program there. So again, it's it may not come back to this council as a formal amendment to a zoning decision, but it does help us as a city evolve because we understand what the needs are or what the desires are of residents. And then we figure out which government agency we need to be going to, to fundraise to, to get through to, to really address that vision.

Thank you. Last question is, my understanding is there's the capacity in this area for additional 20,000 units to be built. Does the fact that they haven't been built suggest that there's not going to be much of an immediate payback from authorizing 143,000 to be built, or is that a you know, to what extent is it. Well, first we'd have to get those 20,000. Then we get the other 120,000. And to what extent is. No, there's a lot of stuff that could be built in areas that have yet to be unlocked.

Creating a 140,000 units of capacity. And zoning isn't necessarily going to cause those units to be built. But I think the advocates have made a good point around, particularly in inner southeast, the zoning tends to be focused on the corridors, and there isn't a lot of quieter street multifamily zoning of the kind you might see in northwest or even in northeast Portland or outer east. So that's a that's a solid point behind the discussion here. I think.

I would also add to that one of the written testimony that stood out to me was from cassie wilson, who also lives in. Bachmann actually just lives a few blocks from me, and she was talking about how she uses a scooter to get around, and she needs to live in an ADA accessible apartment. And that means that she has to live on an arterial street because all. Is basically impossible to live off of our arterial street and also to live in an accessible apartment because we made that illegal prior to the ADA passing. And I was reading her testimony about how she, you know, talks to people in her neighborhood who live in these older apartments that are, you know, on quiet streets. That's me. And that's a form of housing that is simply impossible for her to live in. And that is, I would say, a substantial difference from the status quo that a lot of people would like to live on arterial streets. Many people don't. I personally prefer living on a quieter street. I think there are really are material differences between what we currently have available to develop and also, you know, these really significant increase in developable lots. And I know that we as an organization have been advocating for single stair reforms, which is at the city level, and then also next year to do elevator reforms so that more of these homes are accessible, that we have cheaper elevators that we are. I mean, we really need to be building stacked flats that are accessible in 2 or 3 bedrooms, that is, homes that are not being built in the city right now, and that we want to enable to be built on these smaller lots with smaller financing. And I think that is a form of housing that doesn't really exist in the city right now, because for a variety of reasons, it's illegal to do.

Steve Novick: Co-chair or I'm sorry. Novick, if I may, I heard your question a little bit differently. If I can restate it. I heard you ask if we already have capacity now in our current zoning maps, excess capacity, 20,000 units, what makes us think that changing this will get at least 20,000 more? And was that your question? Yeah, pretty much the way I think about it is with our current zoning map that provides parameters to the project economics of a given development project, because that will create a certain ratio of land costs relative to the other costs in the project. And so to pencil it out, you need rents that are probably quite high. And so if you were to change the zoning map, you can envision a different mix of those cost components where the land is actually a lower proportion given each unit, which then would allow you to pencil out a project at lower rents because and then at that point, your demand function would say, okay, I can fill these up. That's that's the way I see it as someone from the outside looking in. It's also kind of what I've heard from developers.

Yeah, I appreciate the yeah, the market feasibility question definitely came up and residential infill project as well. And I hope that that will continue to be part of the resolution. What we've found, especially working on statewide solutions, is that it takes some time. And that is part of the role of Portland neighbors. Welcome 1000 friends of Oregon, but also looking to the amazing team at bureau of planning and sustainability is getting the word out to local developers. Get your permits in. This is possible. These are the changes after the residential project was passed, director esau, then at bureau of development services, did technical assistance roundtables with local developers to say, we did this zoning change. This is possible. Here are the shells. Here are the shoulds. Enjoy. And so I do think that from you know, the work, the work begins, right? The permits start when we actually do that information sharing and that relationship building that comes in these conversations. And so I think we are still seeing really steady, consistent permits coming through for things like a triplex or fourplex because local developers know. I also think there's still a lag time with statewide solutions. So the state has now created at least two statewide revolving loan funds to help with predevelopment costs. So many local developers don't know that the state legislature passed that. That's not on them. No one's getting some alert. It's not on your apple news update. It's not on instagram. We need your help. Councilor. Morillo. And so that's where I would say we really need to make sure that we're helping local developers like curtis, who you heard understand here are the resources available, whether they're policy opportunities that you all are creating or whether it's the funding and financing tools that our state is opening up.

Thank you so much. Happy to help with any instagram questions, although I hear you guys have it pretty covered with cassie wilson over there, our superstar. Thank you guys so much for answering questions colleagues do. I don't see anyone else in the queue. Any further questions or points of discussion? Not seeing any. Thank you all so much for being here today. Your testimony and information was just incredibly valuable. I really appreciate just the joint effort from community and from this council, this commitment to really building more housing, the city of Portland and doing it in a way that doesn't displace people, coordinates with staff, and does this in a way that is going to be legally defensible. I'm just really proud of the coordination between community bureau staff and this council today. And with that, I would like to entertain a motion. Oh, sorry. Oh, we have people back in the queue. Okay. Sorry, councilor Kanal. Go ahead.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks. Sorry. We needed that eight seconds that time. I, I think this is more on the discussion side. So I just wanted to kind of get a little bit of information out here. You mentioned the desire to have a defined time frame. And that part of the reason for the resolution was to create the defined time frame. Was there not one already, or was it was it that there wasn't one already? Or was that it was too far in advance? Too far out?

I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I was looking at my documents to try to facilitate the meeting.

No. No worries in the event. So. So you mentioned that there's there's has been a desire to have a more clearly defined time frame. Was it that there wasn't already one, or was it that it was too far out into the future for this project?

I think that it really wasn't clear enough for the public as far as that transparency. But sorry, director engstrom, could I call you back up?

As I mentioned, we're in the startup phase of this project right now, and part of that work is to define the timeline. So your 90 day deadline is a good fit for the work we're already doing to firm up our timeline.

Okay.

So no, there isn't a firm timeline right now. And this helps motivate the completion of that timeline in the next 90 days.

Great. My understanding is also that you're dependent in part on some work on the PBOT side. Can you speak to that?

I would say more broadly on public works as a whole, the the earlier study identified some sewer basin issues as well, but certainly concerns about traffic modeling and the conundrum with trimet's situation is, is part of the story. How do we how do we improve transit service in this area? I think there's a sense that there could be stronger bikeway work in the future in this geography if we're going to increase density. So so yes, the partnership has been appreciated with the public works bureaus, and they're going to be an important part of the next year.

Okay. Will this analysis also include the the sort of impact of or influence to the conversation around sdgs for the you mentioned the sewers, so I feel I should ask about this.

We do have public works folks here. I don't know. Director, if you're willing to come up. I don't know if that's a question you can answer.

Yeah.

I'll have some general responses.

Introduce your name for the record. Sorry.

Yes. Hello. Good morning councilors. My name is I'm the Portland public utilities director. Dc donna powell couldn't be here. So I'm also speaking on her behalf for the public works service area as well. First, I just want to say we really appreciate the committee's interest in advancing the inner eastside for our proposals. Public works bureau's. Before parks joined the service area. At that time, bts water and PBOT were very involved in the initial collaborative process that informed the inner eastside infrastructure assessment. In this assessment, we intentionally stress tested our system transportation, combined sewers and water distribution systems with the high density conditions developed by bts. We'll continue having this collaboration between infrastructure and land use planning to clarify the improvement needs, implementation pathways and timeline to facilitate growth equitably and effectively. So we'll support in preparing this 90 day report and collaboration on the initial zoning project proposal, informed by the inner eastside infrastructure assessment, we would need to define some of the resource needs as well as refining the infrastructure cost projections in support of this increased densities during this 90 day deliverables.

Thanks. Yeah, I'm mostly just trying to understand the scope of this because I'm I'm a member of Portland neighbors. Welcome myself very supportive of the idea of entering eastside for all. So I'm trying to understand. I want to make sure this is enough is really what I'm asking about here and fast enough to actually move on. And that's that's kind of the basis of my questions. Please don't take it as a negative in any way. I wanted to ask the last whereas clause talks about not having a requirement for a finalized zoning proposal or completed affordability analysis, that makes sense. It's 90 days, but I'm guessing there will be a firm date in that. For how long that will take, or period of time would be part of what you would come back with in 90 days is that I'm seeing a nod behind you. Yeah. Wanted that on the record. I also wanted to just note I've been doing neighborhood association tours, including some of the neighborhood associations whose areas are maybe not necessarily entirely within this, this map. So for example, I was at beaumont wilshire, where which is divided in half by fremont. Fremont's the upper bound of the map area. And so I wanted to just represent what they had asked most of the neighborhood associations in this area that I've gone to, it's been, I don't wanna say 100%, but very strongly supportive of this proposal. And I want to be super clear that even beaumont wilshire had had divided. It wasn't 100% against it or anything, but there were a couple questions that I had from the questions they raised around a the sort of use of a dividing line that is the street itself, as opposed to the arterial itself, as opposed to kind of surrounding an arterial at the edge of it. And if you could give us more information on that when you come back.

Yeah, it's definitely best practice from my perspective, to not use the arterial as, as the final boundary of a project, because you do want to plan holistically along those commercial corridors. So we tend to group neighborhoods into the, the walk sheds around commercial districts when we do this kind of planning.

Yeah. The other piece is exactly what you mentioned around TriMet. So the 24 line is not frequent service here. The entire area up there is experiencing cuts not to lines but to frequency. And just trying to, to sort of tease out the degree to which we need to be reflective of what transit already exists versus helping bolster it through density would be really helpful to me as part of what you come back with and because I and not because I don't believe in it or because I like my, my value system is that it will help drive us transit back up. And I think some of the people who are here advocating for it are the people who know a lot more about it and are all agreeing on that. But I think having data for those folks that might still have questions would be really helpful on that. I lived in seattle before and after they did their massive up zoning proposals, which were based primarily around arterials, primarily on the driving side. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap between that and transit, but it wasn't necessarily built around transit as the core function. So I think they did a really good job on the whole. But I also know that it was much narrower. If you look at the map, it's basically just thicken the lines on the map that are the arterials, and that's the area that you can do. And so I lived on a, on an arterial that had in an apartment complex and behind us there were two, three story buildings and then single family the rest of the way until you approach the next arterial. So I'm excited about the idea of doing it in a just a thicker band. I'm just trying to understand sort of the scope of the project here.

I think we will be developing scenarios along those lines about to test the waters with the public. The the transit issue is we definitely look at zoning on the long game. So we're not going to necessarily adjust zoning just because of one adjustment in a bus line in one year, because things change over the long term. But we, on the other hand, we also have experience where we have built high density and then the transit goes away. And that's also a problem. So we have to engage with TriMet on this.

Yeah. The last thing I want.

Can I pause for a moment. I just wanted to say so the sdc impact is being assessed already. We got an update on that in the housing committee. And part of that is because of an amendment that I put to track how much sdcs are actually impacting things. I also just want to flag that we're at 1058. This is the last meeting, and I am a little bit concerned that this policy will get stuck in committee purgatory if we don't address it today. So if we could keep our questions concise so that they can answer them and we can move forward. Thanks.

Yeah. Well, that was my last question. Just a comment I'll make. In closing, I'm definitely going to support this, and I'm grateful to everyone who brought it forward. I think the other place that I live that's relevant here in new york was a place that had a lot of four floors and corner stores, types of layouts on the streets that I lived in, in queens, and there's a lot that density does to help shore up not only our our finances on PBOT, but also on the rest of public works. And I think we have to, to view this in the context of a broader conversation that it's also helping everything else on our on our infrastructure side, if we are increasing density as well. And I just wanted to appreciate you, all three of you, for doing it, bringing it forward.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Novick. Final questions.

Actually, I was going to suggest an amendment to the resolution because it would be appropriate for me to do that. Now.

Yes.

Okay. And and again, this is if if madam chair, you don't like this idea that I'll drop it, but I was just looking at the the next to last. Now therefore, be it resolved, which says that the city administrator shall provide council with an expedited report with the purpose of identifying how the city can shorten the overall timeline to council's consideration of zoning changes to no later than June 30th, 2027, and thinking that that resolution, that that date might not be practical unless we change some of our practices. I was just wondering if you'd accept the idea of saying, identifying how the city can shorten the overall timeline to council consideration of zoning changes, comma, and any barriers to council consideration of zoning changes no later than June 30th, 2027. So it sort of phrased as we recognize there might be barriers to doing that. Could you tell us what they are?

I really don't do well with things verbally given to me. Could you send me a written copy so I could review it?

Let's see. I should have already. I should have already done that in the interest of time. I mean, maybe just sort of like ask for, is that kind of your understanding of what we're asking them? We're not assuming that June 30th, 2027.

Is I think it's fine. I don't think it changes anything super large unless councilor Green or Avalos have any further concerns. Okay. Yes, we'll do it. Go.

Okay. I moved to add the words after after zoning changes and any barriers to council consideration of zoning changes no later than.

Cannot. Does he need a second for an amendment or.

A motion and a second.

Okay. So moved.

Second.

All right. Diego, please call the roll on the amendment.

Yes. And if I may, co-chair Novick, if you'd be able to send along that language to the council clerk's office.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Not right now, but yes.

So we have motion from Morillo, second from Novick Avalos. I Kanal.

Know, Novick.

I Morillo. I with three I's one nay and one absent. The amendment is approved.

Wonderful. I'm going to actually quickly move us along before anyone says anything else. So I am going to motion to send this to full council with the recommendation that this resolution be adopted. I would like to entertain a motion to move resolution document number 2020 6-01106 to the full council with a recommendation to be adopted.

So moved. Second.

Candace Avalos: I'm going to say councilor Avalos moves the resolution to full council with the recommendation and councilor Kanal seconds it. Is there any further discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll?

Avalos I.

Kanal I Novick.

I just want to say that this is an issue where I feel much more comfortable with this council than I felt with the council I served on from 2013 to 2016.

I Morillo.

Charter change has benefits.

I with four eyes and one absent. The motion carries and the resolution document number 2020 6-106 will move to the full council as amended, with a recommendation to be adopted.

Thank you so much to everyone who came and testified today to the community advocates at Portland neighbors. Welcome to the over 20 organizations that have put their time, energy, thoughts, research into all of this to help council do something to make our housing conditions better. Here in the city of Portland. We are immensely grateful to you, and I look forward to presenting that to our colleagues at the full council. Thank you so much. Diego. Would you please read the next item?

Item three Multnomah county climate and energy trends.

Wonderful. We will have vivian satterfield and kyle dessner here with an update for the committee on portland's progress to date on carbon emission reductions and councilor Novick you requested this item. Is there anything you would like to say before we hand it off to staff?

I know I've seen the presentation looks great. If you can rip through the whole thing quickly, I think it would be really beneficial.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning. Co-chairs Morillo Novick, members of the committee. I'm vivian satterfield, your chief sustainability officer. I'm also here alongside kyle dessner from the bureau of planning and sustainability. Thank you so much for the invitation to come present to you on truly the last meeting and the last agenda item of the climate resilience and land use committee. I was reflecting that one of your first meetings, you also invited myself and staff from the bureau of planning and sustainability and the Portland bureau of transportation to come talk about the sources of our emissions. So I think this is really nice to bookend the time of this committee and the focus. So thank you so much for that. I'd also like to just mention that now that we've stood up, the sustainability and climate commission, an advisory body that is meant to advise uniquely the mayor, the city administrator and city council on issues related to sustainability and climate, that they have had the benefit of not just one, but two conversations at their monthly committee meeting on this very information of Multnomah county carbon emissions and energy trends. And so I think in the future, as we look forward to the new council committees, and I do anticipate that both in the committee of the whole and also in city life, these conversations will be coming up. But just wanted to remind you that we do have the sustainability and climate commission, which will be taking the deepest dives and stewarding this and hopefully giving you the guidance, advice and insight for you as decision makers to make the final decisions on how we approach tackling these fairly large and what can feel like existential issues. And so with that, I'll be brief and hand it over to kyle, who truly is the expert in our city and can answer nearly all of your questions.

For the record, my.

Name is kyle dessner, climate policy analyst at the bureau of planning and sustainability. Good morning. It's exciting to be here and share this work with you. I don't typically say this in public because it makes me feel old, but I have been responsible for our emission inventory since 2010. So as vivian said, I probably am a good person to speak to this, although I will not promise that I can answer all of your questions. Jumping right in. So I'm going to briefly cover two distinct resources that have informed our climate planning. So our community wide emission inventory and our consumption based emission inventory. And we'll talk about our climate and energy dashboard as well, which features these resources. I'm going to talk about our emission and energy trends at a high level. And my goal is to give you the background you need as you're moving forward into this new committee structure. The data is available on our public facing dashboard as a resource for everyone. So starting off with our Multnomah county carbon emissions here, you can see our trends. And we have been tracking our emissions since 1990. You can see there that emissions peaked in the year 2000 and have come down since that time. We had a drop of about 3% just in the last inventory year, from 2022 to 2023, and that has erased most of that post pandemic bump that we saw. So just at the end of that blue line there, our emissions ticked up after the pandemic, but they have started to come back down again, which is a relief to me. 2023 changes resulted primarily from higher electric grid emission factors. And I'll talk about that a little bit more. It changes in weather and increased use of biofuels, offsetting diesel fuel use. On the other hand, our united states emissions, that's that like the Green line, those didn't peak until 2007. So Portland has sort of bended that curve down earlier and quicker than the nation as a whole. And you can see our reduction is much more significant over that period than the us as a whole. I will note that the federal government did not publish a 2023 emission inventory, but a foia request from the environmental defense fund found the draft version and looks like emissions declined 2% from the 2022 levels at the federal level. This just kind of gives you a sense of the slope of those lines. We did reduce emissions much steeper earlier on, but over the last decade, that trajectory has slowed. There's also a ton of variability that is largely renewables in our grid mix among, you know, changes in weather and other factors there. But this shows us really where we need to get to go and get, get to. Ultimately, these are the city's adopted goals shown as those two yellow diamonds and the arrows just point out the slope of those lines and how much steeper we need to be reducing emissions than we have been over the last decade. So we really need to, to bend this curve down much quicker to reach our targets. I will note one thing, which is that you'll see this data is from 2023. Emission inventories run two years behind. That is true of every government in the united states that I know of, including the federal government. And that's because proprietary data, like fossil fuel data, has to get reported up to the federal government, and then it gets analyzed and disseminated back out. And that takes about two years. So just wanted to clarify that here you can see our trends emissions have declined 26% since 1990, while population has grown 38% and jobs have increased 35%. Obviously, you can see the impact there to that growth from the pandemic. However, our emissions have continued to decline and growth often works against our climate goals, but we have been successful in reducing emissions over this period. Thanks. Thanks largely to energy efficiency and increased renewables. I'm also going to talk a little bit more about per capita emissions, because the role of population is pretty significant. So I'll touch on that a little bit later here. This shows our emissions by sector. So this kind of gives you a sense of where those emissions are coming from. With the bulk about 40% coming from transportation and about the other half coming from buildings, residential and commercial buildings combined, and then a smaller share there for industrial emissions, our fugitive emissions and landfill waste, fugitive emissions are emissions that escape the natural gas system, or escape from refrigerators or air conditioning systems, and then wastewater treatment that is our columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant, but also the others in the county. We do our emissions at the county scale due to our long standing history of working on climate action with Multnomah county, and that some of the data sets are available at the county level. Here we can see our emissions, how they have changed since our peak emissions that year in 2000, and how they've come down by sector. So you can see we've made the greatest gains actually in the industrial sector with those emissions declining really pretty steeply, down 58% since our peak in 2000. That is largely the result in changes in the types of industry that we have in Portland, moving from much more carbon intensive industry prior to 2000, like aluminum smelting to lower energy intensive industries. Today, residential emissions have also come down significantly 27% and commercial down 13%. And you're starting to see transportation drop. I will note that they have been incredibly stubborn, and it wasn't until the pandemic that we actually saw transportation emissions drop below those peak levels. We're currently about 13% below that peak in 2000. These are our emissions. So now we were looking at emissions by the sectors that they come from. This is a different way of slicing that by looking at them by source. So where the actual emissions are coming from across those sectors. And what you can see here is that electricity is the largest source of our emissions. And one of our primary solutions to address climate change. So decarbonizing the electric grid is a top priority. And we are, you know, certainly reliant on the state achieving its renewable energy goals for us to, to hit our goals, followed by gasoline at 22%, natural gas at 21%, and then diesel fuel there at 16%, our fourth largest source of emissions. I will spend the rest the next few slides talking about our energy trends from those primary sources. So those top four where most of our the bulk of our emissions are coming from. And starting with the largest source electricity. So this is the current for 2023 grid mix for our electricity generation. And this is a weighted average of pacific power and ppg's electricity. And you can see in the table the ones that are colored Green are renewable generation sources. And today that's about 33% or as of 2023. And we have seen that number come down over time. But we expect that to spike back up as the utilities start to comply with the state renewable requirements. By 2030, the largest source of our electricity generation currently is natural gas, and that is a huge change that we've seen recently as coal has come down significantly from about 30% just a couple of years ago to 14 today. Most of that gap has been made up with by natural gas. So some of the electricity trends here. This shows our electricity sales by sector and utility over time. And you can see that today our electricity use is lower than it was in in 1990 for our base year. And over the last decade, grid electricity use has declined significantly and overall grid sales are down 18% since 1990, with the reduction coming from industrial and residential sectors. The commercial sector, on the other hand, has grown increasing 10% since 1990. But this isn't the whole story when it comes to electricity. We also have voluntary grid power sales, so these are 100% renewable power that different business entities, households are purchasing above and beyond the grid mix. And so you can see when you factor that in, our current electricity consumption is pretty much what it was in 1990, but fortunately, it's a little bit lower carbon and becoming more so as we move towards the state's renewable goals. This is our natural gas sales over time. And this one is is important in that it's you can see from this chart that residential and commercial gas sales have been climbing pretty significantly. Overall gas consumption is up 18% over 1990. But most of that growth is coming from residential and commercial. The top two lines on this chart increasing 62 and 43%, respectively. If we look at per person gas emissions, however, they have declined as we've grown as a population. So we currently use 15% less natural gas than we did in 1990 on a per person basis. And I'm going to pivot now to transportation. Again. A top source is the combined gasoline and diesel. And so this pie chart just shows you the breakdown of our transportation emissions by source, with the bulk of that coming from from gasoline. Here, you can see that gasoline trend from 1990 through 2023. And our gasoline consumption has dropped significantly. You can also see our e100. That's ethanol that is mandated by state law, that 10% of gasoline sales include ethanol. And you can see that here on the chart. I would also. Actually I will show you this on the next slide. So here you can see those gasoline sales over that period. You can see they've really come down really significantly. And the other line, the dotted line is gasoline price. And there tends to be a negative correlation between gas price and gas consumption. So you can see as the price is increasing gas consumption drops. And that's a pretty typical trend. In fact, with our emission modeling, our pathways analysis, we have found that transportation fuel pricing is the single largest policy driver. And PBOT has invested a lot of work in the pricing options for equitable mobility since 2021. So I just wanted to flag that. I will also note in terms of diesel on this next chart that that does not apply diesel fuel use climbs regardless of price. And I think all of us certainly I buy things on amazon and other things that get delivered to my house and that increased growth in diesel fuel use is really showing in our inventory in a way that I think, you know, has been concerning for us. The diesel sales are up 70% compared to gasoline, which is down 20% over the same period. So really just totally different trajectories between the two. And given this significant growth in diesel, it's our fourth largest source of emissions. That's why we adopted portland's renewable fuel standard to phase out the sale of fossil diesel by 2030 and replace it with low carbon biofuels, primarily from recycled waste greases, as mandated by the policies innovative carbon intensity standard. Here you can see those diesel sales with biofuels. Added to that, this doesn't account for the rfs, as the changes in Portland for the renewable fuel standard going up to 50% renewable don't go into effect until this summer. Here a quick look just because, you know, we can't get to transportation emission reductions simply by electrifying and switching to renewables, we're going to all have to drive left. That includes me. I'm fully responsible on that front as well. But here you can see our metro vmt, that's vehicle miles traveled. So this is daily per person vmt for the metro area. And what's important here is that, you know, vmt has really come down, down 14% since the last peak in 2005. You can see it really plummeted there in 2020, which also aligns with what we're seeing across our emission inventory. But we have ticked up since then and just increasing, again, 1% in the last year of the inventory there. So I also wanted to note just briefly that we are working on a new transportation inventory method that will give us greater insight into the transportation sector. Looking at more of those trips that occur in boundary using vmt rather than fuel sales. We're also adding air travel emissions for the first time, which are quite significant. Initial modeling shows air travel emissions are about the same as the commercial sector, so we're talking about adding a really significant new source to this inventory, as well as much more granularity into the off road construction, rail and water transportation subsectors, which are currently rolled into those big numbers. But we don't have a way of breaking those out. And I added this slide because I think it helps demonstrate our priorities. So this is, again, you know, I talked about our population growth while our emissions have come down. So this is looking at those four primary sources per capita. So per person. And you can see that over that period, electricity and natural gas have dropped 41 and 42% per person. Whereas you can see that diesel is is that top line spiking there. And natural gas, which has come down 15%. So just a little bit per person, but certainly not enough as compared to what we're seeing with gasoline and electricity. So the top takeaways here for our carbon emissions is that they have declined significantly 26%. But we have significant work to go to reach our adopted targets. The 2023 changes were primarily from those grid emission factors for the pacific northwest. As I said, increased or the percent renewable decreased to 33%. And then also additional use of biofuels. I'm going to briefly just a couple slides here on our consumption based emission inventory, because I think it's a really important piece to understand here. It's a different way of looking at our carbon emissions. And I will note that our goals are based on the sector based inventory that I just presented on, but it's important to understand consumption based emissions because there is an international push to to move towards more adoption of targets in this sector. So what are consumption based emissions? These are life cycle emissions that are produced as a result of consumer spending here in Multnomah county. And so those emissions are produced not here in Portland. Some of them are, but around the world. When we buy things like clothing, computers, furniture that are made outside of our jurisdiction. Here you can see the Multnomah county consumption based inventory compared to our sector based inventory, the sector based is in red and dark blue. The bigger inventory in blue and light blue is our consumption based inventory. And I like this diagram because it kind of tells the whole story. The the red sector section, there are exports, things that we make here, but they satisfy demand for consumers elsewhere. Whereas that light blue are the things that are made elsewhere that we import into Portland to satisfy our demand. And these emissions are are almost double the emissions we produce locally. So it is really an elephant in the room. Total emissions are about 20 million metric tons. When you look at these inventories combined.

Kyle, we only have about eight minutes left. So I'm going to ask you to wrap up in about two minutes if possible.

Yes. I'm almost there. No problem. The consumption based inventory does allow us to see emissions by lifecycle phase, which helps give us a sense of where the interventions are possible. Here you can see that 66% of those consumption based emissions are coming from the production of things, not the transportation of those things and their supply chain. That's 6% there, but the actual making of those goods. And, you know, that helps to inform our opportunities to affect these emissions. So as an example, portland's low carbon concrete procurement policy requires us to use lower concrete on construction projects. And that changes local demand for low carbon concrete using our purchasing power. So that's just an example of how we can affect production phase emissions, even if they're not occurring in boundary. I lastly just want to point out that we have seen a diversion between our sector based and our consumption based emission inventories, with consumption based rising over time as our local emissions are declining. And this speaks to the challenge of using sector based emissions as the main indicator of our progress. This is also reflected in data in other states, other countries, and Oregon has seen the same in their own analysis. We can skip the top takeaways, because I do really just want to hit on our climate and energy dashboard. All of this data is on this dashboard that's all online and available to the public. There's a link there at the bottom of this slide, and this, you know, helps support our accountability. But it's also really about transparency and making this data available to the public and to academics and others. As we've collected this over many, many years. So we wanted to kind of give people more access than they've had historically. And with that, I will wrap up. Thank you very much for this time and the opportunity to present, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you both so much for being here today and for giving us this final presentation of the climate and land use committee. It's been a pleasure getting to work alongside all of you and getting to work with you. Councilor Novick as co-chairs, I see you have your hand up, and I do want just a bit of time for some closing remarks to go over everything that we've done on this committee before it disappears.

I thank you, madam chair. I just have one question which is, well, one question to follow. Is it true that pacificorp has customers or I mean, they're much more carbon intensive now significantly than pge?

Yes, that is true.

So might that suggest that when we're like we should when we're building new housing, we should build it in pge territory and we're doing energy efficient efficiency measures. We should take those more in pacific war territory.

That is good strategic thinking. I will note that both utilities are required to hit the state's renewable energy targets, which start to go into effect in 2030. So, you know, hopefully we're getting to 100% renewable ultimately with both utilities that will alleviate that problem. But it is a good idea to be strategic in how we deploy those things.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here today. Over the course of this year and having the climate committee, we have done a lot of work. We supported a study on potential reforms for the city's design review process. We've monitored conversations related to zenith, the cei hub and many other things. We focused on the intersection between active transportation and our climate. We reviewed dozens of land use items, including public infrastructure, environmental code, flood hazard area code amendments, and a property annexation. We talked about the Portland clean energy investment plan. We considered parks urban forest plan and the annual parks levy report, and we did numerous appointments to climate land use related bodies. So for folks who are watching at home who are upset about the climate committee being dissolved, you're not alone. We all have feelings about that. But I wanted to inform folks as well that the the conversations around climate are not over just because this committee is going away. So I will be sitting on city life, a new committee that will be chaired by councilors Zimmerman and pirtle-guiney. And that committee will be covering the Portland clean energy fund. Land use decisions, which are often tied to climate, will fall under the housing committee, which is chaired by chair Avalos and vice, chaired by councilor Mitch Green. And I think that there's also potential for some of these broader city discussions to go to the committee of the whole, which will be when your city councilors talk about all of these items together. So I really appreciated getting to work with all of you on this committee. And with that, we will end the the climate committee, the final one at 1129 today. Thank you so much, everyone.