The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-05-20
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (28,156 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.
Okay. And I am calling back to order this meeting of the Portland city budget committee. Councilor Green to Green three.
Mitch Green: Thank you, council president. I'd like to move Green three and its associated budget. Note Green six. Second. Thank you. Colleagues, I given the tenor of the day I. I think I know how this will go, but I. I can't vote for final adopt budget unless I try to amend it here. And this amendment is much simpler, I suppose, than some of the others that I proposed. But this just simply cuts $1 million from the budget in erp for sweeps, and it seeks to redirect those monies to invest directly in public sanitation programs like litter collection, tent side waste collection, basic hygiene programs like public toilets, free free showers and free laundry, and then workforce development programs that provide low barrier opportunities for stabilization and earn income. I know we do some of this already, but we don't do enough. And I got to say that if you look at the last several fiscal years of data and you look at the budgets that we adopt, we adopt both a dollar amount for sweeps, and we also adopt a sort of target number of sweeps. And in fiscal year 24, mayor wheeler's budget targeted 4000 sweeps for that year and ended up doing 6738 sweeps in fiscal year 25. That that same target was, was, was, was overshot, getting to 8303 sweeps. So we were doing far more than we budget for and to, to no effect. And so it's, it's again, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. But more importantly, it just moves people around the city and takes away their shelter. When I talk to the folks who are doing the outreach work in southwest Portland, it's a group named southwest outreach. It's a bunch of clergy members, people who've lived in the neighborhood for a long period of time. They go out and they do direct outreach with the folks who are impacted by this work and what they what they hear from those folks is that the intensity and pace, pace of the sweeps that they've experienced is at an unprecedented level, and it's causing them terror, fear, and many of them who they've been able to have a connection and a relationship because they grew up in southwest Portland, they are now harder to find. They're going deeper into the forest. When I met with the village federation, they tell me the same thing, that they're scared that their meager belongings are going to be taken away again, that their tent is going to be removed from them. And they're they're looking to go even deeper into forest park this year, which going into one of the hottest and driest summers that will probably have on record in the city of Portland. The idea that we're going to drive people into the forest because of the aggressive pace of these sweeps, introduce, introduces a pretty, I think, an unacceptable fire risk to to no effect. And so I'm going to share my screen briefly, and I'm going to show you some statistics. This is from reporting by the Oregonian. I can't remember the exact date, but this is based upon downtown clean and safe data. And the quote in that argue article said that despite the mayor's assurances, more people than ever are homeless in Portland. And so while it's true that there are fewer people in tents downtown, there are 76 fewer people in this reporting period. There's an increase in the number of people sleeping downtown without tents, and there's a number of an increase of homeless people downtown by 337. And so, yes, we have done a lot of sweeps and we have cleared a lot of campsites. So we've cleared out the sort of difficult to look at signs of visible poverty in our central core, but we've not solved any problems. And in fact, what we've done, what we've done, we've just taken away people's barrier between the elements. I know they could go to an overnight shelter, but there's a lot of reasons why people can't or won't, and it's really, really hard to make that connection if you continue to take away. The little bit of stability they have, the the opportunity that they might be able to get a night's rest and think about, maybe tomorrow is the day that I can, I can go out and try to get my id cards replaced and I can go out and try to. Connect with folks and get to a different place in life. And so I'm not proposing a defunding of the sweeps program. In fact, we're required by law to do a certain amount of these with the tozer settlement, which runs through 2028. But that contract, that settlement with the city of Portland, requires that we spend no less than $3 million per year on that in this fiscal year. The budget that's proposed exceeds that. And what we dealt with in the fall time last year was a situation that if we did not approve a budget ordinance adjustment, that. Approved a bunch of encumbrance carryovers, that we were not going to be able to finish the sweeps for the year because they'd already blown through their kitty earlier in the year. And so I can't, in good moral conscience, vote for another budget that maintains this level as proposed, without trying, trying to reduce that level of harm by some small measure, and invest it in things that provide dignity, provide an opportunity for folks to find low barrier workforce development and get washed up. So, colleagues, I would hope that you would support me in this, and I'll leave it there.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Green has moved. Green three and six. Councilor Kanal has seconded both of those. Green three is the amendment. Green six is the budget note. Colleagues, we are going to enter into debate on the amendment. I'm going to ask all of you here. You are all brilliant, articulate, thoughtful, amazing policy makers, and everybody knows that. Let's try to keep it as quiet as as minimal as possible. We know how a lot of these votes are going to go. Let's try and get through this. We have 11 more votes after this one at least. So to the amendment colleagues. Wow. That's that's particularly brief. I solved it. That's all I had to do. There we go. Okay, I'm going to extend a courtesy to mayor wilson.
Council president. I appreciate that and I appreciate this opportunity to talk about this program. It's an important program in Portland. It's creating an awful lot of positive outcomes. And I want to just first of all, start with councilor Green's one pager. And talk about our camp removal program, because it's a removal program. Portland is now one of only a handful of cities of the top 100 cities that offers shelter at each removal, one of the only ones in the united states, because we have a safe bed for every person, every night, for everybody who wants one. One of the only. That's something that's a differentiator. And that's only been the case for about the last 6 or 7 months about the data that he brought up. He's right. Sleeping in tents has gone down dramatically, primarily in the downtown area by 75%. What is being conflated is homelessness is incorrect. The data point that says total homeless downtown plus. 337 that's a misnomer. Those are unintended and active people. My team and I have been going out at night at 2 a.m. Because we see that happening. It's oftentimes associated around our affordable housing properties. We do see the issues. Chief hughes, who's in a different room, goes out with me. My outreach teams, we're now starting to pivot our outreach to 2 a.m. Because those individuals need help, too. And so we've been focusing on the day and we're missing it. We're leaving an important group of people on the street at night. Some are actually unattended and sleeping. And those are the ones. Yes, those are clearly unsheltered homelessness. However, the unattended and active are a host of things. We have people coming in from the different neighborhoods. We have more drugs that are prevalent in our downtown core, and we're addressing that for a host of different reasons public space, public safety. We're rushing care to those individuals because we recognize we have a 24 over seven city, not just a 8 a.m. To 5 p.m. City. So thank you for bringing that up. But that's not the case. What I want to talk about is this amendment is a concern because rather than going to encampments and helping people out of life threatening situations, we would now go to camps and say, stay there, because we're creating a sanitation program. We have shelter ready for those to provide care. Right now, taking money away from these programs while we're trying to focus on improving our city and bringing them inside, is antithetical to where we're trying to take the city right now. And we're improving. We've turned the corner. We're resurgent as a city. We see hope. We see the polling dropping 20 points from 53%, 53% just two years ago to 33%. We're making inroads in city. To stop now would only forego the renaissance that individuals are looking for. We have to continue to focus on providing care, not creating a sustainable situation where encampments are now the norm. It is not normal to camp in an urban environment. It is incredibly unsafe. It's unsanitary, and it's dangerous for the entire city, especially those citizens that are in the encampments. It is not healthy or well in those circumstances. We can't go back to people being found dead in tents, businesses failing and families leaving. Those days are over. We've turned the corner in Portland. I just want us to recognize that, continue to do the hard, important work and continue to trust the teams that are doing this very hard and important work for Portland. So thank you, council president.
Thank you, mr. Mayor. Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: President Dunphy, I don't see why we are being told as a council to limit our comments when this is our time to make amendments to the mayor's budget, but he has ample time to give a propaganda spiel with inaccurate data about how the shelters are working or not working. There is an article from opb from April April 1st. Multnomah county data says homelessness has gone up since mayor wilson took office. There are numerous articles that dispel the myths of the mayor's purported data, which is really just his propaganda about how the shelters are working. But we know that homelessness is going up. It is simply less visible because people are being moved from sidewalk to sidewalk, and many are being pushed out to the suburbs. That's what we're seeing. We're not resolving homelessness. We are keeping it out of sight. So if we're being told to reduce our speeches, then I would expect the mayor also be held to that standard. I'm ready to vote. I will be voting yes.
Thank you, councilor Aye, Morillo, councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, council president, and I appreciate your response. Mr. Mayor. We have a disagreement. And my disagreement comes from who I talked to. So I talked to outreach workers who do this for a long period of time, and they have relationships with these people and the testimony that they give to these outreach outreach workers is to say, where am I supposed to go? Of course, I suspect the response is like, well, just go to one of these overnight shelters downtown. But oftentimes what they're told by these people moving them is to say, I don't care. Just 100,000 yards down or 100 yards down the road, I have to sweep this one location. Don't worry, you can come back after I'm done and we'll just sweep you again. This is what they're told now. Maybe they're lying, but I'm going to believe them because they're my constituents. And this is what the folks who've been doing in this world who who are leaders in their churches tell me. So I, I would then have to say that they're a liar too. So I don't know that we're going to, you know, we've got a difference of opinion on this. I guess we're operating from two sets of information. But this is where I'm coming from on that. And so I have no doubt that there are not coordinators that go to some of these locations. I just don't think they go to everyone. And we need to talk about that. Maybe that's a resource question, but there are people in our in my district that are getting moved, swept, cleared, whatever you want to call it, without that access to connection to service. And they're just being told cynically, like, look, dog, it's this is, this is, this is what I'm told to do. This is my, my job. This is how I'm going to get paid today. I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here. Don't worry. You can come back next time. That's broken and that's a problem. And we are doing that right now with this money. And so it's just a small cut. It does not zero this out. We will continue to do far more sweeps than I am comfortable with. Even if we were to pass this amendment, and I'll yield.
Thank you, councilor Greene. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Yeah. Councilor greene, can I ask a question here? What is the total budget for the impact reduction program? That's where this money is coming from, right?
Yeah, I, I don't have that number memorized, but I can I can get that from you. We also have Portland solutions here in the crowd. You could ask them.
I think it's 14.955 million. My, my understanding is that's on page 110 of the budget. I'm looking at the 2627 proposed 14.9. So I'm just going to round that to. 15. I hope people will forgive me the $45,000 rounding here. I'm unclear on how one of those $15 million going away, when there would still be 14 million roughly in there, and the requirement is 3 million from the settlement. Not that I'm saying we should only base our funding decisions off of settlements. I'm unclear on how that prevents anything from being done. I think that's a little bit of a of a stretch. I respect the conversation here, and I think that what I'm hearing in d2, in cully and in saint john's in particular, but also up from all those neighborhoods along the waterfront of the columbia side, is that folks from other parts of the city are relocating here and not in the places where they're necessarily the most visible, but in the places where, I mean, you mentioned the forest councilor Green, and I think that's worth bringing up. We were looking at the colwood golf course for a disc golf. The disc golf folks were asking about using a portion of it. That's not part of the current golf course, but is still in the grounds. And one of the challenges when we started looking into that is the number of rvs that are there, that are people who've been moved over to that area over over the course of this, this actually, to be honest, it's probably before mayor wilson and us took office that this started. But it's it's still a pattern that occurs. And so I think what we're looking at here, and I would implore I'm going to direct this at the colleague of mine who talks the most about the difference between outputs and outcomes and say, sweeping is an output. But what we're looking at in the data is outcomes. And when we see a pattern of trying the same thing repeatedly and continuing it as and the output is not leading to the desired outcome, that's something that we need to change. And we're not talking about a wholesale change. We're talking about six ish percent being redirected to something that will make our streets cleaner, create more public sanitation, create basic hygiene, create workforce development. And I'll note that several of my colleagues have have worked really hard to create more opportunities for workforce development in this budget. Here's another way. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, keelan, can we please move to a vote on Green three?
Green three move by Green. Seconded by Kanal Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. Absent.
Ryan no.
Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo. I Novick no clerk, no. Green. Hi. Zimmerman. Absent. Smith.
You miss me?
Absent.
What about me?
Loretta Smith: Oh, wait. I'm sorry. What? I'm sorry. Hi. Sorry, Smith absent. Dunphy.
I point of.
I'm sorry I couldn't get off mute.
Oh. No problem. Okay.
Pirtle-guiney I.
Okay, so the amendment is approved with a vote of seven a's, three a's, and two absent.
Can we call the roll on Green six. The note.
Green six, move by Green. Seconded by Kanal Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan.
No.
Koyama Lane.
Can you remind me what this is?
Six the budget note that goes with it.
Okay, I.
Aye, Morillo I.
Novick no.
Clark no.
Green I.
Zimmerman oh absent. Avalos I Smith absent.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of seven a's, three nays and two absent.
Thank you colleagues. Counselor Avalos to Avalos for.
Thank you. So Avalos four also has a companion budget note Avalos. Nine and so this amendment is like I said earlier, councilor Green and I are approaching a similar issue with some different approaches. Since. And I'm really glad actually, that the last one passed. I think that's a good step forward. But Green two and Avalos four have a lot of similarities, and I think that at the core of this, I just want to start by saying, I really do think it's important that as a body, that we take some kind of action to exercise our oversight powers and our budgetary powers. And the way that this is structured, this is amendment creates a restricted reserve dedicated to homelessness, system governance, regional coordination and transition planning work. I'll also note that I think that there's efforts on the other side of the river to offer to do similar work, essentially to start using staff time to figure out what is our plan, what is our real transition to ensuring that we're not doing duplicative work, that we are getting the outcomes that we need, that we're getting the data that we need to make the decisions so that next year's budget cycle, we're not staring down another big hole that we continue not feeling by not making the hard choices of deciding what can our system afford to pay for, what's creating the outcomes that are worth the dollars we're spending on them? And how are we moving towards what ultimately is the city's job, which is making sure that we're providing stable housing for portlanders? So the
The intent of this amendment is to create dedicated planning capacity to evaluate whether the city's homelessness response infrastructure is operating as efficiently and effectively as it should be, particularly as both the city and the county are going to continue to face these budget constraints as we've shared. I think that portlanders are asking legitimate questions about system coordination and duplication of responsibilities. They're asking questions about long term governance structure and whether resources are being aligned toward permanent housing outcomes as effectively as possible. And oversight and accountability of the system are also being questions as we see these stories of financial mismanagement, like at sunstone or the newly resurfaced allegations at urban alchemy. As we've been discussing, the budget note that's related to it adds the the legislative intent. And what it essentially does is it directs Portland solutions, the city administrator and relevant homeless system partners, to evaluate opportunities to improve coordination, reduce duplication, clarify operational responsibilities between the city and the county, and then specifically, that review will include things like assessing overlapping responsibilities, evaluating shelter governance and contracting structures, reviewing cost effectiveness and housing, housing outcome performance across shelter, outreach, ercp, pmo and related programs, evaluating whether certain shelter administration functions will be better coordinated regionally or through the county. Identifying strategies to preserve continuity of services during any future transitions, and developing recommendations for redirecting city resources towards homelessness prevention, housing stabilization, supportive housing, and permanent exits from homelessness. And then the budget note establishes a timeline for council review before development of the fy 2728 proposed budget. I think ultimately the intent here is accountability and long term system planning. I believe that portlanders deserve a homelessness response system that's coordinated and outcome focused and financially sustainable, and centered on moving people into stable housing as effectively as possible. And I don't think I stated at the beginning, this moves $1 million into this one time funding so that we can start actually putting the money towards the work that needs to happen of everything that I described. So that is my amendment in a nutshell. And I will move Avalos for do I need to move both or how do I do that? Four and nine.
Yes. And we don't have a copy of nine. I can't the clerk doesn't have it, and I don't seem to have it in the.
All right. I'll make sure my team sends it out.
Great. Thank you. But councilor Avalos moves. Councilor Avalos four, and Avalos nine. Is there a second? Councilor Morillo seconds. Colleagues to the amendment. Vice president. Clerk.
Thank you. Council president councilor Avalos. Who does this work?
The city, the city administrator.
The city administrator is going to do this.
The city administrator to ultimately be responsible for the outcome. But, you know, pmo and Portland solutions, all of the all of the components of the homelessness work is meant to participate in this exercise.
Can I ask ca li who would do this work?
I would assume it would be part of our portfolio for Portland solutions for now.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark. Colleagues, any further discussion of Avalos four or the accompanying budget note? Avalos nine councilor Ryan yes, thank.
You, council president councilor Avalos, have you been in communication with the joint team? That's the city and the county. That's that meets regularly. The mayor is a part of that. Councilor Zimmerman is a part of that.
Eric Zimmerman: I am in regular communication with all of the partners in our housing system. Yes. And they are aware.
Okay. I just don't like duplication of work. So this is something that's been going on for a long time. This partnership between the city and the county and what was where, I guess maybe the mayor is councilor Zimmerman who is on that committee. Yeah, yeah.
He appoints.
Yeah, that's a mayoral appointment.
Okay. Did you want to add anything? Is this a conversation that's active? That's what used to take place when I was at the table. But then when there was such a lack of tolerance for doing hard work with working with the chronically homeless community and really doing that hard, messy work to help engage them into services, it just got too untenable as we went back to the status quo, housing first work. Yeah. So I, I don't know what's going on in that committee anymore.
Yeah, I know we have the homeless response system, steering and oversight committee that we talked in councilor Avalos. I don't this is the first I've heard of this amendment. So I'm not aware of of conversations with others.
Well, I'm working with my partners across the river, like councilor or like commissioner Singleton trying to again, yes, I am aware of the sock. That is not what this is. This isn't that's just regular business. This is forcing a conversation about making some decisions before the next budget, about how we're going to close this budget gap. That requires making sure that we are able to assess, are the outcomes working? Are they worth the dollars? So it explains it in detail the outcomes. But they are different from the current status quo outcomes of the sock. Yes.
My experience has been that that politicians don't stick with a plan. And so I know when we first got the villages up and running, we were seeing up to 50% rate of going into housing. And especially with those that were engaging in addiction recovery services, those engaging in workforce, those were our best results. And we all celebrated those for about six months because they were there and we measured them. And then we started moving away from that. And so one of the challenges that you'll find in this position, all of you as we work on the hardest thing that we failed at miserably, like I don't think any city has failed more than Portland in terms of engaging with chronically homeless people who do suffer, many of them after they're on the streets for two years from addictions and unchecked and untreated mental health issues. It's sad and it's hard work, and we haven't been willing to hang in there and actually stick with the plan long enough to see any results, because I heard the word footballer earlier, there's just this football game that keeps going on where we can't get on the same page. To be to be doing what's right for Portland, and it would be great for this humanitarian challenge. And so we just keep having like these new ideas that come up. So I think there's more plans than we need to. We have a lot of plans. We just haven't had the stamina, the integrity, the persistence to stick with anything. And so this is my sixth budget process. And so it's just sad to continue to always hear that we have to have a new plan when we haven't been able to see through any of our other plans that we're starting to get results. So that's where I'm hesitant about doing yet another big plan. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, council president, as the vice chair to to councilor Avalos, I appreciate your leadership on this. And as I alluded to when I motivated my own version, that does it a different way, fully supports you in this. Endorse your proposal here, plan to vote for it. But I just want to clear up one thing here. This is not a replacement for the existing conversation that's happening because frankly, that that is that is falling apart. I mean, when the decision was made to sort of tear up this funding arrangement between the county and the city, that sort of drove a nail in that, as far as I'm concerned. And we've had these nice joint meetings about this. But the intention behind this amendment is to to start a timer and start the process of saying, this current system is not working. We need to draw it down. Let's do something different. And let's actually use some evidence based reasoning in the process. And so that's why I'm supporting this today. Clearly the, you know, the folks at the table who've been at this in a leadership position all this while have failed to figure this out. And so it's up to us, as the people who approve budgets for the city of Portland and spend taxpayer dollars to step in and try to do something different. And you're the chair of the housing committee. And so this is the sort of leadership that I'm seeing here. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Green councilor Kanal.
Mitch Green: Thank you, council president, I'm going to talk up. We have the budget note in our emails for those who haven't seen it yet. I just wanted to to get an understanding here. I'm reading over the the budget note, and I think understanding the need for. Reevaluation or evaluation doesn't say in here makes a lot of sense to me. I'm curious if we could just get a little of the legislative intent clarified, because this is one that I'm not 100% clear on. When you talk about an assessment of overall overlapping operational responsibilities, is, is the legislative intent as described by councilor Green a moment ago? Are we trying to to talk about how we get out of overlap? I'm seeing a nod there. And so this can help inform that that makes sense. And then the other piece that I wanted to speak to, and this is something that at least on Avalos. Nine I guess the budget note makes a lot of sense to me. I really appreciate the second to last item here of redirecting away again, as we talked about in the previous amendment, from the management side alone to homelessness prevention, housing stabilization, and on the other side, supportive housing acquisition and permanent housing exits. This is, I think, the conversation that changes, not the plan, but what the plan is designed to achieve, right? Where we're not talking about managing a problem, we're talking about solving a problem to the degree that we can, which obviously we are one player in this process. So at least as it relates to to Avalos nine, this this makes a lot of sense to me. I appreciate the clarification and I will be supportive of of. Nine I'm going to be going back over and asking questions later about. Four but yeah.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president, does this have a financial impact to it?
$1 million okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Yeah, thank you. I'll share a little bit more about the intent. I think the goal here is that we need to have more clarity about the outcomes so that we can make better financial decisions. A lot of this is financially driven for me. That's why it specifically points out getting this information prior to the next budget cycle, because again, we are in year two of staring down huge holes in our budget that are because of these systems that we are overspending and under-delivering on. And so this is about forcing the conversation to move beyond the joint meetings where we just talk at each other about the charts and all that. This is about rising above that and getting to the next phase where we actually start to make better decisions based on data and start preparing ahead of next year. What are the things that we need to start figuring out we can't afford to do anymore? Because the way that we've approached this budget is we're the whole budget was built around keeping everything exactly as it is basically around our sheltering system. And my note and my amendment argue that we need to make some kind of a change. And clearly, the current systems of governance and soc and all of that are not producing any measurable steps, in my opinion, towards some actual change. And so that is why this is different. Yes, we have all these different structures. Yes, we have all of these plans. This is about taking that next step and putting dollars and resources behind it, not only for the planning of it, but it's also for making sure that there's dollars available for people that are going to be moving out of shelters, that we're going to have to close down. And it's about transition, not just for the humans that working at the city, but for the actual humans that we're serving. So the, the way that I have it written for what these dollars in the 1 million pot go to, it's for a broad swath of that, but particularly focused on making sure that if the city has to close things down due to us not having the money, that we have some kind of money that we can reach for to make sure that we're getting people a safe landing.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Colleagues, I just want to note it is 7:00. We still have ten more amendments to get to, and we are currently actually only scheduled until nine, but we are able to extend that until ten. I don't think we can extend it later than that. So, councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: No thanks. Council president, I, I need to ask these questions. So we just took how much did the last amendment just take out of impact reduction? Is that a million? Okay. And this is this would be this is coming from where this next million that you want to snatch.
Portland solutions.
Portland solutions, okay. Either skyler or mayor or somebody. Could you give us the impact of of this cut now on top of the one that we just experienced?
For Portland solutions, councilor? You mean the amendment that was just passed previously?
Well, yeah, there was the last one. And now we have this one. I'm just trying to accumulate the cuts.
My understanding. So cbo correct me please. But Green three, I believe took $1 million from the irp removal process. So the removal process is about 8.2 million of the 15 million. And so that's about 3 to 4 removal crews. Essentially, it's the easiest way to understand it. And I believe put it in a set aside that then can go through an RFP process. Okay. And then this amendment Avalos four, I believe, would take $1 million. And I'm not.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry with that million and why we put it in a set aside and we rethink and plan to do a different methodology. How many employees won't be working on the streets of Portland to do the abatement work and outreach work?
Yeah. The removal crews are about 2 to 3 folks, a crew, so about 3 to 4 crews total.
So okay, so we'll be down to three. So there'll be x amount of abatement work activity that won't happen. Even though we constantly all get calls about people desiring to have that service done for them. And then this one will do what take it from where.
I my understanding is it's non shelter related Portland solutions budget, but I don't I'm not. I'm not clear on exactly where it would come from.
So you're the head of that program and you're not sure what that means.
I think I would. Probably have to pull it through from pmo maybe, but I'd have to look at our budget numbers.
A sponsor. Could you answer the question?
Perhaps that's the answer. It's coming from Portland solutions and pmo.
Just big picture from Portland solutions.
Not from the shelters specifically, but it's for them to absorb the cut. Okay. It's but it stays within their bureau. So they're still using the money. They just have to use it towards the directive that the amendment tells them to use it for.
Okay, I'm well known to be for outcomes. I'll always be for that. I think, again, what I've struggled with since I've been in elected officials, how the political sector does play football with outcomes. And so when we start to make some headway on them, then we shift and we and we decide to try a different method, because maybe that one was getting results that we didn't like, I don't know. But my point is we struggle on this council at the county to even define what success looks like. We struggle to say what the north star is. I'll say it one more time, even though I don't seem to ever get much traction with this, but with a lot of lived experience like some others on this council with homelessness, both within my family especially is, I guess what I want to say is that we we just were failing to provide the support that's needed to do the hard work to move people from dependance, dependance on government services, dependance on drugs and alcohol to independence from both. With the average age on our streets being 25 to 54 men, prime working years, most not disabled. If we really wanted to find success, we'd start to get. We'd start to help move and do that really hard work. That sometimes begins with the impact reduction outreach work. Try to get people into services and by the grace of recovery, which is never linear, it's always kind of like this for anyone that is watching, that knows about 12 steps and doing recovery work, you eventually get to a place where you're stable enough to live independently. And then when you're working, that helps a lot because addicts have to be busy or they'll relapse. And so since we never talk about it, in my opinion, with this type of honesty, we continue to avoid, I think, the real truth. So I just don't want to sit through another planning process where we can't get to the bottom line of what's causing this deprivation. That sadly, has made my hometown special in this regard. When people say that the city and the county collectively are the best chief enablers to the addiction crisis that they've seen of any public system, they don't say that lightly. They say that because they've watched their friends perish on our streets, even though they've tried to do outreach themselves to help them. But we don't provide systems that allow people to move into a place of sobriety. And I just hope someday this council will have the courage, along with the county, to get honest about this problem so we can actually get to some solutions. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, director brucker. When you're looking at your budget, the portions of it that are not shelter, which is given what we're what we're looking at here in Avalos for, are they exclusively pmo or are there other funds that you would characterize as not shelter or. And I imagine there's a question of what is adjacent enough to shelter that you're counting it.
Yeah, I guess depends councilor Kind of how you. But I would say largely. So we have about $1 million just for kind of Portland solutions leadership. So about a few positions and then 2.8 million for outreach, the outreach city outreach team, and then pmos budget, which we've already talked about, and then irp's budget. So those are kind of the only buckets of funding within Portland solutions.
Thank you. So councilor Avalos, getting back to to for. Is the idea that everything that was just mentioned, the million for Portland solutions leadership, 2.8 million for outreach pmo budget and then irp's budget, is that all within the universe that you'd be allocating decision making authority to director Kanal to pull $1 million from? And when you say one time money is the idea there, that it could be a one time transfer of the money. But even if it's ongoing, or are you looking at specific one time dollars that are already there.
It's a mess. It's a one time in a pot. So for this year, because it's about getting prepared for the next fiscal year, right?
Okay. So that what I the way I'm interpreting that is that you retain the ongoing funding stream, but could do a one time transfer of it into this pot. And I'm seeing a nod there. So that that helps me understand. Thank you. And then. The, the piece that I'm only, the only last piece I need to clarify here is this would be general fund dollars. I'm seeing that down in the table. And so does that, because I know that a lot of people's budget currently is not general fund, but. Pcef does that change your answer at all? Director.
So pmo has 2.4 million in ongoing general fund. So that's the general fund that pmo has right now in their budget. I honestly would need to talk to my finance person to see kind of what makes the most sense. But just off the top of my head. Yeah, the pmo 2.4 million is one of our only buckets of general fund.
So the other 1 million you just mentioned, the other I'm going to just go back to the million for sort of administration, the 2.8 for outreach and then irp's budget. Are those all general fund as well?
No. So the 1 million is general fund. The 2.8 is general fund. One time the pmo budget has 2.4 and ongoing general fund. And then irp has. Oh, I'd have to look I think it's about 5 million in ongoing general fund.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Zimmerman. Last word.
Thanks. How many employees at pmo will be laid off because of this?
If $1 million was taken, I would guess about 4 to 5 off the top of my head. But I'd have to look at the numbers.
Okay.
So that's. That's from the last one to this one.
So the last amendment pulled it out of irp. But if we took money out of from Avalos for from pmo, sorry, the end of the day, we would have $1 million probably coming out largely of the general fund, which pays for a lot of our employees within pmo, and some of them are part time workers. So it's not kind of your fully loaded typical employee.
That's very concerning for me. Pmo might be the thing that my constituents talk most positively about in their interactions with city folks. They're the ones who meet their expectations more than any other in terms of my my interactions. So that is a huge concern. But as I read further about this, funds should be restricted until Portland solutions and the city administration provide counsel with the transition and governance framework by December of 26. And some of the points in here about contract and provider transition analysis. Et cetera. Et cetera. I just want to remind folks, Multnomah county is the homeless services provider in this community. Portland took on a sheltering role because the county couldn't and wouldn't in 2021 and 22. But the human services aspect in this community is not the city of Portland. And this looks very much like what councilor Smith and I and others would have seen in the first foundational documents of what was the joint office in 2015, this idea to plan about planning to plan to be a homeless service provider. So I've, I've ridden this roller coaster and I do not want on it. Again, this would be a this is $1 million layoff to pmo, portland's favorite place. And it is a huge shift in the role in government. As I read this, this. And how what it would take for the money to be, quote, released, it'd be better just not to do the work and never release it because this is a dangerous plan. And so I don't think anybody wants Portland who has no social workers on who does only emergency overnight sheltering. And the task sites, which are the most extreme form to take on a larger role here. I think that's Multnomah county has largely the public understands that the social services happen at that level. I also think that Multnomah county, again, would be concerned about this, because I'll remind you that Multnomah county, this chair, previous chairs, have continually said that the. They are the body responsible for the transition of a person to a better living situation. But nothing stops the city from dealing with the things around the camp or around the the neighborhood that that can be problematic. And that's where pmos genesis really came from, which was recognizing that something was happening in the public realm. And we needed something, a government service, who could, who could be adjacent to the homeless services that Multnomah county provided, but take care of the cleanup, take care of the the things that that help prevent bad stuff from happening in certain areas. And that's what pmo has been able to do. And then that's what irp has been able to do. So this is a one two punch that would very much would concern me. And I really hope that everybody does not vote to lay off those employees who I think everybody's problem solver networks in your neighborhoods would be very let down if this occurred.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Councilor Avalos yeah, thank you. One, I purposely was not prescriptive. It doesn't have to be layoffs. There's plenty of other areas in their budget get cut from. Two. I think that the Avalos. Nine I mean, I think at a minimum, I would urge that we at least pass that because it's the intent and the money I've. I'm understanding from some colleagues across the river that actually there might be some resources for us to do some of this research work. And so I think the money isn't as important to me in this moment, because I think we will be able to find a way to do it without this 1 million. But I think the legislative intent is what's more important here, and what I would encourage councilors to consider, because the way that I see it and the way the reason I wrote it this way partially is responding to what I heard around this dais. I think everybody has said some kind of skepticism about ongoing continuing to fund these programs without these outcomes, not understanding where the county is. That's what I heard. And so I crafted this amendment with that in mind. So that's so the budget note to me is more important. I think it's fine. You know, we I don't need to belabor about the 1 million. Honestly, at this point, I think I would much prefer that the legislative intent move forward. So that and also I'll say this aligns really well with the ongoing unified housing strategy work, because by the end of this year, we hope to have some resolution of like really figuring out after we've done all the digging, looking at all the pdfs we have, we hope to have some concrete steps going into the next budget cycle. So this is just adding another layer of making sure that we have the data that we need. Because like I said earlier, there was a lot of things that we requested that we heard we didn't have information for. And I found that really troubling. So this to me is saying legislatively, we need to, if whatever information you're saying we don't have, we need to seek it out. And we need to put that in front of councilors so that they can make decisions on the next budget with that information handy. So that is the goal. I think we'll take a vote on Avalos four and then would we go straight into a vote on Avalos? Nine so that's my my pitch. I think, you know, do what you got to do on Avalos. Four absolutely would encourage you to support Avalos. Nine though, because I do think we have resources for that and it is time for us to make a change. And that's what I heard around this dais, and that's what I'm using my leadership as housing chair to bring this forward. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos, seeing no one else in the queue, keelan, can we please call the roll on Avalos four and then we will move to a vote on Avalos?
Nine four moved by Avalos, seconded by Morillo Kanal.
Taking a leap of faith here. But yes.
Pirtle-guiney. No.
Ryan.
No.
Koyama Lane.
Yes.
Aye, Morillo.
Novick.
No.
Clark.
No.
Green. Zimmerman.
No.
Avalos.
Aye, Morillo.
Smith no.
A amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six nays.
Now please take a vote on Avalos nine.
Move by seconded by Morillo Kanal.
No hesitation. Yes.
Pirtle-guiney.
No.
Ryan.
No.
Koyama Lane.
Yes. Aye, Morillo I Novick. No. Clark no. Green I. Zimmerman. No.
Avalos.
I.
Smith no.
Dunphy I.
The amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six days.
Okay, colleagues, it is now 720. Just a friendly reminder again that we are officially scheduled to work until 9:00 tonight, but have gotten room if we need to extend until 10:00. However, that is a hard stop for us. We need to get through the next ten votes. We are entering a block of items related to restorations, to cuts made to parks and the arts programs. This is sort of an old, vibrant communities block that we would have been doing 18 months ago. We're starting with two items that were rated highest priority by their respective offices, that is pirtle-guiney two and Koyama Lane seven. I'd like to start with councilor Pirtle-guiney and then on to councilor Koyama Lane. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney to epg2.
Thank you, council president colleagues. Pirtle-guiney. To address a concern that I brought up during our work session during the eight days of closures at community centers, which the mayor put in his budget as a cost savings measure and a policy measure to allow for all staff meetings and things like that. I was worried that there could be an unintended consequence of shutting down the type of child care programs that allow people in our community to work. I specifically asked about three programs preschool programs, Sunday school programs, and after school programs. I couldn't get an answer on the dais, but learned after the fact that the preschool for all programs have a built in number of in-service days already, and the plan was to align those with these closures so that days off might change. But the number of days off affecting working parents would not change at all. I learned that some school programs would not be affected, but that parks run after school programing would be affected. This is not drop ins. This is not open gyms. This is just the programs that allow for oftentimes, our younger elementary school students to have safe after care at our community centers while their parents finish their work day. Similar to the type of programing that sometimes occurs at schools. But in three of our communities, it occurs at community centers instead. This is a $15,000 cost. In working with the bureau director, we were told that if we did do a pull from ems, they would be able to absorb that so that working families can continue to have their kids cared for every day after school, and not just most days after school. I would be honored to have your support on this. I think it is a huge impact for an admittedly small number of working families, but an important one at a very low cost shift for our park system. I would move pirtle-guiney two and ask for a second.
Second councilor Pirtle-guiney moves pirtle-guiney to councilor Kanal seconds. Colleagues to the amendment. Please note this is a $15,000 amendment. Can we please limit this discussion as much as possible and get to a vote? Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: I was going to say exactly that, so I'll stop. Let's do it.
Counselor Green.
Yeah, support. Let's take the vote.
All right.
Can we please call the roll on pirtle-guiney two.
Moved by pirtle-guiney. Seconded by Kanal. Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. Ryan. I Koyama Lane. I aye, Morillo. I Novick.
I I I Zimmerman.
Smallest amendment in my career I think I.
Absent Smith. I Dunphy. I amendment is approved with a vote of 11 ayes and one absent.
Thank you very much. Congrats. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney councilor Koyama Lane to tkl7.
Thank you. I am passing out.
An update to this. The. There was a. Mistake and I want us to be nice about it. This program offer is right next to. I won't name any names, but I want us to be nice to cbo. Okay, they're working hard. We're. They're humans. They make some mistakes. This program offer is was right next to another one. They have, you know, overlap. They're both they both support seniors and are adjacent to each other. And so yes, please forgive that. And this is the correct one. So tkl7 restores funding for the parks and rec personal trainer positions that support the health and wellness of seniors and other community members across Portland. The amendment uses 256,772 from parks levy balance funds that are already being transferred into the general fund for operations. This amendment aligns with portland's age friendly priorities by supporting programs that improve health, mobility, wellness. For our growing senior population. The majority of people that use these programs are seniors who have low live on low incomes. And I want to be clear, I've learned a lot of new things about this. We had people come talk to us about these programs at our listening sessions, and these training sessions really are not a luxury. A constituent emailed me today to share that their trainer at their community center works with them, and a lot of portlanders living with parkinson's who can't afford physical therapy out of pocket or don't have adequate insurance coverage. And these programs are really helping to fill real gaps. I see this amendment as honoring the intent of the parks levy and ensuring that portlanders, portlanders are really seeing tangible, tangible benefits from the investments that they voted for. And I would really appreciate your consideration. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. And did you formally move this amendment?
I would like to formally move Koyama Lane seven.
Second councilor Koyama Lane moves councilor Morillo seconds colleagues to the amendment. Councilor. Morillo.
I'm going to keep this brief and just say that when I first saw personal trainers, I was like, okay, we can cut them out of the budget. Surely this is not that important. And then we went to the community listening sessions, and this was so critical for elderly folks in our community who use this as a health resource, who use this to connect with one another. It is also part of our public health system. Honestly, for people to get to have personal trainers and strengthen their bodies and be social together without having to go through the medical system. So it's really critical. People love this. Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane, for bringing this. After all the community feedback we got, and I will be proudly supporting this.
Thank you, councilor Morillo. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president, just a quick question, broadly supportive of this. Just wanted to understand the 16325 I know the. 256 are you saying that this is the one that had the error or the one originally? Okay.
So someone from cbo want to explain, I was just told that we caught an error in cbo had to rewrite it. But what you have in front of you should be correct. And can you speak to this director? And we can. My team can also email this out to you. They haven't already. It should be in your inbox.
Okay. Good evening, sonia shymansky, parks and recreation. I'm not with cbo. I can't speak to that, but I was going to offer that. If you could tell us the particular things that you were looking to restore, we could go work with cbo and make sure we had the right number.
Okay, I'm going to vote for it either way. I just wanted to make sure that the wasn't something we had to revisit later to true up. So yeah, thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Similar in the question, councilor. I'm just trying to understand it. When you first said it, it was taking 256 from the levy. I know you have another ask for 700 from the levy. So we're getting up there. But it sounds I think the way I read it was already going to be used this year by the levy. Is it allocated from excuse me, are you asking the parks bureau with this money just to take a different position, eliminate that and use it for this personal trainer piece? I just want to know what the 256 was intended for.
I wonder if the 256 is the old number and that is not correct.
The old number that I have.
Okay. Are you able to. 75 or someone from cbo please.
I can tell you I have a number for personal training at 160 and senior center at 40.
Okay.
Hello. I wouldn't say it's city budget office. So the difference in the numbers is that we use the decision package that was submitted by the bureau. And there was the whatever the larger number is, the $260,000. That was the total expenses and the decision package that was reduced. It's backed by two separate revenue sources in the package, which is the partial draw on the levy, which is the $160,000, as well as external revenues, which would not show up in this table because it doesn't impact the appropriation schedule as external revenues. So that's the difference in the two numbers.
I don't think I could have said that, and I do want to let you know that I heard a quote today. Someone said, if every office in the world had an own in it, the world would be a better place. Thank you for all you're doing. It's a literal quote.
I appreciate that, but don't know what it means.
Don't owe the explanation.
Yeah.
So external revenue.
My question was, since it was already allocated, this is not this is not money coming out of a contingency. This what I was asking was, what did parks have the money allocated for prior to this amendment?
It says.
It's already being transferred into the general.
Yes.
So what is this?
I want to know what what we're giving up to fund this. And if the math is messy, I will remind folks, we very much have the adoption process for the small things. If we need things to balance and be correct. Because I'm with you, councilor, I just want to have an idea of what we're giving up.
Yeah, generally it's a draw from the levy's contingency, but claudio can speak more about what that means for the impact of the fund.
Yeah. And so to be clear, I know that this is a last minute change. So I was looking at the earlier amendment which addressed senior center, the senior project. So so this would to restore this would be there. As owen said, there's there's an earned revenue component and a levy component. We made the levy reduction in order to close the gap. So this would open that gap. Again, it would be a draw from contingency. And that would if it were an ongoing restoration, that would open the gap in the out years, and we would need to address it in a future budget cycle.
So the narrative that said that 256 was being operationalized from the levy this year is that's not correct then, because that would tell me you're not pulling that. That would say you're not pulling from contingency. It's already in the plan for this year.
I have not had a chance to see this version of it. So I don't know.
A number of amendments that are in discussion this year are pulling from future levy into fy 27, and either asking us to manage toward it over the remaining years or reduce expenses by the time we get to the end. I don't know specifically here.
Okay.
So yeah, no, I think that's a fair characterization. It's essentially drawing from.
So this is a draw from the levy. This is not a recategorizing of current proposed operational funds from one thing to a new thing. This is an additional draw on the levy. That's the reason I bring that up, is that we are I know that we've got another big one coming as well. And so $1 million draw on the levy is I'm trying to understand what that really means in the out years.
Montavilla shelter. Yeah.
I don't mean to pre pre-load, but I, yeah, I so that's what's on my mind. I'm going to hold there and consider as we go through.
Thank you councilor Zimmerman councilor Smith.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. I wanted to have a breakdown of the monies that you're requesting for the. 256 is this for how many personal trainers or does it break down that way?
Sounds like it doesn't break down that way.
Okay, so we don't know how many. So how am I supposed to gauge if this is enough money to do what what it says it's going to do? It's going to I mean, it sounds good. Support health and wellness of seniors through private personal training services. In the fitness program, we have to have some sort of idea of how many trainers or what is that one trainer, and that's their health benefits and the like. What? Tell me what that looks like.
So just just to be clear, this is actually the restoration of decision package 26863. So all the detail is in there. But it is this is a service that's delivered through through outside entities in our in our community center. So I think maximo could probably speak to more detail.
Contracted out to whom.
To personal trainers who deliver service in our.
So that's what I'm saying. How many personal trainers do we get? How many hours is this a full time trainer? I don't know what.
May I give my answer? Yeah, like my office is looking that up right now and pulling it up. And I'll let you know.
Okay.
Okay. We will come back to that answer in just a moment. Councilor. Novick.
Thank you, mr. President. My problem with this is, to me, it's an unfunded cut. It's an unfunded add, which cuts from something that we don't know. We don't know what it is. I had a parks priority myself. I wanted to restore somebody who's being laid off, who's a botanic specialist, who works in the community gardens and parks with the youth conservation crew, works with with schools, with teen, with teens, with volunteers. And I proposed restoring that position with cuts to the city administrator's budget because I thought it needed a funding source. It did not occur to me to simply tell parks to find the money for it somewhere, because that means cutting from somewhere else, whether I specified or not. So I just am not comfortable telling people to find money from somewhere. I was comfortable, I guess with $15,000, but I'm not with this amount, and the amount I was going to be asking for was in the same ballpark, about 240,000. So I just can't I, I understand this is this is a valuable program to a number of people, but I can't support it.
Thank you, councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: And I wanted to finish my question.
Sorry.
Councilor is this in the external materials and services budget? Is that where this money is being restored back to?
Looks like it might be casual staff. It's not a particular individual. So I would need to drill into the detail there. So.
We don't know. Okay.
I don't know.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I had a lot of questions that it sounds like maybe we can't get answers to right now about where this money is drawing from. As best as I can tell, this is pulling from out years of the levy. And I just want to be clear that I'm not going to support anything that draws from out years of the levy. That puts us in exactly the situation we were just recently in, of having a levy that can't fully meet our needs. At the end, we have to budget responsibly. We have to fulfill our promise to portlanders that we are going to live within the means of what they can afford to give us. This is a really important program. I would love to be able to fund it. I did not like seeing it cut, but I can't support anything that draws on out years of the levy without a plan for what we are asking the bureau to cut instead, because otherwise that is just unspecified additional deep cuts we will have to take by the final year. Thanks, council president.
Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney vice president Clark.
Thank you, council president.
Councilor Koyama Lane do we do we know about how many people this serves?
Yeah. Looking at the decision package, there aren't specific numbers. It outlines that the proposal will discontinue personal training at regional community centers, creating a gap in physical fitness offerings for participants. But there are not specifics. It is something that is across the city, though.
Can I ask also, parks you mentioned earned revenue. What are people paying some people paying for this?
People do pay. I've clarified that there is about a $250,000 cost associated with casual staff, so they're not fte, but we buy their capacity on an hourly basis through the year. That's who provides the training. We bring in about 100,000 in revenue off that offering. So the net cost annually in in 27 is the 160 figure.
Okay. You know, I've talked a lot about the parks bureau becoming more entrepreneurial and finding other ways to finance these programs. You have an answer you want.
Yeah.
50 positions total. And for some context, since January at mount scott community center, 190 people have signed up for these sessions. So they are well, well used.
That's just mount scott. There must be others and other places. I'm really sensitive to council pirtle-guiney concern, but I'm also very aware of the silver tsunami and that if this might be a good investment, if we can keep people healthy and so they won't call chat when they fall down or other situations. So I'm, I'm sort of I'm torn. I'm considering this. Thanks.
Thank you, vice president Clark, counselor Green.
Being mindful of the time. I'm just going to say I'm glad to support this. And I'll just remind folks, it's oftentimes our aging population that one votes for these levies. But then also it's just a barometer for our priorities in the community. And we really just want to make sure we we take care of them.
Okay. Thank you, councilor Green. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue. Can we please move to a vote on Koyama Lane seven?
Moved by Koyama Lane. Seconded by aye, Morillo. Kanal.
Yes.
Pirtle-guiney.
No.
Ryan.
No.
Koyama Lane.
I am very, very excited to vote yes. Thank you so much for considering everyone.
Aye, Morillo.
Yes. Thank you for bringing this forward, councilor. Family.
Novick.
No, Clark I. Green and. Avalos I.
I.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of nine ayes and three nays.
Thank you colleagues, colleagues. On to the rest of the parks. Items we've split into arts related, personnel related and infrastructure related. I'm going to recognize myself now to move. Dunphy two, Dunphy two as filed, as was discussed yesterday by councilor Zimmerman, originally envisioned going to take the $200,000 proposed for a downtown marketing initiative that that version of the amendment is available online, but I am handing out a. At the. At the urging of my colleagues, I explored a different alternative funding path for this. The downtown marketing initiative was created back in 2004 as a grant to the. Then to the pdc. It has since become a part of the Portland business alliance and clean and safe. Understanding that this is funding a number of really important amendments. I am attempting to backfill as much of the cuts to the arts as I could find. This pot took a 7% cut. Overall. These are the grant dollars that are given to the regional arts and culture council, the interstate firehouse, community center and music Oregon for relatively small dollar grants for working artists in the community. The proposed cut cuts 45 to 55 additional grants. Cutting through a lot of this because we are tight on time. I'm uncertain if there is support for this as a reduction in the downtown marketing initiative, so I'm proposing to primarily fund this out of the new funds appropriated in the budget to council operations to fund onboarding for new councilors, potentially coming on after this year's election. We are also using general fund discretionary dollars that were made available by technical amendment two. This is an addition of $337,000 to to council operations, likely in excess of what will be required for these office transitions at year's end. Because of the general fund overhead thing, this amendment would take the full appropriation in order to close that gap. However, we do believe that there will be sufficient underspending across all 13 council offices, council operations and council offices that would otherwise be returned to the general fund at the end of the year. We have amended a budget note that directs the administration to reserve any underspending and direct it to the transition fund in the fall, tore up to the $337,000 amount. You might not have heard this, but I happen to think that music in the arts are really important, and the small grants like this are a huge part of it. So, colleagues before you is Dunphy two a revised version or I am moving. I don't know how to do this. I have moved Dunphy two and then I'm also going to move an amendment to Dunphy two. I'll just move the new one for now. I'm going to move the new one for now. But if this fails and colleagues are not interested, I'm going to move the other one. So I'm moving. Dunphy two the red line version, which you should all have in your hands. And I would ask for a second.
Second and clarification. Is this posted online for our staff and for the public to see, or is it going to be emailed out as well?
I thought it got emailed. Let me verify very quickly. Sorry.
It might. My inbox is really bad right now.
I apologize. Okay, now it's being emailed to you all. So Dunphy two with my own name misspelled in the file. Just notice 2.0. So councilor. Thank you. Councilor. Novick.
Thank you, mr. President. Mr. President, I appreciate your passion, but I do not want to set a precedent of each of us going through parts of the budget, looking for places there might be partial and part. There might be some underspending in order to fund a particular little thing that we like. I think that it's I think, frankly, it's kind of like what councilor Koyama Lane just did, saying somebody is going to come out of somewhere. We don't know quite where. Also, I have to say that we are a council with an approval rating of 24%. I think it is quite possible all six of us are up for reelection will lose, in which case we'll need a significant amount of money for transition.
Thank you, councilor Novick councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: You know, councilor Novick, I think that when you're measuring on an aggregate, people might have negative feelings, but I think I'm personally going to win. So and I think maybe it's because we're bringing forward ideas and not shooting everything down, or even our own ideas down, as some people have liked to do earlier. Thanks for sending the email to it. I've sent it to my staff. I'm just trying to wrap my head around, if you can, just in simple terms, explain where it's coming from and what it's going to.
Yeah. In simple terms, this budget appropriates money to the council office for transition in case there are a new elected officials to help with that transition cost. It would if those it would redirect those dollars back to fill the cut that is going to arts and culture. And if those dollars, when those dollars are underspent in that budget, they will go back to to repay this. Is that helpful or unhelpful? This was our attempt to try and. Yeah, I'll tell you what. Honestly, colleagues, this is a vaguely complicated one. It's a stretch, but I'm I think it's worth trying to trying to protect as many of the arts as possible. So I recognize that this is a stretch. If this is too much of a stretch for folks, please vote no. And I have another version that I can get to very, very quickly for.
Clarification, which budgets are going to be. So this is relying on budgets being underspent. So is it not going to be? If the underspending varies, does that mean it changes what is available?
Yes. So.
It would take the it directs the administration to use any available underspending, including a projected $150,000 in underspending from council operations to refill the transition funding in the fall. Tao. Based on updated projections on the need for funding at that time. So we will know more right now. Basically, this puts 370. This budget puts $374,000 into council ops for a transition fund. By the fall tao. We will likely have a better idea of. I believe it happens in November. So I think we'll have a better understanding of this.
And how does the transition funding relate to the arts?
It doesn't. It was simply a pot of dollars that was allocated out of the general fund that I. I'm trying to claw back.
Well, look, I'm the person that tried to take money from the golf fund to fund small donor elections last year. So who am I to judge? Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark.
Thank you, president Dunphy. I have a question and then a couple of comments. So we're not actually taking the money. We're just waiting to see if if if it's needed.
No other direction.
Okay.
Sorry. Yeah, we would if.
We would take the money and.
We would.
Refill the dollars for the transition office from under spending from this year.
If needed.
If needed. I agree with you on the importance of the arts to our economy. And even these are just small grants sprinkled around. What I really want to say is I appreciate your reconsidering the cutting of the downtown marketing, and I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: I'm just going to say speak to both versions of this. Just off the off chance to save time. I would have preferred the other funding source, but I think both of these are good. I appreciate you advocating for the arts always. Councilor Dunphy, council president and I will be voting yes.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. If folks. Who are here today, they lose in in November, they will have the balance of those previous councilors. So why do we need a transition if they already have a budget?
I think that this is a dollars for the sort of setting up of the office, ordering name plates and things like that as well.
$400,000 to name plates.
Well, in theory, if there were six offices that all got replaced and you know, we paid 15 grand to move some cubicles around in our office at one time.
So it includes furniture. Everything is in there in a transition. So we're moving out of anything. It's all inclusive.
Anything further? Councilor Smith okay. Councilor. Zimmerman okay. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan. Can we please call the roll on Dunphy two.
Yeah, sorry, did we get a motion and a second on that?
Yeah. Thank you, thank you.
Kanal.
Yes.
Pirtle-guiney. Absent. Ryan.
No.
Koyama Lane.
Yes.
Aye, Morillo.
Yes, I think this will have minimal impacts.
Novick.
No. Mark I.
Green.
Zimmerman no. Avalos I.
Smith no.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of seven eyes for nays and one absent.
Thank you colleagues. We now have two amendments related to two amendments from councilor Avalos related to personnel and one each related to infrastructure from councilors Koyama Lane and pirtle-guiney. Councilor Avalos, would you prefer to do Avalos 3 or 6 next. Councilor two. Avalos three.
Thank you. One second. All right. So I have those three restores a park position that that supports community stewardship, volunteer coordination and core operational support functions that directly impact particularly east Portland residents. You know, east portlanders are continue to raise their concerns about deteriorating park conditions, including, you know, overflowing trash and closed restrooms. And we have this position, excuse me. It's been a long day. I'm tired trying to get all my thoughts together. Let me start over. Okay? This amendment restores park positions that support community stewardship, volunteer coordination, and core administrative functions. This amendment also helps maintain bureau capacity to coordinate with community stewardship groups and preserve operational support functions that directly impact the condition and usability of our parks. Because these portlanders care, we care about our parks, this amendment helps ensure the city continues showing that same level of care. Particularly, this is speaking to a position that was removed that is particularly for east Portland parks. So. I'll leave it at that. It's pretty straightforward. Oh, and then I guess the funding source is the funding source is the parks levy. So it's using the parks levy for one time amount. That would reduce the ending fund balance in the final year. If no other savings or reductions are found, which, you know, we do believe that that will be found in the fifth year. So this is about preserving a position that was cut, the west side position was kept and the east side was cut, and we're trying to restore the east side position. Thanks.
Councilor Avalos, have you moved your amendment.
Yeah, I move Avalos three.
And is there a second? I will second this one. I'm excited about this one. Colleagues. Oh wait, I cannot wait second.
No it's not.
It's not the one. It's the other one. Okay. I'm good. Just making sure. Yeah. Okay. I will second that. Colleagues to the amendment. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. You said at the end of your description that you expect or you think that the money will be found in the fifth year, I just what does that mean? I'm not familiar with that accounting practice.
Yeah. We were told that we can borrow against the parks levy and that it will be when at the end of the five year, if there savings that it will backfill that. That was the structure that was recommended.
Okay.
So the funding sources, the parks levy, but it overdraws on it technically, but it's with the expectation that by year five, we will have expected savings.
Yeah. I mean. I don't think that that's an accounting practice, at least with councilor Koyama Lane, we are clear eyed that we were actually just taking out of what was possible in year five. But this this seems like a strange way to frame that. I am. Frankly nervous about continuing on the levy. And I think I have another one that I'm more supportive for of using it in Montavilla. And so an additional hit to that with whimsical math is concerning. So I hope that we don't dip further into it on this one. This doesn't seem appropriate.
To be clear, the funding source is the same that we did for leech earlier. So it's the same exact process that again, we've already approved. So it's not unusual as far as us not doing it. This.
No, it's not unusual. It's just that there comes a point right? There comes a the the parks bureau could have spent all money this year that could have occurred. I, I think that there's a method to, to their madness at times. And I've certainly pushed for using all of what comes in each year, but I have also bought off on the idea that they have some hope to be able to have a full value of money issue across five years. And so in this, it's always a question of about how much can you whether. And so that is for me, a large calculation here. And I didn't know this was coming. There are some others who have spoken to me earlier and asked for support that I appreciated. I think I'll hold their thanks.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Yeah.
Thank you, council president. It's really pained me to vote no on some of these most recent amendments, especially the one to do a strength training for seniors. It's needed my life at the moment. So thank you for caring about elders. But the parks levy isn't a piggy bank and this is all beginning to add up. I reached my tolerance and I saw how many were in here, and I thought I should just be consistent. And I just don't think it's a good practice, especially with the fact that I'm concerned. The receipts on the parks levy might not be as projected. So when we keep borrowing from a contingency that is a fantasy at the moment, it's it's very risky. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you. Council president. Could. Director szymanski come up? Thank you. Is this something that you're asking for that you want back?
I'll say a couple things about this. Sonia shemanski, parks bureau the two positions that we have had share a city wide portfolio. The majority of the portfolio of the position that is potentially being cut is east side, but it wasn't chosen for reduction for that reason, nor is it a precisely even split east side, west side. If the position remains cut, which we're planning toward, we have a lot of capacity all around the bureau to do volunteerism work, and I'm very personally committed to making sure that our friends groups and our partners, particularly on the east side, particularly in district one, don't feel a drop off.
Yeah, I'm concerned about the drop off of east side services on every level. Our public service districts, and I don't like to mix and match, but we have not talked about getting those stories back. And they were totally cut. That's 37. And I think that this is not the answer to it. It's only $256,000. But I was just wondering if this is something that you're that you're needing. And if we don't have this and you've answered the question, if we don't have this position, you have others who are going to do the work. Okay. So you're planning for that right now. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: I mean, I think it speaks to what I've been saying. I mean, I appreciate your offer, but you're saying you have volunteers and all of that, but east Portland doesn't have those kinds of volunteers. That's what I've been saying about parks. And so I don't think that's an adequate answer or an adequate reason to not support this. Also, we could have easily cut the west side person, but we cut the east side person. And this is what I'm constantly bringing up. So if we had enough to spread around, why did you have to cut the east side person? Right? I'm not saying you specifically. So yeah, I think that this is about restoring capacity in east Portland, where volunteer capacity or otherwise is not really as readily available. And we always ask east Portland to do more with less. We say, oh, well, we're cutting your position, but we'll find a way. We'll find a way to make it work. That's not good enough. That's why I propose this. I think the Portland levy, the parks levy is the perfect place to take it from. And again, this is about continuing to chip away at things that serve east Portland and telling us to just get by. And that's not good enough.
So thank you, councilor Avalos. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll on Avalos three.
Moved by Avalos, seconded by Dunphy.
Kanal I.
Pirtle-guiney my tolerance for pulling from out years of the levy is zero. No.
Ryan. No Koyama Lane. Aye, Morillo Morillo. I Novick no.
Clark.
No. Green.
Zimmerman. No.
Avalos. Smith.
No.
Dunphy.
Aye.
The amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six nays.
Thank you. Councilors. Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Avalos six.
I'm going to come to you right after this.
We just get it over with. I mean it seems clear where we're going. This is another position. The exact same thing. Let's just.
Bust it out real quick.
Which we pulled, you know. Councilor pirtle-guiney says she her tolerance is zero. But we already pulled from the levy with leach. So we've already done that. That was the technical amendment.
Was a technical amendment at the top.
So we've already done that. So I don't think that's a good enough excuse. But let's just get this over with. And so that everyone can see that we don't want to support the east Portland parks positions. Great. Let's show it. Take the call the vote.
All right. So councilor Are you moving Avalos six.
Candace Avalos: Correct.
Okay, call the vote.
Councilor Avalos and councilor Morillo seconds. Is there any discussion?
Can you read what the what it is before we take the vote?
Ablo six is similar to Avalos three. Same source, same idea, but it's a different position. Particularly, it's somebody who we've been working really closely with in our office. The last person as well, malcolm hoover in the parks bureau, he recently just did an amazing program for us in east Portland, connecting east portlanders to forest park through a program that he found his own way to get resources through ODOT. He's been incredibly resilient working in east Portland, and I think it's a shame that we're cutting him, too. So I'm trying to save both of these. Malcolm hoover yeah, yeah. I know it's a bummer to lose these two people who we've been working with in east Portland to preserve and give access to to east portlanders, to all of our parks, particularly the program that he started was creates workforce for young people because it has young people helping shuttle east portlanders to forest park. They do a program where if people, for example, are afraid to go to the park by themselves because they fear religious persecution, because they wear a hijab or any other kind of thing that they fear, these young people accompany them and help them enjoy our parks. So this is a position that's been working with east Portland very closely, and I don't want to see his position get cut. So that's why I'm proposing it. It's the same method as the last one. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president I, I did community engagement at the city. I think it's important. I think this work is represented by cpw now. And we've talked about the needs there. But as a councilor and previously as a person who worked in the same field, I have rarely met anybody who even comes close to the level of access provision specifically for black and brown portlanders. As the person in this position right now, not just on their day job, but throughout 247. I wish I had known before that this was that particular position. I wish I'd done that homework and known that, and I'm going to I would have gone a lot harder on it had I known that. But I think this is a really important position to try to retain. Seems like it's probably going to go six six again. And so I would ask my colleagues, regardless of your feelings about the funding source, we have another crack at this in three weeks. Please make this a priority to try and save this particular job, because it is a really important thing for access to young people on different projects that parks has done to get input from people on the north Portland aquatic center, to get input for people on the design of parks in saint john's. And I could list off other projects, but I'm going to stop here. But specifically, access for young people, particularly young people of color.
Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Apologies. I have to make a correction. My bad. It actually is from the general fund contingency, not the parks levy. We changed the source for this one. Thanks.
There you go. Okay. Thank you councilor. What?
What from general fund.
It's from general fund contingency, not from the parks levy. Out years. Okay. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Director szymanski, could you come up? This is getting really kind of weird. So we're now talking about individuals, somebody that I've had an opportunity to get to know. Of course, I don't want malcolm to lose his job, but it's getting so personal right now. And so you're the leader of parks and you get to make some decisions right on how you want to use personnel in putting them in the right places so that they can succeed. So I think we're talking about a role, not a person, right? I mean, I just think it's odd that we're getting into personal names of people that, that, that are on the, that we're talking about at this moment and amendments. I'm, I'm not used to a budget process where this body gets this deep into the micro arrangement of your. But this is such a micro amendment, and I'm just startled by it, I, I know back in the commission form of government, we would have worked this out and we would have had dialog about it, and we would have been able to make some strategic decisions. So what I'm trying to do with this right now is listen to your vision on what these positions are. And I'd like to hear from the budget office what the damage is now to our contingency in the general fund. So with you, I'd like you to just to get a sense of the vision about these positions and how you would like to restore them.
I'll give you a brief.
Is this the way we're supposed to go about it, or is there another way to go about this?
Well, I'll give you a brief comment and mostly refer to my colleague amanda garcia snell, who will be who is moving into the oversight and leadership role with community engagement citywide. Her vision is the one that this team will be supporting through parks and recreation. I anticipate going forward, we put this position forward, in part due to the sdc freeze and the reduction on overall engagement demand anticipated from the bureau over the next few years.
As you explain that last point, that's because there isn't as much money being spent for new.
Less money coming in less less planning to do around fewer projects over the next few years. So we think the workload for this group of people will be lower. We think the remaining number of fte will be sufficient to do the anticipated community engagement workload really well, and we'll do the best with the positions that we have. I'm comfortable with the number that we put forward. I think we can do a darn good job of engagement with the priorities that we have for fiscal year 27. I take your point. We have some real superstars in the parks bureau doing this work. Yeah, and I'd prefer, as would you, not to see anyone laid off. But again, we're comfortable with what we put forward.
That was helpful. Thank you. And now we're chipping away at contingencies today. So I just wanted to hear the update.
Yeah, councilor, for the record, jonas biery chief financial officer my perspective and opinion on the use of general fund contingency hasn't changed in the last 8 hours or 24 hours or last couple of months.
Your tolerance level is not very high for these cuts.
I would well, I would say with regard to use of general fund contingency, the risks that I highlighted earlier in the session would would remain.
Right. And I haven't heard an economic forecast that says our general fund is going to go up a lot in 26 to 27. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: This office is going to be cut by 50% over two years. And just because I happen to know the person and they're being a name, all of these people that we just cut, all those jobs we lost, there are names behind those, those jobs that we cut too. This is one job. So there's one name, but it is personal actually, and it is particularly personal because this is somebody that we've been working hard with to create more access to east portlanders, to our beautiful parks. And so again, like the last position, if we keep cutting the positions that are intentionally specifically working with east Portland, then I don't think we are applying these cuts to parks equally. And that's exactly my point.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos councilor Kanal.
Candace Avalos: Three things. First, I'd like to request that we limit debate to those in the queue. Secondly, I just wanted to point out that over the course of now, two budget cycles, we have seen where when we proposed something that's large and has a lot of different changes, there's the pushback that it's too sweeping, it's too much, it's blind or whatever. And when you go to to protect one or 2 or 5 positions, it's to micromanage. So instead of it being consistent, it's just simply no, right. You can boil down the message to this, which is you got an idea? No, you have a big idea. Still. No. You have a small idea. Still. No. And it's getting really tiresome to hear a new goalpost being moved every time when we're talking about it. If we want to lay people off you, we should say so. I encourage my colleagues to to have the courage to do that. Now, as it relates to this particular situation, I, I have to first say I have a lot of faith in director shemanski to lead this bureau, but I will respectfully disagree about engagement. We are not good at engagement as a city. It is one of our core values. We are not good at it. Sometimes that's because we don't listen to it. And so that has nothing to do with the actual people doing the work. In fact, most of this has nothing to do with the people doing the work who are often understaffed, under-resourced, and simply not listened to. And because they're not listened to, the people that they engage with are not listened to. And I think the sooner we recognize that we are bad at this, we cannot fix it if we do not recognize it, and we are not even starting to fix it because we do not recognize how bad we are at engagement specifically with underserved communities. And we talk about that geographically a lot in east Portland. And that's true. It's also true in basically every edge of this city. Just run around the perimeter of our city limits. It's true there too, but it's also true for youth. It's also true for seniors. It's also true for those words. We're not allowed to say anymore black and brown people. It's true for them too. And I think having that recognition will lead us to the ability to do something about it. I would ask one other thing because maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this isn't about just saying no. And if it is for you, not about just saying no to every idea, provide another option. There have been amendments to amendments put up here. We did a lot of them last year. Some of them passed and actually got seven votes on things that would not have the first way around. I'm not seeing that as often today as I heard last year, so I would love to encourage that. But either way, let's just be honest about it. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president, director szymanski, could you come back up? So the question that I have, have you sent out layoff notices?
Both informal and I think recently formal notification has occurred for positions that might be affected in.
That might be affected and impacted. So does this the employee malcolm, does he is he on that list.
Presumably, presumably bhr could be more precise and certain about.
That and.
Saved his layoff notice.
And could he actually be appointed to another position within the enterprise?
That's a good question for bhr. I think it you'd look to the contract and to our general employee support programs to understand pathways. I know there are some.
So is he on contract or is he a. On fte?
This is an fte.
Okay, okay. I just wanted to figure out, because I didn't know that we could actually identify a specific person because you're laying off a particular fte. Group, not you're not laying off persons, you're laying off groups of people that have a particular fte specificity, right?
Yes. This the budget is specific to the position.
Are there several several positions like this position that you're laying off?
There are a lot of positions across the bureau. I believe this is the only position in the community engagement group.
Okay. So it's one one community engagement group. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Did you have something to add, mr. Zito?
Councilor, my apologies. And for the record, ron zito, hr director I just heard comments a moment ago asking inquiring about whether a layoff had taken place or not. At this point, the majority of formal notifications have taken place.
Okay, okay. That's that's what I was not clear of. And was this a, a labor position that that is represented by labor or non-represented?
It may be. Cpi-w. Okay, okay.
Thank you.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Colleagues, it is 815. We have five more amendments and a handful of things we need to get through tonight by 10:00. Councilor Clark.
Olivia Clark: Thank you, council president, just because I want to avoid a vote explanation, I want to say that there are names behind the police bureau desk clerks, and there are names behind the p3s in the police bureau as well.
Thank you, councilor Clark, vice president Clark, colleagues. Thank you everybody. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Kanal I'll tell you usually why I vote no. I vote no to things that pretend to pay for things with magic money. I vote no when somebody says just use contingency, just use out years of the levy. I tried to save jobs by bringing proposals which used real money, which said, let's cut our bloated office budgets. Let's cut back. The city administrators proposed additions to his budget, and I was told, no, we can't do that. And I am disturbed to see that what this council seems to reward is proposals paid for by magic money. But if that's the way it's going to be, I'll play to. After I saw the councilor Zimmerman had proposed. Adding 20 new officers without saying where the money was going to come from which, which he then withdrew. But when I saw that he.
Voted against.
My will, oh, it was okay. I was supposed to against this will. Okay, so apologize for that. I told my staff, figure out how much it would cost to give every child in Portland under the age of 11 a pony. And let's introduce an amendment to do that. We drew up the amendment, and I was really upset that cbo did not forward it because I was it was important for that to make a point. So I'm not going to bring that back in the adopted budget I project. There's going to be $200 million in underspending in the general fund, and we're going to use that to buy every child under the age of ten a pony. And I assume that will pass because things with magic money pass.
Thank you, councilor Novick. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: I think that was a very weird statement, and I don't appreciate that. I don't think the people that are losing their jobs appreciate that. I don't think the councilors that have worked really hard on these amendments and found sources appreciate that. So I just needed to say that because that that made me feel ill. I don't I don't like how that sounds. I don't like how that sounds to the community because you're speaking to them, not just us. And to say that we're working with magic money, that's, that's offensive. So I just need to make sure I say that.
Okay, colleagues, it is getting late. It is 820. Everybody is grumpy. Let's everybody except for councilor Zimmerman is grumpy. And let's I'd like to move forward towards a two way vote. Seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call the roll?
Candace Avalos: This is roll call for Avalos. Six moved by Avalos. Seconded by Morillo Kanal I.
I can't hear you.
Pirtle-guiney.
Here we go.
No!
Ryan, no!
Koyama Lane I. Morillo I. Novick no.
Clark no.
Green I.
Zimmerman.
No. Avalos.
I Smith no. Dunphy. I amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six nays.
Thank you councilor Koyama Lane to to t cl six.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Yes, I will do this as quickly as possible. Okay. Here is a handout that reverend sarah fisher gave us. Brought it back for you. This is about Koyama Lane six, the Montavilla park shelter, which was demolished by Portland parks and rec in October 2021 due to health and safety concerns. Designed and permitted replacement has been. You can see it's on there and I know that this demolish. When it was demolished, that was also delayed from an earlier timeline. Before that, it was expected that it would be moving forward immediately with rebuilding this project. But the project was halted because of budget shortfalls and has been on hold since. And Montavilla park currently has no standalone, has had no standalone covered shelter there for community gatherings. This is the part of our district in district three that extends east of 82nd avenue. We hear a lot about thinking about east Portland. That is where this is. Every single Saturday, rain or shine, there is a church service that has met there for many years. Hope and bread church. They hold a service for homeless portlanders, and they have been advocating, along with many other community members, to have this covered. Space constituents have reached out and shared that the shelter has was once very important for community gatherings. Shade on hot days. They have the luncheon play there and they really want this restored. I believe this project reflects our commitment to maintaining trust and following through on promises made to the community. It's also an opportunity to ensure, like I said, yeah, communities east of 82nd really do feel seen, valued and invested in. Third spaces are very important for connection and community and. Let's see, the shelter was actually was originally planned to be funded in a previous parks levy. And it's really well past time to complete that commitment. So heard a lot from community members that voting yes on parks levy should really mean that promises are kept and that projects are delivered. I would really appreciate your consideration.
Thank you.
I want to second.
Councilor Koyama Lane moves.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: I would like to move Koyama Lane six.
Councilor Zimmerman seconds. Thank you, colleagues, to the amendment. Councilor Zimmerman, thanks.
So I am excited about this, and I'm glad that councilor Koyama Lane brought it to my attention. This will. It might not be like why we just talked about levy, but a capital project for me is something that I do see as valuable in terms of getting forward and ahead on in terms of the way the spend goes. And so I don't whimsical math this. I know it will have impacts in the out years and I think it is worth it. And so councilor Koyama Lane, thank you. The. I used to live in Montavilla. I also appreciate that commissioner Edwards at Multnomah county, who represents the same area, also reached out and asked for support and similar to councilor Clark, I know good leaders when I see them and councilor Commissioner edwards reaching out and advocating on this helped a lot. And so, councilor, thanks for bringing it. And. When she came to me and said, I know you're going to something something about the shelter plan, and I had no idea what she was talking about because we had just ended a sheltered conversation in the homeless continuum. But this is a picnic shelter, a picnic shelter at a park, and I'm excited about that. And while I don't live in Montavilla anymore, it's a great park, great area, and this will be a good addition. Thanks for bringing it.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: I would love to be able to vote for this. This is important, but I think that we should make all of these decisions in the context of considering trade offs. And parks has a huge maintenance backlog. And if we do this, it means less money available for potentially ever doing restoration work on the community music center, which I happen to learn last year. A lot of people care very much about, so I'm not going to blow off the fly off the handle against councilor Koyama Lane as I just did a minute ago, partly because councilor Koyama Lane actually voted to cut our bloated office budgets with me, so I really appreciate that, but I just can't make this decision out of context. Maybe if we took a long look at all the things that communities have been promised and the the maintenance backlog, this would rise to the top. But I can't say that I've done that work. So I can't support this today.
Thank you, councilor Novick, councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Yeah, thank you for bringing this. Councilor Koyama Lane. I grew up near Montavilla. I grew up in rose city. I'm sorry. Rose and I went to many a many a birthday party here as a kid. And this place has specific meaning to me. And I I've actually been pretty sad that it's been closed. And I'll just remind folks that we, when we referred the parks levy resolution, that resolution had specific guidance for the parks bureau and the city administrator to explore expansive definitions of what system development charges can be used for. And I think in this case, we ought to think very carefully about using some of those scarce resources for high opportunity project like this. This is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. So I'm going to support this today just to to make a declaration that that this is worth saving and rebuilding. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Yeah, thank you, councilor Koyama Lane, for bringing this forward. I think there were actually quite a few of us that tried to bring amendments to create funding so that we could fund things. I think of the management cuts that we were trying to do to save some employee jobs, but we didn't get seven votes for that. And, you know, my staff are personally pretty exhausted right now. I believe your staff had to go home because they were also exhausted. And so I think having our offices properly staffed is really critical. And that's why I'm not going to vote to cut my office budget, because I don't want my staff to be overworked, as this city tends to create in people. But I think this is really important, and I think it's going to be a just a net good for the community. I appreciate you engaging with some of our district three councilors, so I'm happy to support this amendment. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Morillo councilor Ryan.
Angelita Morillo: Yeah, thank you, council president. Of course, this is important. I want to support it. Did you consider having there be a match where half of this could be raised through donations? And then when they get to the halfway point, we could meet them halfway, because then I could maybe get there. But this is coming out of the general fund contingency, correct? All right. We've heard enough about why that's becoming a concern. So unless this had more of a creative funding solution and there was maybe at least half of it was through donations, then I could probably get there. But there's so many examples of this that we could grab. So I just have to be consistent. Thanks, councilor.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. I appreciate that, and that makes sense. And if this amendment does not pass, director shimanski and I have spoken about some other options.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Counselor pirtle-guiney.
Thank you, council president. Colleagues.
Each district group of councilors has been tasked in figuring out projects for capital dollars that came out of the levy every year. And this, I think, actually probably would be a project that would qualify for sdc dollars. There are many options for how to fund. It. Sounds like the councilors already looking at other options for funding it. It's an incredibly important project, but we are again looking at stealing from the last year of the levy. And I would ask you all what you are planning on cutting in year five of the levy to make sure that we balance. Thank you, council president.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney. Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan o councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: I just have a quick question, I apologize. Are we taking it from general fund contingency? Are we taking it from the out year of the parks levy, or is the idea that it's both because we're taking from general fund contingency with the expectation of using the out year money from the levy?
It's just general fund contingency.
So then why why are we keeping on hearing that we're taking from the year the levy? Okay.
Ruth, I.
Just I'm good.
Okay, okay.
Keelan can we please call councilor? Novick.
My mistake. Councilor Kanal and councilor. Koyama Lane. I thought that this was coming from parks operating funds. If it's coming from general fund contingency, then I restate all the concerns that the cfo has raised about that previously.
Okay.
Thank you, counselor. Novick. Keelan, can we please call the roll on Koyama Lane six.
Moved by Koyama Lane. Seconded by Zimmerman.
Do we need answers?
Yeah, yeah.
Own or are we asking a question on this.
Still.
I missed that. I'm sorry.
How do we not have someone from cbo?
Sorry. Is there a question, counselor? I thought this was going to vote. I apologize.
Koyama Lane Koyama Lane six. Can someone please explain how it's funded.
My understanding from the way it's written and been moved is that it would come from general fund contingency.
Not from the levy.
It was. The levy. Unless there's an amendment that I'm not aware of. The way the way I read it, I don't see any reference to parks levy.
Okay.
I think you should table it to the adoption.
Ready to move forward with a vote. Counselor Smith.
Could you tell me how.
Could you tell me cfo biery how much is in the general fund contingency? Is that the blt that everyone was talking about earlier?
It's. Thank you, counselor, for the question, I believe, and I think ruth maybe just walked in the room. So it's separate from the blt reserve, which is sort of carving off a piece of what would otherwise be in contingency into the blt, a separate blt reserve with sideboards. And thank you. I don't know that the dollar amount of is the remaining of the remaining contingency.
Yeah. Sorry to be a little late. So this is. Koyama Lane six. And it it does it draws from general fund unrestricted contingency. There is a total of just over $4 million in general fund unrestricted contingency in the budget. We added 1.025. So it starts the ongoing amount. There is 3 million. In the mayor's proposal, we added 1.025. So now it's 4.025. So this would draw 755. And I do not believe.
One time.
Only of the one of the of the one time portion. That's correct. Okay.
Perfect. Thank you.
I would like to move to table this.
I withdraw or table.
Let's bring it back in the adoption.
Just withdraw and you can.
Withdraw it. Okay. I'd like to move to withdraw this.
Okay.
Councilor Koyama Lane is going to withdraw this. We can bring this back. This is certainly less than the 10% threshold. So we will come back to this when we get there. Thank you very much. Councilor pirtle-guiney to epg3.
Thank you, council.
President colleagues. We were supposed to get a report last week detailing what the cost would be to reopen the pool at columbia park. This is a pool that was closed quite a few years ago. At this point, it was closed because it needed repairs. Those repairs did not come. Those repairs did not come. The pool deteriorated. Parts were taken from the pool to support other pools across the city, and the cost of reopening it is now significantly higher. This pool is slated for demolition and while we could get into a host of arguments about where pools are needed most, I hope that we can all agree that Portland needs more pools in our parks infrastructure. The community is interested in reopening this pool and has by and large, agreed that reopening it as an outdoor pool would fill a need in the community and cost less. We put this in as a $5 million draw from general fund contingency, frankly, to hold place until we got that report. What we have seen so far is just a preliminary version of that report. It looks like costs could range from five up to over 20 million as a baseline. Unfortunately, I don't have a fully fleshed out proposal for you today. I would still ask for support to show the community that we care about investing in our pool infrastructure. I will beat you all to the punch, because I understand the irony of this coming as a draw on contingency. This is something that could wait. This is something that could wait if we kept paying to maintain it. But the mayor was not willing to continue with those costs. So this is what I am able to bring to you for something that is critically important to many of my constituents, I look forward to questions and debate, and I would ask for the courtesy of a second.
Councilor pirtle-guiney moves. Is there a second? Second councilor Novick seconds colleagues to the amendment councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Yeah, I.
I wanted to find out how much the total cost was. And she actually answered that question. Where is the pool exactly? So this was an indoor pool that you were going to move outdoors.
I can move it.
So the pool at.
Columbia park, it's on the north side of the of lombard, not the annex, but columbia park proper. It is on the south east corner of the park. Sorry, I just did a little bit of geography there, or I guess the east side of the park. I would say it was originally built as an outdoor pool. It was later covered. And at this point, the most cost effective way to reopen it, and probably, I would say, though I know there are some folks in the community who might disagree with this, that given the other infrastructure we'll see for pools in the area, probably the biggest need is to reopen it as an outdoor facility.
Okay, okay. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues, it is 836. We have six people in the queue. Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Yeah, thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney. I know you beat us to the punch, but you were just so intense about this earlier that now I have to say my piece about it too. And I'm going to give a voting timeline of what happened today because frankly, I kind of can't believe this is being brought forward after we are putting so many employees on the chopping block. Kanal one died 6 to 6, which was to fund mci and williams and russell out of the blt reserve, despite councilors like you proposing an amendment that removes 7 million from the blt fund Elana pirtle-guiney five and 5 million from the general fund contingency to fund a swimming pool. And now this amendment Kanal one 6 to 6, died to fund mci and williams and russell out of a pot of money the city attorney confirmed is functionally identical in restriction and operation to the social housing and revolving loan fund. It was a pot staff were shocked that we didn't take advantage of because it was obviously the right thing to do. That funded everyone's proposals. We had. Green failed 6 to 6, declining to fund basic accountability measures for sexual assault and harassment in our shelters. Green one failed 6 to 6, declining to cut management positions in order to fund the fire engine. In district two. Avalos two died 6 to 6, declining to remove the immigrant liaison position from the mayor's office to depoliticize it and grant more resources. Avalos, 6 to 6, declined.
Point of order.
No, no, no, I'm not done, because we're talking about the contingency funds and what they're being used for. So I'm going to take my time. Councilor Smith, you often do. Avalos one 6 to 6, failed to remove PCEF funds from pmo, which was used for sweeps. So today we have heard a lot of concerns about the utilization of both a blt and the general fund contingencies, which, based on the dialog that we just had, I realized most of my colleagues don't even know what the difference is, and that was based on perceived threat to our credit rating being downgraded sometime between now and the fall, when the mayor or this council will clamor to do any number of things with those funds. And today, we've seen members of this council declining to pause a poorly crafted realignment package and pause the layoff of 46 represented positions despite touting their unionist credentials whenever possible. So members of this council have declined to fund housing for ssi and williams and russell.
Germane to the amendment.
It is.
Drawing very close to not being germane.
Councilor okay, I'll get to the end then.
Votes are not.
There for this. That's okay. We can move on.
Yeah.
Well, I felt like it was important.
I feel like I, you know, ironically, we're sitting here contemplating the use of $5 million to fund a pool to fund an inanimate object, the cost of which is $1.7 million more than what it would have cost to prevent the layoffs, a fund that was unacceptable for saving jobs or supporting black homeownership, unacceptable for real, live people who need to pay their rent, feed their families and address medical needs. So it's pretty wild to me that this council has been rejecting proposals when members of this council continue to misunderstand what general fund contingency is and what the blt reserves are. So more pools and less union jobs. Okay, I think these are unserious proposals and I will certainly be voting no.
Thank you, councilor Morillo councilor Avalos.
Angelita Morillo: Yeah, I have to pile on because truly, it is very frustrating to lose so many resources in east Portland and to be asked to give $5 million to another pool. How many pools do they have in north Portland? I respect that north Portland needs this. I want us to have this. But when you constantly say that we have to cut east Portland disproportionately, this budget disproportionately cuts east Portland. It cuts the people that work in our parks. It cuts all kinds of things that we need in our district. And we've been lectured all day about contingency and all these other things. Just say what you want to say. Just say that you don't want to support councilors out of some kind of petty thing, because that's what it clearly feels like. So I'm absolutely not supporting this. And I think it's weird that you even brought it up, given everything you lectured us on about today.
Thank you, councilor Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you. President. Thank you, council president, director shymansky, could you come up, please?
So I.
Could you because I'm I'm concerned right now because the north Portland. Are people talking? Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. I have the floor. Excuse me. Stop talking. Thank you. Explain to me where the north Portland aquatic center is compared to the columbia. Because it is. Isn't that in the same jurisdiction? Because when I first got elected, there was a lot of talk around the aquatic center and this columbia pool. And is the aquatic center an indoor. This is going to be a state of the art pool for north Portland, right?
Correct.
So what? So is it close to the columbia? I, I don't know, tell me what's going on.
It's it's. Sonia shemanski parks bureau. It's pretty close. I don't know that a kid could walk. I think an adult could walk between them. And north Portland aquatic center will be large and able to do lots of things year round.
And so it will be like this big thing. That's that's the next big thing. Okay. Is that going to be done by the Portland parks bureau, or is that a private entity?
That's a city project.
It's a city project. Okay. So yeah, I just wanted to know because there's a, there's, you know, by the time we get the money, the $20 million that we need in this report to do this, the aquatic center will be up. Am I correct?
Hard to say. It will be closer. I think we anticipate that late in calendar year 2030.
20, 30. Are they building it now?
Not building yet.
Okay. But that is the plan to have it up. Okay, so we got competing big pools in north Portland. I like it that services. But if we're if we're if we are trying to balance what's going. We we don't have that many pools in east Portland at all. So. I think I we should just take a vote on it.
Thank you councilor.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call the roll on pirtle-guiney three?
Moved by pirtle-guiney. Seconded by Novick Kanal.
The same remarks for social media on this. I'm going to vote no, though.
I don't know.
Sorry. Was that no. No thank you.
Pirtle-guiney I.
Ryan no.
Koyama Lane. Absent.
Aye, Morillo no. No no.
No.
Green no. Zimmerman no.
Avalos absent. Smith.
No.
Dunphy.
No.
The amendment fails with a vote of one I nine nay and two absent.
Okay, colleagues. Looks like we have three amendments left and then a handful of nonsense. We have to get through. Councilor Kanal. I'm turning to you for councilor Kanal three.
Sameer Kanal: Oh, thanks.
Great. Thank you. So, colleagues, I will be moving Kanal three in just a moment here. I councilor Morillo kind of beat me to the punch a little bit on what we were talking about here, but this amendment is called driving towards democracy. It transfers $450,000 from the golf fund to backfill small donor elections. Small donor elections is a critical part of ensuring the health of our democracy and ensuring that pacs and corporations and wealthy people broadly, are not dictating the terms of the elections to regular portlanders. It is a bit short on its funding. This year they asked for ongoing funding. I want to be super clear about that. That would be the ideal situation. We don't have that. What we do have is one time funding here. Last year we took $1 million out of this fund. I hope that by next year, we don't have to take any money out of this fund, because we're going from 1 million to 450. The trend is that by next year we won't need it at all. But that's not where we're at this year. We do have a shortfall. So I do want to to propose this. And just to be very specific about it, it removes it from 603, the golf fund and Portland parks and recreation 450,000 transferred to special appropriations, the public election fund there. And it's $450,000, which is sufficient to ensure the the full amounts that are needed for this year's election. I'll note that this year there is an election in November. We. If you. If we haven't mentioned explicitly yet, if it's not obvious by all of what happened today. But we do need to make sure that that election is able to have the full matching funds available to it. So I move Kanal three and ask for a second.
Councilor Kanal moves Kanal three. Is there a second?
Second.
Councilor Avalos seconds colleagues to the amendment. Any discussion in the queue? Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Okay, I hope that this is funded in a proposed budget moving forward. As a candidate who is currently in this program, currently running for office. This concerns me to take a vote, so I will be abstaining. The idea of funding a program that I can directly benefit toward in the months currently in election gives me levels of heartburn. So I agree to the points councilor Kanal made fully funding this program. It needs to be in the proposed budget. And I think for those that are that are not in it, you guys should do it. But I don't see a way to do this and follow ogc as far as I can read it.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Council president.
Last year, there was conversation about what we would need to do over the course of a few years to ensure this program is fully funded. With the $450,000 here. Does that make the program whole? Is there still a gap? Help me understand what we accomplish with this.
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Yeah, it does make the program whole for this year, I it does not solve our problems for 2028. I want to fully talk about how they prefer to have the. And when I say they, I mean the independent Portland elections commission had had asked for us to make this entire thing ongoing. So to ensure the health of the program in the long run does not assist in that, but it does for this year. So that's the information that I have. There is 450,000 of one time funding already in there. This would make it the 900,000 in addition to a portion which is ongoing. That gets you to the full 2.2 that is necessary for this year's structure, but it does not it does not solve the 2028 problem. That's why they asked for 2.2 million in ongoing funding. Should this pass, we will have 1.34 million in ongoing and 900 zero zero 0 in 1 time. So that that's the information I've received. By the way, for those who may be looking at April 27th, we all received a letter from the independent Portland elections commission that that breaks down with tables what the effects of this would be.
And so that I can understand the funding source. We pulled one time funds from the gulf fund last year. We increased golf fees to offset that. Where does this draw leave the golf fund in terms of its sustainability? And are they better off because of those increased fees from last year or worse off, because we're doing another one time draw compared to where they were two years ago, let's say.
Councilor you can't see it, I don't think. But we've got folks up at the at the dais.
I see them, it looks like it was perhaps director shemanski and claudio campuzano.
Correct present.
Okay.
Sonia shemanski, parks bureau. The simple answer is golf is doing great. The fee increase. We're just heading into the season where we'll see what the increase does to numbers. We're very confident the golf fund is not doing as well. It's at a deficit in the last year of its forecast. This would drive that deficit a bit higher, and that's primarily driven by internal services cost increases. It's a dynamic citywide. And that about exhausts my knowledge.
And I think.
She fund is at a deficit. What does that mean in terms of operations of our facilities. Do we need to worry about that.
So that is in the fifth year. This is claudio campuzano, finance property technology manager for parks. So that is in the fifth year of the the forecast. It's a very small, small deficit. And we anticipate making adjustments in the coming years. And we'll bring those to this council.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Council president.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you. I actually had a question for robert taylor. So I might have to pause, but I thought we liked pork barrel politics here. That helped us with reelection. So I didn't realize we would have questions about this. But I am curious from a legal perspective, if we are allowed to vote on this as running candidates or if we have to hold back because we might technically benefit from this fund. So I guess maybe I should just wait till robert taylor gets back, unless there's another attorney in the room that can answer that. Robert question. So I'll just wait till he gets back.
Councilor Morillo we will come right back to you. Councilor. Novick.
Yeah, I actually wanted to ask. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. I was reading the thing. I wanted to ask robert taylor whether there's any legal problem with our voting on something on this. Okay. We will.
Wait till robert taylor gets back for your question as well, councilor Green.
Mitch Green: I pending robert's response, although I don't know why it would be because we are the budget committee and we approve these funds. But I'll let robert say this. I'll just say that I have been saying all along that I think for those of us making decisions about the number, the volume of resources available for the election system, if that if that kitty of money is lower than it could be otherwise, then we are privileging the incumbents at the expense of the challengers. And so that's just a really important thing to recognize. And there's, there's a there's a number of people running in district four who would love to challenge one of the three of us for a seat, and I want them to have the best shot possible. So I'm supportive of this approach. Of course, we would like to hear from our city attorney on the legality of it, because I think it's an important question. Okay.
Councilor Morillo turning back to you to ask your question to robert taylor.
Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, robert, catching you the one second you get up for a break. We were wondering if there's any legal conflict with us voting to increase this fund. Since we are in a reelection, some of us are in a reelection cycle.
Thank you. Great. Great question. And I appreciate the the, the the concern about that issue. This this had come up before and we had inquired of the ethics commission on this topic, and their conclusion was that there was not a conflict because the campaign is is a separate legal entity from a personal benefit to you as an individual. So so based on that advice from the ethics commission, we haven't declared a conflict. We don't view that as a as an issue.
Gotcha. Thank you, robert taylor. So it sounds like you don't need to abstain.
Councilor. Novick.
I just want I, I'd really like to support this, but we sort of rough on the golf people last year and I think that they've been pretty, pretty responsible in their handling of money. And I don't want to punish them for their success. So I'd like to find some other way to do this, but I'm going to have to oppose this one.
Okay. Thank you. Councilor. Novick. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you. I think I was the seventh vote on this last year with the golf fund, because I do understand that without these publicly funded kinds of programs, like the small donor, that you'll have big superpacs deciding who wins races. That being said, I got a nice note from bob williams, who's a part of the leisure golf club, which is the african American golf club. And he said that this fund is looking toward the future as costs, as costs for increases. And it helps to serve as scholarships for underserved kids. Is that correct? Okay. And so he said also that reserve fund is a time when needed. We would have to come to the city because we will have the funds if they're taken away. And he said, our rainy day is today, except we do not have enough money to make repairs or improvements for things except for this fund. And I do remember last year, my son's grandfather, who was also a member of the leisure golf club, he gave me a few words that I can't say here on why I was supportive of that. And I told you all earlier, I do get that, but I think this year they are so low and we took. There's no. That something like this needs to come out of the general fund. It should not come out of a reserve for golf fund. And we have an ordinance. And that is that responsibility is the mayor. He has to fully fund this. The pressure has to go to that direction. So next year, as we're talking about this and he's preparing his budget, we need to make sure that he has the money in there. So I will not be voting for that today. And sorry about that.
Councilor. Thank you, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Councilor Kanal thank you. I just wanted to point to financial policy. 3.54 and then I'll have a question here as well for our staff, which is the the golf fund policy. And it says, and I quote, contingency requirements for per financial policy, 2.0 for contingency funds should be used to address reasonable but unforeseen requirements within the fiscal year. There are no minimum or maximum contingency requirements for the fund. Historically, contingency size has been recommended to remain around $1 million but can fluctuate based on debt requirements. Reserve requirements there are no reserve requirements for this fund in the budget. On page 60, it says that the golf fund has a beginning balance of $5,968,414. Is that correct?
That's correct.
Okay. Thank you. So what I'm proposing here, just to to be clear, is a reduction of 7.5% of the fund, which is $4.5 million, $4.9 million above what the financial policy says it needs. That's that's what this does. And it is under half of the reduction that was proposed last year. I think it is clear from that that we're trending in the correct direction. I also don't think this is something you can really fix next year, because we've got the election in six months, five and a half months. So I, I would love to get to a place where we have exactly what councilor Smith said. I think she's completely correct in the general statement about it, but we are working with the budget in front of us. And given that I would be, I think abandoning the responsibility as someone who's not up for reelection and does not have any direct reference from this to try and ensure its solvency through the year and full ability to to match funds. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, keelan, can we please call the vote on Kanal three.
Moved by Kanal, seconded by Avalos.
Kanal I.
Pirtle-guiney.
I but colleagues, let's leave this fun be in the future.
Ryan.
What was her answer?
What was your answer?
I let's leave this alone in.
The future.
No Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. No mark. No Green.
This is a hole in one I.
Zimmerman abstain.
Avalos I. Smith no. Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of seven eyes for nays and one abstention.
Councilor Koyama Lane moving to cl three.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: All right, let's see how I do. All right. This one is about the office of equity and human rights. We very recently just.
Moved this one.
Okay, okay. Sorry.
We just hired our first director. Very, very exciting there. This. Aubrey, can you come up and explain this?
It is getting late.
We have our new chief equity equity officer. We've had many cuts. This adds four analysts to our. It feels really important to make sure that this new chief equity officer has the capacity to actually do this work. Well, it would bring back the human rights commission program offer, which was retired in 2020. Ultimately, it would be up to the discretion of the equity officer to allocate these funds. The mayor's budget adds 14 positions to hr in addition to realigning position, and this amended amendment is funded by reducing these additions, these additions to ten positions. So it takes four. And make sure that oer will have capacity to do things like process. Ada requests fmla sorry, hr will still have the capacity to process ADA requests, process fmla, and provide core hr functions. And the hope is that this can support title six civil rights and title two ADA. I would like to move Koyama Lane three.
Councilor Koyama Lane moves Koyama Lane three. Is there a second? Second counselor Avalos seconds colleagues to the amendment.
Is. I don't think.
Okay. Seeing no one in the queue. I'm pausing for dramatic effect. Can we please call the roll on Koyama Lane three.
Move by Koyama Lane.
Seconded by Avalos. Kanal.
Yes. Thank you counselor.
Pirtle-guiney.
No, I think we need to focus on some of the restorations for things that are being immediately cut.
Ryan.
No.
Koyama Lane. I Morillo.
I'm sorry, I know we we moved on to the vote quickly, but I'm struggling with this one because I recall that this was a these are the positions that are being replaced with nonunion positions that are in bhr if I'm not mistaken.
Are we in the middle of the vote?
Yes. Okay.
So I think I will vote yes, but with an eye to making sure that the positions replaced are still union.
Novick. No.
Mark, no. Green I.
Zimmerman. No.
Avalos I.
Smith.
No.
Dunphy I.
The amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six nays.
Colleagues, we have two more amendments. So in your inbox and print it in your hands is a new version of Dunphy four. I'm actually been working on. This is a new version that I've been working on with councilor Pirtle-guiney. Let me pull my remarks up. It is the end of the day, and we have not managed to fund many of the front line public safety employees. I am breaking the emergency glass on my merit and cola pay freeze proposal. This amendment limits cost of living increases for non-represented employees to the first 100,000 of their salary freezes, merit pay increases for non-represented employees making more than $100,000 annually. This affects all employees regardless of the underlying fund, although the only funds we are repurposing are general fund dollars, this amendment would allow us to retain the jobs of five desk clerks and one police administrative specialist, support administrative support specialist position within pbb, which I believe is on all of the positions eliminated this budget that are currently filled. It would also restore the at risk youth outreach coordinator position within parks that I tried to restore earlier today. It also. We have some. We. It puts the additional 5% into the office of community based accountability in line with our charter requirements and our overhead, our general fund overhead contingency. And I. So I move Dunphy for. And I would welcome a second. Second councilor Kanal seconds. Thank you, colleagues, to the amendment. Councilor.
Novick thank you, mr. President. I was pleased to see that your change to this amendment. I think that it's much easier to support than your previous version, because it would mean that people would still get cola on the first 100,000 of their salaries, right? Yes. So I'm interested in the funding mechanism. My problem is that my highest priority, if we're going to add anything back, is to add the rescue, the rescue 19, which is sort of on the border of our districts. I would like to see if we can work together to come up with a somewhat bigger package that does that, plus buys a number of things you're talking about here. I also want to tell you, maybe you already know this. I've been going back and forth with the police bureau and hr about how many police, administrative support specialist positions were being cut. I was first told that there were one. Now it's actually two. So people are being laid off. So if we're able to work out a package, I'd actually like to restore both of them.
Okay. Thank you, counselor Novick vice president Clark.
Thank you, council president. I don't understand the funds for the ocbpa.
Yeah.
Can you explain that why that's happening here and now?
Yeah. So the office of the community based police accountability is required by charter to have 5% of the total police budget by adding money back to the police budget in the form of these new positions. Authorities, that means that the total police budget has grown and therefore the 5% amount must grow. So that is a $38,055 addition to ocpa.
Thank you for that. I'm also concerned with the same issue that councilor Novick brought up, as well as the p3s and the other pieces that were in Clark, Ryan, Novick, e, p, g and Smith, which was rejected very early in this process. So to me, this is somewhat incomplete. I appreciate what you're trying to do here. I'm not sure where I'm going on this. Thanks.
Thank you very much, counselor Green.
Thank you, counselor Dunphy. This is a pretty significant departure from where you started. And I think that is a reflection of the the tense and somewhat stalemated kind of conversations we've had here over the course of two days. I appreciate your willingness to, to be nimble and try to just deliver something for, you know, particularly the Portland police bureau, which has not not had these these desk clerks as part of these restorations. And so I think that we should restore this. I think that we should pass this. But I'm actually very interested in the conversation about continuing to find strategies to restore some of these other priorities. There's been a lot of other funding and resource packages that have been floated over the last couple of days that have died and failed. I have a lot of energy, not tonight, but in my tank. If you want to call them reserves, if you will. I've got plenty of those on my own.
Restricted reserves.
They're unrestricted councilor and, well, they're restricted in that. You know, I want to. Never mind. I'll leave that one alone. So let's just pass this tonight and deliver a win for for these for these areas that have been neglected. And let's continue to do the work in our office that we I know we can do to restore some of these other ones. So I hope you guys will support that.
Thank you, counselor Green councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you. Yes. So I just want to take a chance. While, while it was uncharted, I do think that there are some really important things that we were trying to restore that that colleagues were trying to restore in the previously mentioned amendment there. And I'll just note it had the chat program, which was restored, the funding there. The station 22 fire engine, which was restored. We do have a few things that are left in there, one of which is the precinct staffers. I want to just note that throughout a long day, we've had some of our our labor leaders here. I know that the the person who the union that represents these folks has its leader here. And I appreciate that. And I think that there are probably several members of that union who are watching as well and have probably been watching, disappointed in many of the decisions we've made so far as a council. But I think we have the opportunity to find a way to solve a portion of this problem, at least for those positions which are filled, or potentially all but one of them. Having said that, I do want to note that I agree with the comment about the rescues. I am intending to retool the amendment that I had earlier for the adopted budget about the opioid funds and bring that back. That's about the same amount of money as either the rescues or the precinct administration folks. This one would solve at least a portion of the latter. And I hope we do today. I'll be supporting this. I really appreciate that you looked and retooled this as well. I think there are there there are it's important to recognize that the people who are making more than these thresholds are still getting cola and merit on the the first 100 k of their salaries. And that's it's not a complete stop to that. And I just wanted to make sure that was on the record. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.
Thank you, council president, and thank you for for looking at how we might be able to do this. There's been some discussion about what to restore. I think this is a really important one for us to restore. I know there are others that we should also be looking to. I want to talk about the funding source as well, though. This is actually something that the mayor did last year as a cost savings measure. When everybody gets the same percent cola, we see the difference between our highest and our lowest wage earners increase year over year over year over year, because 3% of 150 or 200,000 is much more than 3% of 50 or 60 or $80,000. When we allow no colas, though, for folks who are higher wage earners, we see compression and we see a disincentive for people to take on larger and larger roles within the city. A move like this allows us to avoid both of those pitfalls. And so I appreciate, councilor Dunphy, your openness to thinking about this different approach, because I actually think that it is not only a means to fund some very important work at our city, but also. A smart thing to do every now and then to make sure that we don't border on compression. But we also don't let that wage gap get get much larger. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Councilor pirtle-guiney, councilor Smith, mayor wilson, I will come back to you. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: That mayor wilson goes before me.
Okay. I'll acknowledge I'm extending a courtesy to council to mayor wilson.
Council president. Thank you. I spoke to all of you over this last 3 or 4 months about a mistake I made last year. When I came in, we inherited $130 million budget gap, and the first thing I did was start to look at cut lists, cut items, expenses, also stabilizing employee pay. And I capped management wages at 3% up to 100 k, which is what this is proposing. And I removed merit. And in so doing, looking at the wage disparity between unionized and management, last year we gave a 4.5% overall wage increase to our represented staff and to our management staff. It turned out to be a 1.8%. Affordability is affecting us all. And I've spoke to each and every one of you and said, I'm not going to do that again as mayor. I'm not going to take a particular class, coworker or employee and pay them at a different rate. It's not fair. They did not have anything to do with our fiscal position on where we're at. And I said, we're going to at least very minimum, provide cola to our staff. I didn't determine what level we were going to apply it at. I'm going to say it again. The disparity that I've created last year was our represented staff earned a 4.5% wage increase, and our non-represented was 1.8. We're doing this again, and we're creating a situation where our city isn't an employer of choice. And my concern is, is that that gap will become less, compression will only be accelerated. We need to treat the entire staff fairly across the board. Cost of living is affecting everybody. I'm asking that we not pass this because we have to be disciplined in our approach going forward.
Thank you council. Thank you, mayor wilson councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you. I figured you were going to say something pretty profound. Mayor. I'm glad you went first, because I was going to say a pack of bacon cost just as much for someone who makes over 100 000, which is me and I have three grandkids, it costs just as much for me to pay for orange juice that has risen, costs just as much for everything, even though you make over $100,000. So I agree with you, mayor, that it is not fair. And I think we need to identify another source. I like what you're trying to do. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney and councilor Dunphy and I think all these restorations are good. And again, the ps three, we still have not done anything for them. And I think we need to have a larger conversation. I'm not going to be in support of this because this is not this is not a it's not appropriate, nor is it fair. Thank you.
Councilor Smith, vice president Clark.
I may have had my question answered by the mayor. I'm just not sure how this the merit piece works, how that messes things up. Could somebody help me with that? I don't know, ca lee or can you help me understand that.
We'll have hr come up.
Good evening councilors. For the record, ron zito, hr director. Merit is an approach to awarding pay for performance for our non-represented staff. Over a number of years, we've converted to a focal point system where we award a merit increase on July 1st of each year, along with cola over the past number of years that that that merit has been withheld. Last year, as you heard from the mayor, as well as a number of years going 2020, we have not established a merit budget this year yet to announce to staff. And so I myself am listening to the conversation a bit confusing how we would move forward with any sort of merit this year.
That's helpful. I, I feel like this is well, I'm very interested in the desk clerks. And I had an amendment along with a bunch of us to restore that cut and to restore the p3s and other pieces in pb as well as the rescue. I don't feel I feel like this is punitive and probably not going to support it.
Thank you, vice president Clark. Counselor Avalos.
Yeah. I think what I'm feeling right now is that I'm frustrated that these positions were even put up in the first place. The police bureau has an enormous budget, and I the fact that the thing that was put up was these desk clerks that are front line to our communities, especially in east Portland at the east precinct. It's just really frustrating. There are so many unfilled positions in the police bureau that they could have drawn from. There's so many pots that they could have drawn from. So I don't love this. The only reason I'm supporting it and plan to support it is because I want to make sure that the east precinct has what they need. But at the same time, I'm very. I don't love this, and I'm doing this very, very reluctantly and honestly, the way that this is all going gone today, you know, I'm not eager to put more money into police. When we couldn't even put any money for immigrants, we couldn't even save east Portland parks positions. This is just feels gross to me because I'm, I'm just exhausted by these last two days and hearing everybody's arguments and what they clearly care about. And it's not the community that I care about. So I'm doing this simply as a favor, but I want to say it on the record. I don't want to do it. And honestly, the whole budget at this point, I'm probably not even going to vote for.
So thank you, councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Councilor Kanal yeah, thank you. I, I look at these, I look at our budget conversations a little bit differently, I think, than some of my colleagues. And what I mean by that is I think that there are a lot of people who think that adding money to a bureau sends a signal, and taking money from a bureau sends a signal. And that might be true for folks who are just reading headlines. I think I look at the work specifically. And so, you know, there there are some of our bureau's parks is probably the best example of this. Do 50 things. You can add money to parks. It doesn't necessarily mean you're adding money to the things that people think of when they think Portland parks and recreation. I think that's the case for many of our bureaus. I have to say, when I look at this particular one, I'm looking at what's the work that we want to try and fund? I think that we've talked a bit about the funding source, so I won't go into that. But in terms of the folks who are frontline, I really appreciate that clarification. That point from from councilor Avalos and not just at the east precinct, but that's included, but the north precinct as well. And I'll note that this the the proposed cut did not take anything from the central precinct. And so I want to just try to, to close that gap and make our parts of the city get the same level of service when they walk into a police precinct. And right at that first interaction. Additionally, I think that there's a really important point that councilor Clark brings up a lot about cuts that are penny wise and pound foolish. And when you don't, the natural human inclination, when you are the closest desk to the unstaffed front desk is to go and try to respond. If someone comes in and the the person who's going to be there is probably either it's either going to be unstaffed, which is bad, or it's going to be a, an armed police officer, which is not necessarily a bad outcome, just an expensive one. And so staffing up these positions also has the impact of saving us money. I've had the ability to meet a couple of these folks, not necessarily the ones who are up on the the affected employees list, but folks who work at the front desk. In the past and since coming into office. And I think that it's a, it's a role that might appear purely administrative, but isn't. It's a role that has an impact in terms of customer service, in terms of engagement, in terms of just making sure that it's not nobody's coming to okay, maybe not nobody, almost nobody is walking into a police precinct on a good normal day, right? So in that situation, you want someone who is going to be that first line of communication, that first point of contact, to be prepared to do that, to be able to do it in a trauma informed way. And these folks do. So I think it's important. And we can talk about should we be funding something else. But what we're seeing here is that the big amendments are not necessarily doing that well. So here we are coming back with another one. And like I said, we funded the saint john's fire engine. Thank you, colleagues, for that. We funded the chat program. Thank you, colleagues, for that. And now we're here on the next one. That doesn't mean that it's the only one. It doesn't mean that it's the last one. And I think, as I mentioned, the rescues, I'm still going to be fighting for that in the adopted budget. But I think we have to look at this in, in in terms of the work itself in a vacuum and say, is this something that makes sense and are we moving in the right direction? Because there aren't a lot of other options out there to, to fund this in the remaining amendments? Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Ryan, last word.
Okay. Thank you, president Dunphy. This has improved. I've heard from a few colleagues that we could probably bring something, something excuse me, to the adopted. And I will be bringing an amendment to the adopted budget before the adopted budget to bring back the desk clerks at the precincts. I can't imagine going to the the monthly meetings that I attend there. And other times when I show up for committee meetings to not have a person welcoming constituents at the precinct offices at both north and east Portland. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll on Dunphy for.
Moved by Dunphy. Seconded by Kanal Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan.
Yeah. No. For now, look forward to an amendment.
Koyama Lane. I Morillo I.
Thank you.
I said.
I.
Novick no, for reasons previously stated. I do want to say that one thing I like about this amendment is actually adds to general fund unrestricted contingency.
No Green. Aye, Morillo.
Zimmerman no.
Avalos.
Reluctantly. Yes.
Smith.
No.
Dunphy. I the amendment is approved with a vote of seven eyes and five days.
Thank you colleagues, we have one more amendment. Councilor. Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president, and thank you for your patience this evening with me. I'm not going to move Koyama Lane for anymore, and we'll figure it out and use my office budget to make sure that that tribal nations summit is funded. And I actually have a revised amendment. Tcl6 regarding the Montavilla park shelter here on paper. And there's a copy in your email inbox. Thank you to cbo and my team for making that quick fix. The revised proposal is clear that the funds for the project are from the parks local option levy fund. I'm very proud to have the support of county commissioner Julie edwards and also representative toy tran for this. My hope is that we've debated this enough and we can move straight to a vote. I would like to move the revised version of Koyama Lane six.
Councilor Koyama Lane moves revised version of Koyama Lane six. Is there a second? Second counselor? Green seconds colleagues to the new Koyama Lane six. Any discussion? Seeing no one in the queue. Keelan can we please call the roll?
Koyama Lane six moved by Koyama Lane seconded by Green Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. Know Ryan. No Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick no.
Clark no.
Green I Zimmerman.
I thomas. I Smith.
No.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of seven ayes and five days.
Colleagues, we are going to take a five recess to allow our staff to figure out what it is we just did, and we are going to close everything else out. Please be back here at 930. Welcome back. Colleagues. Colleagues, before we start, I'd like to let you all know that I am going to be abstaining from the next two votes because of the funding that was added for leach botanical garden. As I announced at the beginning, my wife works for leach botanical garden, and so I am abstaining from the next two votes. But we have to vote to approve the changes our individual floor amendments have made to attachments b and c of the memo associated with the budget. This has the effect of incorporating all of the changes, so that the approved budget, which we will vote on next, reflects our amendments. May I have a motion to approve the changes to the attachments?
So moved.
Second counselor Green moves councilor Kanal seconds. Keelan. Will you please call the roll on the package of amendments and changes to attachments b and c?
Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I.
Ryan.
I just enjoyed watching robert taylor go like this to me. Thank you robert. Sorry I'm late. I have to trust that this is about the attachments. Yes. Okay. I.
Okay to.
The attachments.
I. Aye, Morillo I. Novick I. Clark I.
Green I.
Zimmerman I. Avalos I.
Smith I.
Dunphy abstain.
The motion is approved with 11 yes votes and one abstention.
Thank you. You'll recall that on Monday, colleagues, there was a motion and a second to approve the report that comprises the city's 2627 approved budget. We are now voting on that motion, as amended. Keelan will you please call the roll?
Kanal.
Sorry, I.
Just want to make sure I'm on the same page here. This is approval of the report and transmission to the to sdc. I believe that.
Is correct, yes.
Okay. It's nice to not have to withdraw this one this year. I vote aye.
Pirtle-guiney.
I Ryan. I Koyama Lane. I aye, Morillo. I Novick. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman.
I just want you to know this is really like the beginning of the budget process when we send it to tsec so I know this feels climactic, but here we go. It really starts now I.
Avalos I Smith.
I Dunphy abstain. The motion is approved with a vote of 11 ayes and one abstention.
Colleagues, as the budget committee, we must also approve tax levies. I'm going to read about three pages worth of documents. It's just one full page. I'm wrong. The city shall levy its full permanent rate of $4.57 and 7/10 of a cent per $1,000 of assessed value, and $30,801,933 for the payment of voter approved general obligation, bond principal and interest, and $279,235,522 for the obligations for the fire and police disability and retirement fund, $1.40 per $1,000 of assessed property value for parks levy op parks, local option levy and 40.402 $6 per $1,000 of assessed value for the children's levy. Furthermore, the city shall levy the amount listed in attachment e for rural urban. I'll try that again. Furthermore, the city shall levy the amounts listed in attachment e for urban renewal collections. May I have a motion to approve the tax levies. So councilor Kanal move? Is there a second? Second councilor Novick seconds keelan. Please call the roll.
Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan.
I.
Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Dunphy.
I.
Motion is approved with 12 I votes.
Colleagues do not get excited by this next sentence. I now adjourn this meeting of the city of Portland budget committee and reconvene from recess the Portland city council. We are now in consideration of item eight. And guess what? I now recess this meeting of the Portland city council and reconvene from recess. The prosper Portland budget committee. Keelan, can you please call the roll.
Kanal.
We have to approve the budget committee for prosper Portland. Now we are doing attendance roll, not a vote. Just seeing if you're here for the budget committee of prosper.
I can confirm a quorum is present.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, city attorney. At this time, there is a motion on the table to approve the report that comprises the prosper Portland budget, as amended. Budget director levine, is there any further action needed to reconcile the prosper Portland budget to the city of Portland budget?
No.
Okay, keelan, please call the roll.
Kanal I. Pirtle-guiney I Ryan I. Koyama Lane I. Aye, Morillo I. Novick I. Clark I.
Green I.
Zimmerman I. Avalos I.
Smith I.
I the motion is approved with 12 votes.
Thank you. I now adjourn the meeting of the prosper Portland budget committee and reconvene from recess. The Portland city council colleagues, the approved budget will be published, as amended on the city budget office website. Note that this budget will correct an error in the budget book in prior years. Actuals that cause some to appear out of balance. This is purely a technical correction. For the purposes of compliance with state budget law. Looking around at my professional colleagues friends, that is the budget and the meeting of the Portland city council is now adjourned.