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← Recent meetings · September 2026

The record · Transcript

Council Session — 2026-09-24

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (4,426 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.

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Thu, Sep 24, 2026 · meeting length 35 min · council salary-time ≈ $443

Council salary-time = 12 councilors × ($133,207/yr ÷ 2,080 hr) × meeting length. Attendance varies and salaries are fixed regardless of meeting count — this contextualizes the council time a session takes; it is not money the meeting "spent."

Session TL;DRAI draft · not editor-reviewed

Key points

Where the council disagreed

No substantive disagreement recorded in this session.

Roll-call votes from this session date

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AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions and not yet reviewed by the editor . It describes the discussion only. Each point links to the transcript turn it rests on, and a program checked that the words it relied on are in that turn; the wording of the point is the draft's own. Positions are given without names because captions do not show who is speaking — follow a link to see for yourself. Recording times are not stored for this session, so the links go to the transcript turn. Captions contain errors.

Procedural markers in this session

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0 Keelan, this is councilor Smith, and I'm online.
1 Thanks for letting us know. Councilor Smith.
2 Thank you.
3 Hey, we're not starting quite yet, but if you are online, we might need you for quorum. Can you turn on your cameras, please? Good morning. I'm going to call this meeting of the Portland city council committee of the whole to order. It is September 24th at 9:34 a.m. Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
4 Good morning. Koyama Lane here. Morillo here.
5 Novick here.
6 Clark here.
7 Green. Zimmerman. Avalos. Dunphy.
8 Here.
9 Smith. Here.
10 Pirtle-guiney. Here.
11 Ryan.
12 Kanal.
13 Here. And claire, will you please read the statement of conduct?
14 Thank you chair. Good morning and welcome to the meeting of the finance and governance committee of the whole. To testify before this committee in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council/agenda/come or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting in person, testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted. When your time is over, the chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers to unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
15 Thank you claire. All right. So today we've got committee chair updates. We've also got continuing discussion of the five ordinances that were filed. And we started discussing last week on the regulatory program changes. We'll have updates on those as we get into them. We please call item one.
16 Item one committee chair updates, document number 2026-337.
17 All right. So as per usual, updating everything on here, everything that's been discussed that I am aware of is now on a calendar. Save one thing going into the rest of the year. And I think that thing is actually foreclosures, which actually is on there now. So we are in a situation where I appreciate that that two weeks ago I asked if anyone knows of something coming up that needs to get on this committee's agenda before the end of October, please let me know. And the response was sufficient to actually fill up most of the rest of the year. So I appreciate both the administration and colleagues for for doing that to help us be more predictive, able to predict what's happening. The main takeaways from page one is just that there is no meeting on October 1st, and instead we'll have a meeting on October 29th. So we'll still have four in October. And some of the rest of the items are still in the possible tentative getting confirmed state as we go forward. Just waiting on each thing's got some some slightly different things happening. I did want to flag going to page two that some of the items on here are probably going to be in a sort of transition memo I give to the next year. Chair of this committee, should it be retained in this format or try to get done in January? We probably have a meeting in January before the any switches may occur. So most of this these kinds of things are probably not going to get done this calendar year. And I just want to be up front about that. But if anybody has things on that that get filed in our approved by, you know, clerk and code review if necessary, attorneys, if necessary, we can try to get it in as well. Just wanted to, to flag that, switching gears and talking about the leadership requests and workgroups, I did want to flag the street renaming code piece. We discussed this in the discussion around campesinos boulevard renaming and having a broader conversation about how this code works and what we're going to do about it. I want to thank the folks who volunteered for that. We do have this penciled in for October 15th as a discussion item, so I'm going to ask if those five councilors that are listed can help to plan the discussion in terms of run a show and things like that. Dc williams has confirmed that PBOT is available to give their sides of it, and I've also given all your chiefs of staff a heads up that I was going to mention this today. The discussion we're going to have on the 15th about street renaming is primarily for counselors. Pbot is going to be present to answer questions and give feedback on feasibility of ideas, but not to kind of like how dc sorry, how cfo biery yesterday said, here's the implementation challenges or e's not so much. Here's my opinion on them. It's kind of going to be like that. It's not a formal presentation and but it is designed to sort of lay out options. And I'll give I've been using this behind the scenes, but for those who may be a little curious about what's kind of the goal of these discussions that don't have that don't have legislation tied to them yet, the example I've been giving is they're first downs, meaning we're not trying to score on the play, get a touchdown or a field goal, but we are trying to advance the conversation so that it gets keeps going and we're able to have future action to resolve the problem. Sorry for the non-sports fans out there that I just got you to glaze your eyes over with that. But yeah, so that's, that's the, the work group update. And that's pretty much it for my part, but I did want to just see if there's nobody in the queue. I'll go to councilor Novick to give us an update on the work of the community and public safety committee.
18 Thank you, mr. Chairman. Well, yesterday we actually have the full council was looking at a couple of the issues that come through the public safety committee, that psychedelics ordinance and the two police grants. It's a big picture. Things we've had, we've had and presentation on the report that councilor Smith requested on what the what the timeline would be and the expenses would be for significant ramp up in police staffing. And the police also had some suggestions as to where such staff might be assigned. That was an interesting conversation I think is probably worthy of follow up. We also had a presentation on police response times at vice chair murillo's request, which frankly, I think left a lot of questions unanswered. And I'm told the police bureau that I'm planning to bring them back to continue that conversation. In terms of specific. Oh, and I should also add that in the context of discussion, police response times, I got a reminder that we should schedule a discussion of clearance rates, solving of crimes, particularly because in that presentation, the bureau said that currently we only count in our clearance rate statistics cases that are referred for investigation. So if there's a crime that's not referred for investigation, that's not counted. So I told them I'd like to see statistics that include both because something that's not solved and not referred should be treated as not solved in terms of specific legislation. After numerous discussions about the protecting public buildings, guns, concealed carry legislation which would have, pursuant to a state authorization, eliminated the the affirmative defense for criminal charges, for having for having a concealed carry. We finally, after numerous discussions, came to a vote on that issue and the legislation did. We did not recommend moving to full council. We had a preliminary discussion of an idea of councilor Zimmerman's. The safe parks proposal, which would expand the city's ability to exclude people from parks. And over the next month, we're going to have a report from the psr committee. And we'll also have a discussion about the great shakeout for earthquake preparedness. We are going to have a presentation on fireworks enforcement, which is pretty much non-existent. When I have a conversation about whether it's possible to have some level of enforcement of the fireworks ban, and also we had in the committee earlier this year discussion of restorative justice and the restorative justice folks said that the police bureau doesn't really refer many cases to restorative justice. And chief day said, well, he actually believes in that concept. So I'm going to ask chief day to come back and give us his thoughts on whether it's possible to increase police use of restorative justice. So that's what I got.
19 Thank you, chair Novick. I'm going to give everyone a second. If they want to get in the queue to ask anything of chair Novick. That was comprehensive. So thank you so much. With that.
20 And I forgot, we also need to schedule a discussion of disparities in traffic enforcement.
21 Appreciate it. Thank you. So I guess with that, we'll wrap up the chair's update and I will ask. Rebecca if you could please call items two, three, four, five, and six together.
22 Item two amend regulation of payday lending code to update program fees. Amend code section 7.26.030. Document number 2026-325. Item three amend pay and park and non pay private parking facilities code to strengthen compliance and public notice requirements and update program fees. Amend code chapter 7.25 document number 2026-326. Item four amend secondhand dealers code to strengthen compliance requirements and update program fees. Amend code chapter 14.90 document number 2026-327. Item five amend social games code to strengthen compliance requirements and update program fees. Amend code sections 14.7, 0.060 and 14.70.070. Document number 2026-328 and item six repeal amusement devices, games and machines code repeal code chapter 14.110. Document number 2026-329.
23 Thank you. So before we just wanted to confirm, we finished all testimony, there wasn't anybody who had to wait right last time. Okay, so we've heard our presentations. We have heard testimony, we're in counselor discussion and the ability to amend to refer on. We can refer these on individually or as a package to the full council as well. But I want to start by recognizing I know that that. Councilor Novick you had something you wanted to start with. So I will start with you.
24 Thank you, mr. Chairman. Yes. Partly in response to chair connell's questions about background checks and the second hand dealer's item 2026 327. We were taking a look at that item over the last week, and concluded that there's some language issues that need to be worked out, that I think that we're not I don't know that we're quite there yet. I apologize for that. So I think that it's appropriate to. So I asked to refer that item to the actually to the to the committee. I think that's appropriate because the whole reason for this part of the regulations is concern about second hand dealers potentially dealing in stolen goods. So it's there's definitely a public safety nexus. The four remaining items I hope to refer on to council today. Look forward to the discussion. I think given some of the discussion last week, my preference would be to vote on them separately rather than as a package in whatever order the chair deems appropriate. So I'll begin by making a motion to refer document 2026 327 to the community and public safety committee, and would ask for a second, second.
25 All right. So just for everyone's knowledge, under city code 3.02.02 0b1a1c, it is that many subsections. This is something that the council is allowed or sorry, committees are allowed to refer to another committee. So there's a motion from councilor Novick. There's a second from council president Dunphy. Is there any discussion on the motion to refer this to the committee? And this is item I want to say for councilor Pirtle-guiney.
26 Thank you, chair. Councilor. Novick. When you had originally presented these items together as a package, there was a budget implication for not moving all of them at the same time. And can you speak to the budget implication if we don't move this forward? And have you talked to the bureau, do they have any concerns about budget gaps that might create?
27 It might.
28 Be something.
29 Gap, but right now we're not at full cost recovery for these programs. So I think it's something we can live with. And I think that we can resolve the secondhand dealer issues in the next several, several weeks. I don't think it's going to take forever.
30 So by the time we're at our next budget cycle, this should be resolved and we should be back to about the balance that you had originally proposed.
31 Yes.
32 Perfect. Thank you so much.
33 Thank you. Seeing no one else in the queue, rebecca, will you please call the roll on the motion to refer item four secondhand dealers to the committee on community and public safety.
34 Okay. Calling moved by Novick. Seconded by Dunphy. Koyama Lane I Morillo I.
35 Novick I.
36 Clark I.
37 Green absent. Zimmerman absent.
38 Avalos I.
39 Smith.
40 I.

Procedural episode · turns 41–49

Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.

41 Kanal I.
42 Pirtle-guiney I.
43 Ryan. Absent and Dunphy.
44 I I.
45 And the motion to refer is approved and apologies for the out of order vote.
46 Great. Thank you so much and thank you. Councilor Novick for the motion. We're back into the main queue to discuss the other four items here. Again, they can be referred to the full council together or as individual items as councilor. Novick has expressed the preference for. And I'm not seeing anyone in the queue yet, so I know we're all still waking up, but I just want to give everyone a chance here. I guess.
47 With a motion to move agenda item to document 2026 325 to full council with the due pass recommendation be appropriate right now.
48 That would absolutely be appropriate.
49 So moved.
50 Is there a second?
51 Second.
52 A motion from councilor Pirtle-guiney, seconded by councilor Novick, to refer item two on to the full council. Is there any further discussion on this motion? Seeing none. Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
53 And to clarify, that was 2026-325. Thank you. Yeah. Moved by pirtle-guiney. Seconded by Novick to refer to the full council with due pass recommendation.
54 Koyama Lane I.
55 Morillo I Novick. I Clark I.
56 Avalos I.
57 Dunphy I.
58 Smith I.
59 Pirtle-guiney I.
60 Kanal I.
61 And the motion to refer is approved with nine I three absent.
62 Great.
63 And just as a reminder, we still need seven votes for everything today, even though we have three people absent. I don't think that's going to be relevant today, but just wanted everyone to be aware of that going in. We're back into the main queue to discuss
64 The remaining three items. So those are pan park social games code and amusement devices, games and machines. And a motion would be appropriate to refer any of those on to the to the full council at this time. Councilor Dunphy, thank you.
65 Thank you. I mean, I'm going to be supportive of all of these. I think this is a great direction for us to be going as a city. There are actually a few other things that I have seen since looking into this, that I also would love to just dig in and get rid of, including some of our requirements around locking up spray paint and taking people's driver's license information, which the police cannot even actually process or claim those documents in any way as such. I'm. Would it be appropriate to move more than one at a time as a package, or are we looking to do these individually at this point?
66 I am was proposing to do them individually in in excess of caution because frankly, I wasn't sure we'd have a number of votes for all of them. But that given what I've seen so far, I think it would be appropriate.
67 Okay. We still have items. Is it three and five and six remaining?
68 It is three, five and six. Yes.
69 Thank you. Well, I'd like to first reiterate some of my concerns about number three, but I'll still be supportive today. I think that we should be. Tying some of our parking, our our surface parking lot goals towards some of our environmental goals. We have some land use goals around trying to disincentivize parking lots in highly zoned areas or highly densely zoned areas. However, that's not relevant to this motion and as such I would move that we refer items three, five and six to the full committee with a due pass recommendation, and I would seek a second.
70 Second.
71 There's a motion to refer items three, five and six together to the full council. Moved by councilor Dunphy, seconded by councilor Novick with a due pass recommendation. Is there further discussion on this item? I'm going to be in the queue on this. I'm going to support this motion as well. I did want to ask while I had the chance last time we discussed on the on. This is a related item three about what portions of the comments that were received got integrated in. And I just there was supposed to be more information on that, and I don't think I got it via email. So I just wanted to know if there is if it's not resolved today, I'll still ask at the full council, but I just wanted to know if there was anything.
72 Mr. Chairman, I ask the team to come.
73 Up to come up and help answer that question. The revenue team.
74 And for the record, I ask this on a few of them and I got the answers on the other ones. So I do appreciate that.
75 For the record, tim mercer, revenue division. Yeah, sorry for the oversight there. I didn't realize we owed you something on that front. But yeah, so in terms of payne park comments that were integrated, we, we, we got comments across a pretty broad range, particularly negative comments around the increase of fees and some comments related to some of the changes around requirements for parking machines, the, the actual machines that give you a ticket. We, we modified our approach in regard to the, the machines as as a direct result of the feedback we received. Did we make any other changes there? That was a direct result of feedback.
76 Lila taylor, regulatory program coordinator. We also. Discussed modifying the fees or the penalties that can be assessed for parking.
77 Yeah. And we also adjusted the language around grace periods, I believe, correct? Yes. Because we heard feedback that what we were proposing might be difficult for operators to implement. So we adjusted there.
78 Okay. What was just out of curiosity, what was the original proposal on the grace period?
79 Seven minutes. And we adjusted it down to five minutes as defined within the park definition of parking.
80 Okay. I don't know if you had anything more you wanted to add. Councilor. Novick. Okay, that was all I had. I appreciate that clarification. And that's it for me. Councilor Ryan.
81 Thank you so much, chair, and I apologize that I'm late. And so with some humility, I will ask a couple questions. And someone could say, well, you were late and you missed that. I didn't really hear the modification to the modification to the pay in part to the meters was from 7 to 5. Is that what you said?
82 That's the grace period in which a penalty.
83 Modification was.
84 Yes. We made we made a modification. We had proposed language that said that we would have a seven minute grace period around ticketing at lots. And we rolled that back to five minutes. It would have been three minutes previously.
85 There hadn't been.
86 Any no grace period. So the grace period was a direct result of, you know, sort of feedback that where a citizen that got a ticket was saying, you know, I was in the in route between the machine and my car when I got the ticket. Yeah. And so adding a grace period seemed to offer some relief for, for citizens that might get a ticket in that circumstance.
87 That I appreciate that. And that wasn't really why I even put my hand up. But, but I was curious because I didn't understand what was just said. So thank you for explaining. I put my hand up because I had a good conversation actually with you. Councilor Novick of course, about what I've been discussing with private parking systems around, especially pearl and belltown. This is a workforce issue. When we try to do all we can for our small businesses, our small business restaurants at the top of a lot of their complaints is that there's not adequate parking for their employers, their employees, and their employees are have to run out and they'll like this grace period, trust me. And so they often get ticketed and they we have a system at smart park in central Portland, downtown Portland, where there's a spring. There's a swing shift type rate, which is better than the usual rate. And we're trying to get the private parking folks to do something similar to that. And so I'm socializing something that I don't have an amendment for today because I think it would cloud this anyway. I think it's an and, and I hope that we can come back with some this council actually caring about workforce issues and caring about our employers in the private sector that work at restaurants and such, and offer them some opportunities to have some relief with the challenges of finding parking spots a and finding a price that's somewhat similar to what we have in our downtown smart park. Again, we don't have smart park locations in upper pearl and slabtown. The closest one, as you know, is down on the waterfront. And so that's what I want to work with. Hopefully you councilor Novick on. And I think that that was what needed to be voiced at this moment. I can go along with this. I was fine with all of them. That was the only one I really wanted to have further discussion with. I see that we pulled off one and I'll find out a little bit more. Why thank you.
88 Thanks. Councilor Ryan councilor Novick.
89 This is a little off topic, but in response to councilor Ryan, I want to know what of my parking peeves, which is that when people put up temporary no parking signs, often the no parking is a very big letters and the from, you know, August 23rd at 3 p.m. To August 26th at 2 p.m. Is very small, so people just see no parking go on by. So I wanted to have a conversation with PBOT about can we require the lettering about the time for parking to be as big as the no parking part? But yeah, this is off topic, but you just reminded me of my own issue.
90 All right. Thanks. Seeing no one else in the queue, there is a motion to refer the item on. It's been seconded. All three items together. Sorry. Items three, five and six. Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
91 This is the motion to refer ordinances. Document numbers 2026-3, two six, 2026-3, two, eight, and 2026-329. Moved by Dunphy, seconded by Novick.
92 Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.
93 Novick I.
94 Clark I.
95 Avalos. I Dunphy. I Smith. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I know. I motion to refer is approved with ten I and two absent votes.
96 Okay. Well that is the whole agenda. I have two quick housekeeping notes and I think councilor Ryan wanted to say something. I just.
97 I could for the. Anyway, could someone just give me a brief summary on why we pulled the other one?
98 I'm going to let councilor Novick speak to that. Yeah.
99 Yes. On the second.
100 Hand, dealer provisions, partly in response to councilor Kanal questions about background checks last week, we were looking through the language of that provision and concluded that there's some language issues both in the in the the preexisting rules that I think need to be addressed. And I'm not quite sure we're there yet. So I just want to have some time to work with the team and come back with with language that I'm comfortable with.
101 Will it come back to this committee?
102 We referred it to the public safety committee because it's those regulations exist because of concerns about dealing in stolen property.
103 Yeah. So that's good. So the the public safety system at the city can then weigh in on this in a deeper way.
104 Yes.
105 Good. Thank you.
106 Thanks. Okay. So two quick housekeeping notes from a committee of the whole side of things. We are we don't meet next week. We'll be meeting on October 8th. That is a Thursday at 9:30 a.m. And then we do have a work session today at 2 p.m. Of the full city council, which is about the cei hub. So hope to see you all back there. But I promise that if we got done, we would not take up your time. So I'm happy to give an hour and 58 minutes of everyone's time back.
107 At a work session. That's a real meeting.
108 Oh, sorry. It's a full council meeting at 2 p.m. But the whole agenda is about cei hub. My apologies. Full council, full council. But yeah, happy to give an hour and 57 minutes back. And with that, or actually more with that, we'll adjourn the meeting at 10:02 a.m. Thanks.