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The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-10-14
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (32,000 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 · meeting length 3 hr 45 min · council salary-time ≈ $2,880
Council salary-time = 12 councilors × ($133,207/yr ÷ 2,080 hr) × meeting length. Attendance varies and salaries are fixed regardless of meeting count — this contextualizes the council time a session takes; it is not money the meeting "spent."
Session summaryAI draft · not editor-reviewed
The Portland City Council convened on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, with roll call confirming attendance. The session opened with agenda reordering to move a drone-related item earlier, plus housekeeping notes on HVAC maintenance and a Veterans Day meeting-time adjustment. Public communications included testimony on a World Mental Health Day event, a proposed moratorium on drone facilities to protect wildlife, concerns about school funding and ICE enforcement, remarks disparaging a named councilor (which drew a rebuke from the presiding officer), and a complaint about an infill housing project on Huron Avenue. The City Administrator gave an update on federal immigration enforcement activity, noting no major new developments, with councilors requesting standing updates and information on the Macadam building land-use process. The council then held a first reading on zoning code amendments (Document 2026-345) to comply with recent state housing legislation, with extensive testimony and discussion about cottage cluster common-area size requirements; the item was moved to a second reading without amendment. A separate first reading and hearing on the Central City Code Amendment Project (Document 2026-343), covering zoning map changes, height allowances, and ground-floor housing standards, drew testimony from developers, nonprofit representatives, and industry groups; deliberation was continued to October 15. A resolution authorizing notice to the state regarding a possible drone facility moratorium passed. Votes also occurred on consent agenda items and intergovernmental agreement/appointment items related to the Moda Center renovation and Oregon Arena Joint Authority; outcomes of these votes appear in the vote ledger once verified.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions and not yet reviewed by the editor . It describes the discussion only. Captions contain errors. Votes from this session appear in the vote ledger once verified; none from this session date are published there yet. Where the summary above mentions the vote ledger, read it as where this session's votes will appear once verified.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good morning. I'm now calling to order this meeting of the Portland city council. It's 932 on Wednesday, October 14th. Keelan. Can you please call the roll?
1 Good morning. Clerk. Here. Green. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Avalos.
2 Smith here.
3 Here. Pirtle-guiney. Ryan.
4 Here.
Procedural episode · turns 5–13
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
5 Aye, Morillo.
6 Here. Novick here.
7 Dunphy here. And councilor Avalos has joined us as well.
8 Thank you.
9 And could the attorney please read the rules of decorum for the chamber?
10 Good morning. Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at ww.Portland.gov/council/agenda. Information on engaging with the council can be found on the council clerk's web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless presiding officer states. Otherwise, your microphone will be muted. When your time is over, the presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in an ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually your testimony to address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls their name. Thank you.
11 Thank you very much, colleagues. Our first item on our agenda is the approval of today's agenda. I understand there is going to be an interest to rearrange items as if anyone watching along at home. There was a 9/12 item added to our agenda. Councilor Kanal.
12 Yeah.
13 Councilor council president, I would like to move to reorder the agenda to move the 9/12 item up immediately after the consent agenda item, I'll make sure I get the the numbers correct here. So consent agenda is six through 11. So this would be moving it between 11 and 12. And it is currently 14.
14 Okay. Thank you counselor. Do we need to move on that or do we just how does that work?
15 Sorry. I just want to clarify. It looks like the consent goes six through nine.
16 I have six through.
17 11011 online.
18 Yep. It's because I'm looking at the wrong agenda. Sorry. Thank you.
19 Okay. Do I need for a reorder of agenda? Is there a is there a motion? Do we need a second.
20 That we do need a motion in.
21 A second.
22 Thank you. Councilor Kanal moves to reorder the agenda to move the 9/12 item between or up to item between items 11 and 12 and councilor Pirtle-guiney seconds. Colleagues. Is there any other requests for reordering of the agenda or. Okay. Can I have unanimous consent to accept the reorder and accept the remainder of the agenda? Seeing no one freaking out the agenda is accept colleagues real quick. Two other quick housekeeping notes related to our schedule. Not specifically today, but first, a reminder for everybody that city hall is going to be undergoing maintenance on our hvac system on November 2nd through November 6th. All meetings that week, the two council meetings and the committee of the whole meeting. I will be fully remote that week. And so second Wednesday, November 11th is veterans day and a city holiday. Under normal city procedure. This would result in our regular council meeting being held at 9:30 a.m. On Thursday the 12th. However, it will work better with our other scheduled committee meetings if we hold our regular meeting at 2:00 on the 12th, when we would normally hold our recessed meeting code requires that council make and approve a motion to do this, so I move that our meeting, regularly scheduled for 9:30 a.m. On November 11th, instead, begins at 2:00 on November 12th. May I have unanimous consent? Okay, okay, the agenda is approved. We have made a motion to fix the calendar next to two weeks from now. Three weeks from now, whatever, a month, I don't care. Keelan, can we please move to public communications?
23 First up, today we have kate calvert.
24 Welcome up folks. Kate here.
25 Kate calvert. Okay, next we have an casper.
26 Good morning. Please state your name for the record. You're welcome to share your pronouns. And you have three minutes. And don't worry, you can take your time. Yeah, take your time.
27 Thank you.
28 This is only half.
29 It's a lot.
30 Of books.
31 All right.
32 Good morning. Very nice to see you. Thank you all. My name is anne casper. I'm a master's student in virtual reality at at university of Oregon and immersive media communications. I'm also on the elliott neighborhood association board, and I've been volunteering here in city hall since 1984. I'm here to talk today about the world mental health day event out of the library tonight at 615, we are celebrating the world mental health day, as well as the university of Oregon purchasing 14 of these books. I was at yale university last week for a similar celebration of authors of lived experience, lived mental health experience. The united states does not yet have a mental health lived experience department, as other countries do in the uk, canada, australia, new zealand, scotland. And we are getting here a part of it here at the university of Oregon in northeast Portland. You all can check out books there. If you don't know, it's a beautiful library in the concordia neighborhood. Why are these books important? They are written by authors who have their own experiences and do their own research. Some of them are survivors, ex patients, and they are making history. This is a modern movement. It's decentralized. We don't we have like five names. We don't agree on the names yet. It started in 1969, actually in Portland, Oregon here. And and we're all over global. I work with people in france, south africa. I was just at the united nations a couple of weeks ago, and we are working on making this life a better place here in the city of Portland. You have a peer support specialist working for you, but you pay them $20,000 less than a community health worker. So it just happens sometimes that cities don't have the knowledge yet of what works for real people. So books like these are important because they're needed to help you make good policy and help us actually heal. So unfortunately, when commissioner Patel had people testify about the mental health systems and making decisions about the legislation you're going to vote on, I think the advice to the Oregon legislature, she unfortunately kept out the voices of us peers, the families, the nonprofit organizations and the police that actually worked together on mental health every day. So, for example, this is an example. So if you make legislative advice on black families, would you keep the voices of the black families and black people away from giving testimony? It happens in mental health. Let's have all voices here at the table. Tonight at the library. We'll have people from dbsa. Does the city know what dbsa is from? Disability rights Oregon and from nami, nami, Oregon, northstar, clubhouse, okc, all these organizations that the city has yet to be working with. I encourage you please work with the county together. Work with the county together, work with us. We will find our way out of this time in Portland. And believe us when we say when things don't work, we are the ones living with your decisions and I appreciate who you are and what you're doing and for being here. Thank you.
33 Thank you very much.
34 I leave these with the fliers.
35 Thank you.
36 Next up we have micah mescal.
37 Good morning.
38 I'm sorry.
39 Good morning, council president and councilors. My name is michael mescal, and I work for the alliance of Oregon, where I'm our conservation director. And I'm going to start off today by lending our organization's support for implementing an immediate moratorium on drone facilities in the city and the development of a policy to limit the potential negative impact of drone operations on the city's residents and wildlife. Beyond the obvious human health, human safety, and human privacy issues the drones pose on the urban landscape. There's a growing body of research that indicates drones can negatively impact wildlife, especially native birds, during native migration, during migration and nesting seasons. We urge you to support councilor Kanal and councilor Pirtle-guiney moratorium and policy development process. We are ready to dig in. During the moratorium alongside the city's planning staff, its terrestrial wildlife biologist, its noise control officer and community members to help inform the city's own policy that incorporates the best practices and available science to protect our city's wildlife and residents. Over the last two years, we've been engaging with Oregon state parks to help inform and adopt strong drone regulations to protect native birds, wildlife and people in Oregon state parks. And we're ready to bring those learnings and policy concepts to a city policy. And while I'm here, I'm also going to take the opportunity to briefly share my organization's ongoing efforts to protect and steward our 172 acres of forested habitat in northwest Portland, which we do so in alignment with the city's conservation efforts. Alliance of Oregon was founded in 1902, and the bird as a bird conservation. Advocating for the protection of native birds and habitat they rely on. For over 90 years. Of our 124 year history, we've been advocates and stewards of our property and the surrounding forest in the northwest hills of Portland. This land was parceled together over years, while our members and organizations simultaneously simultaneously advocated for the conservation of public lands in the northwest hills. As the rest of the city was being developed, we now own and manage 172 publicly accessible acres of maturing forest adjacent to the largest forested urban park in the nation. Our sanctuary includes some of the city's oldest and tallest trees. One of the largest red legged frog breeding ponds in the city and the largest wildlife hospital in the state, and miles of publicly accessible trails. We manage it for wildlife habitat, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and public access all values that benefit from a larger, contiguous system of protected areas. In fact, the ecological, health and function of our sanctuary and wildlife that use it depends on the broader protected system. That's why in the early 90s, we helped inform and advocate for the passage of the forest park natural resource management plan, whose top line conservation goal is to protect native plant and animal communities and grow an ancient forest. Our organization is members and the public
40 Cherish this land and take great pride in stewarding it and conserving it towards this goal. And this ethic bleeds onto other public lands and public resources that are connected. We offer any of you counselors to come take a tour of our sites and see how it connects to the broader. Thank you.
41 Thank you very much.
42 Next up we have lisa jackson, spotted elk.
43 Good morning.
44 I want to start by saying.
45 You introduce yourself.
46 Lisa jackson. Thank you. Thank you. I want to start by saying what leonard peltier told on democracy now! On indigenous day, killing women, children, bombing every damn thing, annihilating a race of people. That's what happened to us. See, we're all here together. And I'm here to to help advocate, to honor. I want a better understanding on how the city governs its city but can't advocate for schools. Especially with one of the councils being an old board member. You should realize how crucial the system is shutting down schools while your infrastructure will be affected. I suggest some of you board members come to these meetings and rightsizing just to get a get a clear understanding of what's going on with this community. See, the superintendent shouldn't be making $334,792. That's a lot for the stuff I do for free. I volunteered 789 hours for our native community last year. I've been in front of you. I've been in front of the county. I've been everywhere. My main focus is for our generations to come. Like I told the county last week, all this voting stuff that you guys are doing, none of it matters if you're not voting for your generations to come to succeed. That's why we're here. As you can see, your infrastructure of your city is everywhere. It may not be your fault, but there's board members that could have made change. Now, one thing I want to talk about is that a native person, I share a lot of my personal stories because I've been through a lot of pain in the city in the last six years I've been here personally, have experienced stuff. As I shared a story with you all at the beginning of the year. Losing, losing someone so precious to me. I get to tell you to your face now how that affected me. I don't know how we're not advocating for ice in this city yet. I don't know how ice is even able to do what they're doing in this city still. We need to be really clear. We're all indigenous. Our brown people are at risk to. Every immigrant is at risk. And this is the city of immigrants. The whole. I don't know how this is going on. And as as this person sitting here talking about saving trees and birds, we need to take care of our land. Our land speaks for us. You guys, if we're not taking care of that. Like none of this matters either, because what are you going to be sitting on when nothing's there? Like I feel like, you know, there's some type of disconnection. There needs to be a governance to govern connection between the city, the county and the districts. When it comes to your schools and your education system. I don't know how that's not happened yet, but that should happen because voting seasons around the corner and your community depends on you.
47 Thank you very much.
48 Next up we have eddie rogoway.
49 Thank you council. My name is eddie rogoway. I'm a second generation Portland native, a proud second generation Portland native. I have I have given up hope about Portland returning. I. I have lost hope. I am here only because I have an elderly mother and I won't leave her. But if that. If it were not for that, like the vast majority of the higher earning tax base, I would be gone in a new york minute. So since this is recorded and for my own, I don't know, therapy, I want to say this. Candace Avalos is the single biggest threat to my city. And it's not her city. She's not from here. I'm from here that there is. And I want to I want to make a record of that. So what happened is Candace Avalos ran for city council once, I believe she got 9% of the vote, which, you know, is concerning. And so but she's smart and sophisticated. And so what she did is she got herself appointed on the redistricting commission or the charter commission when the city council respectfully was completely asleep at the wheel for the two years of COVID, were the entire city of Portland got basically a paid vacation on our dollars. So she gets on this commission. Before that, she was the head of a nonprofit, an environmental nonprofit. I believe she was making six figures that the city of Portland was paying for while she was on this charter commission. While she is creating gofundme, and I have the receipts to ask people to pay for her vacations, she. She framed them under the guise of, I'd like to go to this convention. Well, if you're making six figures, candy, you can pay for the convention yourself. So prior to running, part of her strategy was to make a completely baseless, anti-semitic accusation against vadim mazurowski. I don't know how to say his name correctly. They were on the charter commission together, and because he disagreed with her, I know this was covered up and no one wants to talk about it because he disagreed with her on a valid, substantive issue that the commission was tasked with discussing. She accused him of racism, and the media actually covered that story. So whenever Candace doesn't get her way, she makes an accusation of racism. I've heard recently that she attended an event. Am I done or do I have 30 more seconds? Okay, so here we go. I just want to make a record that this woman is a grifter. She is capitalized on Portland tax payers. Whenever she doesn't get her way, she claims racism, although her racial identity. Well, there's some questions about that. So I would ask you all.
50 All right. Thank you. I think that's enough. Thank you very much. You've crossed the line in terms of disparaging individual councilors.
51 Thank you. I'm so sorry.
52 Thank you for your comments. You're welcome to bring those directly to me. I'm happy to talk to you. But you've made a lot of false claims. So happy to chat offline. Thanks.
53 We're going to circle back to the first communication. Kate calvert has joined online. Okay. You're muted. Just a moment. We need to. Okay, there we go. Kate, can you hear us?
54 Yes. I'm sorry. I'm I'm. I'm really bad about computers and stuff. I really I apologize to everyone for holding you up, so. I'm so sorry.
55 No need to apologize. You're good.
56 Well, good morning. My comment to you all, and I'm sorry about all the negativity here, but I'm finding that our representatives in the city do not listen to those of us who live here and are paying high taxes, even in middle class areas where I live, the city of Portland, the planning and sustainability team and our representatives in district two have all voted for so-called low income housing for Portland. But it does not belong on our street, which is huron avenue between lombard and oberlin in north Portland. It's a very narrow street which has no parking on lombard and no extra parking on on oberlin. Eight neighbors that are going to be impacted the most, one of which has no off street parking by the six were only notified via an orange flier on our doors that the property was going to be demolished. We found out later that the planning and sustainability group was in the approval stage for six houses on this property. To find out more information, we had to do some digging rather than our district two representatives getting in touch about the huge negative change this was going to have on our short, narrow street. There is no parking, extra parking here and there will be no parking on the on the infill housing area. So although eight of us living here have tried to get only four houses on the small property because we understand the need for low income housing, six units were set to move forward. I personally got in touch with kevin bond and continued to ask questions about the appropriateness of their initial approval. Before this building was approved, we met with Dan Ryan and aid will aid his. His aid will misspelt, who were great and we had a meeting set up by tom kowalski, which we. We really appreciated the chair and the president of the university park neighborhood association in Portland and. And kevin joined that as well. And matt from sameer's office attended all of them, all of. After all of this, the answer was, sorry, there's nothing we can do for all of all of us. I will reiterate that these infill housing do not belong on every street in Portland. You do not listen to people who live here. And from what I read on nextdoor.com, this is a universal feeling. Our representatives on many issues here in Portland. Although you give lip service to caring about our quality of life, your actions betray your true feelings. And now our nice neighborhood is going to be filled with 18 garbage cans and five yellow bins for one property, 6 to 12 more cars as is right near this infill project. Have children living there who will? Who play on the street that that will no longer be available to them. With the increased traffic and the addition of the cars parked on the street. So let me just say one more time, you do not listen to people who live here, and we need to be heard and the voting is coming up and that's it. So thank you for your time. Again, I apologize for for wasting your time this morning.
57 Thank you very much for being here.
58 That completes communications.
59 Thank you very much, colleagues. Our next item on our agenda is the. We're going to hear an update from city administrator lee on the status of ongoing responses to federal interventions in our city. City administrator lee.
60 Thank you, council president. As council is aware, we. You should have received an immigration enforcement briefing on Monday, and there have been no major new developments since then. The city will continue to monitor activity. Community advocates report that enforcement levels have fluctuated, which with activity trending downward since last week, councils will receive an email later today with a list of resources to share with the community as well. There are no new updates on the actual facility itself as of today.
61 Thank you very much. City administrator keelan, can we please call our first time certain item? Absolutely. Before we move on to that? Councilor. Morillo.
62 So sorry, council president, I didn't raise my hand till later. Thank you, city administrator for that update. Can you clarify for the public where we're at in the sort of land use process for the macadam building? We've been getting an influx of questions on that again, and I know I'm not asking you to say anything that we legally can't, but I just think explaining to them, like where we're at on the court case, all of that will be helpful.
63 I would ask if legal has any updates on that, because right now I know our city attorneys are in that process as well.
64 Yeah, our office will have to I personally do not know, but our office can get something to you.
65 Okay. I think having it, you know, told on the record for the public to hear is what I'm asking for, whatever we can share with them, because there is an influx of questions again, and because I'm the immigrant on council, people expect answers from me in a different way. I think.
66 I will be in the chair again tomorrow so I can have that information before we start tomorrow's meeting. Great.
67 Thank you so much.
68 Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Kanal, just to.
69 Put a finer point on that, I agree with everything. Councilor Morillo said, can we have that be a scheduled subsection of this report every time? Sure. Because we get asked about this literally every week. So in and there was a there was a gathering about it yesterday across the street. So I'm aware that there's a lot of folks who are still very interested in that from how loud that was. So I just want to make sure that that's kind of the default setting. Thanks.
70 Thank you.
71 Thank you very much. Okay. Keelan seeing no other hands in the queue, can we move on to our first time certain item.
72 Document 2026-345. Amend the Portland zoning code to bring it into compliance with Oregon state legislative bills passed in 2025 and 2026. Amend title 33.
73 Thank you very much. This is the first reading of a nonemergency ordinance. Christhopher herr from council operations is here with a committee staff summary report. Christopher. Good morning.
74 Good morning.
75 Council president and councilors for the record christhopher herr council operations policy analyst and reading on behalf of claire adamczyk, who staffs the housing and permitting committee and prepared this committee staff summary. The ordinance before you document number 2026-345, was heard in the housing and permitting committee on October 6th, where it was referred to council with the recommendation to pass. The ordinance amends Portland city code title 33 planning and zoning and adopts legislative intent and findings as shown in the state land use compliance project. Recommended draft exhibit b the ordinance also directs adoption of the findings of fact report exhibit a as additional findings, the ordinance takes effect January 1st, 2027. The code amendments bring the city's planning and zoning code into compliance with state land use regulations passed by the Oregon legislature in 2025 and 2026. The amendments are grouped under the following categories in the recommended draft category one middle housing development standards, including updating allowed configurations for middle housing, adding new required bonuses for middle housing, and changing some development standards that apply to middle housing land divisions category two land use review procedures, including adjusting the timeline for middle housing, land division applications, consolidating land division reviews and revising notification, public hearing and appeal regulations. Category three allowed uses, including expanding residential treatment facilities, are allowed and making it easier to replace a dwelling that has been damaged or destroyed by natural or involuntary event. The full impact statements on this item includes information on economic and real estate development impacts and community impacts, and community involvement. One person provided verbal testimony and one person submitted written testimony on this item via the map app. Prior to committee action. The general themes included the city's application of zoning changes in a way that supports the economic viability of building needed housing in Portland. Concerns regarding increased requirements for common areas that limit development on constrained sites, potentially reducing the number or size of residential units that can be built. Differences in parking regulations for attached and detached units, potentially creating confusing for housing developers. And that concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
76 Thank you very much, christopher councilor Avalos, this came out of your committee. Any opening remarks?
77 Thank you. Yes. The committee's discussion was fairly straightforward. We heard some testimony raising broader questions about middle housing, particularly around common area and parking requirements, but ultimately recognize that this ordinance is focused on bringing the city into compliance with recent state law. Those broader policy issues can continue to be considered through future work, but they did not change the committee's recommendation on this item. And so therefore, it was referred to full council. Thanks.
78 Thank you very much, councilor Avalos. Colleagues, we have staff from planning and sustainability here. If there are any technical or clarifying questions before we move to public testimony. Councilor Ryan.
79 Thank you, council president yes, I do have a couple. I have one technical question, actually. Two, I'm curious was the feedback of the drac body? Was it about these updates? Were their recommendations included in the amendments? Oh, thanks. Any.
80 Hello, councilor.
81 Sandra wood for the bureau of planning and sustainability. For the record, I use she her pronouns. We did share this proposal with the drac. And as you know, we we attend the track meetings every month and engage with them. This project was so focused on state compliance and the state rules, they use different language than we use. And so it was basically like taking the state the purpose of the state bills and translating them into the Portland zoning code, so developers can see all the rules in one place.
82 So I just always value their opinions when I had that assignment. How do these amendments affect the waste management and parking regulations for infill housing, like cottage clusters and multifamily housing, or single family.
83 Waste management was one of the questions. And parking. Yeah. So for waste management, they don't the state hasn't required anything for waste management. But we do have a project that's called space for waste that we're working on closely right now with our colleagues in the bureau, planning, sustainability that manage the state, the city's waste system.
84 So you'll tell me a little bit about waste for space.
85 Space for waste?
86 Yeah, that'd be better.
87 Oh, it's my favorite project. It's my favorite project right now. It is. Basically what we're doing is taking a look at existing multi-dwelling projects and seeing what developers have already provided for space. We're seeing quite an array of solutions, or maybe not so many solutions, especially when it comes to these new types of housing, like cottage clusters, where I think the culture is that they're sort of like single dwelling houses that people are using by themselves. And so both our waste system treats them like residential through the residential franchise system versus the commercial system. So we're looking at that and we're looking at the zoning code regulations that would be paired with that. So that's for waste for parking. As you know, we don't require parking for any type of development in the city of Portland. We had done that for years. And then the state did the climate friendly. So climate, I can't remember the name of their acronym, but there are no parking requirements. One of the testifiers that the housing and permitting committee testified to, when you do provide parking, what are the standards that apply? And that's what miss radelet testified about at the housing and permitting committee.
88 I think some of it is listening to the testimony, being reminded of spending an hour listening to that neighborhood, that block. And I think some of the pushback that we're getting in real time is we make big code changes for big areas, and there are streets that are quite narrow. Portland doesn't have a uniform street width size. And so when I listened to them and I've listened to others on these issues, they usually talk about their concerns for safety, like, can a fire truck get through? And they have a really legitimate complaint, especially on, on garbage and waste pickup day. So I hope that that's part of the dialog that you're having as you think about these issues, because the testimony here today is a very common testimony about a concern that many portlanders are having. They want infill housing. They just think that we have to be more adaptive block for block at times. Does that make sense?
89 Yeah.
90 And is that a dialog that you're having?
91 We are having a dialog in the sense of how can we reduce the number of cans, as you might imagine, and cottage cluster, which is basically like several units on one lot, do they need five composting bins, for example, the big Green roller bins, when they don't have that much yard.
92 Space for waste.
93 So that's part of the space for waste conversation about how we can and we are working with. So that team is working with on a case by case basis. We get questions from not only neighbors, but people who are moving into those new developments saying, hey, what's the deal? And how can we better work together so that there aren't so many carts themselves?
94 And what about with fire? Are you including?
95 We are working with fire with the space for waste project. Yes.
96 Okay. I look forward to hearing more details about how we can maybe have some edits to the code that would be more relevant to the reality of these big developments on some very narrow streets. Yeah. Thanks.
97 Thank you.
98 Thank you, councilor Ryan. Seeing no one else in the queue for technical or clarifying questions, keelan, can we please move to public testimony?
99 Yes. Thank you. I'll call up testifiers in groups of five. Each individual will have three minutes. For those testifying in person, you'll see the timer countdown displayed on the monitor in front of the testimony table. For those testifying virtually, the timer is displayed in zoom. You will hear the timer sound twice, once when there are 30s left, then a second time when your time is up. Before you begin your testimony, please state your name for the record. Our first panel of testifiers includes serena ashby, chandra robinson, kevin volk, jenna varner, bradley clover.
100 Keelan can I just verify we are on item four? I'm looking online and seeing the testimony that was on testimony item number five.
101 You're right. I'm sorry. That was my mistake. Let me revise that first panel. First up, we have sarah radley, kristin vaccaro's, vlad kovtun, jessica truncata.
102 Good morning council. My name is sarah radley. I'm a land use planner and private practice helping clients develop their properties and particularly involved with infill middle housing projects. I live in district three and work with clients throughout all four districts of the city. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge city staff's good work within a short timeline and the necessity to limit scope to bring code into compliance with state rules. Last week I testified at the council committee meeting, and I'm here today to provide more information specifically about cottage cluster outdoor areas, and to request that council not make the common area requirement more challenging to meet than it is today. I also have provided written testimony which you should have. Cottage cottage cottage cluster projects are multiple smaller homes on a single lot. The current cottage cluster code sets out a typical minimum of 200ft■!s of common area for each unit in a cottage cluster project for six unit project that typically requires 1200ft■s of common area. The current minimum required size of each common area is 450ft■!s, with te potential of multiple common areas on a single project. This allows the common areas to be spread throughout the project. This minimum of 450ft■!s is beig proposed to increase to a minimum of 750ft■!s. With this project, there is no mandate from the state to increase the common area minimum size by requiring each common area to be at least 750ft■!s. This will likely result in smaller footprints and or the elimination of units, especially on tighter sites, with existing homes being preserved. For example, a six unit project with two common areas would be required to provide two 702 common areas of at least 750ft■!s, totaling 1500ft■!s. This is 300ft■!s over the minimum required 1200ft■!s. This additional 300ft■!s could otherwise be used for an additional unit or larger units. I request that council keep the existing 450 square foot minimum instead of increasing it. Increasing it will make smaller sites more difficult to develop with multiple housing units. Alternatively, if there is a strong desire to increase the minimum common area, then have that apply to only one common area and any additional common areas could have a minimum square footage of 450ft■!s. Again, this doesn't change the required amount of common area, just the size of each common area. The requested change doesn't reduce the minimum total required outdoor area, it just allows more flexibility to have it be met with smaller outdoor areas as the current code provides, and instead of making the code more onerous and difficult to provide housing, it maintains the current rules. My submitted written statement. I've included two drafts of code language that could be used. One is the current code and one is this one is 750 and the rest are 450ft■!s. I know that if you adopt the proposed minimum 750ft■!s area requirement, that results in more challenging regulations than currently and has potential impacts of reducing the size and or number of units. I urge you to keep the current minimum of 450ft■!s for common areas to allow and facilitate more and larger housing. Thank you.
103 Thank you very much.
104 Jessica.
105 Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is jessica drinkwater. I'm an architect at acre development. We specialize in residential infill development throughout Portland. Currently, we have four cottage clusters under construction, seven actively in permit review and three more soon to be submitted to the city of Portland by the end of the year, the majority of our cottage cluster projects are between 5 and 10 units, roughly in the. In the mid range of cottage cluster. I would like to support sarah's testimony and oppose the proposed change to the cottage cluster code, which would increase the absolute minimum size for a common outdoor area from 450ft■!s to 750ft■!s. Due o the size of a required common area on a typical site, it is one of the governing factors when considering the feasibility of a project. We believe that increasing the minimum area for any individual common area will significantly limit the flexibility needed to make. Many of our small infill projects work. Although the proposed amendments retain the allowance for a common outdoor area to be subdivided into multiple areas that could be distributed across the site. Increasing the the minimum size of each of these areas would make that option impractical for many of the small to medium sized developments that we specialize in. Two common areas under this new scheme would require 1500 square foot minimum, equivalent to the total common area required for a ten cottage development. So basically, any project with fewer than ten units wouldn't have the option of splitting up the common area if desired, because that would actually lead to providing more common area than what would be required otherwise. Secondly, we would like to request clear language explaining how this revised minimum will interact with the mandatory adjustments under senate bill 1537. For example, the 750 square foot minimum is based on a five unit cottage cluster at 150ft■!s per unit. The senate bill permits up to a 25% reduction in the minimum common area, which would reduce it to 563ft■!s. We don't quite understand if a qualifying project would still be eligible for that reduction under the proposed code amendments. If the minimum required area is 750ft■!s. So potentially it would prevent a 5 or 6 unit project from taking advantage of the mandatory adjustment that is available to larger projects. We ask that the city reconsider the fixed minimum and retain the original 450ft■!s to preserve the flexibility for smaller developments and to not unduly disadvantage those developments from the opportunity to divide the common area. Thank you.
106 Thank you very much.
107 Glad.
108 Good morning. My name is vlad kovtun. I'm one of the partners over at acre development. I want to pardon the. This is a bit nervous. This is my first time addressing you folks. But one of the partners at acre developments. We were one of the one of the first folks out of the ground with the newly adopted cottage cluster code over in north Portland. In fact, some of our some of our products have actually been featured on some of your literature. We we will be constructing approximately about 180 units this year, all within that affordable, attainable price point. And jessica is a is a valued member of our team. We work hand in hand with with sarah. And I just want to essentially second the, the need to, to maintain the 450 square foot minimum for outdoor area. I'm kind of on the front line of acquisitions and sales. So I work directly hand in hand with different agents, realtors. We, we review different properties for feasibility and viability. And this will ultimately result in us having to essentially pass on a lot of properties that would make this much more challenging to add additional much needed housing, affordable housing. We also. One of the things, and I think this is the most important thing, is we listen to our, our buyers, the folks that actually, you know, once it's concluded, once we put the jigsaw puzzle together of the development and go through the permitting, going to go through the construction aspect of it, only to hear feedback from the potential buyers that will occupy these spaces. And majority of these folks by, by increasing common area, we have to do one of two things right. We either shrink the unit sizes themselves, what makes them much tighter, much, much more smaller bedroom sizes, oftentimes reducing bedroom sizes and or quantities. Furthermore, to limit any form of private backyard space. Now, if we if we have if we cannot, if we can't offer garages, if we can't, if we have very, very minimal backyard spaces, because we're making way for common areas, folks have very limited areas to store things, store bicycles, kayaks, you know, very much things that, that folks use all the time here in the northwest. So my, my thought on this as well is to see if we can keep the 450 minimum. Specifically, if it's not a requirement. Yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
109 Thank you. Thank you for being here.
110 Kristen barrows.
111 Hi there.
112 Good morning.
113 My name is chris because this is all way above my pay grade. I do have some advice for you though, as a developer of garden court apartments.
114 You speak into the microphone.
115 As a developer of garden court apartments ten years ago. You have a huge resource to answer both those questions that you have about what people actually want in terms of community space and garbage maintenance, just by going to these garden court apartments, which are all over Portland and date back to the 1920s and the 1930s, these people and the people who own these complexes can answer a lot of those. What do we do with waste management? How do we manage it in a way that keeps people happy, stress free, and a community a little bit more livable? When I came to talk about, though, is math. I'm really perplexed at the idea of affordable housing, given that yesterday, multifamily released a median sale price of units at 1.95 and median means like half above and half below, I'm thinking and development for low income housing units in Portland are at 778. I understand that's a high figure, but that is one development project that registered that. What's affordable about that, and specifically the multe credit that's kicking out a whole bunch of money. From your coffers, you know, and I'd like to get that figure and I can't get it. I can get it up to 2017, but not from 2017. Inclusionary housing. On how many developments are using mlutei. I'm so bad with acronyms.
116 Call it multi.
117 Reit multis. And what is that costing you. I know what my property taxes are. I know what the inclusionary housing with that $100,000 a year multe exemption which was extended from its ten years to an additional five years on appeal, that's 15 years of property taxes that you're not getting from multiple units. And given that median two apartment, two bedroom apartment right now is 1700 and low income is also 1700. So those two inclusionary apartments that are in these mult developments that are getting these huge tax breaks. And additionally, I understand that you're going to be using a bunch of really interesting financial mechanisms to do a lot of affordable housing, for example, that tax equity credit, which if you look at the numbers that that's kicking out of the federal coffers right now, it's 3330 billion as of this year. These are big numbers. How do you how how is that not going to cost in the long run? Affordable housing, given what I know about property taxes, what I know about waste management, what I know about water and sewer fees, what is affordable housing and who does it actually profit? I'm not seeing any project based vouchers being distributed in these new projects. It seems to be not heard of and actually also calling home forward. Yesterday I noticed there's a six year wait on section eight housing six year wait. That's not affordable housing. Thank you for your time.
118 Thank you very much.
119 Lakota toe.
120 Good morning.
121 Good morning, council president, members of the council. For the record, my name is lakota tao. I'm here representing working class construction professionals across Oregon who depend on responsible development, predictable permitting, and the opportunity to earn a living building the communities we call home. I recognize that ordinance. 2026-345 responds to five bills adopted by the Oregon legislature in 2025 and 2026. Portland has a legal obligation to bring its zoning code into compliance, and I'm not asking this council to disregard those requirements. We support removing unnecessary barriers that delay responsible development. Housing must be built, investments must move forward, and working families need access to the jobs those projects create. But compliance with state law and accountability to the public are not competing responsibilities. My request is straightforward implement what the law requires, preserve what the law permits, and make the process transparent enough for the public to understand what has changed. We're state law limits, public hearings, notices, or appeal procedures. I'm not asking Portland to recreate those restrictions through another process. I'm asking the city to maintain, maintain accessible public records, clearly document how development decisions are made, consistently enforce applicable development standards, and explain what lawful protections remain available. These are important distinctions. A faster permit process should not mean an untraceable decision. A reduced hearing requirement should not mean the public cannot understand how its government operates, and a fewer procedural steps should not mean less responsibility for applying the law correctly. The legislature changed certain approval procedures. That does not eliminate the city's responsibility to administer those procedures lawfully, consistently and transparently. I respect respectfully request three commitments from you guys. First, publish a clear explanation connecting each amendment to the state law requiring it, including in any implementation choices made by the city. Second, maintain public access to existing development records and decisions to the extent required or permitted by law, without creating new procedural barriers or delaying statutory review timelines and third, use existing administrative data to evaluate whether these changes reduce processing delays and support housing production and make those findings publicly accessible without adding requirements to individual permit applications. These requests are intended to support implementation, not obstruct it. Working families cannot afford unnecessary construction delays. Communities also deserve confidence that government decisions are made under clear and enforceable standards. We do not need to choose between faster development and responsible government. State law establishes the framework Portland remains responsible for implementing it correctly. Thank you for your consideration.
122 Thank you very much.
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123 That completes testimony.
124 Okay, colleagues, we're now into council discussion. I personally would love it if our our folks from dps could come back up, because I have some questions based on the testimony. Thank you friends. I'm going to ask my questions first, just sort of broadly specifically, you know, there was some very specific things that were mentioned here by testimony about where we are going above and beyond the minimum of updating is that am I missing something? Is there is this accurate? Are these things that have been that we are going above and beyond the basics here, or can you tell me more about from your perspective?
125 Sure. Again, for the record, my name is sandra wood with the bureau of planning and sustainability when we were scoping this project. Well, let me just start. The state was very active in the land use arena in the last couple of years, and there have been many bills when we were scoping this project and deciding whether we were doing a broader look at middle housing, we realized that they had actually more more bills and more rulemaking coming. And as a matter of fact, it's happening right now too. So we had some deadlines to meet, and our deadline is January 1st of next year. We decided to do this project named state land use compliance project. And our scope and our view was to keep it confined to what the state required with these bills to be effective. Some of them are already effective in in the state, and some will be effective on January 1st. And we outlined that in our report. The notion that perhaps that we went too far with the common outdoor area, I think, is the main one that people are discussing. So the state requires that cottage clusters, they get out of a lot of regular development standards and have their own set of development standards. And the state wording on that is that the cottage clusters include a common courtyard. We translate that to be a common outdoor area because we already have common outdoor areas and multidwelling zones, cottage clusters aren't required to have individual outdoor areas. For each of the residents. They're only required to have this common outdoor area. With this proposal, the requirement. So the definition of cottage cluster changed. It currently is that three units on a lot is a cottage cluster. We're proposing that five units on a lot be a cottage cluster with three units on a lot, and each of those units having 150ft■!s f outdoor area. That meant that the outdoor area would be 450ft■!s, increasing the minimum to five units. Being a cottage cluster by changing the definition meant that five times 150, which is required by the state, is 150, increased it to 750. So we don't feel like we were going further. We were just translating the number and doing doing the math.
126 Okay. Thank you, councilor Green.
127 Thank you, council president. I just wanted to kind of uplift a little bit of the discussion that we had in committee. And I know that councilor Pirtle-guiney probably also wants to say some of the same thing. But one of the things that we we had a robust conversation around this, and I think we heard from some developers, we heard some from folks in the community who have strong opinions about this. And where we landed was we we recognized that we're on a deadline to meet this to conform a state law, but that there was some appetite to maybe tune this up with a later process so we can have more public conversation. We can we can iterate in a more thoughtful way. And so that way we don't shoot ourselves in the foot on making it harder to build. I think that there's a way to land this in a way that satisfies multiple interests. And so I think, did you want to offer any remarks on that? Then we're going out of order.
128 But no. Councilor pirtle-guiney is next.
129 Thank you. Council president and councilor Green. I also jumped in the queue to share a little bit about what we had talked about in committee colleagues and in committee. There was some conversation about the benefits of the 750 square foot minimum and the reason for it. But there was also conversation. I had expressed an interest. I think, councilor Green, you may have as well in having our bureau look at whether it made sense to require that 700 square foot minimum for a first common area, but if it were a larger development to allow secondary common areas to be that current smaller size of 450ft■!s, trying to both ensure that the formula works that the bureau has now, and that, frankly, folks in a larger cottage cluster environment do have that larger common area that allows for more types of gatherings, but ensure that we don't run into the concern that a few testifiers brought up today that if you have 702, 750 square foot common areas, you're starting to really eat into other space. I believe what we heard in committee was that the bureau was happy to take the time to look at that moving forward, and that in the next round of changes that come to council, you would put some thought and discussion into that so that we might see changes to this in the future, including the idea that a primary common area still hold the 750 square foot requirement, but that secondary common areas could be smaller. Does that reflect your memory of our conversation in committee as well?
130 Yes. Yes it does.
131 Okay. And was there were there specifics about a timeline for the next changes that will be seen at council when you would be looking at that, that we should make sure to share with folks today.
132 We are actively working on that project and will probably be. We haven't discussed it with the public yet. I imagine we'd be at council in 15 months or so.
133 Okay. So colleagues, I think part of what gave me assurance in moving this forward was that there would be an opportunity a little over a year from now, to see if we needed to make some changes to this, including looking at those secondary common areas, and that moving forward today would allow us to keep that formula that we have, keep these updates to ensure we're in line with state state requirements moving forward, but not get too far down the road before we can address some of these concerns. And I just wanted to make sure to share that with everybody. Thank you, council president.
134 Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney, councilor Zimmerman, thanks.
135 I have some similar questions along the lines of, you know, when this is phrased as coming into compliance, but that seems like there's a lot of meat to that right now, which seems unusual. So I am very curious what the nature of the questions and discussions was at the planning commission.
136 Nature of. They also received limited testimony, miss radelet testified there also there was support for a different project that somebody testified on the commission. I think many commission members have been, along with staff on our evolving regulations about residential infill. Several of the commissioners were on the planning and sustainability commission when that occurred. We've done residential infill one, we've done residential infill. Two, we've done a land division code project. We've done housing regulatory relief. So I think the conversation at council was, I mean, at planning commission was were now in the business of understanding state bills and how to translate that into our zoning code. So there wasn't that much discussion about these state bills, in particular.
137 Any estimate for how long they spent on this item.
138 How long we went and did a briefing and hearing in one meeting, and they made their recommendation that very day.
139 Is that like ten minutes, an hour, two hours.
140 Probably an hour, probably an hour presentation?
141 Yeah. The reason I'm asking that question is I generally would look to a planning commission for some input here. And given some recent stuff, I'm seeing that some things get their attention and others are kind of pass through. And so I'm growing concern that maybe we don't have that check there. So that's where the nature of my questions are kind of coming from in terms of.
142 May I just respond to that? Also in your packet is the letter from the planning commission chair and not aye, Morillo. And we have erica thompson here. I was going to say we have erica thompson as a planning commissioner who presented at the housing and permitting committee on what the deliberations were from the planning commission. I would like to.
143 What was the discussion at planning commission? How did you guys tackle it?
144 Yeah, I mean, I've just for context, I started on the planning and sustainability commission in 2021. I've been on the planning commission since its inception a few years ago, and I've borne witness to this changing state trend, which is to be really active in the land use space. There have been a number of state compliance projects that have come forth to the planning commission. And as sandra described, they come with a pretty tight timeline. It is a a compliance oriented project. And we really tried to keep our focus on that. We had, I want to say, maybe fewer than ten total testifiers and pieces of written testimony. Some of the testimony was around the themes that you've heard already with the outdoor area, maybe 1 or 2. Also, there are people that show up and express their their interest in bigger moves that the city could make, perhaps sometimes adjacent to or not even entirely related to what's before us. And so that was some of the testimony as well. And we highlighted in our letter some of the themes around aging in place and accessibility that we thought were worth emphasizing. But at the end of the day, I mean, we staff, they, they, they work so hard and there's a lot that comes at them from all angles. And so when when planning commission, here's one of these state land use compliance projects, we really try to navigate that line of, is this something that we're hearing a ton of testimony about? And it bubbles to the surface, and we really feel like now is the time to address it. And we push staff in those instances. And in other cases where there might be a couple of voices and they might be raising valid points. But for any number of reasons, there's complexity there that may be better served by a larger, more comprehensive look like residential infill project version three or something that I think exists on the horizon. And that latter scenario is where we were at with this most recent project.
145 Thank you both have described somewhat of the testimony. What I'm really trying to get a sense of is what are commissioners discussing? What kind of questions and in depth, how how is this compliance versus going further than compliance? And what what is the planning commission doing to ensure that they're not just a rubber stamp for a for a staff project? That's what I'm trying to get a sense of, since they have worked so much on this, because there are some aspects to this that the testimony is somewhat surprising. And so some aspects I'm trying to understand with respect to this, because when I get a. This is just to get in compliance memo, I kind of expect some basics. And that's not we're not bumping up against those basics right now. So that's where this is coming from. And I, I'm still not getting a sense of what did commissioners ask? How far did they go into understanding coming in compliance with 2138 and the others that are listed here? To the staff? Then I guess what options exist for the city when it comes to this action and. Getting into compliance with a state law, which of course, I'm in favor of, but also ensuring that we stick to the letter of that compliance. What options exist here?
146 House bill 2138 is probably the bulkiest of these requirements, if that's I mean, there are several there are several laws, right, that we were trying to comply with. House bill 2138 really changed the definition of what middle housing was, and in particular, I think, was changing it in a way that didn't make sense to most people. So, for example, I think we can all understand that a triplex is three units in one building. A four plex is four units in one building 2138 said. We're not going to define it that way anymore. At the state level, three units that are detached from one another on a lot, three separate cottages or units, that's going to be called a triplex now also, and four units on a lot is also going to be called a four a four plex, even if they're detached. They also said 5 or 6 on a lot is also going to be called a four plex. We were like spinning like, what does this mean? How would we translate this? This doesn't make sense to us. So for example, in that case, we said, okay, we can understand that four units on a lot is now a four plex even though they're not attached. And maybe we can educate the public and I'll understand and use that vernacular. Now when it's more units, though, in our world, why don't we call that? Is it multi-dwelling development, multi-dwelling development? And so that way we can have that basis of a definition and then use those definitions to decide what the development standards are that apply to each of these things. So that's an example of how we were trying to translate the rules or the words that the state is now using into a system where we can not only in the zoning code, regulate that way, but when we're talking to our bureau partners and how they're regulating and how they're applying sdc's, etc. We can still have definitions that we all understand. And that's one example, but that most of that conversation happened at the staff level. And we and that's what the proposal number one is, is to allow different configurations. It's not to redefine. Yeah. Allow different configurations of attached and detached, same as cottage clusters. We had been hearing and the state heard the same thing. And this is, I think a good thing for cottage clusters. They used to be all detached. The development community said, why can't we do some of them attached have duplexes and single. The state passed that rule. We are adopting that.
147 Those all sound good, right? Any of us who are who. You know, I had high hopes for the residential infill program when it came through in 21 and then watched basically just developers be able to take advantage of it for many years. And I think we're finally making some progress in that. So high hopes and shared alignment. It seems odd to have testimony and concern coming from people who are building these projects about, does this rush through something? Does it mean we can't actually put the you know, I don't know if it's construction standards or if there's something else. There seems to be an undercurrent with this, and I'm trying to get at the heart of that because it doesn't seem like it's related to middle housing, it seems, or and to our infill objectives. I believe that that part is shared. I'm trying to understand the undercurrent. And I, I'm hoping maybe I'm going to retire my answer my question because I'm hoping to see where the conversation goes, because perhaps I don't have the vocabulary to get to. What is the undercurrent and why is this. Set of compliance laws causing heartburn? Usually compliance laws don't. And so when they do, I have. It's a bit of a. Let's pause for a moment. That's why I wanted to see how much did our planning commission actually get into this, or was it just a. Okay. Got it. Stamp next. So that's what I haven't been able to suss out yet. So I'm going to retire my comments council president and listen to the rest of the conversation. Thank you.
148 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Vice president, clerk.
149 Thank you, council president. This just as a layperson and who is not on the committee and who knows that there are cottage clusters all over Portland, as somebody said earlier from the 1920s on, this just seems like so much overengineering and I, I have great sympathy for you trying to translate what happened at the state level and make sense of it for us. But, you know, when you look at the 1920s clusters and 1950s clusters, I mean, we live with that for a long time. I don't understand why what we're trying to improve here, they still work. It just seems like overengineering to me and I don't I don't blame you for that. It seems like that's coming from the state, but if anything, we should be trying to simplify our code, simplify everything so that we can incent more infill, more development, more affordable housing. And I thought that the testimony from the developers of cottage clusters was very compelling. I don't know why we have to wait for more information. I thought that it was very compelling to me, and I don't I don't have the full context of your conversation in committee, but I just think we're we're getting in our own way here that we should be doing everything we can to simplify and not make things more complicated. And I understand you were giving some given laws that are really complicating things. Yeah, I just, I don't know, I just want to make that statement, but is there anything else we could do to simplify what we've been handed? I don't know that that that I agree with the 750 based on everything that we've been living with in clusters in this community since the 20s, I don't know how we're improving on anything.
150 There's there's two things I can respond to on that. If, if the council would like to propose an amendment, we did write amendment language up in case you wanted to go in that direction, based on the housing and permitting committee's conversation. The other is that we all think of the old garden apartments that we see everywhere. Most of those don't have parking, so the outdoor common area is kind of a given because they're all oriented towards a common courtyard. As the state describes a common courtyard with 150ft■!s of commn area per unit, we looked at, I don't know, five of these. After the committee hearing, we pulled up some cottage clusters, and it's not hard to meet the 750ft■!s when you don't have vehicle area. When you have vehicle area and you have a long driveway going in and it kind of looks like a subdivision, that's when the common area becomes more challenging for the developers to provide. So we would be amenable to an amendment, but there's like two different things to have in mind is if there's no vehicle area, then the 750ft■!s is probably not a problem at all.
151 So are we requiring parking for.
152 Not requiring parking? It's the applicants who are proposing to put parking in.
153 Oh, interesting.
154 So when parking is provided and driveways provided, that takes up a considerable amount of space. That's based on our looking at five of these, not looking at more. So that's if we wanted to do it in a subsequent project, we could look at more examples and have a conversation with community and developers about that. But if you would like
155 To proceed with an amendment. Today. I have some slides that I could walk you through, but I don't know which direction.
156 That I would. I don't have proposal, but I and I appreciate you have amendments. I would really defer to the committee. I think it's civic life. Is that right? Housing is is housing. Oh, okay. I'd like to hear from more from the committee members, I guess, on that. I mean, I, I'm happy with trying to simplify with an amendment that would address the issues that were brought before us today, but I'm happy to hear more from the committee housing committee members.
157 Thank you. Vice president Clark going to councilor Ryan, then pirtle-guiney and Zimmerman.
158 Thank you, council president. I really appreciate the dialog we're having. I think not being on the committee. I'm just trying to grasp this. And I realize the committee did talk about this. Councilor Green pointed to that, and you had a robust conversation. This is a really big issue with our constituents all over the city. And I think because it has evolved. When you mentioned the parking lots within the court, what used to be the courtyard, now they they have parking there. And then you've noticed with your own eyes that where's the common area? So people are chatting about this. I think there's a lot of portlanders, vast majority that want infill to work. They want more density in housing. We want simplification. To councilor Clark's point of view, but it's complicated. And so I think that my first question is actually how many people testified at the committee meeting? Can someone from the committee let me know? Maybe that was in the report.
159 About four.
160 Okay.
161 Right.
162 And one complaint I keep hearing is that they want. Could you summarize the nature of the updates to the code around the land division, giving notice and hearings for middle housing and infill housing, because their communication out there about this.
163 Sorry. Can you repeat your question?
164 Could you summarize the nature of the updates to code around the around land division, giving notice and hearings for middle housing or infill housing? Did all of those go out? Because I think what I'm trying to get at is the amount of people I hear from on this issue, aye, Morillo outpaces the amount of engagement that we're experiencing with what I think a lot of us thought would be perhaps a simple truing up with compliance.
165 You're talking about. Are you talking about the notice for this project? Yeah, I am, yeah, yeah. So our, our, our process for this project was to, we have a website and we notify groups. I think we have, I don't know, over 1500 people who subscribe to our long range planning project newsletter and let them know we're starting this project. If you're interested in this project, subscribe to the website. And we do blog posts as we're going along. Before we go to the planning commission, we send out a notice 35 days before the planning commission hearing. We also send a notice to dlcd, which is a the state's department of land and conservation development. They have their own list of folks that they send it to, and then we post it on the planning commission website and we hold a hearing at the planning commission. So that's before the planning commission hearing for all the people who testify in writing or verbally at the planning commission, receive a notice of the plan of the city council hearing two weeks before the city council hearing, we have been notifying sending that notice before the committee hearing, but we also communicate with those folks informally that about what's happening. So after we finish the committee hearing, we let them know we're out of committee and we're headed to city council.
166 I'm curious about this. Did the state weigh in on the public right of way as they proposed the changes? Because often when we're in these dialogs, it's about the actual housing, not on the site, but they don't weigh in on the public right of way. The sidewalks, the streets.
167 No. Are you talking about the improvements that would be required?
168 No.
169 So did so. Pbot water and sewer fire have perspective on this issue?
170 No.
171 They did not weigh in. I think.
172 I'm just going to it's okay. They didn't. Right.
173 They did not.
174 Okay. That's good that you think that's the conversation we're having. And I think it's important to get that out. Because what I'm experiencing when I'm out talking to constituents, that's the disconnect. So we make decisions about from the door on, if you will, and then the courtyard, the parking. Maybe if the developer decided that would sell more units. So they're providing the parking. But there's a frustration that we're not talking about the sidewalk in the streets. And that's where water, sewer, fire would also come in with PBOT. I think that's the concern. I want to keep lifting on these conversations and it feels very half. We did a half measure as opposed to the totality of the issue, because these are on blocks in neighborhoods, and we're just going to continue to have residents of the city that have no intention of coming down to city hall to be upset about something, just to wake us up about this disconnect. Is that a fair statement?
175 I think it's definitely a fair statement and something that we've been improving, I think, as an administration of working together across bureau lines. We have, as you all know, the cap work. We have the code and policy coordination team. So I think there's increased coordination, these changes that the state made isn't the state's middle housing ordinance. The middle housing ordinance was house bill 2001 that passed in. 2020 or 2021. So middle housing is already allowed. These are just about like the configurations and what the development standards are for those middle housing types. So it's not allowing more development, it's just allowing them in a different configuration.
176 Right. And again, the state didn't go beyond the door, going beyond the door. They didn't think about the public right of way outside the door, going towards the sidewalks.
177 Correct.
178 Okay. Thanks.
179 Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Pirtle-guiney.
180 Thank you, council president. I was jumping in because nobody else on the committee had on councilor Clark's ask about what we thought about seeing the proposed language, because there are so many pieces that have to fit together to make this work, I was hesitant to try to fit all with this from the dais. If we have a proposal from our experts who think that that proposal won't negatively impact other parts, either of our compliance with state code or our broader permitting work at the city, I would be open to seeing that. If it doesn't look right to us, though, I would suggest that we not fiddle with it from the dais because there are so many other pieces that could be impacted by that. But if others are are interested in seeing what the bureau has, I certainly, given the work we did on the dais, wouldn't be opposed to that. My concern, like I said, with making changes from the dais, was the the broader impacts on our our code and on our compliance with the state.
181 Thank you. Councilor, I would presume that if they have amendments, they've thought about all those that connective tissue that you're talking about, and maybe we can have them present that to us.
182 I would defer to others on if they want that and the council president on whether that's okay with him, but I wouldn't be opposed.
183 You have the floor. You're welcome to ask for it if you want.
184 Could I look to my fellow committee members and just get a nod about if folks are.
185 What's the question?
186 We.
Procedural episode · turns 187–195
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187 I think we can be pretty quick about this.
188 And I'm seeing at least two other members of the housing committee say, yeah, they'd be interested in seeing it.
189 All right, let's run through some quick slides and then we'll get to councilors Zimmerman, Green and Avalos.
190 In. In our estimation, the council has three options. Go with what the planning commission recommended, which is what's on the slide here and the recommended draft. And and I guess I should clarify, I think what we're. There's two things I think you're hearing from constituents with concerns about middle housing in general and development in their neighborhoods in general. We're not going to solve that today. You heard some more specific testimony about the common outdoor area, and that's what we have the amendments for. So there's three slides. The recommended draft includes an. Each common outdoor area must be 750ft■!s instead of 450ft■!s. And that's because now a cottage cluster will have five units instead of three units.
191 So I have a point of order. I just need to clarify. Council president, what you have on the screen here is a proposed amendment or this is the recommendation from planning commission.
192 This is the recommendation from planning commission. So if you don't amend any.
193 Change from 450 to 750.
194 Yes. That's what staff proposed to the commission, and the commission agreed with that. So that's what's on the table today. If you don't amend anything, that is what would go into effect with the adoption of this ordinance. Okay. So amendment option number one for the councilors is to say we don't agree with 750. That's too much. We'll go back to 450, which is what the code currently says. Amendment number two is to do what the testifier, miss radelet, suggested, which was that at least one of the spaces be 750ft■!s, and the other ones can be smaller at 450ft■!s. This way they are not providing too much outdoor area for the smaller cottage clusters. That was part of her point is that 750ft■!s is enough outdoor area for five units, and if they do a six unit cottage cluster, this unit is now providing how 750 and a second unit is providing 750. So by having that second outdoor area smaller. That that addresses her concern, I believe. And that's this is what she had suggested. So those are the two amendment options or leaving it as is.
195 Council president. Do I still have the floor?
196 I still.
197 Have I have a question about this. Absolutely. Okay. On this amendment to option, there's a lot of language changes. Are subs two and three as this is laid out language that is already included in both current code and the proposal before us. And what I'm seeing is significant changes is just to specify that this applies to each individual common area, regardless of size. There aren't actually substantive changes beyond the 750 plus.
198 Correct. Because the way it's laid out here in the recommended draft is that each common area needs to meet these standards. Now that there's a big common area and a small common area potentially on a site, we needed to clarify that each of them needs to meet those dimensional standards.
199 Thank you for the clarification. Colleagues. Based on what I said earlier, I would be interested in this option to, but I want to hear from. There are a number of other people in the queue now, so I'd like to hear from others before I propose moving anything.
200 Okay. Thank you, counselor pirtle-guiney counselor Zimmerman.
201 Thanks. So I'm cautious about making an amendment from the. So a couple of things, right. I don't think I've received any briefing on this. Right. So this is a this is a something that's gone through committee seems fairly substantive given what's going on here. Have not received a council or district based briefing on that, which I think this seems like a topic that probably was apt for that. Certainly something I think could belong in a work session. So I'm cautious about making amendments to get past the moment. I think we've had some not great outcomes with that in the past. Also, these amendments, while I appreciate them, don't really seem to be the crux of the entire concern. They seem to be one thing about the size of a courtyard. But there were other things that I think are more into this, that it's not just about courtyard development sizes. So. I. What whether the body decides to amend or not, I am weighing whether or not I feel that has met. I guess the the level of standard and information and clarity on something for me to take an action today, that's that's where I'm at. So I, I truly am listening. I appreciate there are a couple amendments, but I think there may be more in the in the works, and I'm not sure I'm in the amendment on the fly mood today for this.
202 And just as a note, colleagues, this is a first reading of a non emergency ordinance. Councilor. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Green.
203 Thank you, council president, thank you for bringing another, you know, another option for us to consider and for bringing us back to the the subject, which is about the actual common area and how to deal with state compliance there. This is in line with what folks testified and asked for. I share some of councilor Zimmerman's concerns, though I think that I think the baseline was probably too much. I think it's sort of a linear scaling of open space. And I don't know that that's really the intent. The intent is to have a sort of reasonable amount of open space that's common. And there's probably a less linear relationship there in terms of like the benefit piece. I'm not an expert in this stuff, so I'm inclined to to adopt this, but I really do think that we should not stop here with a process like, let's get through this, but let's, let's talk to the building trades, let's talk to folks, developers, let's talk to neighbors and figure out what makes the most sense. But that can't happen here at the dais. And that can't happen before the end of the year. So I'm amenable to this amendment because I think I've heard this is the only other variant I've heard from people who have some expertise in this field. And so I, I feel deferential to that. And if staff's bringing it, that means that I feel like you guys can say, hey, what, you know, what this this works in terms of our compliance. And so I would vote yes for this.
204 Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Avalos.
205 Yeah, thank you for the discussion. I, I think I share a lot of where councilor Green is landing on this. I, you know, in committee, we decided that the questions that were being brought were good policy questions, but couldn't be addressed necessarily in that moment. And then we had an understanding of some time sensitivity. So let me start by asking that. Is there a time sensitivity that I should be aware of?
206 Yes. These need to be in effect on January 1st, which means that we need to have a second reading by December 1st.
207 Okay. And then in a scenario.
208 Or what.
209 Or the Portland permitting and development planners will need to apply the state rules directly. And that will cause a lot of confusion because there's a lot of interpretation that can be made on how the bills can be implemented. You know, do we mean, you know, does does six units on a lot mean a fourplex and therefore follow the fourplex rules? Or does six units on a lot mean multi dwelling and follow the multi dwelling rules, things like that.
210 Okay. So it sounds like we want to or at least I want to at minimum avoid that scenario. So now in a scenario where we let me put this amendment aside. Let's say we put this forward as is without these amendments. What does it look like for council to come back and address these outstanding policy questions? Do those things have to happen on that same timeline of by January, or is there time after January to say, we're going to come back and address some of these broader issues? I'm trying to get a sense of like, if we do want to come back, what's our time constraint on that?
211 If we do want to come back to the council and do it within this project and this this project record, we could come back next week with new language. If you knew what amendment you would want us to pursue, we could write it up at the end of this week and come back next week.
212 I think the question is, though, that there's I don't know that this council is set even within one week to know what we want to do, right? Because we need to talk to some stakeholders, it sounds like. So I want to know, is there a way to come, if we were to pass this as is, is there a way that we can come back later to make either this amendment that's in front of us or any other future amendments?
213 Councilor Avalos, patricia diefenderfer for the record, I would just say that the time constraint is to get this project into effect by January 1st. If we want to come back and make these other changes that you're talking about, we have suggested a staff that we are going to be undertaking. Another look at the middle housing regulations, and we can incorporate that in that project, and that that was the intention to do that. So there's no time constraint on making this particular amendment, this for as is or as potentially proposed here, would meet the state compliance requirement. And so we would we would be in compliance with the state. And it's just a question of what what the next project and what the timing of that next project will be. There's no constraint on that. It's just the time that's required to go through a legislative process for staff to do its analysis, to do the outreach, to better understand the issues, and then bring a proposal.
214 When you say as proposed, do you mean including this amendment or without this?
215 I do believe and staff can correct me, that whether the council adopts the proposal as is, meaning making no amendments, or if the council adopted this particular amendment, for example, that we would still be in compliance with the state law. And there would be, as long as we take action on that in the time frame that sandra mentioned, so that it's in effect by January 1st, we would be there wouldn't be any concerns.
216 And can you give me another read of your opinion on the difference between these two amendments? Sure. Yeah.
217 Are you asking me council? I would say that this particular I think the option. Well, let me say that option one essentially means a reduced per unit square footage of outdoor space overall. Right. So again, whether it's linear, like if you have x number of units, you just make sure that each unit has the same amount of open space. And that's your standard. That's typically how we apply the code. But adopting this would mean you're requiring less open space per per unit.
218 Let me just clarify. It's the same square footage per unit, but each common outdoor space would be smaller.
219 Sorry, the common outdoor space would be smaller, right. But overall there'd be less open space on the site for residents there. There's common and there's.
220 There is no individual individual cottage clusters. There are no individual. This is all the this is. So it's 150 square foot per unit. So you would have. But then how big does that common open space need to be similar to what.
221 Effectively a reduction in the amount of open space.
222 You'd have two.
223 Well, okay, let's let's just be clear. I mean, this proposal reduces it back down to 450. The next proposal. Can we.
224 Just not the absolute number. It's the minimum size. It's the minimum and.
225 It's the minimum size.
226 Common open space.
227 Okay. And then this particular amendment would essentially say that the, the common, the first common open space or the primary common open space would be 750. And then any other open spaces that are provided would have to, would be, wouldn't have to be larger than 450. So it's just different ways of orienting the open space on the site with ultimately this option requiring less total space, common open space on the site that in a way that might be more conducive to being able to accommodate the number of units, as we've heard from the testifiers.
228 Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think even just that back and forth makes me uncomfortable with choosing one of these options right now. And it sounds like, you know, this one you already drafted. Am I hearing you say that there were there's potential to draft other things between now and next time? Or what was it that you were saying?
229 I mean, I'm not personally, I don't know that we would be able to come up with anything different than this necessarily within a week's time in order to make it into this package for the, for the to, to get it to be effective in the time that's required. I will say also that currently there is another state law, sb 1537, which allows for automatic adjustments from regulations, and I believe that their projects can avail themselves of that. If there is an individual project that is having difficulty complying with any particular standard, that they could use that automatic adjustment to address their particular situation, and that is in place until 2032. And that does give an option while we continue to have time to better identify solutions for this issue. So that that is another sort of relief valve that exists currently.
230 Okay. Well, I think where I'm landing is again, don't feel comfortable moving any of these amendments right now. Yeah, maybe I'll just keep listening to the conversation. I'm not sure what to do with that, but yeah, thanks for answering my questions.
231 Thank you.
232 Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Colleagues, just a programing note. We are about an hour over on our schedule and we have a number of must pass things today. So this is a good conversation to be had. But just noting the time, vice president Clark.
233 Thank you, council president. I'll try to be quick. So let me ask a question on this. Option two does this sort of mirror what's actually out there with clusters? Now, the five clusters that you looked at, I know there's many, many more, but is this sort of a mirror of that?
234 Not necessarily. Like I said, our main observation was if there's no driveway and parking, then 750ft■!s, the open areas ae actually a lot larger. 750 is about 50ft wide, 15ft deep. It's the ones that have parking, that little pieces of open area, oops, are being carved out that are in essence, look like people's front yards. And, and depending on where they have driveways between the units, the front yard area is functioning or counting towards the common open area.
235 Okay. Without diagrams and photographs, it's really hard for me to visualize all of this, but I'm just two things. Ultimately, I think everything we can do to simplify. All of our processes, our codes, our permitting, everything we can do to simplify is where I would like to land, but I don't think we're going to get there today on this amendment. And while I would really like to resolve this and get an amendment going, I think maybe we just continue this first reading so that we can have that conversation and get the kind of input that councilor Greene was talking about. If that if you're amenable to that, to continue the first reading, and that would give us a little more time to get our head around it. I think we can still meet the January requirement. Anyway, I'm going to throw that out there. Thank you.
236 Thank you, councilor Councilor Ryan.
237 Yeah, I'll be brief. Thank you, council president. I'm into the compliance of what the state provided, but it's real clear in this conversation. Thank you, councilor Avalos. I think your leadership showed up to adapt, and I don't think we're ready to pass amendments today. And I hope when we do come back, we also obviously, I care about looking at the totality of the public right of way in this conversation as well. It's missing in our dialog. Thank you.
238 Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Koyama Lane.
239 Thank you, council president.
240 I appreciate this conversation and think that this is going to be strengthened by us continuing to work on this. But I also just want to be clear that you all came to committee very prepared. We did have a discussion about this. It did pass. Everyone that was there voted yes. And so I just want to acknowledge that there has been communication and hard work that's gone into this, and we are still figuring out our committee system. It was really hard for us to track all the committees when we had even more than we have now. We have a smaller amount, but we have we I understand, I just want to be clear, we have work to do to figure out how are we as councilors, tracking things when we're not in that committee? How are we deciding if something should be at a committee or a committee of the whole? So while I'm glad that we're continuing to work on this, I just want to be clear that and acknowledge that there's been openness, there's been conversation, and I think some of that is for us as councilors to have our staff looking and and flagging things for us when it's going to be of interest, and also being able to reach out and ask for a briefing. Because I know whenever I, I am asking the city administrator or any of those dcas it's like, yes, we would love to communicate. So I just wanted to, to thank you for your openness and appreciate your work so far.
241 Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane, councilor Green.
242 Thank you. Yeah, I think we need to move on from this item. I just want to note that if we if we don't vote on this or we do it, it fails. And then we have to have another amendment in a week's time. It's functionally the same as continuing this first reading, because then we would have to do another reading anyway. And so I wouldn't I wouldn't advocate that we continue this first reading. I would say, let's just pass this to a second reading. And if folks still want to do the amendment, we can we can have that conversation.
243 That sounds good to me. No one else in the queue. I'm going to move this item to second reading. Okay. Thank you all very much.
244 Did we close the written record and oral testimony?
245 Can you just announce that the record.
246 Absolutely. The record. The record is officially closed on this item, both written and oral.
247 Yes.
248 Okay.
249 Good. Everybody.
250 Did we get a time certain for our.
251 Yeah.
252 Oh, there we go. This ordinance will be moving forward together with the project report and zoning code amendments to second reading for adoption on October 21st at 6:15 p.m. Time. Certain. Okay, great. Colleagues, it's 1115. I'm going to ask us to please be back here at 1125. We're going to take a quick break, and we are going to try to get through with the rest of our agenda. Thank you.
253 I.
254 Welcome back folks calling us back to order. Thank you very much for the very brief break. Keelan can we please call our next time? Certain item.
255 Document 2026-343. Amend the Portland zoning code. Portland comprehensive plan map and zoning maps to facilitate housing production and post pandemic economic recovery and revitalization in the central city. Amend title 33 Portland comprehensive plan map official zoning maps.
256 Thank you colleagues. This is the first reading and hearing for item 2026-343. The ordinance for the recommended draft of the central city code amendment project, or the cc cap, as we are calling it. I understand there is a brief presentation from our friends at planning and sustainability. Well, come on up.
257 Thank you so much. I think we need just one moment. Are we already logged in to share the presentation?
258 Thanks.
259 Thank.
260 Thank you so much. Good morning. Is it still morning? I'm not sure. Good morning, council president. Vice president, councilors. Patricia diefenderfer for the record, chief planner, bureau of planning and sustainability. I appreciate the time to have the opportunity to present this project to you. So I am going to go ahead and do the presentation. I'm joined by rachel hoy. She's a supervising planner and bts, and together we will help answer questions, but I'm going to go ahead and do the presentation. So I will go ahead and get started. Next slide please. Thank you rachel. Okay, so this slide just shows the presentation outline. Essentially, we're going to give an overview of what the planning commission recommendation is. Give some background on this project. Provide an overview of the proposal itself. And then we are joined by commissioner Planning commissioner Erica thompson, who is going to present the recommendation of the planning commission. And I do believe she has some time constraints, so hopefully we'll be able to get to her portion while she's still available to be here, if you could. Next slide please. Thank you. So the planning commission held several meetings on this item. Starting in late may. They had a briefing and a hearing and a number of work sessions. On July 14th, the planning commission voted to recommend that city council take the following actions to adopt the central city code amendment project report and to adopt the amendments that are proposed in that report, including comprehensive plan and zoning map changes and changes to the zoning code. Next slide please. So I'm going to just provide some brief information about what the background of this project, specifically the purpose of this project, the purpose of this project was to is to facilitate housing production and post pandemic economic recovery and revitalization. It builds upon a number of efforts, prior efforts to remove regulatory barriers. It has taken a very tactical approach to addressing current challenges, including market conditions and investment that we've been seeing in the central city in recent years. The amendments are intended to be responsive to trends precipitated by the pandemic that have resulted in greater remote work, 25 plus percent office vacancies and significant vacancy on ground floor and ground floor residential spaces. The zoning, the zoning changes that are part of this project really are about creating flexibility, greater flexibility in the allowable uses in various zones in order to help fill vacant ground floor and office spaces, and again to foster new residential development. And lastly, the project does support, has some small provisions in it that supports some of the larger catalytic projects that we talk about frequently, such as the broadway corridor and omsi projects. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later, I will. Yeah, so this project does have kind of a long background, this project really the genesis of this project dates back to a development survey that was conducted in 2022. The findings of that survey and public input that we received through a number of other projects, including the housing needs analysis, the housing production strategy and the housing regulatory relief project, which was a project that temporarily suspends some development standards for housing developments through 2029. All of the in all of these projects, we heard, we heard common and recurring themes about the need to to look at the central city and the regulations of the central city, and to do some tactical changes that would support trying to spur economic development and housing in the short term. So this this project was a bureau initiated project because of the outreach, the input that we received through a number of different projects. And importantly, I will say this project was never scoped or intended to be a full update of the central city plan. The central city 2035 plan was a plan that was adopted fairly recently in 2020 when with with ten years of public input. And so this was not intended to be a wholesale update of that plan, but rather some tactical changes to affect some of the things that I was describing previously. Next slide please. So now we will go into the proposal. There are again these are the themes. This project was trying to advance housing production, economic recovery, and to continue efforts to streamline regulations and make regulations more flexible. The actions that are part of this project are map changes. So some changes to comprehensive plan and zoning maps, and some changes to zoning code. And I will also say that the changes to the maps, as typically is largely changes to height and very few changes to base zoning. But I will describe those in more detail. Next slide. So this slide I won't go into too much detail. It does outline the the engagement process that was conducted for this project. As mentioned, the impetus was input that we received through many prior projects. We started outreach on this project in earnest in March of this year. Public input informed both the the initial discussion draft, but also informed subsequent drafts and proposed the proposal that you see before you today. Next slide please. So we wanted to just quickly summarize the testimony from planning commission predominantly what we heard, what the planning commission heard in public testimony was support for proposed. The proposed height increases in this project. There was actually requests for even more increases to height in this project. There was some testimony around desired increases in the floor area, ratio allowances in the. In the zoning in the central city, there were requests for additional rezoning of industrial areas beyond to residential mixed use. Beyond those that are proposed in the project, there was support. Provided for the allowance of some of the parking allowances, including allowance for temporary surface parking. And there was also some concerns about those things. So you can see some other points there that are listed on the slide. But that was the predominant input that was received. And I'll just add sorry if you could go back for just one moment. I think I would just simply add that the planning commission did make several changes and amendments to the proposal as a result of testimony and their deliberations. Those largely included the they added an additional track and option for height that includes an unlimited height option, which I'll describe later. They made some changes related to the types of uses that can be allowed in the river setback, for example, in. As it relates to open space and tom mccall waterfront park in particular. And they also refined the provisions related to ground floor standards for residential units. So there was much debate in the planning commission, and there were amendments made as a result of that debate. One proposal, or they did not, however, make any changes or add any additional area industrial areas for rezoning as a result of the input, despite their deliberations on that. So I just wanted to note that. Next slide please. So the next few slides go through the map changes and I will first, as I noted before the changes, the map changes really focus largely on changes to maximum bonus height. So we looked at throughout the the plan area at properties throughout the plan area and identified places where additional height could be added. And again there were limited changes to to actual base zoning. So next slide please. This map here shows the very targeted and limited areas where rezoning is proposed in this in the proposal that's before you from industrial or general industrial to the what's called the x zone, which is a mixed use, is a mixed use zone that allows residential uses. And you can see essentially the purple areas on the map. They are kind of east of the river in the central east side are the existing x or mixed use zones. And you can see the hatch purple area are the limited areas where industrial zoning is proposed to be changed from industrial to that mixed use zone. In this project, you can see that many of those changes really are focused on corridors and completing existing mixed use corridors, or completing adding properties that are in transit station areas and are proximate to transit in a couple of instances, particularly in the lower albina area, you can see the changes there are really supporting some restorative development projects that are planned for that area. And you can see there is one area that has hatching that's in red and that is a rezoning to from industrial to the commercial, the central commercial zone, which is the red color that you see on the map. That is a site that's along the river on the east side in the lower alpine area. That's where there's some plans to try to make a waterfront connection to the river from the neighborhood in the east of there. Next slide please. There's so those were the the base zone changes. Those were the extent of the base zone changes. And there is one other base zone change, which is in the goose hollow area. There are two blocks in the goose hollow area that are proposed to be changed from what is a multidwelling zone right now to that red central commercial zone. And this is really to allow a wider range of uses to be able to take place in that location. Next slide please. The proposal also includes there are a few parcels that you can see on maps here where there is existing, what we call the zoning, the central employment zoning. That zone does allow a wide range of uses, everything from residential to industrial uses. In these parcels they the plan they're already zoned that central employment zone, but they have a prohibition on residential uses. And these. This action would repeal that prohibition in these targeted areas. Next slide please. I mentioned the height. There's proposed. This proposal includes a number of locations. As you can see all across the area on the map there where height is increased and the increase is to the maximum bonus height. So that's the height that projects are eligible to use when they have provided inclusionary affordable units or some other public benefit. Those height height changes that you see there represent heights that increase from 100 to maybe 200ft above, what, 250ft above what the allowable height is today. That equates to about 10 to 20 stories. So significant. You know, we looked carefully to find areas where height could be increased significantly. Additionally, as I mentioned previously, the planning commission did introduce another height option. We're just calling that track two here for purposes of just to be able to describe the or to delineate between the two, and essentially what that unlimited height track does is it allows projects to have unlimited height with some meet if they meet some standards, as long as they are not within designated public view corridors, historic districts, or in some other limited areas within the central city. Next slide. So just a little bit more about that unlimited height. Track two this projects would be eligible to use this unlimited height if they are largely residential projects. And if they if once they reach a height of 100ft, they reduce their floor plates and narrow the the towers to 1200 and 12,500ft■!s. So the idea is to get tall but slender towers. Again. This site. The sites that are within designated public view corridors or historic districts are not eligible for this. And there are. The proposal introduces a shadow analysis requirement for. There's. For projects that are within a certain distance of residential areas outside of central city or within certain distance of tom mccall park. There's as well as some requirements for shadow analysis when you're near open space, which is something that already exists in the code. Next slide please. So now I'm going to go into a quickly go into some of the code changes. Those were map changes that we just talked about. And now we'll go into some of the code changes. The regulatory changes again as a means to try to really create more flexibility in zoning and to encourage reuse and occupancy in vacant retail and office space. This project takes the two predominant zones that you have in the central city, the the red areas, which is the central commercial zone and the gray areas, which is the, the industrial, the general industrial zone, and essentially allows more uses within those areas, expands the allowable uses. So in the gray areas that you see on the map, the general industrial, the allowance, the code would allow more. An increase in the amount of retail sales and service uses. And similarly, in the red areas, the code would remove limit current limitations that exist on the size of manufacturing and production spaces, so that those spaces will no longer have a size limitation. And I, you know, hopefully that that will allow a wider range of uses, light manufacturing uses, maker spaces, etc. To occupy vacant office spaces. Next slide please. Another thing that this project focused on was looking at the places in the central city where ground floor, residential uses or dwelling units are prohibited. The map that you see on the left is the map that is in place today. All of those streets shown in Green are places where residential units are not allowed on the ground floor. Currently, the housing regulatory relief project, which I mentioned, which is temporarily suspended, a handful, like a dozen code provisions, actually has waived this provision currently. But this is intended to be the permanent regulation. So you can see that the map on the right is the proposal, the the the proposal that removes a number of streets. It adds a couple of streets, but it basically reduces overall the number of streets where there's a ground floor probe, prohibition on residential or dwelling units so that there could be dwelling units in more places in the central city. Next slide. To go along with that, the as we allow more residential units on the ground floor, there's standards that would accompany that that would ensure that those units are built in such a manner that they are setback and or stepped, stepped up from the sidewalk to create a sense of kind of privacy for the units, but also to do so in a manner that still kind of fronts the street and keeps some engagement between the building and the street. So all of these provisions really are about designing the unit in such a way that they are livable for residents, but also are addressing the street appropriately in a downtown context. Next slide please. Another of the provisions of this package include increasing by a ratio of 1 to 1. The allowable floor area for as a bonus floor area for projects that provide family sized units. This is something that was identified as an action in the housing production strategy. And so this project fulfills that, which is to really try to create a pathway to encourage more family sized units within the central city, which is not what was developed in the last sort of development wave. There were a lot of studio and one bedroom apartments. Next slide please. Again, this package also includes a number of provisions that expand the range of visitor serving uses that are allowed in tom mccall waterfront park. Specifically, there are some provisions that apply to open space generally, but there are a number of provisions that apply specifically to tom mccall waterfront park as well. Expanding the range of uses the the amount of retail sales and service, for example, that could be allowed in the park. And it also allows for park and open area uses within the river setback. So it essentially both reduces the river setback and allows for a wider array of uses to exist within that riverside park, all with the goal of trying to really kind of revitalize and activate the waterfront and the waterfront park. Next slide please. There are provisions that this, I think, falls into the category of some of those more miscellaneous provisions, but there are provisions that update the parking and food cart regulations, for example. So parking regulations, essentially, we're trying to create a little bit more flexibility for surface parking on a temporary basis or in city owned parking spaces, parking structures. But all of these parking provisions, the goal of these provisions is to create parking for workers and and visitors, just to encourage people to come downtown, make sure that people who are working downtown have some some options for parking, as well as visitors and people patronizing
261 Businesses and some of the cultural institutions in the central city. Likewise, the food cart provisions essentially expand the areas where food carts are allowed from just parking lots to paved areas such as plazas and paved areas and parks. And these provisions, the food cart provisions actually apply city wide. Next slide please. Additional amendments include amendments to the roof requirements in central city. This was something that was part of the housing regulatory relief project. This this is essentially taking that temporary regulation which allows a combination of solar panels and roofs and makes that permanent. And that differs from current regulation, because current regulation really emphasizes the eco roofs in in the regulations. And I mentioned the in the early part of the presentation about provisions that support some of the larger master plan and catalytic sites. And so this is that provision where it would reduce the level of review for amendments to an approved central city plan in the event that such a such an amendment was needed. So that's just something to help support those projects. And I think we're at the point in the presentation now where I just wanted to outline the technical amendments that. And there were sort of two sets of amendments that were published as part of the agenda. These technical amendments, and I'll go into them in a little more detail. But one clarifies the standards for the ground floor residential development standards, specifically the entryway or porch. We realized coming out of planning commission that the standard was not quite as clear as it could be. And so that's a technical amendment to help bring that into greater alignment with what the planning commission intended to do. And the second amendment is really to update a greenway inventory map. And I can talk about that a little bit more. So next slide please. So you can see here the the shaded language is the language. That is being added to further clarify the intent related to those ground floor residential units and how they're designed, how the porches are designed. And, you know, the fact that there is an entrance required for each unit from the street. Next slide please. And this is just a continuation of that. There are two options you will see because one relates to I'm sorry if you could flip back for a second, rachel. One relates to when units are essentially raised above the ground floor and the rules associated with that. And they they mirror each other. And the second option, next slide is just slight modifications to that. But how the rules apply if you are stepped above the sidewalk level. So you have a bit of a raised entrance from the sidewalk. Next slide please. This is the second of the two technical amendments that essentially updates the greenway inventory map. So it updates this map that shows where the natural resources are in tom mccall park and shows the the more limited resources that are along the seawall. And this just is updating a map that also corresponds with an action that was that's part of this project, which is to adjust the boundaries of the river environmental zone in this project. This is all part of the package of tom tom mccall park amendments that are proposed. This is the amendment, Green, Green one amendment, and this is a proposal to essentially for the unlimited height track, the the proposal that's before council currently. If we could flip to the next slide. Thank you. It does. You'll see that there's some language stricken. So the language that's stricken is essentially. Much of this mirrors the shadow analysis requirements of the base and bonus. And we were just trying to import some of those concepts to the unlimited height track. We did add the stricken language was an addition specifically for the unlimited height track that required a shadow analysis for projects that are within a certain distance, again, of residentially zoned areas outside of central city and tom mccall park. In those two instances, there were not the same objective standards for what constitutes a shadow impact in those cases. It was more generalized, and it was it basically just said that the the body that is reviewing the project would make a determination about the significance of that, of the impact of that shadow for for a variety of reasons, I think councilor Green was interested in. There was some testimony, I should say, about a concern about that shadow analysis and not having that objective standard. And so staff evaluated that further and determined that because of the other requirements for that unlimited height track, namely that the floor plate gets significantly reduced above the 100 foot level. And the result would be these small, slender towers that we didn't need to have the shadow analysis requirements. So the proposal here, as part of this amendment, is to strike out that that additional requirement for shadow analysis that was added as a part of this project. And I think that we're at the point now where we can invite our commissioner. Thank you so much, commissioner Thompson, to provide an overview of the planning commission's recommendation.
262 Hello again, erica thompson, representing today the planning commission for the central city code amendments project, which the commission voted unanimously to recommend to you at our July 14th hearing. I'm going to abridge some of my comments because I know that there's a lot to get to, but suffice to say that this is a really multifaceted project that the commission believes will support housing production and economic development in the central city, where housing production has been most challenged, and yet where we really need it most for the city's recovery, the rezoning, the removal of housing prohibitions, unlimited building heights in some areas, more flexible development standards, development for development bonuses for multi-bedroom units. We believe that all of these will create a more supportive environment for housing production. The as patricia mentioned, we heard from 11 individuals in person and reviewed 42 pieces of written testimony. I would. I would like to reassure councilor Zimmerman that this was definitely not a rubber stamp at planning commission, as the projects before us never are. We did have, I think, deep and. And thoughtful deliberations about most, if not all of the testimony themes that that patricia shared on that slide. I'm just going to highlight a couple of the bigger discussion areas, and then happy to answer questions or get into more details that make sense. The ground floor dwelling unit standards in the central city. This is something that we heard testimony on, including from the design commission, and ultimately recommended that ground floor dwelling units have at least one entrance on the street facing facade and include a setback for a space like a porch or a patio. The commission agreed six two on those measures. That they're critical elements for maintaining a vibrant, active urban realm as we allow more ground floor housing into the central city and also create a sense of safety through eyes on the street. And then after the commission's recommendation, patricia already described the additional minor technical amendment that is needed to go along with that. The commission has reviewed and supports that technical amendment. By the way, the unlimited height allowance. This was another area of pretty significant deliberation. I mean, I think there were some thoughts about the financial feasibility and viability of these super tall, slender towers, but that was ultimately outweighed, again, 6 to 2 with a vote that felt that unlocking anything that we can do to provide more flexibility for housing production is ultimately of value. We also reviewed a proposal to further decrease the river setback to 15ft in tom mccall waterfront park. The setback is currently 50. In the proposed draft. It was 25. After deliberating that and hearing testimony, we felt that it was most prudent to stick with the original proposal of the 25 foot setback. The last thing that I wanted to touch on quickly, we did hear pretty significant testimony, and I suspect you probably will again, around the zoning and the central east side, there was a lot of discussion about potentially going further with zoning changes from the I, g one to x. Ultimately, the planning commission decided to not recommend more sites for rezoning than the ones that were originally proposed by staff. And I think that the real driver there. And the reasoning for that is the larger economic opportunity analysis context, which I believe should be forthcoming in the next couple of months for you all. But that overarching goal of preserving industrial lands in our city, the calculations, the considerations that went into the eoa for how much we have and where that exists, it felt like we were starting to pull at something that we might not fully understand, to get into broader rezoning and that central east side area. So I will stop it there. I think those are some of the highlights, but again, happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
263 Thank you.
264 So colleagues, a couple of programing notes. You'll note that it is currently noon. I appreciate you both introducing the the technical and the Green one amendments. Those are introduced for the purposes of public testimony, but we're not moving them right now. Colleagues, I want to tell you that I am going to get us through testimony or technical and clarifying questions and testimony. We are going to continue the remainder of council deliberations until 4:00 tomorrow, so that we can get through all this and get to some must do stuff that is on our agenda. Additionally, I have extended this meeting until 1:00. So, councilor Zimmerman, for technical or clarifying questions. No. Okay. Councilor. Novick. Technical or clarifying?
265 Mr. President, I'll let you decide whether this is technical or clarifying. Well, actually, this one definitely is. Miss thompson, do I take you to be saying that you think that the central eastside industrial council suggestions. Part of your reluctance was you thought we should wait until we get the economic opportunity analysis before considering them.
266 I mean, maybe patricia will want to jump in here a little bit, but there are some fairly nuanced calculations that go into the eoa about the repository of industrial lands that we have. And while we the the eoa outlines a plan that is in alignment with that, that does not account for or include bigger sections of the central eastside being rezoned in that way. I think that it's this is me speaking personally now, not necessarily as the whole commission, a very worthy topic to consider, but it again, felt like it was a little bit maybe cart before the horse or something that we weren't going to be able to fully resolve in that space. As the eoa is already moving forward.
267 Okay. And this is the question I'm not sure really is technical or clarifying. I'm looking at one of the six proposals, which is to go to x on basically Hawthorne and madison between sixth and 12th. And there's a list of the current uses. And out of 46 buildings that six are manufacturing and production. And then there's a reference to the memo that I think the staff did in July 8th to we want to preserve family wage jobs. So at some point, maybe not. Now, I'd like to hear a discussion of like, do it. Our wholesale sales jobs, family wage jobs, our industrial services, family wage jobs, etc. Just sort of, I kind of assume that manufacturing, production, family wage jobs, even though that might be true, but at some point it's sort of like, see, like going through the kind of uses here, really family wage jobs, we should be going out of our way to protect at the expense of flexibility.
268 Do you have an answer?
269 Yeah, I would.
270 I would maybe say that's kind of a larger question to answer. But you know, the those different uses, they're part of an ecosystem that supports both other industrial businesses and, and commercial businesses. And so it is a policy of the central city 2035 plan and the comprehensive plan to preserve industrial areas to preserve them for industrial jobs, which are generally higher paying jobs. And I do have some information about the average salaries in different sectors within the central eastside that I can share when it's appropriate. So I think the predominant thing was, because this project was not intended to be a wholesale, a major policy change was not intended to be a wholesale update of this plan. The the targeted industrial changes were very strategic and they were quite limited in geography. And the request on the part of the cic represented a much bigger area and a much bigger departure from that existing policy, and really felt not to be in the scope of this project.
271 Thank you.
272 Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Pirtle-guiney.
273 Council president. I have a number of questions that can absolutely wait until after public testimony, but I just want to clarify that your intent is to make sure that we have staff available to ask questions tomorrow. Is that correct?
274 That is my intent. Absolutely. Thank you, thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Keelan. Can we move to public testimony, please?
275 I'm just going to leave my computer here.
276 Okay. Our first panel includes serena ashby, chandra robinson, kevin volk, jenna varner, bradley clover.
277 Come on down, folks. Make sure to introduce yourself for the record. You're welcome to share your pronouns in three minutes.
278 Good afternoon. My name is serena boston ashby, for the record. And I spell that cireena, and I use she her pronouns. Today I'm here in my stead is the vice president of external affairs at the 1803 fund, located in district two. On behalf of 1803ceo ricky adams, our board and staff and the community of albina, I extend our gratitude to president Dunphy and our great councilors of district two councilors Ryan Kanal and pirtle-guiney, and to the entire city council. Thank you again and good afternoon as well. Thank you for this important agenda item of the central coast central city code amendments project. The cc cap as staff is presented, the cc cap updates, the Portland zoning code and map and incentivizes affordable housing development and supports economic revitalization across the city central neighborhoods. And that would include albina the. And that would include albina, the historic and present heart of the black community of Portland. 1803 is a capital investor that deploys a $400 million fund. With our capital, we invest in. And for black Portland in an area that has most recently been recognized by the Portland city council as pivotal to the health, viability and prosperity of Portland. That area, of course, is albina and albina is 1803. Focus. To date, 1803 has invested nearly $100 million in grants and financing to albina based organizations such as albina vision trust, williams and russell cdc and the Portland housing center. These organizations are critical partners to 1803 work and 1803 capacitated. Their affordable housing, which helps the city meet affordable housing goals. 1803 is also investing for Portland through our own real estate developments. 1803 is. Two projects are the albina riverside, once known as the louis dreyfus grain silos, and our other project, the low end. Both projects will benefit from the cc cap. To explain as briefly as possible, these projects are currently under development and these two projects cannot accomplish. 1803 goal of a rooted and prosperous black Portland. Without the zone amendments, our intention is to develop each site with more modern commerce amenities and safe designs to be of benefit to albina and accessible to all of Portland. With these zone amendments, 1803 projects could evolve infrastructures with safer and more environmentally sound structures that will galvanize neighborhood living and tourism, and stabilize local residents alike, including restoring safe and celebratory physical access to the Willamette river from the east side. We will sustain current businesses and support new businesses, and create partnerships that will benefit black Portland and the greater Portland area. Furthermore, through these zone changes, our projects will create sustainable jobs to employ the current and future labor forces of the city. In short, the cc cap is a win for the community of albina and will enable 1803 prosperous developments very quickly. What may seem like bureaucratic code and land use terms are actually literal mechanisms to ensure that real people, the people of albina, are able to receive and enjoy a built environment that they deserve. In closing on behalf of the many, the many diverse residents of the. Zip code 97227, district two and the heart of all of albina, including black portlanders. We thank you for your consideration and support of the cc cap. Thank you.
279 Thank you very much.
280 Can you go next?
281 Oh, I'm sorry, I thought the round of testifiers all came up together. Hi, I'm bradley clover. Sorry to cut in line. I'm here today asking you to please vote yes on the proposed draft along with amendment Green one. This proposal comes before you at a moment when permitting activity in the center of an almost 2 million person metro region is near zero. This should set off alarms. And while this proposal is not on its own, an adequate response and frankly, bts lacked any sense of ambition with this project, it does still contain some important reforms that will meaningfully reduce barriers to construction. In particular, the proposed unlimited height option that the planning commission added in is a landmark reform that goes a long way toward teeing up the central city for the next building cycle. This proposal helps and warrants your support, but there remain major barriers that are holding up residential construction in the central city. More than anything, I am here asking you today to prepare for the next step after this, among the most urgent barriers that are holding up construction are building code rules that contribute to making high rise residential uneconomical to build. One of the clearest examples is that builders in Portland cannot use space saving interlocking stairs, which is a proven technique used in Vancouver and new york city for decades that is unavailable here. Portland has the capacity to draw on the lessons and best practices of our peer jurisdictions, both within the united states and abroad. But to do so needs a directive from council. Oregon's building code is uniform statewide, but a city may adopt different requirements if the state's building code director authorizes it, and state statute directs that director to encourage experimentation and innovation and cost effectiveness by municipalities. Portland cannot rewrite the building code unilaterally, but it's the only city in Oregon with a high rise downtown. If Portland does not take the initiative, no other city will, and neither will the state. Please pass this project with amendment Green one and then take on the next set of barriers holding up housing production in our central city. Thank you.
282 Thank you very much.
283 Hi, my name is chandra robinson. I am a resident of district two. I grew up in Portland. I'm a small business owner. I'm an architect, and I'm here today in my capacity as chair of the Portland design commission. And I'd like to read into the record the letter that we sent as part of our testimony to city council about the cap. So the design commission commends the effort and intent of the proposed central city code amendments. The commission supports these amendments as a meaningful step toward addressing central city housing needs and economic recovery, including the introduction of ground floor residential units. The commission is enthusiastic about the amendments broadly and provides the following two comments. Unlimited heights in parts of central city with design review approval. So we are definitely think that unlimited heights are great, but more clarity needs to be provided on what constitutes a significant negative impact. Miss diefenderfer was talking about that earlier. The significant negative impact of shadows from a proposed building on adjacent residential zone or open space, for example. Is it significant on the number or type of units that are impacted if it's a single family home, if it's an apartment building, if it's a park, is it about the total area that's impacted? Is it about the outdoor space? Because there are provisions in subsection 33, five, ten, two, ten, c, two, d and e that include example language, where the zoning code offers qualitative criteria instead of just saying significant impact. Also, more clarity about what happens with the cumulative effect of shadows from multiple buildings overlapping the same residential zone or the same open space area. For example, the first building results in a shadow, and the subsequent buildings then increase the amount of shadow on the residential residential zone or open area. So are we evaluating the combined shadow impacts from all buildings onto a residential zone or open space? In terms of ground floor residential, these amended new development standards will contribute to central city vitality and increase livability of ground floor units. Central city is a different environment for street level residential in terms of privacy, personal safety and the need for an active public realm. It's it's different than our than other urban neighborhoods. And we appreciate the planning commission's thoughtfulness in amending these standards as recommended by the design commission. I want to add that having looked at the amendment by councilor Green, it's it's really not necessary to eliminate the shadow study because the shadow study is about a ten minute endeavor. It's a tool in all 3d modeling programs that all all buildings are designed with. And essentially it just shows you what the impact is. And there is no harm in showing you what the impact is. And again, it goes back to the cumulative impact of a lot of different buildings. All you have to do is twist the building a little bit and then potentially the shadow impact is lessened. So having more information about how these buildings impact the open space or residential areas is important. You can still have unlimited height, tweak the building a little bit and not significantly negatively impact residential neighborhoods and open space. Thank you.
284 Thank you very much.
285 Kevin.
286 Hi there. Good afternoon counselors. Thanks for having me. My name is kevin volk. I'm a partner at holst architecture, and today I'm speaking on behalf of volunteers of America who own property at 200 southeast seventh avenue in the central east side, which is located in the ecg one island located between ankeny, Washington, sixth and eighth, just south of or excuse me, just west of sandy boulevard. I've worked in the central east side for the last 30 years at holst, 20 of that being right in the middle of this ecg one zone. I asked the city council today to include the voa block, as well as the rest of that igg1 island in the changes for the zoning as part of the ccep.
287 So the.
288 Sap project or cc project, excuse me, the site is a full city block with four street frontages, and although the property is zoned ag one, it's most recently been used for voa's women's residential program and its child care program under a conditional use for the last 30 to 40 years, the voa is looking to move their campus to the east side of town and are looking to for redevelopment opportunities for that site. There is very little to no industrial use in those islands, and I ask that council and staff consider more specifically those two pieces of zoned property within. Within these changes, it's an opportunity to look at the at the bigger picture. There's a couple reasons, I think that the zone is right for the for this for this area. Obviously, it's surrounded currently by x zone. And so that would continue that zoning along with the amendment that is proposing some some changes. Now, it's obviously consistent with the city's direction. It's still an employment zone. It's still allow industrial uses. The design overlay means redevelopment must meet some standards in the district. That area, as I said, I had been in that area for the last 30 years. Outside of the zones or the areas that have been rezoned to xd, there's been little to no development, and that makes for some pretty blight areas between the x zones now. And so we ask that you take this opportunity to look at this in the bigger picture, along with the rest of the igg1 zoned for redevelopment. We understand the concerns about the. It's preserving the industrial nature of the area, but I. I think that can be balanced with additional uses for some of these properties. So thank you very much for your time.
289 Thank you.
290 Good afternoon. My name is jana varner. I'm the ceo for voa Oregon. And I concur with kevin fox comments regarding development in the area he just described. Voa Oregon placed this property for sale on July 17th, 2025 with the intent for the proceeds to support our vision for growth and new facilities to address the addiction and behavioral health crisis in our community. In the last 14 months, we've had numerous inquiries on the property and our real estate team, apex real estate partners, prepared a letter that was sent to the council regarding the experience. In the letter, the following is stated. The property has been extensively marketed proactively since it was placed. The property has not received a single purchase offer despite market pricing. The strongest interest has generally come from child care and educated related education related users, retail oriented users, and short term shelter operators, rather than the traditional industrial occupants. Additionally, the property. The property has problems with open drug use and camping on a regular basis. Persistent challenges exist immediately surrounding the site. Over 20 tours of the site have been hosted, and on only one visit was a block free of tents or campers. We have encountered aggressive behavior on multiple occasions, observed as many as 7/10 along the sidewalk on the block, and have seen clear impacts associated with the lack of public restroom facilities in the area. Selling this resource is critical for voa Oregon. I believe that our chances of doing so increase by rezoning the site to x. Thank you very much for your consideration.
291 Thank you.
292 Next up we have brad molson. Jordan winkler will short, gerald powell renee morgan.
293 Any of those folks are in the room. You're welcome to come down to the dais. Don't have to do it one by one. Thank you. Kick us off.
294 I'm jordan winkler, I'm with winkler development corporation. We're a local multi-generational, family owned and operated real estate investment and development company with more more than 40 years of history in Portland. I just wanted to express my support generally for this project, express my support for the cic proposal, that just sort of further economic study about the idea of a broader rezoning in this area from igg1 to sort of x, would allow housing and other mixed use developments. And I want to respectfully request that the property, located at 1019 southeast 10th avenue, be given a x zone. As you know, as part of this project, similar to what an adjacent property is being given and similar to what other nearby, very nearby properties are being given as part of this project. This property is currently igg1, but that designation no longer reflects the evolving character of the surrounding area or the property's strong potential to contribute to the city's housing and urban development goals. This is exactly the type of site the central city code amendment project is intended to activate a centrally located full block with immediate access to services, infrastructure, transit, employment areas, walkable amenities and very importantly, the ability to deliver housing at scale. The surrounding area already functions as a walkable, mixed use environment ideal for residential living. The goat blocks market of choice grocery is located across the street and some of portland's most celebrated restaurants, as well as entertainment venues, transit and bike infrastructure are all within an easy walking distance. Moreover, the success of the nearby mixed use residential developments clearly demonstrates strong demand for housing in this area. The goat blocks project includes 349 residential units, and there are more than 1000 housing units within roughly a quarter mile of the property. Additional housing here would reinforce the successful pattern, help address portland's housing crisis, and support existing businesses by increasing the customer base within a walking distance. Maintaining an industrial sanctuary designation. This property is increasingly incompatible with the area's evolution into walkable, mixed use district. Reflecting that shift, the adjacent industrial zone properties to this one already include many non-industrial uses, such as an art studio, a gym, a florist, a pub, event spaces and much of the remaining nearby truly industrial space is today vacant or very underutilized. Further, the mismatch between the property's existing industrial use and the neighborhood's active residential and pedestrian environment and can invite unsafe interactions. The property's loading docks, you know, literally across the street from yamhill alley, where their neighborhood events are hosted, where hopscotch Portland draws families and children. And and that's potentially dangerous, you know, in short, this is a rare opportunity to thoughtfully rezone a centrally located full city block that had become progressively less suited for industrial use and instead align it with the neighborhood that already exists around it. Today, as a local Portland company that cares. Thank you.
295 Thank you very much. Jump on in.
296 Hi. I'm jerry powell. I'm representing the goose hollow neighborhood as well as myself. I'm a director of the and the goose hollow foothills league neighborhood association. And incidentally, it's neighborhood planning director or chair. Our neighborhood board initially had some real reservations about several proposals that are included in this omnibus amendment. Staff has worked with us. We've resolved most of that. One of the big reservations that I'm sure everyone would would have a question about is, is this neighborhood that has contested development proposals with the Multnomah club over the past 15 years. What do we think about block seven being rezoned to. You know, it works. The Multnomah club has represented to the neighborhood that what it has in mind is, is in character with the neighborhood and in scale with the neighborhood. That's something that we have not had any inkling of before, and we're delighted. Of the things that that we had questions about. One actually didn't come about as a as a question mark until we started digging around in the in the weeds of what happens with the view corridors. We're kind of protected, protective of those little things. They're they're a public asset. They are specifically public view corridors. They're not for for privatization by someone that wishes to have great views from, from the upper floors of their condo or, or apartment house, the. Height limit regulation proposed. Proposes unlimited heights accepting in a view corridor. Well, now that's fine as far as it goes. Yet the the purpose of the view corridor was to give people a context to not just of the thing that they're objecting out there, the, the city or the, the mountain, but the city. So what happens when, when you have unlimited height next to a protected view corridor, you're looking through a keyhole. That's not the what the purpose of the regulation was. Thank you.
297 Thank you very much.
298 Rene. Is joining us online.
299 Are there questions? Will this record remain open?
300 No, the record will not be remaining open after today.
301 I'd like to request that it do so.
302 Thank you rene.
303 You're muted. Rene, can you hear us? I see you're unmuted. Can you can you hear us?
304 Not sure what's happening.
305 We can hear you, renee.
306 Oh. I'm sorry. Shall I begin?
307 Yes. Go ahead.
308 Thank you. My name is renee morgan, council president and city councilors. Thank you for this opportunity for public comment on the central city code amendment proposal. I'm speaking today on behalf of Willamette and columbia river. Floating home communities and marinas, including waterfront. Org organizations of Oregon to share our concerns about the impacts of the amendments. River review requirements for dredge projects. We applaud the planning commission's work to update central city regulations and codes. The targeted set of zoning and code updates will allow for housing expansion, more locations for businesses and parking options, all of which portlanders need. The code proposals are nearly exclusive to central city housing and commercial zone land use development. However, the addition of river review and setback provisions to the amendments appear to have been added without opportunity for our river community input. We have recently completed a river review for a dredge application for our community, but the river review amendments are tantamount to denial, requiring mitigation for simply moving material from the river bed to an area adjacent to the dredged area to maintain navigational depth and access for fireboats and rescue personnel. While the c.c.c. Ap is not modifying title 24, it will be changing some of the definitions and parameters related to river review, as we are directly impacted by some of these changes, we are requesting either a simple amendment be added or a delay of the process to hear from the other 50 mortgages and 1400 floating homes. Owners on the Willamette and columbia rivers, as well as the Multnomah channel that are impacted by river review and e zone review related to required routine maintenance dredge work. Also note the city owned Willamette park will require maintenance dredge work and will require this same issue soon. Thus, we are requesting a simple one sentence revision to allow approval of dread projects by the well-tested methods and management of the past authorities, such as the coe corps of engineers, dsldqepanmssodfw and usfw. There are a lot. The amendment would be minor maintenance. Dredging is exempt from river review when in. Water placement is in the same FEMA floodplain that has been approved. The aquatic and water placement by Portland sediment evaluation team set. Thank you very much.
309 Thank you.
310 Brad olson. Well short.
311 Welcome.
312 Thank you.
313 I guess. Good afternoon councilors. I'm will short, senior vice president, scb, Portland based real estate operator and owner within the central east side. I've asked the clerk to put a map up that we had submitted along with our written testimony. I'm here representing the central eastside industrial council and its land use and urban redevelopment committee. We submitted that written testimony and a map. Therefore, I will focus my testimony on our two requests. It's important to note that cic supports the cc cap and asks that you pass it today. We are here about what comes next for economic development in the central eastside. We proposed broader zoning changes last December, mapped specific areas in February and raised them again in may. The planning commission encouraged staff to work with us on those sites. That work never happened, and the recommendations came to you unchanged. Our conversations with dps leadership have improved in recent weeks, but that history is why we are asking council to set the subsequent direction. The reason we are requesting council to set the direction is due to the lack of cooperation between dps and the cic throughout the last year. The map included in our written testimony illustrates the bureau's proposed changes with solid lines. The dashed lines represent our proposed additions. The first addition represents the southern portion of mlk and grand. The addition completes a continuous corridor that connects existing businesses to the emerging district via the streetcar and the future Green loop. The second edition represents the Hawthorne and madison couplet. This addition provides a consistent corridor zoning with a thoughtful transition to the neighborhoods immediately to the east, and the third edition represents ODOT blocks west of water avenue between Hawthorne and morrison. Bridgeheads. This addition allows for coordinated redevelopment and waterfront connections. In recent weeks, staff has asked a reasonable question if the district currently has zoning for more than 15,000 homes, why do we need to add more? Our response is that this request is primarily about jobs and reinvestment in underutilized and unutilized sites, not solely about housing. First, x does not force out industry. Existing businesses may remain and owners gain more permitted uses. The flexibility. This flexibility is what drives capital and it provides owners of older buildings with additional options to reinvest and more types of tenants to occupy them. Second, the industrial land mass is contained in the bureau's own memo from July. The area staff analyzed from our request would utilize 1.4 additional acres of a 12 acre surplus of industrial capacity, approximately ten acres of surplus capacity remains after accounting for every proposed change by both staff and us. Third zone capacity does not equate to production. Housing gets built when transit infrastructure and investment converge. These corridors possess the streetcar, the Green loop and the new central eastside corridor tif district. What we are requesting is a coordinated review of these changes, with business retention and economic development at the forefront of the discussion from the beginning. Therefore, we have two requests. Our first request is that you approve the cc cap provisions before you today. Our second request is that you instruct pse to collaborate with the cic and relevant city bureaus on a separate, coordinated review of our proposed dcsd expansion. That review should clearly define its scope and timeline and present recommendations regarding zoning, infrastructure and business retention and growth, infrastructure, business and retention and growth.
314 We are.
315 Over time.
316 The alarm didn't.
317 Go off.
318 Thank you. Apologies. Thank you. It didn't go. Yeah. Apologies for that.
319 Next up we have mariano de yorio and akasha lawrence spence.
320 Hello, counselors. Hello, president. Vice president. My name is mariano. I am the founder of pdx and chacha circus and also a board member of the nonprofit factory of dream, all located in the inner southeast Portland on the corner of ninth and taylor. I am here to testify in support of the proposed code change as they relate to the ac one zone in the central east side. I grew up in argentina and through family struggles and homelessness, discovered juggling, street performing and circus. I then found. Founded the first social circus school in buenos aires. That school today is celebrating 26 years of teaching people and inspiring people. Over these years, we have helped thousands in our community develop art and circus skills, and we have entertained our city. People travel from all over the world to visit the space. In 2008, I was brought by cirque du soleil to this country and I performed over 3000 shows with them. I will never forget the people, community and spaces that gave me my first opportunity and believe in me. I am living proof that finding circus arts, culture and creating a community can change people's life forever. And I am working to lift up the community in Portland in the same way. My wife, two young children and I came to Portland with a vision of creating an art focused space that allow us to create, inspire and share our experience and knowledge with and for this city. We have created a space, including a circus school, art studios, screen, print shop, wood shop, clay studio, and an active creative community at chacha, our biggest impediment to success to success has been the code. We believe the proposed code changes will make an immense difference to our ability to thrive and create together, elevating our entire community. Thank you so much.
321 Thank you.
322 How would they?
323 Good afternoon, chair Dunphy, vice chair, clerk and members of the Portland city council. My name is akasha lawrence spence, and I have the honor and privilege of serving as a director of external affairs at albina vision trust, carrying forward the community vision of a reconnected and abundant lower. Albina ave is the largest community led restorative redevelopment project in the nation. Our mandate is to actualize the community investment plan, a 50 year vision for lower albina that emerged over three years of community engagement to create a world class, working class central city community. The city of Portland recognized this plan and has been a partner in helping us to achieve the milestones we have already accomplished. Today, the central city code amendments project represents the next step in that partnership. We all know that our city is in need of tlc. Our housing needs analysis states that we will need 120,000 new housing units by 2045, an average of roughly 5200 units per year. But our city deserves more than just housing. We need to site housing in spaces that are accessible, transit oriented, and walkable, with access to resources both civic and cultural. Our community members need living wage jobs and active public realm and small businesses that animate street fronts and neighborhood corridors. The 94 acres that comprise the ave project area will. Of catalytic development will be able to build over 1000 units of housing and be home to over 3000. Portlanders create over 5000 construction jobs, established nearly 600 permanent living wage jobs, and deliver portland's iconic street grid in a neighborhood just a few miles east of this chamber. The cc cap is a comprehensive roadmap to make that development not just feasible, but inevitable. It removes barriers and requisites that create development hurdles and, in its place, provide solutions that make community centered, home grown development with community benefit like ours. Not just a possibility, but a certainty. I urge an I vote on the adoption of these amendments. Thank you.
324 Thank you very much.
325 That completes testimony.
326 Okay. Thank you. Colleagues. As discussed previously, the oral record is now closed. We're going to leave the written record open until tomorrow at 4:00 pm. This item is continued until tomorrow at 4:00 time. Certain for council deliberation and consideration of amendments. Keelan can we please move to the consent items?
327 No items have been pulled. I'll call the roll on the consent agenda. Clerk. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. Absent. Smith. Absent.
328 Kanal I.
329 Pirtle-guiney I.
330 Ryan I.
331 Koyama Lane I.
332 Morillo I.
333 Novick a very emphatic I.
334 Dunphy I.
335 The consent agenda is approved with a vote of 12 ayes and two absent.
336 Thank you very much. Can we please call item the newly scheduled item 2026-374.
337 Authorize the city attorney to provide written notice to the Oregon department.
338 Folks, can we please have some quiet in the chambers? Thank you.
339 Authorize the city attorney to provide written notice to the Oregon department of land conservation and development of intent by city council to consider a moratorium on the development of facilities necessary to support commercial unmanned aircraft systems.
340 Thank you colleagues. This is a 9/12 item cosponsored by councilor Kanal and pirtle-guiney and signed by nine of our colleagues, including the co-sponsors and myself. I'm going to turn to councilor Kanal and pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.
341 Thank you, council president colleagues, I'm going to give brief context and then get into the specific resolution first, the context, the number one issue that has come through zendesk for counselors and district two over the last few weeks is concerned about a potential new facility for launching commercial drones in north Portland. There's another one in district two, as well as in district three. Also, I can't speak for the email inboxes of my colleagues, but speaking for my own email inbox, it's also the number one issue there. And looking to the steps that we have allowed staff to take on potential applications for these types of facilities. There are a couple of places where there ambiguities, and more broadly than that, there is no specific land use structure designed with this type of facility in mind. We need a proper revision process for code, and in order to do that without having current code be applied in both an imperfect way and a way that may be really hard to undo. We would need to consider a moratorium. Now to the resolution itself. This resolution is not a moratorium. You may disagree with the idea of having a moratorium. You may love the idea of having a moratorium, but this resolution is simply asking you if you think we should be allowed to consider one. And because we're running over time today, I'll ask that we keep the commentary and the discussion about what the resolution actually does, because the thing itself, a potential moratorium, will have that chance if it's filed in the weeks ahead. Under state law, the city must notify the state's department of land conservation and development, or dlcd, of potential consideration of a moratorium 45 days before taking the final vote. City attorney's office can do that if authorized by the council, but by the body, not specific councilors. And this resolution is the authorization to do that. So I'd ask for your support today in passing a resolution that authorizes the city attorney to notify the dlcd that we might consider a moratorium, keeping our options open for a moratorium, and eventually a better code framework designed for specific and unique type of land use facilities for the takeoff and landing of commercial unmanned aircraft systems, and for the specific needs of our Portland communities. Thank you. And with that, I'll pass it over to my co-sponsor, councilor Pirtle-guiney.
342 Thank you, councilor Kanal colleagues, the question before us with this resolution is really quite simple. Do we want to preserve our ability to have a critical policy discussion about a pretty significant change facing our community, the use of drones for a new type of commercial activity? If we want to preserve our right to have that conversation in the future, we have to pass this resolution as the first step. There may be a lot of opinions up here about where we want to land on those policy discussions as we move forward, but we don't get to have any of those unless we pass this today. We had a bit of a rush on this because we knew there was some action potentially coming in our city. We have a little more breathing room right now to do this work as we move forward, but I think the rush on ensuring that the state knows we are interested in this conversation still stands, and I hope to have your support today. Thank you.
343 Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney colleagues, I understand there are at least three people signed up for public testimony on this item. Before we move into discussion council, I'd like to get to their testimony. So keelan, can you please call our testifiers?
344 First up, we have alice christine walker, followed by jessica marquis and emily garcia.
345 Welcome. Come on down. Introduce yourself for the record, you're welcome to share your pronouns. And you have three minutes.
346 Good morning councilors. My name is alice christine walker, and I'm a resident of east columbia. Our neighborhood association hasn't been able to meet yet to formally adopt a position. So I'm here in my personal capacity to amplify the voices that I've heard across multiple neighborhoods. We need more time. I'm certain that our three district d2 councilors will support this request for a moratorium, as the concerns of our communities are clear, I'm here to respectfully ask that the other district councilors support this as well, and understand that you aren't being asked to make a final decision today about the future of drones. You are simply being asked for time so that we can make an informed decision together as a city. I want to thank councilor Kanal and council pirtle-guiney for quickly bringing this forward, and I thank the other nine councilors for your support today.
347 Thank you very much.
348 Go ahead. Jessica.
349 Hello, councilors. My name is jessica marquez and I live in Kenton in district two. First, I want to thank councilor Kanal and pirtle-guiney for introducing this resolution. And thank you all for moving this up in the agenda today so that we could be heard. It was added to today's agenda on short notice, because it is a critically urgent issue that has developed rapidly and therefore requires a rapid response. And I'm here to implore you to vote yes on this resolution. As noted in the impact statement, this has been the most common topic reaching our councilors in the district since the news of these plans were publicized in late September. And that comes as no surprise, because when you look at the reports of the immediate deterioration in livability in communities where amazon has started drone deliveries, it is so deeply troubling. The current application to add drone operations in district two might feel distant from your district, but these drones have a delivery radius of seven and a half miles. And I understand amazon is already looking at other properties around Portland to extend that radius. If amazon wants drone deliveries here, those operations won't stay in one neighborhood or one district. So the choice before you today is to be proactive for the people you represent. A vote for this resolution, as stated, doesn't adopt a moratorium, and it doesn't change the code. It just starts the clock. That creates a pathway for council to consider action in a timely manner, and to give the public an opportunity to be heard on this. Every week of delay pushes back the council's timeline to even open the discussion during a time that amazon is actively trying to move forward through the permitting process, even if today it feels like we have a little more room. Voting yes preserves the council's ability to act, so you have the option to consider how this type of operation could change everyday life in the city. These facilities are a new kind of land use, closer to a small airport than a warehouse, and our code wasn't written for them. This council has already acknowledged that in the face of rapidly changing technology, we can't rely on rules and definitions written for a previous era of business and technology to shape the city we live in. I know this takes nine of your votes of your 12 votes today, which is a high bar, but I believe it could be unanimous because the list of concerns this poses for our city judge privacy, the environment and wildlife,
350 Noise, economic development, jobs, childhood development, mental health, the list goes on. And it's long enough that it touches multiple concerns. But I know each of you care about that. You vote to work on because your constituents care about them. The the cost of voting yesterday is practically nothing. It's one small common sense vote today to start a conversation and to keep that conversation able to happen. The risk of waiting is that permits get processed under existing code that couldn't possibly have known the reality we find ourselves in today. While council is still waiting in a waiting period to do anything if these operations are approved, council can't easily undo it, and every application and company that follows will point to the precedent set by amazon voting no. And waiting until your phones start ringing means explaining to your constituents why you had the option to open the conversation about how to protect them, and you didn't take it. You have the opportunity to allow action to happen before harm is done to our city and our community, not after. So please take it. Please vote yes on this. Thank you.
351 Thank you very much.
352 Emily garcia. That completes testimony.
353 Thank you very much, colleagues. Just a point of clarification. It took nine votes, nine signatures to get this onto the agenda. But it is not an emergency resolution requires a simple majority in order to pass. Colleagues, is there any is there. We are now into council discussion. Is there further discussion of this resolution? Seeing none. Oh, there we go. Councilor Ryan.
354 I just have a quick question. Thank you, council president. I was first made aware of this just recently. I've also in district two, and I've been trying to dive into understanding this. And so is the intent of this to buy time to understand it, because that's what I've been trying to do. And if I knew that was the intention of that and someone would have reached out to me, of course I would have joined. But I'm trying to verify that.
355 Other sponsors want to jump in. Yeah. Could you pirtle-guiney.
356 Thank you. Happy to jump in. Councilor. And I'm sorry that our teams weren't able to connect as quickly as would have been ideal on this. What this does is gives notice to dlcd that we may have a conversation about a moratorium. We are required by state law to give a 45 day notice before we pass anything. So if we choose to open up a discussion on a moratorium, which I hope we have that conversation, the moratorium is actually what would buy us time. A moratorium, to be clear, doesn't say this can never happen. It just says we're pausing anything happening here until we can set code for us to set that moratorium and set that pause, we have to give dlcd 45 days. So this is a step back from a pause. This is saying we might take a pause, and you need to know that dlcd before we even decide if we take a pause or not.
357 Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. And I know that you always do good work. So you connected with legal to make sure this was all in code perfect.
358 It's been fully reviewed. I'm going to let council speak to that as well.
359 Yeah.
360 We spoke to both lauren and robert taylor both about this particular one. So from the legal perspective. Yes. And then to answer your question directly also. Yes. Basically the the short version is yes, the long version was councilor.
361 Pirtle-guiney just I know we all move fast. I'm just disappointed we couldn't have had this conversation earlier.
362 Thank you. In committee yesterday when all this was going on. So, you know, those couple hours where the 912 request was out there.
363 So thank you councilors. Is there further discussion of this? Councilor Kanal.
364 Yeah, it's I just wanted to put on the record that, you know, if this should pass and we're able to look at it, I'd be looking to ask the city administrator's office, city attorney's to just for the assistance and making sure that that any potential proposal for moratorium is, is informed by the people who do this work on a regular basis. And then just to get on the record as legislative intent for what that second clause means. It means it's direction to the city attorney's office that if there's anything else that you need to file the notices, just just talk to the council president. We don't want to have to do a second resolution. I think I'm on the record that I think it's dumb that we even have to do this resolution at all. I think we should be able to send administrative notices of future consideration and then have the actual debate on the consideration itself. But since we have to do a resolution, let's let's make it so we don't have to do two is the idea. Thanks.
365 Thank you. Councilor Kanal seeing no one else in the queue, keelan can we please call the roll on this resolution?
366 Yes. Document 2026-374.
367 Clerk I.
368 Green I Zimmerman I Avalos I Smith. Absent Kanal.
369 Thanks, colleagues.
370 I pirtle-guiney I I Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick I Dunphy. A resolution is adopted with a vote of 11 ayes and one absent.
371 Thank you. Can we please call item 2026 three, six two and 2026 363 together?
372 Yeah. Authorize intergovernmental agreement between the city, state of Oregon and Multnomah county to establish the Oregon arena joint authority and document 2026-363. Appoint members to the Oregon arena joint authority.
373 Thank you very much, colleagues. Before we begin the staff presentation on this item, I'd like to acknowledge that we canceled a moda center work session this week due to the legislation being before us, and due to a lack of major substantive updates on those negotiations. However, I'm going to invite dca oliveira to give an update on the public to the public on the status of those negotiations. My update to this body, though, is that I officially communicated with city administrator lee that I will not be scheduling a final action on funding the mode of renovations in December, unless we have the definitive documents that are required by the term sheet resolution that we all that we passed in August. So that means a complete and transparent review of the finalized budget, lease terms, labor standards, and a major and major components of the community benefits agreement. I wish our negotiating team well in this incredibly tight timeline. And with that, I'll ask don de ca donnie oliveira to share a negotiation update.
374 Great. Thank you, council president donnie oliveira, for the record. So since August 12th, when council adopted the resolution that included the draft term sheet, which we submitted to the blazers immediately after we have begun negotiations, continued conversations with blazers, and now including our state partners and our county partners, and outlining those terms. While there's been progress related to some of the underlying themes of that term sheet, there continues to be distance between us, us being the plural governments and the blazers organization. On some of the more predictable elements that we all discussed in August related to revenue sharing or rent related to labor decisions, community benefits, all things that are material to this council's interests and the county's as well. So we continue to have those conversations about what it might look like. As you know, as we discussed in the past, the state's resources, that $365 million bonding opportunity does have a hard deadline coming up later this winter that we need to meet. And they have a bar pretty high to clear for us to to activate those dollars. So the short of it is, is that the conversations continue each week. We meet with the blazers team multiple times. We also meet with our our state and county parties partners to refine our our intent and negotiating tactics related to the term sheet. So a lot of work still to be done. And again, the commitment is still to get the best deal for the city of Portland and for portlanders on this, on this on the mode of center.
375 Thank you very much. D ca oliveira. I'm going to now move us to the ordinance and the report at hand. These items are going to travel together and they establish the joint authority with the state and county partners, as well as the three city appointees to that body, who will oversee a mode of renovation project. I'm hopeful that council will move this forward to second reading today, continuing to demonstrate that city government is showing up at the table in good faith to get a fair deal for Portland. Dca oliveira turning it back to you. The floor is yours.
376 Okay. Thank you, council president. I'm going to hand it over to carl because we got we're short on time. Dive in. All right. Thanks a lot, carlisle. I'm the spectator venues program manager. So today we're requesting two council actions presenting them together. Ordinance is the first. It authorizes the city administrator to sign the intergovernmental agreement with the state and county that establishes the Oregon arena joint authority. This new body will oversee public investment in the motor center renovation project and the accompanying report. The second item appoints the city's three initial members to the authority. For context, the state has said they will approve this in its current form in the county approved it at their board meeting on October 1st. So more specifically, approving the ordinance and accepting the report before you today does two key things. It establishes the Oregon arena joint authority meeting those requirements of the state legislation that provides a pathway to state funding of the moda center project. And secondly, it approves the three city staff members to represent the city on the joint authority as the initial members. Today's actions are an administrative step related only to the establishment of the joint authority. Today's actions do not commit the city to any funding for the renovation project, nor do they review or accept the terms for a new long term lease with the operators and the Portland trailblazers. Those important steps will require future city action. Establishing the joint authority is important because it is a required step to leveraging the state and county funds for the project. The authority will oversee public investments in the renovation, as well as retaining oversight functions of ongoing operations, maintenance and capital investment in the arena. Post-renovation. As a reminder, as currently proposed, the state will be funding the majority 64% of the cost of the initial renovation. This slide shows the investment proposal reflected in the city's draft initial term sheet that you'll remember from August. On the left, you can see the proposed funding for the renovation project. With the state funding, the largest portion of the $573 million project. On the right are the sources of the proposed $288 million in projected funding for ongoing improvements in sustaining investments over the life of the 20 year lease. As has been said, the ordinance and report before you do not appropriate any city funding for the project. That has to come later. The governance structure of the joint authority was negotiated between the state, Multnomah county and the city. The authority will have seven members, three each from the state and city and one from the county. Generally, support from a majority of the authority members is required in decision making. However, certain material decisions pertaining to the renovation project and ongoing state interests in the arena also will require approval from two of the state's three members. Conceptually, the authority is envisioned to be in a leadership role during the planning for and implementation of the renovation project, but after completion of the project, the authority retains an oversight role. But the city, as the facility owner and the largest investor in ongoing projects, assumes a leadership role is the different financial contributions that drive the state's desire for greater control of material decisions regarding the renovation project, and then the city's need for more control after substantial completion. And that's reflected in the agreement, which is exhibit a as it's written, and meetings of the authority are anticipated to be held online and will be open to the public. So just a tiny bit more detail about that. Articles five and six of the agreement that's exhibit a to the ordinance. They cover the roles and responsibilities of the joint authority before and then after substantial completion of the arena renovation project. The agreement is set up to place the joint authority in a leadership role during the negotiation. As I said, of project development agreements and the planning, design and construction of the improvements. And then after the renovation is complete, the city is the arena owner and largest provider of ongoing funding, assumes a lead role in the ongoing management and oversight of arena operations and improvements. The joint authority retains an oversight and approval role. So accepting the report today approves the city's three initial members of the joint authority. Per the agreement, all members of the authority must be members of the management or professional staff of the appointing party, and will serve initial terms that last through substantial completion of the renovations. The proposed members are city administrator raymond lee, building official natalie didion and deputy budget director brian connell. Their biographies and statements of interest are included in the report. Looking ahead to next steps, including authorizing. Any city funding for the project, we've been clear with our partners and rip city management that the city council expects several key things. And council president, you were just referring to this. Several key things have to be presented to us before we can make any decisions, and these include those detailed project plans and budget details, the negotiated terms of that 20 year lease labor standards and demonstrated progress on community benefits agreement. Establishing the joint authority fulfills an important requirement of senate bill 1501, but the bill also requires binding financial commitments from the city and county, and a binding 20 year lease commitment from rip city management and the Portland trailblazers. The state needs these commitments in place in order to commence work on the bond sale and to be able to sell bonds prior to the end of their financial biennium. This means that further city council action, as well as actions by the Multnomah county board of commissioners, will need to be taken in order to meet the requirements of senate bill 1501 and allow the state to proceed with their bond issuance preparation activities. So again, just to to reiterate, we're presenting today an ordinance which would authorize the city administrator to sign the intergovernmental agreement establishing the Oregon arena joint authority. And we are asking you to accept a report appointing the three initial members to the city on the joint authority.
377 Okay. Thank you very much. Keelan. I'd like to confirm, has anyone signed up for testimony on either of these items?
378 No one has signed up.
379 Okay, colleagues, we are now in both technical and clarifying questions and council discussion. Councilor Kanal.
380 Thank you, council president. So I just wanted to appreciate you both being here in the work you've been doing on this. I just wanted to follow up on one thing you had mentioned, because this is something I've been bringing up for several months now. It's on page 13 of the document. It's section 4.2 on eligibility. Each initial authority member shall be a member of management or the professional administrative staff of the appointing party, so that by not simply by who is being chosen, but by actual intergovernmental agreement or proposed at this moment, would exclude anybody from the legislative branch from being on this. Is that correct?
381 Yes.
382 Okay. I've colleagues, I'm not going to take up a lot of time because I've been bringing this up and segments of or conversations you've all been involved in for months. But that is a, a deal breaker for me. So I'll be voting no on, on this and I appreciate everyone's time. Thanks.
383 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Ryan.
384 Thank you, council president good to see both of you. Did you mention who the state and the county have selected?
385 The county has put forth chris neal, who's their chief operating officer? And we we have we're waiting for the state's official term, but we believe it will be. Department of administrative services director, chief financial officer, real estate portfolio manager type, level position.
386 So the governor and the county chair, similar to the mayor, are selecting professionals and trying to keep politics out of the nuts and bolts negotiating. But keep that here on the dais and having professionals in their units provide that at the negotiating table.
387 I might refine that. Councilor I don't think it's about keeping politics out. I think we were trying to get the right people in the seats in the moment in time. We are for the just the quick pace we're on to get these renovations.
388 Of course, I had to be political. I just I'm really I really appreciate that the mayor and the governor and the county chair are appointing similar skill sets and an influence from their organizations. And I think it's important that we align up and play in in accordance. So thank you.
389 Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Pirtle-guiney.
390 Thank you. Council president c a lee. Sometimes when we make appointments on this body, we ask questions of folks getting appointed. And of the three folks on the list, you're the one who's here. So can you share with us how you plan to keep council briefed and up to date about the work of the joint authority as one of our representatives to that body?
391 Councilor just for the record, brian and natalie are here as well.
392 Fantastic.
393 I still think I'm the best to answer that question, since that's my role in general. I think we will still continue with the same course of action, of making sure that we are constantly keeping first, initially kind of the council president and vice president engaged in the communication, but also trying to develop a schedule with the council president of what will be the routine and schedule and flow of information to the elected body. You know, we have our different avenues of doing that, that I'm open to doing our six by sixes, our since this will be some negotiations and may be some executive session conversation as well, but I will lean on council's leadership to kind of talk through the frequency of communication, but also the flow of communication. And how should that be handled in writing or face to face as we kind of go through these negotiations? I know a lot of this will be a lot of moving pieces at a certain time. So I'll really be leaning on council leadership to help disseminate information. Or if we need to have a briefing session to make sure we get that scheduled in a timely fashion.
394 Great. The joint authority documents are dense and long, and there are some things in there that I would have written differently, but I understand that we're negotiating them, and we each have to do a little bit of give and take there. But can you speak to how you plan to balance the needs and interests of the city, as expressed by this body on behalf of our constituents, with the need to find agreement with our other two public sector partners as we enter into some very complicated work through the joint authority.
395 I believe I'm in this unique situation and what I've been in these last several weeks, a month where I'm really having conversations and and talks and negotiations for all three branches of our government from our state, county and city, and trying to balance the desires of all of those electeds as it relates to what's the best deal for portlanders, but what's the best deal for the state of Oregon as well? I think as we continue to have conversations my long term and what my job is always is trying to keep the best interest for the city of Portland at heart and how we're moving forward with setting us up for long term success in any negotiations and being transparent, because ultimately, this body has to be able to vote on that and bringing something back to this body that is digestible for a vote to pass from this body. So as I go through negotiations, it's always looking at some of those core value things that I've heard repeatedly from this body, the things they want to see in the short term, or even a long term agreement with the blazers, and seeing how we can get that across the finish line.
396 Thank you. I know that there are multiple definitions for success. When you look at this body, the executive and the administrative branches of our city. And I know balancing that is no easy task. But I hope that you will continue to come back to us to reevaluate what success looks like as you move through the process, and that this isn't just a report out, but a two way communication where we can continue to provide you updates on what we're hearing in community and what we think we need for our city. As you move through the process.
397 I believe that is critical in these conversations.
398 Thank you. I'll just add one other thing, and I will be supporting this, and I don't want to nitpick and propose changes, but I was a little disappointed to see, in the language of the findings laid out, not in the language of the agreement itself. Number 11. The parties have agreed that funds for renovations to the moda center will improve visitor experience, install more energy efficient systems that will lower the building's carbon footprint, and update lighting and audio visual systems. I have heard of about a significant number of upgrades that are needed needed for that building to optimize operations of events within the space, and to optimize the workplace for the people who are there. Neither of those were listed, and I think those are some of the most important renovations that we will be considering. So I hope that you are carrying those into the conversation, as well as the three things that are listed in sub 11.
399 Most definitely. We want this venue to be a venue that's activated every day of the week, and we know to be able to do that, we have to have those type of enhancements to the facility so it can be utilized to its full capacity.
400 Thank you. Thank you, council president.
401 Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal last word.
402 Thanks. Yeah, just to clarify, because I don't enjoy.
403 Having my previous comments being mischaracterized, I. But before I actually get to that, we're voting on these two things back to back, right? We're debating them both simultaneously.
404 We'll be voting on them next week. They have to go to a second reading. One of them has to go to second reading. So we'll be voting on them back to back.
405 Got it. Okay. So yeah, first concerns not with the three individuals whose qualifications are not in doubt in any way for being on it. And if this was any two of them, I wouldn't have a concern with that either. I think the idea is that if you look at what's been going on for the last, I mean, at least nine months, maybe more, we've seen that this entire thing has been run out of the out of the executive branch of our government. And so it's not leaving in or out politics to exclude the legislative branch. It's reflecting just one elected officials, politics, the one who's not in the room right now. And so I think it's really important to capture that and to say that's the problem, because I don't believe that the the path that we've been on between the executive and legislative branches for communication around this particular project have been accurate. One example of that is what councilor Pirtle-guiney just raised. What does it mean to say in the findings of this ordinance that the parties have agreed? As far as I'm aware, nothing's been agreed to. So how is that in a finding which is supposed to be something that already happened, reflecting a previous agreement? And I think that that that is the same thing that we've seen where we have someone who is not authorized to speak on behalf of authorizing PCEF funds, doing it. The mayor we have seen over and over and over again that problem. So I resent the implication that it's putting politics into it, to say that the best way to ensure unity at the end of this is to ensure that the legislative branch is also in the room. So that's the concern I've been raising in executive sessions for months now. Everybody up here knows that. And so that's that's the reason that I can't support the iga specifically. And I just wanted to get that on the record before it's mischaracterized. Thanks.
406 Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues seeing no one else in the queue for discussion, document 2026-362 is passed to a second reading to be heard on October 21st. Document 2026-363 is also carried over to October 21st. We will vote on both of these items sequentially. On that date. We are. We have concluded our agenda for today and we are in recess until 2:00 tomorrow, Thursday, October 15th. Thank you very much.