The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-03-04
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (36,405 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.
Good morning. Welcome to the Wednesday, March 4th meeting of the Portland city council. Can we keelan. Can you please call the roll?
Good morning. Alice. Present Smith. Here and all here. Pirtle-guiney here. Ryan here. Koyama Lane here. Aye, Morillo here. Novick here. Clark here. Green here. Zimmerman here. Dunphy here.
And can we please read the rules of decorum? Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at wwe Portland council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on on the council's web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest or trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matters being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
Thank you very much, colleagues at the top of our agenda here. We. I will be continuing to hold time to hear updates about the federal response that we are facing and any other emergency matters, and we'll continue to try this at the beginning of council meetings. But, city administrator, we would you prefer to give us an update on the federal situation as part of your city administrator report a little bit later on the agenda? Okay, great. We will do that. But before we move on, I want to give council and the public an update on resolution 37734. Our oversight hearing on the information sharing around Portland housing bureau funds in the fall 2025, how that resolution requires that the council president set a date for the initial oversight hearing by March 6th. Today is March 4th. Pursuant to that responsibility, the initial oversight hearing per resolution 37 734 will be at the committee of the whole on April 23rd, 2026. That meeting will run from 930 until 12:30 p.m. Thank you for thank you, committee chair Kanal for working with the sponsors of this legislation to make that time work. Colleagues, our next item is agenda approval. There has been a. First. I will ask to see if my colleagues have any requests for amendments or changes. I will note that item eight has been pulled from the consent agenda and will be heard. Are there any other requests? I had a request to swap items 11 and 12 on our agenda. There's a posted amendment item 11 and. Which I had scheduled as a block of three quick second readings. But because of that, I'd like to be able to get staff from item 12 out of here sooner, since that is the second reading. So I'd like to move item 12 before item 11. If there's any objection, please let me know. Otherwise, do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda? The agenda is approved. Thank you. Can we please call the public communications?
First up, we have. Excuse me, john hollister.
Good morning. Good morning. And introduce yourself. For the record, you have three minutes.
My name is john hollister and I live in district four. I'd like some help on how to put together a public record search of commissioner Lane's cell phone. On 128 from 9:30 a.m. On, she received a text with a picture of my cell phone, and I promised the person who told me about it and actually sent it to her that I wouldn't use his name. I'd also like to request video footage from 128 930 on to document the behavior that commissioner Lane gave to me during my testimony. Commissioner Lane, I actually would like to thank you. Although you didn't mean to, you actually helped me get in touch with some of my undiscovered childhood issues. So, so thank you very much for that. Raymond lee. If you could, if you could pass the word on to mayor wilson that I thank him so much for everything he's doing, and he is completely redefining patience and tolerance regarding the disrespectful behavior that he receives from several council members. I am so happy that you are here that we have a professional running this, and I think that you're going to find a lot of bureaus that have extra money, because for so many years they have been run by city commissioners that their previous experience was things like running a bookstore. Someone who's run a bookstore is not qualified to run PBOT. And so the so I believe these bureaus have been able to just run over and say whatever they want. And very complicated terms beyond the ability for nonprofessionals to do this. With Portland being the last major metropolitan area in the country to have a city manager form of of of governance. Thank you for being there. I have heard great things about you and continue your great work. I also wanted to say really quickly, I'm set to give testimony on the the storefront project, but I have to leave. My wife needs the car, but the we all want to live in a place where Portland has a vibrant storefront. And that's the fact. Why many of us moved downtown was to have that vibrant storefront. So I really am in favor of the storefront project. And my last comment, and I'll talk about it more next month when I come back. The blazers are leaving Portland, and it's a result of the policies that you've put in place. They are.
Here today.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Next up we have guy frankenstein.
Good morning.
Again. My name is guy frankenstein. That is my real name. That is not a joke. This morning I wanted to talk about something from last week's meeting that bothered me very greatly. But on my way here, I changed my mind. I wrote down some thoughts really quickly that I'd like to share. Last night I came across a social media post by a counselor here that unintentionally was being discussed positively in some very specific local right wing spaces, and I understand that was unintentional. But, you know, that's how these words were perceived. So I tried to think of an opinion that I have or something that I would say that could be construed positively by a group of abject degenerates. And that made me realize that I share affiliation with some of the same groups as you. I have political memberships to some of the same organizations as you, but we are all not fighting for the same things. We're we're just not. I'm coming here and screaming into a void. A lot of people are coming here and screaming into a void. History has done the actuarial work of the paths that we are currently on. That work is done. We know where these paths lead. I just I just want to say that when we get to where we're going, I hope that you're comfortable with the decisions you've made. I'm comfortable with mine. Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Next up we have mitchell sheridan.
Good morning.
Good morning. My name is mitchell sheridan. Hello. Council members and city administrator I want to begin by thanking you for your service to our city. I know the work you are doing is not easy, and I appreciate the time and energy and responsibility that comes with representing our community. I am a Portland resident and a nursing student at OHSU, and I'm here this morning to advocate for my neighbors who are struggling to access health care this term. My nursing program is focused on population health, and I was fortunate to be placed in the clinical rotation with Portland fire and rescue, community health and assess and treat program, known as chat. As many of you know, chat was created in 2021, in response to a clear and growing problem. 911 is increasingly being used for preventable health care needs, and hospital emergency departments have become the catcher's mitt for everything from opioid overdoses, residents seeking a hot meal and folks experiencing chronic illness, flare ups who just need basic health care. Teams of highly trained firefighters are being called on lift assists and overdoses, and the reality is that none of these systems were designed to function in this way. And using them as such is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars and not helping solve the issue. This is where I've seen chat come in and make a huge difference. I've watched firsthand their two person response teams respond to medical calls and support clients in the field without the use of expensive transport or diverting them to our overcrowded emergency departments. Then I've watched them identify upstream barriers that could prevent these clients from dealing with these same situations in the future. Their teams are trained to connect people with primary care, behavioral health services, housing, insurance, enrollment, or whatever is standing in their way. I personally have never been in a position where I've hit so many roadblocks to accessing health care that I felt like emergency services were my only option, but many portlanders are in exactly that position right now, not because of their own failures, but because of the injustices that are woven into the fabric of this country. Since 2021, chat has generated well over 10 million now in estimated health care savings to our system. It has paid for itself many times over while improving health outcomes, preserving fire and ambulance availability for true emergencies, and reducing strain on our hospitals. My request this morning is simple please reinstate chat's funding in your next budget cycle without cuts, and move that funding from temporary to permanent. This program must continue the work it is doing. If you believe in achieving the goals you have all outlined for this city. We all know that this program has the potential to do even more with stable and sustained investment. I recognize that all of you have many difficult budget decisions ahead of you. Luckily though, the data here is really clear. Chat improves health outcomes by holding up portlanders who are falling through the cracks in this system. They do all this while saving the system money and using public resources wisely. Thank you for your time and for your commitment to the health and well-being of portlanders.
Thank you very much for being here.
Next up we have caroline skinner. She's joining us online.
Hello. Thank you for having me. My name is caroline skinner. I live in district two and I'm here to comment on home forward. I want to thank Willamette week writer sophie p for laying out the situation so clearly. And by the way, before I proceed, I want to say what he said. I'm seconding what he just said because we need effective common sense solutions desperately. The article, the coverage of home forward is just so revealing. I hope every city councilor Reads it and is thoroughly familiar with the points that it raises. The most recent coverage home forward's real estate portfolio was fast approaching financial distress. I was a renter for 40 years. I didn't buy my house until I was 58 years old. I managed a 32 unit apartment building for more than 20 years. I also used to own a small rental house out by the airport, so I have some insight into the situation. When I managed the apartments, it took typically 1 to 2 weeks to turn over a unit nearing an effective vacancy rate of zero. According to this article by sophie piehl of Willamette week, it took an average of 185 days for home forward to fill an empty unit in 2025, despite long waitlists across its properties. So I'm coming to you with a simple five point plan of suggestions for possibly ways to improve the situation where portlanders in urgent need of housing are not being well served. While executive pay rises to an extent, that should be a gross embarrassment, frankly, to all. One decrease rents to $200 below market rate. Use unspent housing dollars to make up the difference. The Willamette week coverage talked about people that had such a bad experience with home forward that they just went out and had got a rental on the the open market. They said that the intake process was so convoluted and difficult. There were so many hurdles to becoming a tenant at home forward, and the price difference was so minimal that they just went out and rented on public private housing, rather than going through home forward to decrease vacancy rates, prioritize empty units readiness three speed up application process new tenant intake. Keep waitlist updated for improved rent collection. Do more to connect tenants with rental assistance programs and five. Keep executive pay frozen or cut to 150,000 per year. Anything above that must be earned using performance based metrics. Willamette week says that phil kiesling, former secretary of state, urged an audit of I think I'm out of time here. It's hard to know what that time means, but I'm urging all of you to don't make a blame game of old, old city council. New city council.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Next up we have james yeager.
Good morning council.
Good morning councilman. Councilman, thank you again for your open house meeting that I got to meet you at at saban. My name is james yarger. I live in district two. Coming to you today with concerns that we have about development on our street at 1926 northeast liberty street, the lot was purchased off market by a developer who intends to develop a cottage cluster on on the on the site using ppe and code under title 33. Concerning cottage cluster development, the woodlawn neighborhood association last night signed off with us to delay the permit of demolition of the existing 1927 built cottage that's on the property. The reason we're doing this is developer of of this lot has done three other cottage clusters in our neighborhood. None of them seem to be appearing to meet what the code requirements show for cottage clusters in so much as providing Green, livable space that's shared by the units, and also providing ADA visibility. I've contacted planning and development to ask if waivers were given for the other developments in our neighborhood, and I haven't heard anything back from them. We're not against development. In fact, we're for the idea of development. What we really want is to protect the 125 foot doug fir tree that's on the property. I've looked after this property for the last 15 years for the current owners. They're currently out of state taking care of elderly parents who are in arizona. The tree is pretty important to me because it provides livable, makes a neighborhood livable. The thing that's most important, like I said, is for us is to try and make sure that the development of these cottage clusters actually does provide Green space for, for, for people and make. Make, make the space livable for everyone who is currently living there and who will be living there. Some of the the units that have been put in to our our neighborhood, as I found out last night in our neighborhood meeting, we're so poorly constructed that they had to have renovations made to them in order for people to get loans to purchase those homes. So again, what we're trying to do is to make sure that the development of cottage clusters is adhered to by the building code. Another thing that's happened, too, is a lot of these units are purchased off market by from elderly couples who've allowed their homes to fall into a state of disrepair. And we don't really feel that the that the my neighbors who've properties have been bought up were given fair market value for the sale of their house. Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much for being here.
Yeah. Thank you.
That completes communications.
Thank you very much. Thank you for everybody who came today. Colleagues, next on our agenda is the committee referral report. I referred three items to the climate and resilience and land use committee. Those are available online at Portland. Clerk slash committee referral dash list. Our next item is the city administrator's report. City administrator li oh, please call item number five first.
Thank you. March 2026 city administrator report.
Good morning. Councilors and council president and vice president. Rather than walk through every update in the written report, I want to frame this month's report around three themes operational stability, enterprise modernization, and a disciplined fiscal stewardship across all service areas. The organization continues to move from reaction to structure, from fragmentation to alignment, under operational stability and public safety. Recruitment continues with new firefighters hirings and ongoing police and emergency communications onboarding. Portland street response is now five years into operation and continues to mature as a core component of our first responder system and public works. When a readiness protocols were activated and transportation funding engagement is underway in every district to gather community input on long term funding strategies in community and economic development. Public engagement continues on housing bonus alignment to support affordability and family size. Unit production. Overall, the organization is operating with continuity and coordinated execution. In enterprise modernization, we engaged with a vendor to develop our roadmap for transitioning from sap to a cloud based enterprise resource planning system. This will be a multi-year enterprise transformation focused on systems alignment, efficiency and change management. Human resources has also launched two classification and compensation studies, affecting roughly 2001 hundred employees. This work supports workforce equity retention and structural clarity across the organization. At the same time, public works continues implementation of smart meter technology and a new customer engagement portal to modernize water service and customer access tools. Under fiscal stewardship, the city recently secured approximately 2.7 million in federal funding for housing, safety and infrastructure priorities. Citywide. Grant management remains strong, with roughly 567 million in active grant funding being managed across the enterprise and nearly 57 million in pending funding requests year to date. Closed claims a total of around 180, with approximately 186,000 in settlements paid and roughly 387 in total. Incurred. Costs included legal expenses. Claims above 50,000 continue to return to council for approval. We also anticipate receiving 400,000 from the visa and mastercard interchange settlement. My intent is to apply those one time funds towards payment system security and pci compliance upgrades. Finally, fy 2526 budget note tracker reflects the majority of items are either complete or on track. But if there are additional things that council is seeing not hitting on the budget note, please feel free to reach out to me at any time so I can bring that to the top of my radar. As we look through strategic investments, the city continues advancing discussions around the moda center renovation framework and the social housing feasibility study. Both represent long term strategic investments in portland's economic vitality and housing future. Under the federal response, the administrative rule is in effect regarding deployment of gas munitions. Staff is still working on the permanent rule and will follow up with council on a timeframe of that permanent rule to be in effect. We did get notice an appeal has been filed with the hearing officer for the notice of land use violation at the ice facility. This is brand new news. The hearing has not been scheduled yet. As we have more information, we will be following up with council. With that schedule and closing. In summary, the organization is steady moving forward with stability. Major modernization efforts are underway, fiscal oversight mechanisms are functioning and new ones are being developed, and enterprise alignment across service area continues to strengthen. We remain focused on operational clarity, accountability and forward motion, and I welcome any questions that council may have at this time.
Thank you, city administrator lee, colleagues, is there any questions or follow up for mr. Councilor Kanal?
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, administrator lee. Thank you. Council president. There's a lot of good news in here. I'll just without getting into the details, the info on chat on fb for clara vista, the hiring of the immigrant affairs lead. Happy birthday to psr turning five. All the new folks in public safety. I also wanted to quickly shout out the work that our office of government relations has been doing as well. I wanted to ask a couple questions here. I'll start with the budget notes since you mentioned it. One I need to make this for the public. There was a a budget note to look at the director and deputy director classifications, and it says in the report that that it's based on this, that there is a class comp study going on for the entire supervisory management level, employees of the city. That's not what was asked for in in my note, and it expanded it in a way that actually has both delayed it. And I think, given a false sense to the employees out there of what exactly was being asked for, I'm going to give you the exact number in a second here, but it's do Kanal oh eight and so in the description for it, it talks about doing a class comp study that there was no request for class comp study at all. The idea was to look at and see do 30 person bureaus. 20 person bureaus need deputy directors at all, and if so, what? Whether should they should be ones, twos, etc. Do bureaus that are that small need a director three instead of a director one and as this is related to the entirety of the the conversation around, you know, the whether or not our org chart is a pyramid or a pillar, and whether or not our layoffs last year were really targeting the top as as proportionate to the rank and file employees who do a lot of the work of the city. So that was the, the, the purpose behind it. And I just wanted to take a chance to to clarify that for the for the folks who might be wondering, you know, why did you get this? I know a lot of us have received emails about with surveys around this budget, sorry, around this class comp study, which is has been portrayed as related to the budget. No, but is separate. So I just wanted to take the chance to clarify that. I have. I'll do three things now and then I can get back in the queue if others want to go. But I did want to ask. There's it's noted in here that the the body camera footage from the shooting of Eric shearer was released two weeks after, which is policy. And I, I wanted to just note that after the release of the body worn camera footage for the death of damon lamar johnson last June, our office had several conversations with dca, with the Portland police bureau and the mayor's office around the process of that release, and several improvements that we wanted to see in terms of narration, editing, things like that, and also ensuring that council continue to have the opportunity to review the footage, which was a good process that was put in place for that particular. For that particular release. Talking again about about damon lamar johnson, we actually feel that that has gone backwards in my team around, you know, we didn't have that that advanced conversation this time. And the narration and editing remained. I think it's good to just release the footage and let the public make their own justification. I'm mentioning this now because fortunately, police shootings are actually a rare event in Portland. But for the because of that, I think it's easier to implement a standard practice for how councils notified and how the the release is actually structured. And I wanted to specifically mention the introduction. Narration is designed to frame the conversation, as opposed to just letting people see what happened, which is, I think, the purpose of body worn camera footage and its release. And then the third question I had, and this one I think I would like to understand, there was a Portland mercury article on February 27th about a February 24th employee town hall, in which the quote from you, mr. Administrator, was, I will tell everyone we are committed to that facility, staying open as it relates to the ice facility on mcadam. And I just wanted to give you the opportunity to clarify when you say we who's we?
City leadership. And that's an administrative side.
Okay. I think yeah, it might be helpful in the future to just be a little clearer, because I think people may have misunderstood that to include the folks on the city council who have not made a commitment either way as an entity, and I certainly individually have not.
Yeah, and that's a quasi judicial matter as well too. So I wouldn't be making any comments as it relates to council. And when I was making that comment that was related to the access, as we have thousands of citizens within our community that are still trying to seek through citizenship, that are required to still go to that facility to actually report from that standpoint, that's what I was making comments to.
Thanks. Yeah, I just I wanted to make sure people understood. You know, who we're talking about here. Thanks. And then I'll have a couple other things. But I don't know if anyone else is in the queue, so I'll wait. Thanks. Thanks.
Councilor. Morillo.
I didn't really have a comment or I didn't have a question. I had more of a comment on one of my budget amendments, so if you want to continue councilor Kanal, that's fine if that makes sense for flow.
Sure.
Thanks. The other piece relates to some of the appendices. So first I wanted to say that the the on the budget note tracker. The long term vacancy fee notes were both due back on on Saturday. I want to shout out to jonas biery for the package delivery fee information, and everybody else who worked on that, that was on time. I appreciate it immensely. I think PBOT was pretty heavily involved in that one too. I just wanted to to note for the record that there has been conversation. I am aware that why the long term vacancy fee ones have not come back yet. I'm looking forward to to seeing that when they do come, but I also don't have the exact date yet for when that's that's expected back. So just wanted to flag for those who have been asking my office about it. The second piece was that there is a an overtime related note, and it's not actually in this. It's related to overtime. I put out a press release on it showing that the overtime prioritization note was not followed by PPB. So there was a reporting so that the technical definition was report back and show it and the reports back were done, but showed that the the actual guidance was not followed on that. I just wanted to highlight that as well. And then two requests for more information, because I think this report has gotten better over time, both during previous administrator and your tenure. So two pieces of information I'd like to know. One is about contracts. We have a tracker showing new contracts, but I'd love to know the contracts that are continuing beyond the fiscal year. And if you wanted to narrow it down, you could say the, you know, above, above $500,000 or something like that. There were a lot of contracts that were either entered into or extended in the last few months of 2024 by the outgoing council. That I'd love to get more information on that are not documented in a single place. There's a searchable form, but you have to know what you're searching for in order to find it. And even for council, we don't have that unless it's listed out. So I think the same way you've done it with igas, which is really helpful, just applying that to contracts too. And then the last question I had was if in closed claims data, the appendix b, if we could get a little bit more information about the claimants and the the ultimate, I think the, the word would be disposition. So whether there was litigation, those sorts of information, the case number just to have a better understanding for the public and as well as for council as to what we're potentially getting sued over or not. And I think as, as we go forward, we've seen that the appendices have become the longest part of this by far. And I think that's good because there's a lot of information here, and I think you do a good job of summarizing it in the early stages. But I really do appreciate this. There's a lot of good news in here. And thanks for your time. Thank you, council president.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Back to councilor. Morillo.
Thank you so much. Thank you, city administrator. I appreciate this report. It was really helpful to me, and I appreciate councilor Kanal talking about the police body cam footage as well. I think that's something that's deeply important to a lot of us here. My I don't really have a question for it. I just wanted to talk about my Morillo 11 budget amendment from last year. We've been working very closely with the administrative side to implement this, and I want to thank you for the updates on the council budget notes. So I want to speak a little bit about my budget note, because it was titled budget transparency and information access framework, a very wordy title, but very important and descriptive. And I wrote this budget note last year with a desire to encourage transparency and collaboration, especially between the council and the administrative side, so that we can get role, clarity and information access as the legislative body. When we're trying to create policies for bureaus and with regards to budget, we need to be able to have access to information equally so that we can be good, strong legislators. So as we enter into the budget season and as the communications working group continues to find a pathway for how council offices can and will engage with city staff, I want to reiterate the three guiding tenets of the framework that council has requested when they approve my budget no. 11 to 1, the framework is supposed to acknowledge the placement of executive authority with the mayor and the city administrator, while affirming council's right to independent access to information necessary to fulfill its legislative duties. Second, to prohibit the imposition of communication protocols so restrictive that they excessively delay, limit or obstruct council's access to factual information, staff expertise, or documentation relevant to pending oversight to pending legislation or budget decisions, and finally, allow council members and their staff to submit information requests directly to bureau personnel with appropriate notice to executive staff and permit bureau staff to respond without requiring real time oversight or prior approval from executive staff. So I look forward to continuing to work with the executive side on this and to the proposal that. But I wanted to provide clarity for the public who's listening on this. You know, as we're structuring this new form of government and implementing these rules and make sure that we are all being engaged as councilors and that these are the core things that I will be looking for in the implementation phase. I know that council is very anxious for clarity on this matter as our city staff, and so I'm really grateful to everyone who's invested time in this proposal, and I look forward to working with you on implementing it. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Kanal.
Angelita Morillo: I just wanted to correct something I said earlier. I noticed there is an email from dca oliveira on the long term vacancy fees. It says that we're going to get info back by April 30th. I will say that that is a lot later than we wanted to be able to have a conversation about it in this year's budget. The reason that we picked February 28th to to do it on was so that this council would have the right and ability to review that information and potentially do something in line, not not necessarily as part of the budget, but in parallel to it timing wise. So I'm hoping that we can get that closer to the original deadline for at least the residential side. One thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president, I just wanted to quickly welcome gerald skelton, who has started his role as our new tribal government relations manager. I've had the pleasure of getting to sit down with him. I look forward to supporting his work here, engaging government to government relations. Really? Yeah, relations and the relationships with our tribal nations are really essential to our work ahead as a council. So welcome, gerald.
Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane seeing no one else in the queue, concludes our city administrator report. Thank you very much. Ca lee. Colleagues, we now move to the consent agenda. Keelan I don't know what you have to call for the consent agenda. I don't remember.
We had one item pulled which you announced earlier and we'll need to do a roll call. Vote for the rest of it.
Colleagues, are there any objections to approving the remaining three items on the consent agenda? All right. We'll have to do a roll call. Just looking. Okay, cool. Great. Please call the roll.
Thank you.
Avalos I.
Smith I.
Know I.
Pirtle-guiney I Ryan. I Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick I Clark I Green. I Zimmerman I Dunphy. I the consent agenda is approved with 12 I votes.
Thank you very much. Can we please call item number ten.
Amend the Portland clean energy community benefit fund climate investment plan document number 2026 022.
Thank you. Colleagues. This is the second reading of a non emergency ordinance. Through discussion I see councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. I'm going to move to divide the question on this amendment. Which I think is not debatable, but what I would like to do in the division of the question is divide it into two parts. The first would sort of take a vote on all the approved amendments to the underlying everything that we approved last time we talked about this, with their conforming attachments, with the exception of amendments related to strategic program 14, access to fair and flexible capital. Those are that specific amendment is in page nine through 11 of the exhibit a. So I want to take a vote on everything except for that. And then part two would be to vote on that.
Looking to our clerk and city attorney.
Yeah. So this this item right now is up for a vote. There is no motion on the table. So there is nothing to divide. Okay.
Okay okay.
Apologies, counselor. No problem. Colleagues, is there further discussion? Would you like to discuss what your concern was specifically or.
Yeah, thanks for that opportunity. Let me turn the mic on. Thanks for that opportunity. Strategic program 14 access to fair and flexible capital. When we went through the the the very thorough cip process was designed to provide access to liquidity and loan capital for folks who traditionally don't have access to it. That's the spirit of it. It's very much in line with the kind of sort of banking the unbanked approach to development finance over the last several decades, it has been amended in this amendment process to sort of validate this idea that we can use that for office to residential conversions, among other things, which I don't think is in line with that. I think it's very much an ad hoc justification for trying to pay for things that seem expedient right now. I think office to residential conversions sound nice in theory, but they're the one of the most expensive ways to develop new housing. You will not find a more costly way to develop housing than office to residential conversions. And so I think if our climate nexus and objective is to say we need to build a lot more housing in the city of Portland in transit rich areas, you're much better off raising those old buildings to the ground, scraping the surface parking lots and building superblocks and doing something like that. That's what we should be doing. Instead of trying to do a couple. Two, three retrofits so I don't support it. I should have brought this motion to divide, I suppose. It's difficult because we didn't vote on the underlying last time, so it's a little confusing. So I guess maybe a standalone amendment would have been more appropriate. I didn't do that. So I guess that opportunity has passed. But I have to raise that because we are going to be faced with increasingly more ad hoc, strained justifications for the climate nexus on trying to reallocate PCEF dollars as, as other expedient opportunities present themselves. So that's why I wanted to do it. I can't do what I want to do today. So for that reason, I will be a no on okay.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: I just wanted to say that I appreciate councilor Green's concerns and want to apologize to this body for not focusing more on this issue when we had the amendments before us in committee, because they deserve more consideration.
Thank you, councilor Novick. Colleagues. Anybody else in the queue? Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I will be supportive today, but the debate that we had at the last meeting was around the movement of funds away from transportation bucket to a housing bucket. And I just want to take this opportunity to say clearly to our PCEF committee that I hope that they heard the interest from council last week in making sure that we make more progress on decarbonization of our transportation sector, and that that is, I hope, a focus of their continued work so that while we are moving money away from that bucket today, that is not a a loss of of traction, not a loss of progress in decarbonizing our transportation sector.
Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you. I have a question. I think for the people that seem to be addressing the question over there. So I will wait about why we can't divide it. So I'll wait.
Okay. Thank. Good.
My question was why it's not possible. This is a motion that could stand. There's two parts that could stand separately. The motion is the the ordinance as a whole. We've divided ordinances before. So I'm curious why that couldn't be divided and have two separate pieces voted on.
It's in front of council robert taylor, city attorney. It's before council now on final passage on second reading it would be possible. You can't divide that. You can. If there's a separate amendment that wants to be offered. Now that could happen. If that amendment is adopted, then that could council could do that and then would have to go to second reading next week. So it is possible to change this right now.
Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Okay. Because I like everything else about the cip and I do want to vote on those things. I am going to offer an amendment and apologies, colleagues, that I have to do this verbally because I was prepared to just divide the question. I wasn't prepared to introduce something so my I would move that we move Green one to remove all of the red lines in exhibit a for the cip amendments such that it just removes that part of this amendment process. So we would not be amending sp 14. The amendment itself would to be not amend sp 14 in the underlying amendment, which is a hell of a mouthful, but that's what I want to do.
Okay. Councilor Green has introduced an amendment as moved amendment. Is there a second? Can we see the language of the.
Yeah. If you pull up, if you go in the item under today's agenda, item nine, exhibit a. It's page nine through 11. So my amendment would just remove those pages from this document, or rather just convert them to the original pre amended language. But my thinking is since this is an amendment to an existing thing, if you just take these out, then you're not amending that. So the underlying stays. Does that make sense colleagues. Other question.
Yes. Oh yeah.
Yeah. We will move to some questions about this. And there has not been a second at this moment. Councilor. No. Well actually I'm sorry I'm lost track of the queue. Councilor Kanal you're not in the queue. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Yeah, I just want to get a couple of things clear. If we adopt this amendment that has, does that mean that we have to push this final vote on to next week? Yes. Is that right? I'm interested if there's I know that there was some time sensitivity to some of the technical amendments here, and I just wanted to know if there's any eps or PCEF staff here that can tell us if this would really upset the apple cart if we lost another week.
Welcome up friends.
For the record, sam russell, program manager for the Portland clean energy community benefits fund. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague james valdez with the team, as he's been closely involved with some of the more time sensitive items to chime in.
Yeah. Thank you, councilor James valdez and PCEF strategic, I'm sorry, strategic partnerships and policy manager, to address your question. Councilor Novick. There are some pieces related to strategic program seven, which is the transportation wallet and biketown for all program, including some investments to be able to improve the fleet of the biketown, the rolling stock or the bikes that are out there. And so there is some time sensitivity to that. I think an extra week probably would, you know, would still be possible. But yeah, there there is some time sensitivity to make those improvements in order to get the equipment in a timely manner.
But a week doesn't give you too much heartburn.
I would say it's not a material amount of of difference there.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: So you guys might want to just stay up here because I suspect we're going to have a lot more questions. Sorry. So to clarify, if we remove sp 14, what happens to the dollars that are allocated? There is does that go into like a limbo. And then it has to be debated because we're changing committees up soon as well.
So right now we've we're working. We do have a market study we're working on with an external contractor on some of the program we anticipate launching there. We're probably going to go back and evaluate some of that scope, as in, and see to what extent we can, to what extent we can understand how we can pivot that towards the the original cip language. So some of the work will continue as, as it was in that that was I think this has been the challenge there. And I just want to maybe restate that program always had a broad amount of flexibility within it. And so some of the program would continue. But obviously as the red line would, as we revert back to the original, we'd have to go back and scope out and scope out. What are the other programing we would want to run out of that. So it would bring us back to the drawing table on some of the programing. Certainly.
Okay. And so if we push this back another week, similar to councilor Novick question, I just want to be very clear because there were some housing projects that we were told are dependent on some of these funds and on these timelines. Is another week going to destroy their opportunity to build that housing?
I don't believe so, in part because we would we would still have to collaborate with our colleagues at Portland housing bureau to develop the nofas for that strategic program. One solicitation. So, no, our expectation is to turn around, work with our colleagues so that we can set up the solicitations for those other resources.
Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I think with those clarifications, I feel comfortable supporting councilor Green's amendment. Appreciate that.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor, pirtle-guiney.
Council president. So is that a second? Don't we need a second to have this discussion?
Yes we do. There we go.
All right. That's all we needed. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Good catch. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. And thank you, councilor Ryan. I was going to ask that as well. My questions are similar to some of the questions from councilor Morillo. So it sounds like the red lining in strategic priority 14 is an addition and not a subtraction of anything currently in sb 14. Is that accurate?
It is. It is a clarification and allowance. It would be an expansion. I think that'd be fair to say. It would be an expansion, a clarification of the allowable uses of strategic program 14.
Let me ask this a little differently. What we have posted in our exhibit only shows red being added to sp 14. It does not show any redactions. Are we removing the language currently in sp 14.
As the amendment before you all today would remove it at the top, it says the section would be deleted in its entirety and replaced with that red line. So councilor Pirtle-guiney, yes, we would be. And and part of that was just an exercise of how much editing we were doing in line, and it felt easiest to strike the whole section and rewrite.
Okay, council president, in the future, I would love to have us get full information about the red lining of items. I did not notice before that this was removing an entire section, so I'm now not sure what we are moving back to if we remove this. That's my oversight for not bringing that up earlier, but I think that we need full information and the public needs full information about what these changes are, what changes either way here would be occurring to sb 14 current current uses. So does this language remove any uses? If we pull back this language what does that mean for utilization of sb 14? Will you be here in a few months saying that this is an underutilized bucket, or will you be here saying, absolutely. We were able to use this for very important things that we wouldn't have been able to fully fund if you council had made that change? Yeah. Help me understand where we're at with this bucket broadly.
So at the moment, if we were to revert back to the original language in the climate investment plan in a few months time, it would likely be the case that, yes, we would come back and say that we've got planning around this, that we'd have to have those conversations, but it would be underutilized, in part because we have to we'd now be starting back a little bit at a not quite zero, but we'd be starting back to begin a process to reprogram those resources.
So the PCEF committee has planned utilization of sb 14. Assuming this change and assuming these uses for that bucket.
Correct. We have we have we have we have a sense for based on these changes. Correct. We have programing that we understand and we expect to move forward with.
So in the same way that we were asked whether or not we wanted to change the PCEF recommendations around housing, and PCEF had already made plans for use of the housing dollars based on their recommendation to us. P cf has already planned sb 14 based on this recommendation to us as well.
I'm trying to think how to because the correlation is maybe not one for one, but yes, we've we've we've we've outlined programing based on this recommendation here.
Okay. Thank you. That's a lot to chew on.
Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney councilor Smith.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: So here we go again. And you can check the record on this. It's so true. Every time we try to allocate funding for underserved organizations, community based organizations that are trying to develop properties, organizations of color, people want to separate the question, add an amendment late to try to delay those kinds of activities. And it is not lost on me that it happens every single time. I need peace staff to step up and say what it is that they want. This is going to cause an issue. This is going to cause a delay in some of these programs. Tell the truth. Speak up. I disagree with this wholeheartedly. I disagree with the maker of it and the reasoning behind it. This is just unacceptable. You cannot, on one hand pass a amendment or pass a resolution. That says you're going to support racial justice when you can't even support racial justice by dismantling something that's going to go to underserved organizations, and you're going to delay it again for another week, just like you delayed the talk on the slow the flow of homelessness. Again, you need to stop. We need to stop. We need to pass this as is with with. Candace's amendment today on the second reading and stop playing games.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Green, back to you.
Yeah. I want folks to understand that what this amendment would do is revert it to strategic program 14 language that already exists. If we did not pass this at all, which says it is $45 million allocated to fair and flexible capital, which goes on to describe the use of funds as deploying funds through loans, credit line mechanisms, match savings or community funding pathways with flexible terms to help grow the number of climate focused projects and businesses in Portland that serve PCEF priority populations. So it does not change the money that would go to the priority populations. The original intent of this was to make sure that we're overcoming, and I quote, a legacy of discriminatory and predatory practices by traditional banking institutions that have created distrust in many low income communities of color. That is what I'm restoring. I'm taking out language that diverts a chunk of it towards some developers who have some commercial properties downtown, who want a little help to turn those into residential, and that actually moves us away from the initial intent. So if we pass my amendment, we strengthen and we reaffirm the original point and purpose of PCEF, which is to provide capital to overcome a legacy of discriminatory and predatory practices by traditional banking institutions in communities of color. Full stop. That's what this does. I'm not taking money away from any communities of color with this. I'm not redirecting it towards any other sort of use. I'm simply restoring language that already exists today that I think has been muddled. So that's what's happening. Let's be clear on what's happening.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Yeah. Following up on those, the prior two councilors, I can't remember. Is there anything in the amendment to sb 14 that says that the money that goes to office to residential conversions will result in affordable housing or housing for PCEF priority populations?
I've got to check the details of this particular amendment. As it reads. I can speak to the initial pilot work that had been done there. It was intended to support households that fall in the moderate income, 80 to 120% area median income. So it was to support market rate housing developments that would be capped in that range.
Also, I just want to say that I'm personally torn on this because although I tend to think that councilor Green is right, given that I didn't bring this issue up in a committee that I chaired, I feel kind of guilty changing my mind on it at this point. So just wanted to just wanted to point that out.
Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Smith.
Steve Novick: I know exactly what this is. This is just a ploy to delay. Again, we're postponing it. That's what I'm saying. Councilor Green. We're postponing it again. For organizations that are putting dollars to help communities of color to develop housing. And I know what you're saying. But you don't think a week delay is a week delay. Anything can happen. Within a week. We went to war and we didn't even know we were going to go to war this weekend. We woke up, woke up in the morning. Anything could happen. If you want to change this, this, this thing that the mayor is doing, write your own, write your own proposal and put it forward and add it.
I think next in the queue is councilor Avalos. So from.
So from what I'm understanding of how the original sb 14 was written and the difference between that and how this now redlined version, you know, the 15 there was $15 million a couple of years ago. I'm trying to like piece the timeline together. So a couple years ago there was some announcement from the city. This was like under mayor wheeler, that $15 million was being put aside for office to residential conversions. Right. And it mentions that a little bit here in this red line. So when that happened, what was that under? Because that was were we in the cip at that point? I helped me refresh my memory.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos. So when and that was I believe that was earlier last year. And this started in earnest under the existing strategic program 14, which, as I just to restate it, was 45 million for a broad range of programs where the focus was financing. Yes. Underlying it was certainly about supporting underserved communities and under-banked communities. As part of that effort, we had in earnest started an effort to try to understand office to residential, engaged in two projects with prosper Portland. Under the existing program. The question fundamentally was if we were to lean further into office to residential, we would need clarification of this program to support that, because once you go further, then you're talking actually a larger portion of this program as opposed to a small a small portion of the program. Does that make sense? It was this question of is it going to function as the majority of this program or larger than that, at which point we need to clarify the language to fully enable that? So that's what the amendment was intended to do. But the initial couple pilot projects that we were engaged in were done under the existing strategic program 14 guidelines.
So this effort is being led by who did the mayor request that there be an amendment so that he could use more PCEF money for office to residential conversions?
We had worked with our colleagues at prosper Portland to understand the demand there. And so they, through working with them and understanding their pipeline of projects, they had clearly communicated. There was a clear Lane of demand for these office residential projects.
Sure, but what I seem to recall from the 15 million pilot is that it is. It was meant to. Like we haven't even fully seen the pilot come to fruition. Right. Because is that we haven't spent the money for that. We we're still waiting for the pilot to be actualized. So we're essentially moving forward with making a change with an assumption of the outcome of a pilot. We have not completed in that. And therefore, that assumption being that we're going to need more money for office to residential, but it doesn't. It seems like the timeline is out of whack. Can you help me understand?
It's the language in. It's a good question. Councilor Avalos. The language in here is it presumes that as we work through the pilot effort, that there would be a stage gate and a bringing back the reporting to the committee before we design that next stage of work with office residential and evaluate how do we tweak it, tweak it in order to make sure that we're getting those community benefits. So in a way, what this does is it gives us the go ahead that should the pilot efforts prove fruitful and there's value there and there's the community benefits, the climate benefits, then there's a discussion, a stage eight with the committee to adjust the program and continue to move forward with that expanded program. So it writes it out such that we go through the pilot, have a pause, bring that evaluation back to the committee, and then roll out the subsequent programing.
And for the record, Eric engstrom, director of planning and sustainability. I think part of the reason this amendment moved forward was transparency to we had some criticism last year that this this program was very broadly written, and it wasn't obvious that office to residential conversions could be part of it. And so this amendment makes that very clear. But sam's right that the intention is still to evaluate the pilot project before moving to anything deeper.
Right. But this amendment makes a move with before we have the outcomes of the pilot project. Am I understanding that correctly?
Councilor Avalos I would say that this amendment would allow that opportunity for the funding to be used. If the if the pilot, if the evaluation of the pilot projects yield positive outcomes and would help us design along with the committee, prosper Portland and staff a more robust and ongoing opportunity for office residential, but only if that was the result of of those studies.
If I may read language from it, it says this is towards the end of that section. Staff PCEF committee members and prosper Portland staff will work together to define key success measures for the pilot to help determine whether a full program should move forward and, if so, how it should be structured and implemented to maximize client and community benefits. That was the work that we did to kind of create that space with the committee, with prosper, with staff, to to have that stage gate.
Okay. And then if I read a little bit ahead of that, it talks here, you know, to I, I don't know whose question. Maybe it was councilor Greene's questions about. Hold on, let me read this. So I'm not seeing a clear. What's the word maybe intent in the way that this is rewritten to honor the original, right where it was, again, flexible capital, priority communities. This the way it's written, doesn't seem that that language and intent has been transferred over. Just this is just my read of it. So I'm curious your interpretation. That's how I'm seeing it. So am I missing something because I feel like that is the gap that councilor Green is raising that I'm also concerned about. Because if we're already pre-determining putting money towards an outcome that we have not decided will benefit, priority communities will be cost effective because yes, office to residentials are incredibly expensive and often. And if we look across the country often not worth it. And in fact, I rose those questions back in that day when the program was first announced. You know, as a community member, I was pretty vocal about that. So that's why, you know, it's kind of retriggering my memory of like how I was feeling about that then and now realizing that this is what it seems, further baking in an outcome we have still not determined how long is the pilot supposed to take? Because we're about to be we're on the verge of a new cip, and I could see the outcome of the pilot landing nicely, timing wise, for us to talk about whether it's worth investing in the next ip. Am I understanding the timing correctly?
The timing? I'll turn it to my colleague james valdez, to speak to the timing of some of the results that we're getting from our studies there and our climate impact analysis we're doing on the first two projects. But before I just before I turn it over to james to speak to that timing, what I will say is there is other clarifications in here focused on, for instance, consumer, consumer facing financing product. And that was part of our work of finding some some of those gaps as we as we've implemented the current cip. So while yes, the some of the broader language around just under-banked communities has been removed because in no small part, part of it is we've got a range of programing that already is providing full subsidies for businesses, for households, for multifamily properties, that the financing component wasn't what we were seeing as most relevant for our under-banked communities, if that makes sense. We were we were we were already providing deep subsidies to the extent of $50,000 for households earning up to 80% area median income. So the rationale there and what we've surfaced is that financing isn't what's needed in that space. So let's focus the financing on where we do have gaps. I'll turn it to james to speak to where the pilot evaluation currently is, because we are close to getting some of that initial data.
Yeah. Thank you. Councilor Avalos. The the pilot study really focuses on two different elements. One is evaluating the embodied carbon savings of not, I guess, demolishing and rebuilding a building, but instead keeping the structure intact and the carbon savings of that. And then there's an operational carbon savings based on the efficiency of equipment and measures that are installed in, in the building. And so the analysis is being done basically, right now there's a two step process where we worked with an outside firm to provide that analysis of both those components. And then there's a third party evaluation of that. And we do anticipate in about a month and a half or so to be able to to report more on that. And the pathway there would be for us to report probably to the committee to then then look, look at those results and determine whether or not a it the savings really warrant launching a more full program. If this strategic program 14 as written were to move forward.
What is the correlation between these supposed savings and carbon emissions and their impact on priority populations? And the reason I ask that is because, as we know, PCEF is not just about reducing ghg for the sake of it. It is about specifically people who have lacked access to climate resilient infrastructure, dollars, resources. So an example I like to use is if people don't have clean water and clean air, then maybe that's more important than making sure rich people have solar panels, right? So where can you help me understand how that goal is going? Back to the original intent of making sure that priority populations are benefiting from the ghg reductions, right? Because again, there's lots of ghg to reduce everywhere, but that does not equally impact people. And it definitely doesn't impact east portlanders if you're reducing ghg in downtown. But we still don't have clean air, and our community members die ten years younger than everywhere else because of the lack of clean air. Do you see what I'm asking?
I do, I do.
Yeah, I would say on the on the structure of office residential there there are requirements in terms of affordability for the units. But as sam had mentioned earlier, it's not focused on low income housing, is focused on sort of the middle income from 60 to 120%. Ami but that is part of the requirements for the entities that are developing and rebuilding into office residential. I think you bring up a much broader range of environmental justice and community impacts, though, than just just the ability to be housed.
Yeah, I think this is there's always going to be a range. And if you look across our city, you're you're not incorrect in that some of that intent. But there is a broad range of how we look at community benefits across our programs. In this program. It is about some of those community benefits are the local economic activation of the central city. But without a doubt, there's also just the job creation, the workforce development. These are prevailing wage jobs. And then I think I'm sure I'm missing a few other things, but I want to name it broader here and that it's maybe there's some programs where it's very targeted and here it's broader, but we certainly have the workforce development opportunities.
Thank you. I appreciate your answers. Yeah. I think overall how I'm feeling about the amendment, I definitely it gives me pause. It's something that, again, I have been vocal about over the years. You know, I was, I think so focused on worrying that we were going to allocate money to, you know, out of housing production goals, that I didn't put a lot of energy into this. So I'm grateful to councilor Green for raising it because it is something that does concern me. I think obviously the process is, you know, a little bit janky, and we're working on that as we continue to understand our legislative powers. But I think hearing your answers, I mean, I think my biggest concern is predetermining an outcome before a pilot is complete. I think that's the whole point of pilots is like, let's test the concept and then decide if it's worth investing more. 15 million. I don't know how far that's going to get with office to housing residential because again, it is super expensive. So I don't even know how many units we're going to get out of that, that small 15 million. And I'm concerned that if we're going to again, predetermine this outcome and set up the path for many, many more millions to be going to downtown buildings to convert to housing, you know, that concerns me for what my constituents are going to be missing out on. They're already missing out on so much. We've already made so many changes to the cip that I do not like, as again, I have been vocal about for years. So that's it's giving me pause. I don't know right now how I feel. I'm curious to hear the rest of the discussion, but I do appreciate raising this. And I think ultimately, you know, when it comes to making decisions in the legislative process, stopping it, slowing it for whatever reason, for the outcome of being helping communities of color, that's always going to be worth it to me. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you so much, councilor Avalos, really appreciate your line of questioning here. I think it was a very clarifying for me. So just appreciate your expertise in this space and councilor Green, I appreciate you bringing this forward. I know councilor Novick said he feels a little nervous about supporting this because we were chairing this committee. It was both him and I because it was multiple sessions and we didn't catch this. And I think that the beauty of the form of government is that we have a lot of people up here with a lot of different expertise, and it is okay when sometimes our colleagues find something to make something better. And we get to do that right now. And I want to reaffirm what councilor Green said, because he is correct. It is only a week delay if we make this change. Sam has already stated for us very clearly that that is not going to harm any of the projects that are on the table right now, and that the existing set of sff dollars PCEF programs in the cip will continue unpaused while the amendment process proceeds. So I just want to reaffirm that I don't think that this is going to cause undue harm to communities of color. And I think that as we're having these big discussions about PCEF and how those dollars are going to be used, I'm also thinking very heavily about the precedent setting of these things that we're passing now, and how that changes, how those dollars can be used from the original intent, which was to help low income people of color who are primarily going to be in district one, and who deserve for these dollars to go towards them in the most holistic way possible. So, councilor Green, I really appreciate you catching this and pivoting quickly under a, you know, short notice. And I think it is good that we have so many councilors who care about the community, who have different levels of expertise, who can show us things a little differently, even if they don't sit on a committee. That's the purpose of us being here together. So I will be very firmly supporting councilor Green's amendment. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Morillo councilor Kanal.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you, council president. I want to also appreciate again following councilor Morillo. I'm going to say ditto to most of that and in particular the line of questioning for councilor Avalos, the responses from staff. And, you know, councilor Green's point about the last week, we talked about this issue about office to residential. I'm broadly supportive conceptually and it but I think your point about the cost effectiveness of it is really well taken by me. And in terms of what is actually going to do more, not only for housing, but for the people that are ultimately benefited by it. Access to capital is really, really important. I think anyone who has paid a lot of attention or any attention to the needs of people, but particularly low income people and people of color in accessing capital, will know that that is a huge issue. And and the importance of maintaining that is something that I appreciate. Councilor Green bringing up as a champion for those communities. And I just wanted to make sure that that was brought into this conversation. I love the idea of opening up a conversation around superblocks as well, and I think it's important that we have that conversation in a different agenda item at some point soon. But I appreciate that being brought up and I'm going to vote yes on this. I probably wouldn't have had to come up last week, so I appreciate that. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I heard last week loud and clear that we needed to follow the pcf committee recommendations. I do think that at times we need to assert ourselves in this work, but last week I voted on an amendment because I was asked to honor the pcf committee recommendations and to recognize that when we had projections of underutilization of funds, we had an interest in making changes, to move forward quickly, to take advantage of those funds during this five year period. Frankly, I am not convinced that office to residential will work here. I agree, and while I have long supported work to expand access to capital and would like us to find more opportunities to do this work at the city so that we can make Portland a great place and affordable place for everyone to live. I'm actually not sure how capitalization of the unbanked. The other thing many of my colleagues are discussing fits within our carbon reduction goals in the first place. Pcef projects are supposed to hit three goals. They don't all hit all of them equally, certainly, but I'm looking at how we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, how we make sure that those who have faced the most impact from climate change benefit the most from the use of the funds, and also how we expand access to good jobs through workforce opportunity provisions. I have questions about both versions of sp 14 before us today, and their ability to meet all three of these goals. Frankly, I don't think either version does, and that's concerning to me on a broader level. But because I'd like to be consistent with the ask last week to support the pcf committee recommendations, and because I'd like to be consistent with the ask last week to make sure that we are looking early at where there might be underutilization of funds. I will support the pcf committee recommendations today. I do look forward to moving upstream in our discussions with the pcf committee moving forward, however. Thank you, council president.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor. Vice president. Clerk.
Thank you, mr. Chairman. I'm going to come at this a little bit differently than what the discussion has been so far, although I really appreciate what councilor Pirtle-guiney has just said. I don't want to discuss the merits of office conversion to housing. I don't know if it'll work. I know it's controversial. I know it's expensive, but it's worth exploring. And I think that's exactly what the staff recommendation is, and I want to give them the flexibility to pursue this. And for me, this really sends a signal to the community about the downtown. Are we interested in turning the downtown around? The downtown is an economic engine for the entire city. It benefits just all the districts, not just the downtown or district four. So I'm interested in that local economic activation that sam mentioned, and that we send a signal that we're looking into this. We're interested in revitalizing the downtown. So I'm a no vote on the amendment.
Thank you. Councilor, clerk, colleagues in the queue. Everyone has spoken at least once. I'm going to extend the courtesy to mayor wilson.
Council president, council vice president. Thank you for the opportunity. Council colleagues, I appreciate this moment to talk primarily about office of residential conversion. It is something that I've been researching for years, and sam has been gracious enough and donny and Eric to kind of review how the strategic plan and program fits with office to residential conversion. But there's so many other value propositions that are at play at this particular moment. We've inherited the central city task force from the previous administration, from the governor, and from all those stakeholders in the downtown core who wants to see our vibrant community and the renaissance that we're all hoping to create with that central city task force. We now have the round table, and one of our key goals is net office absorption, converting these offices into different purposes. Office to residential is one of those purposes that we're committed to doing. And I think some of the questions that you brought forward were very salient. Councilor Avalos, you're exactly right. Who's moving forward with these projects? Is it a viable way to bring capital and housing online, which is what you had noted? Councilor Kanal how do we get capital involved in this? In calgary? They have a successful office of residential program in new york city. They have dozens upon dozens of conversions going on, but they have a vibrant core where they have capital ready to go to work to make those conversions. In Portland, we lack capital. A lot of it's self inflicted on the city that we have right now, but we're making meaningful changes to our city to attract capital. This is a chance to use this sp 14 as the catalyst to show that portland's open for business, and we're going to invest in these office conversions to hit those three key priorities, which is reduce emissions, embodied carbon in these buildings is something we lock in, but we're changing the purpose to reduce energy usage. We're bringing the most high tech sort of hvac systems and led lighting and new programs and technology into these buildings. And then third, how do we benefit communities in need? These office towers are along transportation oriented design or villages that we create. We already have a mall, a bus mall. We walk out there every day and we see the inactivity in that bus mall, and we're cutting bus lines and TriMet times and hours of service. This is our way to just continue to focus on that mixed use in the downtown urban core. So we bring that community back. And without a dense urban core, without an active mixed use core, we're unable to really show ourselves open to the nation for business. And so office of residential activates our office towers. It brings in mixed income housing into our urban core, and it really hits on all of those metrics that we're trying to build in our city. So thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you, mr. Mayor. Colleagues, there are some folks in the queue who have spoken at least once, maybe a couple twice. We are 35 minutes over on our calendar, so we will not be finishing the full agenda today. And I'm hoping we can wrap up, move on to a vote on the amendment, and then move it to or vote on the second ordinance. So, councilor Green.
Mitch Green: I'll be brief. This pilot project will not convert office space in the downtown core with towers to residential. Those towers have really thick floor plates that do not. They're not amenable to conversion. It's very expensive. It will never happen. Not with $15 million at least. This is going to be intended for two pilot projects. I think the prosper Portland has already been working on. One is the casket building in old town, and there's probably some other opportunities. I think at one point in time I heard that maybe the the pine street market one was another contender and that would be adding a floor, not converting, but adding a floor. So these are not the same. I mean, the vision that you've laid out, mayor, I want that too. But this doesn't do that. This does this provides gap funding, for lack of a better term, for projects that have already been identified, but that the private sector is not going to bring forward. We can have a debate about whether we think that's good or not, but I'm worried about the signal we send to say that if you want to do business in this town, you can expect the public sector to pony up the entire capital stack. And that's the new standard. I don't think that's a good use of our taxpayer dollars. The other piece here is it's talking about community benefit and priority populations in the context of 60% to 120% ami 60% ami is already unaffordable. It's already at market. People are not renting 60% ami affordable housing units because they can just go to the market and pay the same rate without all the headache. 120% ami is way above market. So what this is, is this is a play to develop with public dollars. High income housing, frankly, and I don't support it. So I think I've said what I'm going to say. I think we should probably just move to a vote. But if your colleagues if you're if you're being sold an 80 to 120% ami story, like it's going to it's going to be housing for for janitors and teachers, you need to look at what those rents are. Those are in the many thousands of dollars per month for a single one bedroom. So that's this is not it. So thank you, councilor.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, mr. President. I just want you all to know that all projects in this proposed ordinance are stopped until there is clarity. We are so bogged down by paralysis of analysis regarding this ordinance, process and procedures. It's pathetic. Democracy delayed. Is democracy denied. Justice delayed is justice denied for poor folks, underserved residents, communities of color, and community based developers. And that's who we're talking about. I don't ever vote against my interests or my previous support of Avalos. One from last week to this week. I am still in support of it and it needs to be voted on today and approved, not delayed until next week. And then we'll find something else next week to to delay it again. So so no, I will be voting no for this.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Yeah, I'm I'm a little I'm a little puzzled by a couple of the pieces of information I got here. The 60 to 120%. This is last year's data shows that 120% ami the max rent is. This is from Portland housing bureau, $2,606 for a studio. So that that to me is is pretty alarming there. I also everything I agree with 100% what the mayor said in terms of the goal here and I've, I think I've been on the record several times as saying that downtown needs to be a neighborhood where people live in. I don't know that this does it, but I would love to hear a little more information on the particular what what is this 15 million going to go to? Specifically? I heard the casket building and the the pine street market building, but I wanted to understand it a little better from from the administrative side or from the mayor, if that's okay with you. Council president.
I'll be quick.
Thank you, council president. Thank you, councilor Kanal, for the question. Like the first 15 million tranche, what we really tried to do is not spread it thin and put little amounts into a lot of buildings that never got done. It's only two projects that the first tranche went for. And that's the goal for this tranche as well. Just two projects. And you're right, officer residential is not a candidate for every building. It has to be specific. But we do have about a dozen buildings that have potential. We want to match that capital with external capital to get two more buildings funded, to get going on the construction.
Sorry. Thank you for that clarity. That doesn't I think that means we're not ready to say which two buildings yet, and that's okay. But can you speak to the ami levels?
Certainly. And and I don't want to misspeak. And so, sam, if I do endure Eric, if you would please jump in the ami is the focus on a mixed use downtown core. Downtown already has an abundance of affordable housing. We have to create that mixed use environment where we're not just focused on 60% ami or 30% ami. We need all types of housing. This is middle income housing, so we have that mixed use core.
Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: I'm going to vote for the amendment, not because I'm necessarily convinced that the office of residential idea is a bad idea or a bad use of PCEF funds, but because I think that it's worthy of further discussion. And maybe if somebody wants to, we don't have to do all the all the amendments now. I mean, somebody could bring one forward like in a few weeks. So to me it's a matter of like ensuring there's there's further discussion and there's been a vigorous discussion here that I'd like to see continued. I also wanted to note that the mayor's reminded me that I've been meaning to go to calgary to find out about their office to residential program. I've hesitated because calgary is so well known as a paradise on earth that I know that I get criticism of doing a junket far exceeding that of our colleagues who went to vienna, but I think it's probably a good idea to do so if anybody's willing to join me in taking the risk of that kind of criticism. I think that I would like to take that trip.
Sounds fun. Colleagues councilor Kanal are you still in the queue? Okay. Thank you. Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please call a vote on Green one?
Okay, if I may, I would like to restate the motion to make sure. Okay. Thank you. Motion to amend exhibit a to delete pages nine through 11 to restore strategic program 14 moved by councilor Green. Seconded by councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Sounds right to me.
Thank you. Amylose. I Smith.
No.
Kanal.
Feeling we're going to need to revisit this at some point soon.
I pirtle-guiney. Know. Ryan. No Koyama Lane I.
Aye, Morillo I.
Novick I.
Clark no.
Green. I Zimmerman no.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with seven I votes and five no votes.
Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. This item now moves to second reading next week. Can we please call item number 12, noting we rearranged our agenda.
Item 12 documents 2020 6-052 authorized bureau of transportation to acquire certain permanent and temporary property rights necessary for construction of the northeast mlk boulevard safety and access to transit project through the exercise of the city's eminent domain authority colleagues.
This is the second reading of a nonemergency ordinance. I will also note that we are 35 minutes late. Colleagues, is there any further discussion on this item? Seeing no one in the queue, can we please move to a roll call vote?
Avalos I. Smith I.
Kanal just clarifying. We're on item 12.
Yes.
I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane. Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: She may be unavailable.
Absent aye, Morillo. I Novick.
I.
Clark I. Green I. Zimmerman I. Dunphy I.
The ordinance passes with 11 I votes and one absent.
Thank you. Can we please call item number 11?
Item 11 document 2020 6-053. Amend the fy 20 2526 appropriations schedule to reallocate $150,000 from the legal priorities reserve fund to support refugee and immigration legal services colleagues.
This is the second reading of a non emergency ordinance, but I understand there is an amendment. I will look to counselor Avalos.
Yes. Thank you. All right. So, colleagues. Funding legal aid and deportation defense is one of the most direct and critical ways we can support immigrant, refugee and asylum communities. Right now, the federal administration is weaponizing our broken immigration system to advance a mass deportation agenda. Since taking office, we've seen a staggering increase in detentions. Portlanders are being taken off our streets and rapidly moved into deportation proceedings. Portlanders who are mandated to attend ice check ins are part of their as part of their legal obligations, are being detained. Organizations like innovation law lab and clear clinic are on the front lines, defending immigrants and their right to due process. These legal clinics are doing the bulk of representation work as part of our rapid response system, including at the Portland immigrant immigration rights coalition's resource center near the macadam ice facility. In fact, these are the only two organizations doing this work in the Portland area. In many cases, the legal representation they provide has been the difference between deportation and keeping families together. It has been the difference between life and death. Let me be clear. This amendment continues to support saw and the important preventative work they do to help people pursue lawful status and stabilize their families. That work is critical, and it absolutely deserves support. But prevention alone is not enough. For the moment that we are in right now, people in our community are being detained and placed into removal proceedings. And when that happens, the only thing standing between someone and deportation is access to legal representation. Deportation defense is fundamentally different work. It is courtroom representation, bond hearings, emergency filings and preventative rapid response when someone is taken into custody. Critically, we have seen immigrants, refugees and asylees targeted for deportation even as they are fulfilling their legal obligations, like attending mandatory check ins at the ice facility. The trump administration has used the information they have to target people with legal status, including aggression, family outside of the same east Portland adventist where they shot luis and the family had a pending asylum case, and they had work permits and they were still taken by ice. The crespo family was released and safely returned to Oregon after significant media attention. Work done by attorneys at law lab, and the advocacy and oversight of congresswoman maxine dexter, I bring up the story of the crespo family not to cast doubt or disparage the meaningful preventative work of soar, but to demonstrate that preventative work alone does not mean people are safe from deportation. While the state is making investment in deportation defense, the demand far exceeds the available resources. The organizations doing this work locally are experiencing enormous strain. Clear clinic alone has seen a 600% increase in workload, while staffing levels have remained the same. And last October, this council unanimously adopted the protect Portland initiative and committed to identifying ways the city can act to safeguard portlanders from federal overreach. Supporting deportation, defense and legal representation is one of those ways. This amendment simply recognizes that a comprehensive approach requires both preventative legal services and deportation defense. For those already facing removal. Legal representation keeps families together, it stabilizes communities, and it prevents the devastating consequences of separation that ripple across our social safety net. I urge this council to treat deportations like the emergency emergency that they are, and to support this amendment. I have a couple of questions as well. One of the requests that I received from a member of the mpc was that any other organization considered for funds should present a proposal in the same way that soar has, outlining that they would use those, how they would use those funds, and what the impact on the immigrant and refugee community would be. I agree that this information should be put on the table so that the public is informed and counselors can make a fair assessment of this amendment. And I believe that representatives from innovation law lab and clear clinic are in the audience, and I'd like to call on them so that they can explain more about what their respective organizations could achieve with the 100 k in additional funding.
On the agenda.
Do you want me to go first?
Thank you. Go ahead. Please answer the question. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Good morning councilors. Thanks so much for having us here. The clear clinic and innovation law lab.
For the record first.
Jamie Dunphy: Oh. I'm sorry. Thank you, councilor Dunphy. My name is laney tupper. I'm the executive director of the clear clinic. The clear clinic and innovation law lab provide rapid response legal assistance at the macadam ice field office, which means that we have attorneys and often paralegals as well, who remain at the field office to provide legal advice to anyone, any portlander. I think really importantly for councilor the councilors to consider is that any portlander who walks into the perc resource center, which is outside across the street from the ice macadam field office, is entitled to receive legal advice and assistance from our attorneys. We also have paralegals and outreach workers who are present there to help people get connected with other resources and services. We estimate that for $100,000, we could provide 125 rapid response legal shifts. And conservatively, we estimate that we assist a minimum of three individuals at every rapid response legal shift. Often it's been closer to 4 to 8, but conservative the conservative estimate would be three individuals that we assist with legal screenings and more, sometimes up to and including habeas corpus petitions for relief for unlawful or unjust detention. So that would be a total of 375 folks that we could assist with that funding.
Sure.
Council. My name is lisa pena. I'm the director of strategy at innovation law lab, and I will just echo what laney has shared. We have been doing this rapid response collaborative work over the last year and hoping to provide that rapid response for individuals who are coming to the facility as well. As, you know, we are organizations that are funded by the equity corps of Oregon program. And I'd like to just clarify what our kind of connection to, to the equity corps of Oregon program is. So the universal representation program, which is equity corps of Oregon program, actually started in 2017 and 2018 by an initial investment from the city of Portland that was geared at making sure that people who were in removal proceedings or facing deportation had access to an attorney. People are 5.5 times more likely to win their case if they have an attorney alone, so it felt very critical at the time to make this investment. And since then, in 2022, the state of Oregon made it so that the equity corps of Oregon program could be a state funded program. Right now, it receives about $15 million per biennium, and it is funneled through the Oregon worker relief coalition as well as the Oregon state bar. And it provides a series of different things, including. A statewide clearinghouse that provides logistical support, a universal navigation and support system which includes a call center to streamline access to immigration attorneys, a client service fund to assist with fees like filing fees or interpretation costs. It also provides a individuals who are seeking services need to make sure that they are both program and income eligible, so that they have access to attorneys, and then overall, it provides resources to attorneys. So it's not just deportation defense. It's also not just immigration legal services. It is navigation. It is support services. It's a statewide call center. It is much larger than that. And so none of the actual rapid response shifts that we are doing are funded. They are only funded if an organization takes on the case. The equity corps of Oregon program believes that people who are eligible should be able to access an attorney, and the funding goes to the attorney. Once the services are provided. And so us being at the macadam facility is not funded unless we are actually helping an individual. Happy to answer any additional questions to.
And I'd just like to add lainie tupper, again, for the record, I just like to add that that includes individuals who are not necessarily echo eligible. So people who live across the river in Vancouver are also eligible for our services, whereas they might not be our rapid response legal defense services, whereas they might not be eligible for equity corps of Oregon. And our time, our attorney's time that they spend sitting there providing legal advice and, you know, being available for anyone who has an ice check in is not remunerated through the equity corps of Oregon program. So I think that's an important distinction.
Thank you. Have were you going to say something to or are you just coming along for the ride? Okay.
Thank you so much for having us. My name is whitney phelps, and I'm the immigration justice program director at the clear clinic, and I am one of the attorneys that is providing rapid response on a weekly basis. So I'm happy to answer questions. But I would say that on a weekly basis, I have the opportunity to support people as they go into their ice check ins, provide them with at least a little bit of legal advice, and in the worst case, I get to meet with them once they're detained, provide them with information, potentially help them to understand what their rights are if they don't already, and then avenues for potential relief where, like lainey said earlier, we're evaluating is there a habeas corpus petition that could be filed to prevent this person from being long term detained? And we are. It's an honor to serve people in that capacity.
That's thank you for being here. Lastly, members of this board, I want to say thank you to the ncpc, who has been working with me in the last few days to adjust this amendment accordingly. Luckily, the board and I share the same goal of getting support to our immigrant communities that they desperately need, and I'm glad to hear that they are supportive of my amendment. So I hope that the council will consider this urgent need and act accordingly. And I ask for a second for my amendment.
Second.
Councilor Avalos moves councilor Morillo has seconded the amendment. Councilor Avalos, are you? Thank you. Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you. I, I just want to start off by saying how appreciative I am of the work of all of the community organizations and of all of the councilors that are trying to do right by our communities. I think that these discussions are so difficult because we're working with such limited dollars, and we're trying what I think what people are seeing in the community is that everyone is trying to do right by our communities that we love and care for under very pinched and difficult circumstances. So I just want to name that before we begin this discussion and ground us in that. I do have questions from the and I really appreciate councilor Avalos amendment and the changes to it. I see that it was increased from 150 k to to 300 k. And I just want to make sure because this is the city's legal defense fund, as far as if we pass a policy and it needs to be defended in court, do we have funds available to defend our own policies that we pass when they go through court scrutiny? And it's my understanding that fund was already on the lower end of what it should have been. And so this would be an additional amount taken out. Can anyone from the city attorney's office, maybe, or whoever is meant to speak on that, talk about the potential impacts of 300,000 versus 150,000, just so we know what that impact would be for the city and for us trying to defend our policies.
Okay.
Hi. For the record, robert taylor, city attorney, the the your correct. The fund is intended to help the city defend council priorities or other judgments that are not covered by the risk fund. The our preference in this fund is to have at least $1 million in it every year. The fund is drawn down over the course of the year. Our preference would be to have that replenished every in the budget cycle. Currently, there's about $820,000 in that fund. I, I if you take 150 out of it, I think that sort of puts us in the yellow risk category. I think if you take 300 out of it, we're probably still in the yellow risk category. But bordering on the the red. I would not want to go below 500,000 if we can avoid that. And if the if the plan is to replenish in the next budget cycle, going down to about a $500,000 level, it's a short term risk, right? You just have to do it for the remainder of the fiscal year. If council's intent here is to draw it down to 500,000 and not replenish it and just keep it at that 500,000 next year, then I think we're, you know, we're in a difficult we're in a higher risk situation. And then just to kind of put this conversation in broader context, there's there's at least one other, you know, there's other items coming before council today where if council adopts the policy, we may look to the risk to the legal priorities fund to help cover that. So, you know, there are trade offs that council is going to have to make as the policy maker and the budget writers here. But I think if you take 300,000 out, we're we're getting very close to the level where we're putting other things at risk. But again, if council is just going to replenish it in a few months, that's a short term risk.
Okay. Thank you so much, robert. I really appreciate that. I think I had heard from councilor Avalos that the intention was to replenish those funds in the budget cycle. I trust that we can try to do that. I'm also just cognizant of the fact that we're going into a massive budget cut season. We're not. So we're going to be making very difficult choices about beloved things that the community cares about. So I think we can all say it's very easy to find 300,000 right now, and we will find that that is a lot harder later, as we are all put in the pressure cooker of trying to defend things that are constituents care about. I do have a few questions about the original proposal. Councilor pirtle-guiney about the 150 that would be allocated, and I was wondering if we could get more details on the types of roles and services or which programs specifically it would fund. But I was curious about how much of this 150 k is expanded services versus backfilling programs that were previously funded by state or federal grants that have lapsed? I have a few questions, so maybe I'll give them to you one at a time so I'm not overloading it.
Council president, is it appropriate to bring somebody from sau up to answer these specific questions? I don't want to misrepresent any of their intentions with these dollars. I know that she wasn't able to be in the room, but kerry babin from mpc is online as well, if that's an appropriate speaker at any point. And councilor Morillo, I'm happy to answer questions, but I'd prefer on the the technical spending details to make sure I don't get any details wrong.
That makes total sense to me. I feel comfortable with that if everyone else does.
Absolutely. Yeah.
I think we are getting access online for whomever is online, but if anybody from sores in the room also happy to have them come up.
I see some folks from sauron ecumenical ministries standing up. They may be able to help us.
Good morning. My name is britt conroy and I'm with ecumenical ministries of Oregon to the question about whether these funds will be backfilled or represent new investments in the community. It's true that saw legal or immigration legal services program lost $300,000 in a federal cut when the trump administration came into into power. This is this. As you may remember, three different levels of investment were presented to the new portlanders policy commission. The highest level was $300,000 that would have made investments in naturalization. That would have been some of those that backfilling, in fact, $150,000. The focus is not in that space, but rather to protect those that have lost. Protections or are at risk of losing protections. The focus of this amendment is to focus of this proposal is is on that preventative work that would help again, about 75 individuals and then plus benefit on average another three family members. Through that preventative work. So councilor Morillo, if there's any other questions I'm happy to answer those.
Okay. I think that's helpful. I have a question. I don't know if this is well, you should stay up here because I think I'll have more questions for both of you. But I don't know if this is for you or for councilor Pirtle-guiney, but I'm curious why 150 k was the number that was chosen, as opposed to 140 k? 185 k? What is the like? Are there specific things that were. Does that make sense? So why is half our council gone?
Council president do you mind if I take that question? Councilor Morillo I can't speak to why the recommendation from ncpc was at 150,000. But when I looked at the recommendations, which came in a 15,000 150,000 or 300,000, I initially made an ask of our our cbo and our finance director about where we might be able to find funds at the $300,000 or the $150,000 level. There were not many options at that. There were no options that our administrative team felt comfortable with at the $300,000 level. But this legal fund was identified where mr. Taylor said that he was comfortable with us moving into what he just described as the the yellow zone at the $150,000 level. So I chose that mid level to bring forward so that we could at least make progress.
Gotcha. Okay. That's that's helpful. So it was less about specific programs and more about like what that fund could withstand. So if 15 k I'm sorry to be so pedantic about you know, I love you, britt, but it sorry to be pedantic about the different individual pieces of these programs, but I think so. 15 k covers the screenings for 75 individuals. What is the rest of the funding going towards? And yeah, let's start there.
Yeah. So this purple thank you council. This proposal seeks to screen and provide legal services to at least conservatively 75 individuals and their families. So someone would be provide legal screening to see if they have a remedy that could protect them, provide them with a different status to keep them and their families together and safer and deportation. That remedy could look like applying for asylum. A client applying for. Adjustment of status or a different a different remedy under federal law that. So that's where the investment goes is actually that the attorney time and if necessary fees to help someone secure that that protection.
Okay. That's helpful counselor.
Just just sorry to jump in. We have to be careful that we are limiting debate to the amendment. And so clarifying the the what what the underlying versus the amendment is totally germane. But just wanted to just wanted to let colleagues know that we are in debate around the amendment specifically at this moment.
I see the problem is I can't vote on councilor Avalos amendment unless I understand the contrasting. Absolutely proposal. Is there a better way for me to go?
I don't think you've done anything wrong. I just wanted to make sure that everybody is on the same page.
Makes sense. So okay, follow up question for you then. So to be clear, is any of this 150 k covering the program costs of the programs cut by the federal government?
My understanding is that, no, that that that we've worked really hard over the last year to secure funding from other sources to replenish funding for naturalization that's been lost but cut under the trump administration. This this is a this is broader preventative work. We do hope that every single client that we have eventually goes down the path of citizenship that we make, that this is a first step to help people remain here and become citizens.
Okay. Thank you. This was really clarifying because I think, I think part of the confusion started because there was a discussion from a well-meaning colleague that was talking about some of this work as rapid response. And I think that this is a continuum, right. We need to make sure people don't get to the point where they need rapid response, but then that sort of change the discussion about what we understood this funding would go towards. So this was very helpful. Appreciate that. Thank you.
Thank you, counselor. Morillo councilor Pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. And I just I'm going to be a little long winded here. I'm sorry.
Go on.
Ahead, colleagues. I am going to ask you to vote no on this amendment, not because I disagree with anything that my colleague, counselor Avalos, said the need she has identified is real. It is important. But because of a few other funding and broader funding environment pieces and because of the funding source, and I want to lay those out, I also will note that I am again frustrated by the lack of professionalism and respect in this body. I saw this amendment for the first time when it was posted this morning. I learned about it for the first time from a stakeholder outside of this body. Despite my offering on the dais to be a partner in finding an additional funding source to move forward this different body of work. And despite my staff reaching out to my colleagues staff to try to find a time to sit down and talk about this, I also was surprised to hear that ncpc might support this amendment, since just yesterday they came by my office and said that they were in the building talking to some of you about their concerns with the amendment. So I'd like to allow them at some point to clarify their position so that we all are on the same page, regardless of what that position is, whether it's support or opposition for the amendment. Colleagues, we had an extensive conversation about this at the last meeting. The ordinance before us, the underlying came from an official recommendation of the new portlanders policy commission. They are the volunteer body that we charge under city code to center immigrant and refugee voices on our city policy making. I asked them about six months ago now to evaluate options of places where council could step in to provide low cost, high impact support for our immigrant and refugee communities in Portland. They followed their formal review process with an email to all of us in the fall and testimony in the winter, asking us to take action. When we ask a volunteer advisory body to bring us a recommendation. Many of us have talked about the importance of genuinely working to move forward. That recommendation, ncpc made a specific recommendation for preventative legal services, though I'll note that I believe sore also does deportation defense work. Ncpc's recommendation, however, was for screenings, pathway identification, and direct representation for status adjustment. This upstream work stabilizes families and reduces the likelihood that people enter removal proceedings. It also protects vulnerable portlanders from exploitation during rapid rate. During a period of rapid federal policy change. There have been some questions raised about deportation defense, and I heard today some comments around rapid response. But I'd like to focus on the deportation defense piece for a moment. That work is essential and the state is actively investing in it. Colleagues. This week, the joint ways and means committee in Salem advanced $8 million in new funding for universal representation, following 15 million passed in the middle of last year. While it is true that this is not all for deportation defense, I believe that a full 5 million of those funds are the reason those allocations are so large is because deportation defense, not the rapid response piece, which we've heard is quite affordable, but the full suite of deportation defense services are expensive. What I've been told by our partners at soar is that that can cost about $10,000 per person, compared to the $2,000 per person for the services that we are being asked to support today in the underlying. That doesn't mean that we should not look at our ability to support deportation, defense or rapid response, which is of course, much more affordable. But it does mean that on deportation defense, our funds don't go as far. We simply don't have the level of funding that the state does. Additionally, there has been a significant gap in funding for preventative services that is not being filled at the state. Saw presented their proposal to the ncpc. Based on those gaps and the need to fill the gaps in the preventative work that are not being filled at the state or elsewhere. On fiscal responsibility, I appreciate councilor Morillo your questions to robert taylor. He also described to me the Green yellow red fund status previously, and I felt comfortable asking us to move into the start of that yellow zone. I was not comfortable asking us, asking our legal team to move us close to the red zone. $300,000 a $300,000 allocation from this fund moves us to $520,000 left in the phone, mr. Taylor said. Red lights start flashing for him when we reach $500,000. I wasn't comfortable asking us to dig that deep into this fund. So colleagues, here is my request. Let's pass this ordinance as drafted. Let's vote no on the amendment. Let's get these funds out the door quickly for the upstream work, where there are huge gaps in the system. Then let's come back and discuss rapid response where there is additional work that it sounds like may not be funded, that we might be able to support it at a low cost. And finally, if we want to look at gaps in deportation defense after state funding is deployed, that far more expensive part of the work, let's have that conversation after we see where the state funding goes and what the gaps there really are and what the need there really is. Today is the first part of the conversation. That doesn't mean it has to be the last part. I'd encourage you to vote down this amendment and support the recommendation that was brought to us by the folks we appointed to the ncpc. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Kanal.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I also have questions for robert taylor. So I don't know where. Sorry. There follow ups. My my concerns. And I'm similar to councilor Morillo in that these are concerns that also relate to the underlying. When I think about the needs broadly, I'm I'm supportive when I think about the people doing the work. I'm supportive when I think about the concerns around the other potential uses. And the opportunity cost of the funding is where I have concerns. And that's frankly, it's not just true about making it 300,000 to about 150 as well. So I appreciate you you answering the questions from councilor Morillo. And I wanted to to add on did the budget request, speaking as a, as a bureau director, did the budget request from the city attorney's office include replenishing the fund?
I, I believe it did. In fact, we were thinking of asking to. Increase the amount from a million to maybe 2 million, given the heightened risk profile of the city at the moment. Okay.
And in the event, you know, we have two pretty, at least two pretty prominent higher profile policy proposals that might come before this council later on that your office is aware of. But I'll just I'll summarize them by saying there are policy proposals that relate to ice and relate to federal response and relate and may theoretically create some not risk of necessarily losing a case, but but a case that we would have to defend against would passing this either the way it is now or as potentially amended, would either of those lead to you recommending something different on future policies related to federal response? To put a finer point on it, would passing this make you more likely to say, hey, hold off on a policy change in the future?
No, I don't think so. My job really is just to advise you of the risk and and then if the risks exist and it comes to pass that we have to pay a judgment or we have to hire a bunch of outside counsel to pay for it, then we need to meet those obligations, pay the judgment or pay the outside attorneys. And if we don't have the money set aside to pay for that, I have to come back to you and ask you to figure that out. And then at that point, you're going to have to figure out where where to find that money in the budget. And that can be a very difficult thing to do in the moment. If you're responding to a judgment or responding to an urgent need to hire outside counsel, that is the situation the prior council found itself in a few years ago, and that's the reason they created this fund. But there is nothing stopping this council from going back to the way it used to be and just, you know, taking on the risks. And if we have to pay somebody later, just figure it out in the moment how to get those funds. So it really is to me, it's, it's a question for you as policy makers and budget writers how you want to balance that risk. And do you want to set money aside for that or not. But my job is just to tell you what the risk is, and then it's your job to make the policy and budget decisions to accommodate that.
Thanks. In the context of this question, just just two follow ups. One is does anything you just said change? If it's 150,000 versus 300,000? I mean, you mentioned that the risk to the fund itself being depleted is gets towards the red if it's 300,000 earlier. But in terms of your legal advice for the legal risk associated with potential future decisions, does anything change there? If it's 150 versus 300?
I'm not sure that I follow the question, but I, I think. I think I've answered that in terms of 150. Brings us into the yellow 300 gets us much closer to a situation where I think we're exposed. And it's up to you if you want to replenish the fund. If you do, that's a short term risk. If you don't plan to replenish the fund, that's a longer term risk. And if that risk comes to pass and we don't have enough money in that fund to cover risks, then it just comes back to you and we got to figure out how to pay for that. And, and I and I would I would give you that advice. Now I'll give you that advice in six months. And it's really up to you about how you want to balance your role as policy makers and budget writers. And that's really what this question is about to me. And it's up to you to decide where that balance is.
Okay. And then the last clarification, you said you'd come back to us in the event of a judgment. Could that in terms of the when you'd come back, it wouldn't be at the time of adopting a policy, then it would be when there's a court case or a challenge of some variety. Right?
It would be. I mean, it it could arise in a few different situations. It could arise in we got a verdict. We need to pay the judgment. Where are we going to find the money to pay this thing? It can arise in the setting of we've got a case against the city. We would recommend that we settle it. Where are we going to find the funds to settle it? And this fund can provide a source of that so that can help us get through, achieve a settlement in times. There's a policy coming before this council today that would give employees the ability to be defended if they are subject to retaliation by the federal government, if it's a criminal case that's brought against an employee for retaliation, we would hire outside counsel to defend them in that, since we don't handle criminal matters, this fund would be a source of funding to hire those outside lawyers to help defend. So I think that's you know, when I say you get down to 500,000 and if tomorrow we had to go hire outside criminal lawyers to defend city employees who are being retaliated against, that could draw that fund down pretty quick. So I think those are the those are some examples of where that fund would be useful for the city to have. And we've heard a lot of testimony today about how useful this money would be for folks out in the community who are providing other services to people in the community who are likewise affected by the federal government. Those are all valid. And and I think, again, that is just the the difficult decision this council has to make as policy makers and budget writers about how how do you balance your needs as a city versus the needs of the community, and how do you balance your risk and whether you want to set aside money to accommodate that or not? If so, what level? So I think those are all things that you just have to make a decision about.
Okay, what I'm taking away from that, given that you were very precise with several examples and I really appreciate that, is that this would not be something that the city attorney's office would say in a in the context of a policy that doesn't directly drain the fund or have a direct risk of draining the fund as a reason not to do that policy. That's that's what I took away from that.
Well, I. Let's say the let's say there's $0 in the fund.
Sure.
Of course. And let's say or let's say there's 500,000 in the fund. And council wants to adopt a policy that is high risk. And if we lose, we're going to have to pay a bunch of money. The advice is in that situation, we don't you can do this. It's high risk. We just don't have a way to pay for this. And so if we have to pay for it, it's going to have to come back to you and you're going to have to figure that out in the moment that that's how that would work.
Thank you. That that last piece is really helpful of will come back to you. Thanks. That's all the questions I have on this. I have a weird situation similar to councilor Morillo in that I need to ask a question about the underlying in order to be able to vote on the amendment. Is that permissible?
Absolutely.
Okay, so the question that I've been asking here is effectively, is this going to be used later on to say I can't support a future policy that would stand up against the federal government, and I would like to because there's no money to defend it. And I'm I'm trying to be very transparent about that. I have two pieces of policy coming forward later on. And so I would ask if the sponsor would clarify that at either the 150 or $300,000 level, if that would be something that would affect that would be part of their decision making factor on future policies, because there are trade offs associated here. And I'm just I'm not going to put you on the spot right now. But that's that's something I'd like to know before I vote on the amendment. Thanks.
Council president, would you like me to respond to that now?
You're welcome to.
You know, councilor, I hadn't made the connection between this policy and my votes on future policies related to ice until your line of questioning to mr. Taylor just previously. And as you were asking that line of questioning, I it dawned on me which policies that you're bringing forward that that might apply to. I don't want to make any commitments about my vote on future policies until I see final language. But I will tell you that that's not something that I had previously even contemplated, contemplated until you brought up the connection today.
Yeah, it had come up. Just to be clear, not the lesser issue is this one. The greater issue is the later ordinance that we're going to be talking about. So probably not today. But yeah. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal vice president Clark.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you. Council president, I'm wondering if you would indulge us on how the ncpc representative who's online, perhaps talk to us a little bit about their position, their concerns since they were in the building yesterday and I don't know exactly the message. Would you allow that?
Absolutely. Yeah.
And maybe council member Elana pirtle-guiney would also have some questions here for them.
Council president kerry babin is one of the I'm not sure, kerry, if your chair or co-chair of ncpc, but kerry is online if you're interested in calling her.
Kerry. If you are available, we'd love to have you respond.
Yeah, I'm right here.
Great.
So yeah, and I am neither chair nor co-chair of the ncpc, but I am a member and was on the policy committee and on the policy committee for the mpc, and was part of putting together the proposal that we presented to the city council that you're considering right now. And I just I want to clarify a couple of things. One, I was at city council yesterday talking to individuals about this decision that you're making today. And I did that not as a representative of the ncpc, but just for as a as a personal constituent. And so I wasn't there speaking for the ncpc. But I do also want to address one thing that I heard councilor Avalos say, which was that the ncpc has endorsed the amendment to this ordinance, and that is not the case. The ncpc hasn't met as a commission since February, and we, as far as I know, haven't seen the amendment. I have never seen it. And so we haven't had a chance to look at it, to discuss it or consider it. And we the only proposal that we have presented to the council is the one that's that councilor Pirtle-guiney put forward. So I want to make sure that's really clear.
Thank you.
Thank you carrie. Thank you. Vice president Clark councilor Green.
Mitch Green: I'll be brief because I know that we're trying to get through a lot of business here. I support the amendment. I am sympathetic to some of the process stuff I've heard before. It cuts a lot of different ways, and I've sometimes on either end of it. But I just needed to make a comment about this amendment, talks about allocating more money. And so I just need to comment that in the last year, we've dismissed four bureau directors and had to pay them $700,000 in severance. And if this body wants to get serious about cost control, we can adopt a policy that clarifies when to use the new not for cause clause in those contracts that result in an automatic severance. And so there's money on the table there, and I'll leave it at that.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. I was fully prepared to support the underlying ordinance request, and I just found out about the the second request this morning. And it was great to hear some of those folks speak about what's going on. Having been a former immigration caseworker for senator white, and I know how important that is, I'm prepared to support councilor Pirtle-guiney underlying, I was not prepared for the other today, and we can talk about that in in another different fund. I think that's important too. But today I'm going to support councilor Councilor pirtle-guiney ordinance request.
Thank you. Councilor Smith. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Yes. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you to councilor Morillo for sharing your concerns. And just to answer, since it wasn't directed to me, but I'll answer to you, we do intend to replenish the funding this budget cycle. I intend to bring forward amendments around that because, as we heard, there are many things actually, that that fund is going to need to go to. We're going to need to replenish it anyway if we're going to pass all the policies that are currently on the table. And so that's absolutely a priority that I think that this council should take up. And I think, you know, it is a priority for us that this council continue to take bold action to protect our communities, in my view, and we can take on the short term risk of maybe having to tap this fund beyond what was originally proposed. But I will note that robert taylor did say that the funding at the 300 level is still in the yellow. So he said it gets close to the red, but it's technically still in the yellow, and that we have the ability to replenish that and minimize that risk, especially since we're almost through this fiscal year. I think at the end of the day, my east Portland constituents should not be forced to take on the risk of being detained and deported with no representation. That risk is more important to me, and I'm glad that we have this funding to do just that and look forward to securing more funding in the legal priorities reserve fund as it relates to timing colleagues, first and foremost, definitely not the way I want to go about this policy, and I would have loved to have had more time to develop this proposal and to introduce these changes earlier in the process. For context about why the amendment was posted last night, we were waiting on confirmation from the executive side on which was the fastest way to get the money out, and cbo confirmed this morning that a grant would be the fastest way to get them the money. I always try to avoid surprising my colleagues with last minute, last minute amendments, which is exactly why I daylighted my intentions at our last meeting. I don't see how that is not enough notice to tell you that I and I told you exactly what I intended to do. The technical legal language, and getting that from the attorneys from the executive side. That takes time. But I was very clear about my intent. And like I said last week, this is exactly what we're elected to do. Listen to our community and constituents, make changes to policy based on what they're hearing and what I heard from my communities. The largest and most diverse immigrant communities in Portland is that the original proposal doesn't go far enough to help immigrants. And so to my colleague councilor Pirtle-guiney, who felt caught off by this amendment, I am genuinely confused by that. Considering that my office discussed this with your office ahead of last week, we put it on your radar and I made the effort to keep you in the loop, because that is the courtesy that I expect. It's not a courtesy I have received throughout this body, and I'm not even going to. I don't need to drop that t, but if we're going to talk about consistency, maybe let's evaluate that. As far as you know, whether we need to continue to do this or if we should just pass this and introduce my own policy. I mean, I think, councilor Smith, you like to say justice delayed is justice denied. You said it a couple times today. And I think that's actually the crux of what you're asking us to do. You're asking us to delay action on helping immigrants, not me. And so if we pass this amendment today, we pass this ordinance next week. We could possibly pass it today if we want to do an emergency at the end, depending on what what transpires. But if we don't and I have to come up with my own policy later, that adds several weeks at least to this process. So we're delaying getting dollars out to the front line organizations, helping to keep families together. And that is not acceptable to me. I think at the end of the day, despite this type turnaround, we we are being responsive. We are adjusting this to, again, not diminish the work that saw does. That is very clear. If I didn't care about what saw does, I would have defunded it. I clearly did not. I clearly am trying to expand the level of legal services. Sora has already answered their capability and what their scope of work is, and it is not the scope of work that I need for the constituents that I represent. And so that's why I'm proposing this amendment. At the end of the day, I believe that this is if you bring legislation to this dais, it is not done. It is not done. Just because it's introduced does not mean it's complete. So I think we need to get away from that in general. And I think there's been a lot of conversations about consistency and all of that. And I think there's a severe lack of nuance that is being taken into account. And I hope my colleagues reflect on I believe that I have been consistent. I believe that I am consistent in fighting for the communities that I represent, and that's what I'm doing today. So I really urge you to support this amendment. We made sure to get the language right with the attorneys so that we can get those dollars out directly to these groups right away. And I feel confident that this body will have the, the, the feel the same urgency that I feel to continue to replenish that fund because we have many more fights with the federal government ahead. And it's something we're going to have to face regardless of this vote or not. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Councilor Kanal one more thing. And just to be clear, when I said that the mpc endorsed it, I talked with george and I talked with the chair. We discussed the amendment. They said that they agreed with it and were supportive. And so it sounds like the last speaker is not the chair and does not. And said specifically they don't represent the ncpc. So I'm not familiar with that person's position. I spoke with george and the chair, and that's who I got to support my amendment.
Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you.
Just a quick question for for sore. Is it 1 to 1 in terms of the scaling, meaning $150,000, the quote you gave was 75 people would be helped. Is is it accurate to say it's it's each $2,000 fits that. So if we were to go up to 200,000 to be 100 people, if we were to go down to 100,000 would be 50 people.
Councilor Kanal thank you for the question. That is that is something I'd have to get back to you on. My understanding is that typically when we invest in additional resources for the community, we have a baseline of of staffing that enables us to, to, to do that work. But so it's my sense from having worked previously for two years and our immigration legal services program that it's not 1 to 1. So a drop in funding would would result in a larger impact than just the 1 to 1 might imply. But I do not have the exact numbers. I'm happy to get those for you.
Okay. Thanks. And so when you went to npc who we should know, npc is our is our policy new portlanders policy commission. They're not actually generally a funding related entity. So I don't know what the normal is there. I had the privilege of visiting them to. I do have a lot of support for their their members or staff, their whole vision. But I also know that it's it's not I don't think we've received any funding recommendations through this body before that I'm aware of. But when there were you had three options you gave them at the time. Right. And I just wanted to to understand a little bit more there. In terms of the you mentioned the higher level one, but because the the amendment here would reduce the funding, I have to ask about the other one as well, just to get a little bit of of understanding about the lower, because I believe 150 was the middle tier, and I was just hoping you could speak to that as compared, not to the higher the upper end, but as compared to the lower end.
Point of order. Are we talking about the amendment or are we talking about the underlying?
Absolutely. Talking about the amendment, because the amendment would reduce the saw allocation from 150 to $100,000?
Exactly. Right. Exactly.
And so I'm asking for them to compare the $150,000 on the table to the lower option that they talked about.
But that's talking about the underlying point of order.
Colleagues.
The amendment is being debated. I find the conversation germane.
Hi, I'm kayla and I'm a legal assistant at immigration legal services. I can speak to the lower tier of the $75,000. That amount would be able to provide at least 75 consultations to people in the community. And then from the 75, the 150, we can take those people who were eligible from our consultations and help them apply for the appropriate process for their case, and then going up to the $300,000 ask that was for naturalization. Specifically, as brett mentioned back in March of 2025, we had our federally funded naturalization program ended. And so that would kind of I think that's where the word backfill kind of came into the equation. That's we would be able to breathe life back into that program again with the 300,000.
And I would just add that I believe the initial tier was for just screening alone was 15,000. Just to be clear on that, that point.
Oh 15,000.
Yeah.
Sorry. 15 one 5 or.
1 515 to provide screenings alone, which has tremendous value for the community as they know. What risk they're under and what possibilities they might have, but is not the same as also receiving service to move to to a state of protection.
Thanks.
Yeah, I just colleagues, I don't feel particularly happy about the idea of pitting groups that are all doing good things against each other. I actually pretty much hate that. I'm not particularly concerned about the relative breakdown of of dollars going to the different parts of the continuum here. My concern is, is entirely around the dollar, the aggregate total amount. So that's what I'm trying to get more information on and trying to make a decision based off. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues. I will note we are more than an hour over. So for anybody waiting in the audience, if your item is at the end of the agenda, almost certainly will not hear you. Sorry. I'd love to get everybody a bio break. We are to the amendment councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. I have a question for councilor Avalos, which is you said that you intend to try to replenish the fund. I just want to know if you have some initial ideas about where to find the money to do that.
I don't, but it's on my list as I'm working with the budget office to propose my amendments. It's a high priority because in fact, many of my budget amendments this year are going to be immigrant focused.
Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: I just want to flag for both the underlying and for the amendment that I think council is putting ourselves into, kind of a terrible corner as far as how we do this moving forward, because council is essentially becoming a grant delivering body to organizations for what is a minuscule amount of dollars compared to the big budget that we have to deal with. Very important for organizations. I used to work at a nonprofit. I had to write, you know, not directly our grants, but we got money from dhs to do snap benefit work. And when I did that, I had to prove very clearly, this is exactly the amount of hours that I'm spending on this type of work. This is exactly what my deliverables are. This is exactly what I did last quarter to prove why I was handing. I should be given these dollars. The answers that I'm getting from a lot of these agencies are feel vague. I would like I should not be handing out dollars without having very clear answers as to what those dollars are going towards, and I'm not getting that type of breakdown. And again, I say that as someone who worked at a nonprofit that was struggling very much during a time where we were cutting federal dollars for anti-hunger policy work. But the idea, like, if someone were to go to a bank for a loan, they would have to prove deliverables and give very specific answers for what the work was funding. And I feel like I'm not getting that. So I, from a values perspective, will probably be voting for one of these proposals today because those dollars need to go out the door. I'm still unsettled with draining this fund, and so I'm just wrestling with that. I haven't made up my mind. By the end of this meeting. I will have to. But moving forward, we need a formal RFP process for all dollars that go out. We cannot just be becoming a grant giving body. It doesn't work. We need more specific answers, and I just don't feel like I'm getting that. So I will just leave it at that. As far as process, I'm not really happy about process on either side. I think that we're putting ourselves. We're setting a bad precedent for how we should be giving out dollars.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Can I just really quickly.
Thank you, chancellor. President Eric. Thank you.
So I do want to start by acknowledging that I genuinely believe that councilor Pirtle-guiney efforts here are to support the work of sor, because they're rooted in a genuine desire to support our immigrant and refugee communities. I think I remember when she was at your guys's meeting, I think we bumped into each other because it's the same time as the bike advisory committee. Kanal was there. Like, I remember them being like, how can we support? I think that's the energy. I can say. Last year as council vice president, I spent a lot of time focused on federal response work, something I continue to care a lot about, like through that work. A year ago, I was trying to to map the different groups and understand histories and see who's doing what. Started convening a meeting weekly with different orgs, doing on the ground rapid response, deportation, defense work, many of them part of Oregon for all that big kind of umbrella of different folks working together. So I did spend time getting to know immigration law lab, clear clinic, perk. And so when when I did hear from them that yes, in the grand scheme of things, that this amount of money seems small, I did pay attention when they said, hey, you know, we have been meeting with you guys. That group became what's now, I believe they still meet twice a week with the mayor, now with the current council president and vice president. And so I did hear that, like we also need funds. We've been hearing, oh, the city of Portland wants to fund wants to support us. So it is something that that got my attention and that that is part of why I do want to support their work. I want to support your work too. I will say in the conversations that I've had, these groups have also said we support saw. And so. Yeah, I don't like the idea of pitting against and and I see that all all of this work is really important. And so I intend to support this amendment. I tend to support saw getting support also. And I want to share maybe my perspective and maybe there needs to be some some reset or some norms around this. But I have been under the under the assumption that no one, no one person owns legislation. That none of us can, on our own, move policy across the finish line. And good policy is going to be built collaboratively through listening, responding, adjusting based on what we hear up here, community feedback. I think bringing forward amendments is is not necessarily unkind or unprofessional, but maybe that's a conversation we need to have if culturally that's kind of what's common in other jurisdictions, which it might be. There are some maybe unspoken rules that I don't completely understand. I see it as part of doing the work, and I think it's how we can make our legislation stronger and more responsive. And at the end of the day, the goal isn't individual credit. It's about making sure that our immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker neighbors have the support and protection they need, which I genuinely believe everyone on this dais does care about. I'll leave it at that.
Thank you very much, because there was a specific question to or about carrie and the new portlanders commission. I want to give you one last response time. It was with regard.
To thank you. Yeah, I just want to I wanted to clarify, because councilor Avalos indicated that she spoke to the chair of the mpc, who endorsed and supported this amendment. And that was really surprising to me because I'm, you know, on the we've we've been communicating advocate and actively as a commission about this process and have, you know, very plainly made it clear within ourselves that we're not able to endorse anything without having meeting and voting on it. And I just messaged her and she is very confused and said that she has not spoken with councilor Avalos or councilor Avalos office and is not endorsed or support this amendment. And so and he is a member of the mpc, but is not a chair or co-chair and is not able to endorse or speak for the mpc as a commission unless we've, you know, agreed on it as a body. So I just want to make sure that, I mean, I just hope that we're being represented, you know, fairly as a commission for what we have done, the work that we have done. The other thing I want to clarify is that mpc approach saw not the other way around for this, because we have the existing partnership with with saw in the city. And so saw didn't come to us asking for money. We came to them asking if they could work with us on proposal for how we could quickly do this, since that would be it made sense from our perspective as an organization that has an existing relationship with the city. Thank you.
For the final time. What I said was, I talked with george, who talked to his chair, and we discussed the amendment, and they agreed with how the amendment was written. That is what I said. I did not say the mpc all endorsed it. I do not know how they communicate with each other. All I know is I was reached out to so that we could work through the amendment, and I did. And so whether that person I don't that is something you all are going to have to talk through. This is what I'm receiving from your own members. I can't solve whatever interpersonal, whatever communication issue that is clearly happening. But I believe I did my due diligence to have information from mpc, make sure that they were good with the amendment. They said, yes, we want to support more immigrants and so I move forward.
Thank you, councilor Avalos, colleagues seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan can we please move to a roll call? Vote on the Avalos amendment.
Unless I. Smith no. Kanal. No.
Pirtle-guiney.
No.
Ryan.
No. Koyama Lane I.
Aye, Morillo absent. Novick.
No.
Clark. No.
Green. Hi.
Zimmerman.
No.
Dunphy.
High point of order.
Just noting that our colleague came back in.
We could we could vote. Yeah. Can we please include councilor Morillo vote?
Angelita Morillo: Aye, Morillo.
Candace Avalos: This is on councilor Avalos amendment.
Candace Avalos: Yes.
I but I'm going to hold you to finding those dollars.
And then president Dunphy, what was your vote? I so the amendment fails with five yes votes and seven no votes.
Okay, colleagues, is there further discussion of the underlying amendment or underlying ordinance? Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you, mr. President. I just want to thank everybody who came out. It is not lost on me that in a time like this to come out as an immigrant, to speak at a public body, to advocate for something that helps you in a precarious time is not the easiest task. It's not the easiest uplift. And so oftentimes, the messiness that is governing at a body like this, we lose the thread. And I want to, you know, reframe that thread a little bit that today I think the city council is going to take action that helps the legal defense for those who just administratively had their status revoked by the federal administration. These are people who came to the united states. Many invited, many because of the dire situations in their countries that that status was revoked is appalling. And we have a recourse to to try and fix that. And we should make every effort we can. It is it is clouded by the also ridiculous and abhorrent. Roving patrol ideas that we talk about when we talk about interdiction in the moment as going on for our other members who are being deported of the community. So I just really have appreciated the sponsor bringing this forward. I appreciated those who met with me and to the new portlanders policy committee. Marisa sahar, george carey, mary stefani, and bernal, you are doing a lot of important work for us. I think there are members of my family who have considered themselves new portlanders at various times, so thank you. I'm happy to support this and thank you to the sponsor.
Thank you, councilor Zimmermann. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. Colleagues, I'd like to ask for your support on the ordinance before us today or the budget, the budget adjustment before us today. I want to offer my thanks to the new portlanders policy commission. When I said to them what our ways that we can lend support to our community, to portlanders who are facing the direct consequences of the federal administration's actions in our community, I wasn't sure what I would get back, whether it would be an ask for legal support and ask for policy change, what their recommendations would be, and this is what they said would have the highest benefit for the community. I'd ask your support for that. Councilor Morillo I hear your concern about process. I think that there's a broader conversation we should have about this. And had this not been a recommendation from one of our own bodies, I probably wouldn't have brought forth a direct grant like this. But I do understand your concerns. I hope that I can have your support anyway, because of the need in the moment, and that we can address your larger concern through through our broader work colleagues. We have so many portlanders who are facing dire needs. This is one step. This is certainly not all the work that needs to be done. I hope that just as I said last fall when we began to address response to the federal government, that we continue every step of the way to figure out how we can best support all portlanders, and that today we can take this step together. Thank you very much and thank you to all of our partners. And although they're not here today, thank you to every single person who came out and testified about the need and about the opportunity that we have to support 75 families here.
Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Councilor. Avalos. Councilor. Morillo.
I will be supporting the underlying amendment. I appreciate the work that was done here with this body and with folks who are doing work in our community. I am sort of staying stating this for nprc and for other community groups that are going to be advising us on how we should spend our dollars. And I'm going to say it publicly that from what I heard in what kerry was saying, was that nprc approached, saw that is the opposite of a public process where they did intake, evaluated different options. And, you know, when we are giving out precious dollars, there has to be some sort of evaluation process that is not just contingent on people having relationships or knowing one another. It creates a lack of trust. So if we're going to do this moving forward, yeah, we need to fix the process. But because this is impacting my community, because I do value the work that saw does, because this is part of a larger continuum for helping immigrants. I will be supportive of it today, but I'm pretty profoundly unhappy with the process here on all sides.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Kanal.
Angelita Morillo: Once again, ditto to what councilman Morillo said. I'll also say that with the exception of the $50,000 difference between 100 and 50 as originally proposed, and which we're still discussing, and the 100 that would have happened had the amendment happened, we're still in a position to go back and revisit some of those conversations. Should the ncpc or any other process yield some of the other some recommendations for other parts of the of the immigrant assistance and refugee assistance spectrum to be funded as well or other organizations as well? So I'm interested in continuing that conversation to and I think there's there's nothing that not passing the amendment today does to preclude us from, from looking at those other organizations. So from anyone else out there who might be interested in in that, I'd love to continue that conversation with you and of course, with with counselor Avalos as well. The only other thing I wanted to mention is as it relates to the ncpc, it's a little tangential. It's supposed to have 25 members and it has seven right now, so I would love to see it get the support that it needs. That's a city code 3.131.020. That's not a criticism of the seven people who are on it. Quite the opposite. I want to give you backup. And there's a lot more new portlanders right now. I think it's a really important time for us to show our support for this group of people by giving them colleagues, because the best thing you can do for a volunteer often is to give them support through staffing, which they already have very good staff and and colleagues to help take on the workload and be able to do some of those processes that have been discussed. So yeah, thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Thank you. Yeah, I agree with councilor Morillo. I and I also understood that saw was approached directly. So I think that's important to name on the record because we've been lectured a lot about process, and I don't think that's the right process. I'm just going to be blunt. That doesn't mean I don't support all of these organizations, I obviously do. I also, you know, as somebody who is the daughter of immigrants, this is actually really personal to me. So it's been really disappointing to see this turn into some kind of war between immigrant groups when that is not at all what my amendment did. It expanded the access to the different communities that need it. And I'm sorry to east Portland, I'm really sorry because what I was fighting for was because my constituents are getting snatched up every single day, and the difference between life and death is then being able to have deportation defense. That is not what this amendment does. It's I've already brought it up multiple times. That was my intent. And so I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that we weren't able to get that across the finish line and agree that, you know, it sounds like there's a lot of feelings about people bringing amendments, and I hope those feelings get resolved. Good thing we have a strategic planning event on Saturday. Lord help us. I hope that can be something we discuss, because I think that there's a lot of double standards about what people expect from some people and don't provide back to others, and I'm frankly tired of it. And so if we're going to be a body that is, again, if I'm going to represent my constituents and what they need, I deserve the ability to do that on this dais. Period. Full stop. And so I do not want to be lectured anymore about that. And I think that if we're going to be true legislators, then we need to accept that all of us have a voice and a role in legislation, and we all deserve equally our ability to legislate. I'm sorry to east Portland. I'm sorry to the communities that we couldn't serve with this. But please know, trust that I will continue to fight to get you the dollars you deserve. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor Morillo. Is that a legacy hand? Yes. Thank you very much. Seeing no one else in the queue. This is the second reading of a unamended nonemergency ordinance. Keelan. Can we please call the roll.
Lois Smith.
Could you read the.
Read that again?
This is for.
This is the underlying.
This is the.
Big this is the.
Big.
Vote okay. Yes.
Kanal thanks everyone for your work on this.
I pirtle-guiney. Aye, Morillo Ryan. Aye, Morillo Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo. I Novick. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with 12 I votes colleagues.
We've only gotten through 12 items so far today. We're absolutely not going to finish this. But we need to do a few more things today. So I'm going to give everybody a ten minute bio break. And we're going to come back and go until 1:00. Please be back here. We're starting as soon as we have seven people sitting at the dais at 1230. I hope to get to 15. We have 819 total.
We have councilor.
Here. We've got.
And we are back. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I would ask for consent of my colleagues for us to reorder the agenda so that we hear agenda item 14 next, followed by agenda item six, no. Agenda item 17 and 18. That would allow us to hear the report on the supporting Portland storefronts plan. I know we have some folks who are here specifically for that, and then moved to passing our code changes and ordinance to support the lgbtqia to plus community and not wait any longer on those important code adjustments.
13 no, 1414 it's 14.
I'm looking right here. Accept the report.
14 so.
Then 17 and 18 as our next three agenda items.
Councilor pirtle-guiney moves to reorder the agenda to move items 14, 17, and 18 to the front of the existing agenda. Second and councilor Green seconds. Can we please take a roll call? Vote.
Sorry. Before I call the roll, may I confirm which items? Because there was some reordering of the agenda when we approved the changes.
Would you like me to say the item number? The document numbers?
Yes, please.
Document number 2026 080. Document number 2026 073. And document number 2026 074 taken in that order. I believe 073 and 074 are slated to be opened together.
Okay. Thank you so much for that. So that was moved by councilor Pirtle-guiney and seconded by Green. Thank councilor Green. Thank you.
Avalos aye, Morillo Smith.
What is.
We're voting to reorder. We're voting to reorder the agenda. I made a motion to ensure that we can hear both the supporting storefronts and the LGBTQ package today.
Sure. Yes.
Kanal. Absent. Pirtle-guiney.
Aye, Morillo.
Ryan. Aye, Morillo. Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo I Novick I Clark I Green. Zimmerman. I Dunphy. I the agenda is reordered with 11 yes votes and one absent.
Okay. To folks in the audience, if your item didn't get called, we're probably not going to hear it today. Apologize. Apologies. We will reschedule those. Can we please call item 14?
Accepting the. Nope. Sorry. Accept the supporting portland's storefronts. Report to establish a storefront support program document 2026 080.
Thank you. We have ashley hernandez with counsel, operations for counsel. Committee report.
Council president and councilors. For the record, my name is ashley hernandez, and I serve as a staff for the arts and economy committee. The report before you. Document number 2020 6-080 was heard at the at the arts and economy committee on February 26th, 2026, where it was moved to full council with recommendation that it be accepted. The report requests acceptance of the supporting Portland storefronts report. The report provides information on engaging with storefront owners and staff across districts, analysts, and analysis. Of citywide trends and framework for collaboration and framework. Prioritization and opportunity for coordination action. The full statement impact statements on this includes. Economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts, and community involvement. At the committee meeting on February 20th 6th November, testimony was provided. One person submitted written testimony prior to committee action. General themes included possible expansion of benefits of the program. To accommodate more businesses. Need need to need for more public safety personnel, including police involvement, enforcement plan, and mental health treatment. Overlap with enhanced service districts. And that concludes the staff summary.
Thank you very much, councilor Ryan, I believe you were the I'm not sure if you were the committee chair or commissioner. Councilor. Yeah.
The sponsor and the. Anyway, I'm a I'm a co-chair. Yeah. Cool. Do you want me to please present this? Thank you, council president. And thank you, ashley. Today, I'm so glad the city administration presents us with the action plan to develop and establish a storefront support program. This has been a long road. Starting with the original proposal I brought forward back in may a year ago. From then to now, this proposal has been unanimously passed by the arts and economy committee, unanimously passed by the full council as a budget note and resolution. And then the full report, as was mentioned, was passed by the arts and economy last week after a full meeting on this report with robust dialog. The meeting prior today, we'll be able to approve the report on the action plan, and the administration will be able to continue to implement the program planning and development and make it a part of the 2627 budget. A critical part of this process. Important to highlight is that we work closely with storefront owners the entire way. We convened a storefront stakeholder group to advise us on the development of specific actions that the city can take to offer tangible support and ensure that this program hits the mark. It's important to center the voices of our local storefront operators and owners, and will be able to maintain the storefront group going forward. This is an example of the community leading. I want to make sure that we build a program that meets their needs not for them, but building with them and having their perspective and experience guide the path forward. We can't ignore that small businesses don't just need clean sidewalks and increased funding for broken window repair. They also increasingly ask for police presence and public safety response. I'm not. I'm hearing in every single conversation with storefront owners increasing, increasing this need. I'm trying to cut some lines here. Our businesses will continue to pack up, and we need to give them reasons to stay and operate in our city. As we all know, this is a Portland that we want to live in. Sidewalks that are robust and full, with joyful people engaging our storefronts, not staring at for lease signs. I want to acknowledge a dedication of time and effort. The storefront advisory stakeholders have provided, and I want to thank those councilors that have helped me select those individuals and a pickle of happy go lucky daycare in district one, jonathan jawad of baseball, representing multiple districts. John blumenauer of the joinery, representing both districts two and four. Bianca yonkers of spar, representing district two, and kate burt of bar, representing district three. And one final tony burke of broadway cannabis market in multiple districts. I give my appreciation for each of them stepping up to provide their time, which is always in short supply when you're a storefront small business owner. I'm also grateful that they are part of this movement to help save small businesses all over the city. It is sos time for our city when it comes to storefronts. Save our storefronts. That's the reference sos. We don't want to live in a city again with for lease signs and empty storefronts. Just last week, as some of you know, I was in kaohsiung, taiwan, and madame speaker kong, who's been to our city multiple times for over a decade, asked what we were doing to fill the storefronts. She said her experience lately, when she arrives, she's been concerned about the blight she talked to me about. I told her about this program, and through the translator she said, let's go. I love Portland and this is so important. Keep in mind, this topic comes up each year when we have delegations come and we hear this from travel Portland and other stakeholders as well. I also want to at this time, just give a little not a nudge to something exciting that happened after being up for two days on the first day of arrival in kaohsiung, and that is that kaohsiung city council is going to challenge our city council in the dragon boat race on June 6th. Saturday, we'll call it the challenge cup, and we have a video that will release later. That also challenges mayor wilson in the third floor to be a part of this race. I hope that got you a little excited and that will be just one race, my colleagues, not three. So we can all enjoy the festivities on Saturday night. Before I wrap this up, I want to give a big thanks to city administrator raymond lee for ensuring this storefront support program developed and moved forward with project manager victor sanders for listening to our storefront owners throughout the city and putting together an actionable plan. With that, thank you, council president, for allowing me to make remarks. And I do want to acknowledge that we have three of those stakeholders here today that wanted to add voice, and can we go ahead and have them go next? They've been waiting like three hours.
Yeah. We will.
Okay.
Move immediately to well.
Are you able to join us?
Yeah I'll get I'll have keelan call up our our testify.
Okay. It's bianca, tony and john blumenauer of the three.
Great.
It's john.
Hello.
My name is bianca youngers. I've run bing's bar in Portland for 25 years, and I'm in district two. And I really want to thank Dan and victor for all of their hard work that they've done on the storefront improvement program. I was honored to serve on the advisory team members helping to shape this effort. Today, I feel like it's a positive day, and if this program moves forward, it makes me feel like businesses and commercial storefront owners are actually being listened to. And that makes me really happy. There are a lot of things that are great in this proposal. The piece I'm most excited about is the unified command system. When someone reports violence, campsites, break ins, or other safety incidents, that information will go into a database that the public can actually see. And so we'll be able to see what's being done about it. And I think that kind of transparency and coordination is powerful and honestly, might be my favorite part of this proposal. With that said, I do want to talk about safety. And with budget meetings coming up, I'm begging you to not take away funding from the police. In fact, I think that we need to add to it. And this is not about politics. It's just about facts. Calling the police is not something we ever want to do. But when you run a small business, sometimes you don't have a choice. And I think it's important to say out loud that it's a privilege. If you've never been in that position where you don't need to call them because something dangerous is happening at your workplace or at home or on the streets. And I also want to acknowledge that this subject is complicated. Police are not all bad. Sometimes things can be both good and bad at the same time. And I've sat down peacefully at ice, for example, and painted in protest several times, and I feel that system is very wrong down there with the federal police. There's bad things that happen. But again, things can be both ways. So let's not confuse those situations. The reality of the day to day safety in Portland when it comes to running a business or just being a citizen, is important to have support. And there are good officers who come and they help in situations if it's dangerous and we only call them if and only we need to call them. Lately it's been a lot, unfortunately, and I think that the issue could make or break Portland if we don't have the support. Personally, I've talked to many business owners that agree with what I am saying. Small business owners are often put in impossible positions where we're expected to manage serious safety issues ourselves, and we're not trained for that, and we shouldn't have to be. So I appreciate the positive steps being taken here today. Programs like this storefront improvement program, systems like the unified command are important moves forward, but they will only work if we continue to focus on public safety as a foundation of everything we've built on. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next up we have john hollister. Tony burch. John blumenauer.
Good afternoon. Councilors I'm john blumenauer, I own the joinery and we operate storefronts in district two and district four. And I'm pleased to speak today in strong support of this of the storefront support program. And I want to thank councilor Ryan for your continued leadership on this issue, and to victor sanders and others who work behind the scenes to bring the proposal to life. The adoption of the storefront support program is very important in a couple of regards. First, it provides a framework to address critical problems that small businesses are facing. Additionally, it sends an important message that the city is listening to what Portland residents have been crying out for, that the city understands and values the vital contributions that small businesses make to our community and our local economy, and the city is willing to take active steps to relieve the significant additional burden placed on small businesses, especially over the past six years. The program outlines ways to improve conditions for small businesses and, by extension, employees in Portland residents. While many of these are low cost and helpful, I want to reiterate the point that the previous speaker made that the single most important outcome is an improved sense of safety. Ten encampments open drug dealing and drug use, people experiencing mental illness and criminal activity all lead to a sense of insecurity that drives people away. Residents, visitors and increasingly, employees alike take meaningful steps to improve the sense of safety, are critical to the success of the program, and to help the city flourish once again, with your help, there's been improvement in the conditions surrounding our storefront and workshop in saint john's, but we're still dealing with all of these issues at our storefront in the pearl district. We are constantly amazed by the number of visitors who tell us, quote, we haven't been downtown in years. Never mind that they're not actually downtown when they say that they're in the pearl district, but for many, that's a distinction without a difference. They're not coming to the city's central core because of the conditions there. The storefront support program takes meaningful steps to change that. I encourage its adoption. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next up, we have bridge. Bridge, crane. Simka.
Welcome.
Good morning. I'm portraying charles simka johnson, and currently won the housing lottery. So I know about vacant storefronts because I live at 731 salmon. Some of you used to maybe like to eat food at the picnic house. Can't do that anymore. That was the pandemic's fault. I appreciate that. You know, there's this concern about safety, because every time it's unsafe for somebody who can afford to spend a lot, much, lot more money than me. It's also unsafe for the poor people that are concentrated, concentrated in certain parts of downtown and the pearl. And it's interesting to have been here through the whole thing, where miss Avalos did her best to speak out for those people who disproportionately, it seems, are in district one, at risk of deportation. Hopefully, we'll have some more fluent and clear conversations about concentration of different types of at risk communities, different minorities, different income levels, which is kind of hard to do until maybe we get the Mitch Green miracle and you all take a 10% pay cut or something like that, because there are buildings, you know, that are full of people that live off of 900 at less some in my building, 994 months. They don't make it up to that level. That's your weekly pay. So when we're doing this complicated process, because part of what storefront assistance is, is also welfare for landlords. In my basement, of course, that building used to they used to collect rent for the picnic house. We've been pretty lucky there that not to have a smashed window over by the library. The people that sell the clothes at indochino popular hot spot, they go through windows a lot. Some of us would like to have fluency about. The money, and that's especially critical because we just spent however much that was about an hour having a course of very polite and respectful discussion back and forth. About only $150,000. Y'all in charge of housing. You got $109 million. You keep kicking the can down the road. About $109 million. And if you spent an hour talking about $150,000 discrepancy on how we're not going to be able to help certain immigrants at risk of deportation, are you going to proportionately spend that amount of time on $109 million? No, you can't because there's not enough hours in the year. But please pass this and focus on safety for all. It's not just for storefront owners, but it's for residents of all income levels. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That completes testimony.
Okay, colleagues moving into discussion. Counselor Avalos.
Thank you. So you know, I'm entering this conversation actually fresh off of a town hall that I did last night on the creation of an enhanced service district, or esd, in parkrose. It was very fascinating and I'm really grateful. Thank you to the parkrose community for coming out, because I think what I heard was how we want to change the way that we support our storefronts. And I heard a lot of really great ideas that I know we're planning on trying to implement in the esd, and that's the lens that I am approaching this conversation with. I have quite a few questions. I just want to note the time. I know I heard you say that we were going to end at one. I will not be done by then, and so I don't know if there is a desire for me to make a motion to table this to tomorrow so that we can actually have a discussion. I see there's a couple people in the queue, and then we could move the other two items forward if we want people to get past those. Just noting that as a courtesy, because I know that we're not going to have enough time to do all those things in five minutes.
We do not have a meeting tomorrow.
Oh well.
So moving to the following week.
Okay. Well.
We're going to run a little bit past 1:00 and I apologize to everybody. I'm is my intention to try and get through the three items that are still on the agenda or that were moved on the agenda. So ask the questions. Go ahead.
All right. Well, so I guess I'm not sure who is in the audience to answer questions about the report. Who comprise it. Are there people here okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. So let's start with some questions I have around process and representation. The report states that hundreds of open ended conversations were conducted with storefront owners asking, how's it going? Can you clarify exactly how many businesses were engaged, how they were selected, which corridors were included, and whether this sample is representative citywide?
For sure. For the record, victor sanders with Portland solutions, joined by anne hill, who's the director of pmo. So one of the projects that pmo has been working on is our cleaning corridors projects. And so with that work, we have our revitalization coordinators and our team going out and doing what we call door knockers. And so they're actually knocking on businesses, going in and providing information about our programs and asking questions similar to what you're seeing in the report about what is your business seeing. And sometimes those are just staff, sometimes it's business owners. But I believe if you can remind me, the number that we did.
2500 door knockers, supplemented by just the ongoing problem solver meetings that are focused in the business districts across the city, right.
So we felt like we've got a pretty good representation of a whole cross-section of the city. Inside the report, there's some of the lines where you're seeing where we're doing some of this corridor cleaning, and those are the areas where we're doing much of the the door knocking and outreach work.
We're so we're bipoc owned businesses in east Portland, storefronts proportionately represented in this outreach.
Councilor Avalos. I believe that councilor Ryan selected there was the the businesses that were selected that we talked to were provided to us as part of the storefront. What was it, an amendment? Sorry, we're.
Given a predetermined list.
And I think that's what the councilor had referenced, that he thanked those of you who provided names of businesses. So I don't know. Councilor, I want to put you on the spot. My apologies. But the.
Okay, that's that's what we do, councilor Smith, I know because you're on the committee.
Candace Avalos: I'm councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Know, I realized that I that you're there, but I realize that councilor Smith is also going to be a part of this question and answer, because she's on the committee. And I reached out to her while we were passing this some time ago, and she provided she provided someone to be on the on the stakeholder group as well.
So, councilor Smith, you provided the list of east Portland businesses that were included in this report. Is that what I'm hearing?
She she, she the committee, the person to be on the committee, the stakeholder group.
So then to answer my question, were they proportionately represented? So it's what we received. One person for east Portland on this committee. Is that what I'm hearing.
So I would say that the the committee, the businesses that were forwarded to us to talk to had the same feedback that we have heard across the city from storefront businesses. Doesn't matter if they're. If they are operating a clinic, if they're operating a small daycare, if they're operating a clothing store, everybody is wanting the same thing. They don't want biohazards on the street. They don't want to step over human feces. They want to make sure there's a number for them to call if people are in distress, that they're seen outside or coming into their stores, they are wanting vandalism to stop. Whether it's broken windows or people coming in and stealing things they're wanting, if they they're wanting their customers and their staff to feel safe, to be able to walk in and out. And they're wanting the streetscape, which they feel is the responsibility of the city to be clean and accessible for their staff and guests or customers to, to participate in. And so this report, what you're seeing here, what we're basically providing here is. Acknowledging, figuring out how we can get those storefronts that work. So specifically cleaning, which we've already started, the sidewalk corridor cleaning across the city on basic corridors. You will see more of that east of 82nd. We've met with the district one staff. We have an RFP that we are scoring right now for that work east of 82nd. Specifically doing assessments, security assessments, working with the safe blocks group to really figure out what folks need and then figuring out how to get them those resources, whether it's through the restore repair grant, providing services. So on my team, I have someone that does speak spanish. We're also working to figure out how we can sort of provide services to those who speak other languages, either how to report for themselves or figure out what kind of services that they need to. So this work is not so much focused on business plans or like leasing assistance. It's really how do you keep a storefront in the storefront vibrant and. Safe and thriving right at the same time? We're looking at the vacancies. But that vacancy work is really work that prosper Portland is doing. I don't know if.
That helps.
Councilor Avalos I can add that when we pass this 12 to 0, there was an amendment. I think it came from councilor Kanal. I'm not sure we worked together on it, but it was to ensure that we had an advisory group. That doesn't mean that there weren't engagement throughout the city, but but that was just to say that we have an advisory group as well as the stakeholder outreach that anne was speaking to. I can also just say that when I had a position, a role that was citywide, when I would go to neighborhood associations in wilkes or the gateway area, they were some of the loudest voices that talked about these issues. And so when I had an opportunity to be a councilor That would be out on the streets more than in city hall, I jumped on this because I knew that we were missing bringing in those voices. And so I think we've been very transparent in the dialog throughout the journey. I realize that you're not on the committee that dove deeper into it, but I hope that you can appreciate from your engagement when you go to the groups out in east Portland that you're hearing this loud and clear from the main streets out in district one as well. I know that they were quite loud about that in 22 and 23 and 24. Thanks.
Okay, so help me understand then what was the standard or was there a standardized interview protocol? From what I'm reading through, I'm seeing that there was an optional survey that people could take that seemed to be more comprehensive, but that the way it was described in the report, it sounded pretty informal. So can you tell me about what those conversations were like, and are there any summaries or notes available to council about how those conversations went?
Maybe you should talk about the resolution.
Because yeah, I think probably what you're going to see is that most of our conversations were fairly informal, and so many of our recommendations are high level in that regard. So you're seeing what we heard in those common themes section of the report. So there's some pretty common themes that we heard across the spectrum, regardless of which area of the city we were in. To anne's point, right. Folks want to have an expectation of a clean sidewalk when they walk onto the street. They want to have an expectation that when folks, you know, when they call for help, whether it's psr or elsewhere, that there's some level of response and they want to feel like the city is listening to them, there's a lot of just general sentiment that they're feeling. The city is not listening to them, particularly in east Portland. So that's really where we gathered a lot of this data from was just these informal conversations that we had.
Okay. That's not satisfying to hear, but heard. So help me understand why was this report led by Portland solutions rather than prosper Portland? I went back and looked at the resolution to see what it said. I mean, it said that the city administrator would determine that. But prosper being the city's economic development agency, I hear you. I know you're talking about safety, which is another, I guess, issue that I'm having of like what? Based on what I saw on what I approved in the resolution originally and how I'm seeing this report shake out. So tell me more about why you and not prosper.
Well, we were partnered with prosper on this. And so they were part of our work. And so we engaged with them. So they were definitely a partner in this work. We led this work. Given that we're already doing much of what pmo is working on, is related to public realm improvements and livability. And so we already, like I mentioned, we have those folks that are out in the field already delivering the on the services that that our program does. And so it made sense that we would look to how to make this as efficient as possible within the city. So we know that budgets are tight. Right. And so during our committee we talked quite a bit around how this work fits nicely within the existing work and culture that Portland solutions is already doing when it comes to livability work.
So then what authority will Portland solutions have to coordinate across bureaus on this? Is this advisory or facilitative, or does this include operational control as well as as far as implementation of your report?
So the majority of this work is happening right now. Right. So the majority of this work what what my team spends the majority of their time doing is listening to small business owners, large business owners, residents, service providers that have issues with being able to move through their districts. We don't largely focus in residential neighborhoods because a majority of 70%, 80% of local streets in Portland do not have these issues that we focus on, mainly garbage, biohazards folks that are in some different levels of distress that are impacting or impacting the corridors. That's the work we do every day. So a lot of what you're hearing, what we heard and what the two folks that testified before me were focused on are issues that we deal with. That's what we deal with every day, prosper. And when we partner with prosper, prosper has the grant program. We work very closely with our small business office. Those folks, if you look at the suite of services, they're really focused, too, on how to help businesses get into storefronts, how to help businesses with capital, with financing, and then with their with their grants, which are very helpful for us as tools. We also work with our colleagues in office of violence prevention, because when we do do those security assessments, those are where those experts are, right. So we work across those lines with both what most people are asking for across the city is they want clean sidewalks, they want the garbage picked up, they want the biohazards picked up. And when they have an issue, they want to know who to call. And that's what my team spends most of their time doing, is going out and meeting with people across the city. Whether you're in a little market or you're in a large building or you're in affordable housing, and the issues we're supporting here are actually the same issues that we're supporting affordable housing, building managers with. They want the same thing. What do I do when there's a scary person trying to get in my building? What do I do when there's biohazards outside? How do I call about that car that doesn't have license plates that's been there? Those are the questions they're asking that they want answers to. And when they call in, sometimes what happens with some of those, especially if there's issues in the city that we don't have a program for, they sort of fall through the cracks and they get frustrated. So we take those issues and work to get an answer to to the problem. Or in the case of the sidewalk service, basic sidewalk service, we just start doing it. We start providing that service.
In several places. In this report, it suggests that action items will be implemented using existing resources, but elsewhere it states that implementation assumes adoption of the fy 2011 budget request for Portland solutions and pmo. So can you clarify whether these recommendations are contingent on new funding?
Sure. So as I said in the in the subcommittee meeting, everything that we I can't speak for prosper and I can't speak for my colleagues at baps. But what I can say about pmo is employment solutions. What I said was if our budget is passed, then we can continue the level of service that we are providing now. If our budget of course is not passed or if it's reduced, then that would impact this. But this, the work that we're proposing here is not going to cost more money than what we're already doing right now.
So this report emphasizes throughout block by block safety and response times as key drivers of storefront health, where businesses also systematically asked about rent pressures, insurance costs, capital access, taxation and commercial vacancy drivers. And if so, how are those weighted? In this analysis, you provided.
The majority of the feedback that we got, as you heard today was on those issues that I've been talking about, about the general cleanliness and the support we can do. We do have colleagues, though, the colleagues in prosper. If those questions come up, we have a place to direct them to where there are resources and programs that can support them.
So then I guess that begs the question who is ultimately accountable for outcomes under this framework? Is it you or is it prosper?
It's us because what we're measuring is what we have in here. So those items that are not specifically if they're if they're not around the actual the sort of physical environment to provide safe, clean, well lit and activated environments. That's really what this storefront program is focused on. Those other issues, we have ways to connect them to our colleagues at prosper who have programs and funding, and we can certainly with them track their outcomes as well. But that that was why the focus was because the feedback we were getting was much more on that physical environment and less about the financing.
Speaking of measuring, how do you plan to measure success beyond perception metrics? Are there defined performance targets?
Those are things that we'll be working on over the next six months. We have we have basics. We have garbage collection. We have numbers around how many security assessments are conducted, how many security assessments we can actually fund, some of those improvements we can we track how many sidewalks we do, site visits we do, how many meetings we have, what the issues are we can add to those performance metrics as well. We're also doing some work with capstone students at Portland state university, which victor can talk about to get some baseline on some vacancy data. We're also really interested in the nighttime economy, which is something that we haven't done a lot of work in, because a lot of these districts, we really have to figure out how many bars and clubs and businesses that are open late are in the city, how much revenue and impact, how many jobs are those providing, and what can we do to make sure that we are extending the same safety sets of safety measures to folks that are working late at night and doing potential shift work depending on the storefront business. So that's another area that we'll be doing some research and then figuring out how to build out again, knowing that there aren't a lot of resources. We are really working in the confines of of what we are currently doing, and that's why we have at the back that we have some areas around the city that we'd like to do some focus work in to see if what we're laying out here actually works. Right. So parkrose is one of those areas that we really want to focus on. We want to focus on Lents in terms of some of the nighttime work, because of what's going on with the pickles and the bangers and the cherry bombs there, along with some of the stuff around lens town center. We've also got mississippi, which is a very different nighttime corridor than what's happening in the central eastside. So part of those areas was just to for us to sort of test and then be able to measure and see what we can then either change or roll out to other parts of the city.
Thank you. I know we have lots of people in the queue. I'll just state that I appreciate your answers. I see and understand the work and I'm grateful for your work. I am concerned, though, about the scope of this report. I'm concerned about the measurable outcomes. I'm concerned about the way that I don't believe east Portland has been fully represented, and I don't like the informal methodology of the report. That gives me pause. I'll leave it at that for now while I keep hearing discussion. Thank you for your time.
Thank you councilor Avalos colleagues. I will be gaveling us out in 17 minutes regardless of where we are. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you council president. Thank you, councilor Ryan for your leadership on this. Thank you to everyone, the business representatives who were part of this program, and thank you for being here as well as the administrator. I have a couple technical questions and it's a little confusing. We've been told in the past that reports are effectively a proforma exercise, that when we vote yes on them or no on them, it the thing happens, whether the vote passes or fails effectively, but in the the underlying the original resolution it talks about, you know, shall submit a report to council that outlines the plan for the creation of a storefront support program. So my understanding is because we passed that resolution, a storefront support program is going to exist. And we're just talking about the report right now. And I just love some clarity on that from probably the attorneys. Just just from a just a technical question perspective here.
The the report is just the coming back to you and you can improve the report or not, but that doesn't necessarily change the outcome of what's in the report.
So we're doing a storefront support program regardless of the outcome of this vote.
Yes.
Thank you. Okay. I strongly support the creation of a storefront support program. I made some amendments to the the resolution back in September, I believe it was, and I'm still very supportive of it. I don't think this report meets the grade on that, and I have concerns about it. Starting with we talked about well, let me let me ask this. The. I share the concern from councilor Avalos about where this is all housed. I don't I think this is a little bit of a of a surprise and I, I understand there was a changeover in who was directing this work from the time it was passed to now. So I don't I think this is a good faith, but I also expected this to be under said somewhere. And my understanding is does the sense of community and economic development service area does. In the new org chart, where is Portland solutions located?
It reports directly to me.
It does report to you okay. Because in the past it's been described as reporting to the mayor. So important distinction here. But I do I do have concerns about that because this to me reads as a piece arguing for more funding for Portland solutions more than anything else. And I'm very concerned about that because of the number of different places where it says pmo is going to be the lead on. It is concerning, and in particular, the exact thing that councilor Avalos brought up is on my concern list as well, which is that it says assuming the budget request is approved, none of us have seen that budget request. Right? So we're we're being asked to approve of a concept that relies on approval by us in the future of a budget request we have not even seen, because it's still going through the process, not for everything, but for everything that says existing resources with a little number one next to it in there. And that that is profoundly concerning to me at this moment, because I haven't even seen it. I see the lack of a, you know, how many you have 16 Portland solutions, sorry, problem solvers groups, right?
Yeah, we have 14, 14.
How many people are on the invites for those? How many different businesses are on the invites for those? Roughly.
It totally depends on the area. I mean, it can be anything from like 20 to 30 to 40, up to over 100. It just depends on the different area. They don't all come right, they come when they have issues. And I would also say that in those areas where there are sort of strong business associations, they they sort of defer to, you know what I mean, whoever the chair is like. So it becomes a pipeline. So one person comes with the list of issues.
Sure. And they're not just storefront businesses, though. They're all businesses.
They're not all storefronts. And then we supplement that by our the sidewalks. We do. And also the, the individual site visits we do to businesses to figure out what's going on. And then we I mean, you can pretty much we can pretty much tell in most areas, like when we think about the hotspots, like what are those hotspots? And then what's causing that.
That's a subjective your knowledge based on your expertise as to where the hotspots are. My my question is numerical. So if there's let's say up to over 100 people in that are being invited, that's we're talking about somewhere between 1400 and 2000 businesses across this, how many businesses are in the city total?
Sure. I mean, there's clearly a lot more of those businesses, right? So the two things that we wanted to do here was one, do some focused work to test out what is or isn't working so we can get some of that data back, but also be able to provide through whether it's 311, whether it's through normal channels, newsletters, whether it's through communications, how small storefronts, if they have issues, how they can access direct help immediately. Right.
So my point is that looking at resolution 37718, this is number three articulation of standardized data collection methods. Standardized. That's not in here. Definition of storefront business. There is something that I think approaches a definition here which is on it's on page. Three. And it gets into this these terms that are completely nebulous in terms of vibe and things like that, which is it makes sense. This report is not really statistically based. It's not in any way based on on a statistically significant sampling, nothing. It's all vibes based. So it makes sense to be discussing it via vibe.
Councilor can I respond to that? I'm so as project manager, I just want to say council gave me 90 days to complete this work, right? And so we're trying to get through it as quickly as we can.
That's actually not the case though. Council gave the administrator the administrator. I don't think that this should have ever gone to Portland solutions at all. That that's. So don't please don't put that on us. It doesn't say that anywhere in the in the resolution that it'd be you. In fact, the only named entity in here is prosper. Not as the overall holder of it, but just in a couple asides it mentions prosper, sure.
But just to kind of make the point that there is our business health index data points is what we're trying to build out with this. So we're not going to have that data right away. Right. But we do want to build out an infrastructure so that we're able to collect that information to your point, so that we can understand what what's working what's not working. Where are the vacancies block by block, that information. But with the limited timeline, I think for any project manager, right. Whether it was myself, Portland solutions or whatever, turning this around in 90 days is is quite a feat to get to the data points that you might be asking for. So what we've tried to build out is a framework here for this future work, for storefront support, where it ends up living. You know, I suppose the council could say anywhere, right? But for the work that we've been tasked with doing, this is how we've laid it out in this short timeline.
I, I think that's fair to say. The 90 days that that is fair. And I want to I want to recognize that I think there's a good faith effort of here in terms of meeting the timelines. And I appreciate that from both you and from the administrator for that. I am also broadly supportive around the three categories that you've identified, retain, reinvigorate and reinvest. I think that when we get into some of the details, there's just there's not a lot of detail. And I am concerned that that where it gets housed also influences what we're going to hear. Because if we're talking about economic development, I do think that all those things that councilor Avalos is bringing up, I cannot believe that rent is not a core component of this, because that's what I hear about when I get talked to. And as it relates to to to the statistical significance. The other note I'll make is that we've brought this up. I think problem solvers does a really great job for who it does a good job for, right? The people that are involved in it. But I've been bringing this up to, to you in the past that we that it's a very narrow subset of the people that that talk to us. And that's why I asked those numbers. We're talking about maybe 2000 at most business owners across the whole city, which is, I think, the the absolute maximum. You're saying 20 to 40 might be on the lower end, then you can do the math there. We're talking 280 300 total. And there are thousands of businesses in the city. I want to make sure that we're doing a good job, not only for the people that already know how to access it. And I'll mention that that when you have opt in policies, there are massive equity implications of that in terms of who gets reached, who's allowed to be a part of this and who's not. So I'm I'm supportive of the program. I intend to continue supporting the program. I'm not supportive of the report. And that's, I think, the distinction I wanted to clarify up front here because there's it's it's there's it's very visually attractive. I will say that I appreciate that, but I was hoping for actual details and a core definition that just doesn't exist in here, because the definition I have is, you know, it's on page three. I'll let everyone I'll read it. Thank you, council president.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Something is in the water today. Okay. I and just very appreciative of councilor Ryan to victor, to pmo, to ann, and frankly, to everybody who for the last 4 or 5 years has participated in the problem solver network that's been referenced here. And I actually think that they have been able to bring tactical change across the city, and that this report actually is the first effort to harness what is that tactical change and how can we spread it from what started in the core to all neighborhoods across all four districts? And I am very appreciative of it. I never expected to get a scientific PSU based research study. I think that the Portland vibe is exactly what we're talking about. In fact, I am appreciative that the difference between tactical economic development and strategic economic development is an important distinction, and those definitions would be helpful for some folks to do some reading up. Prosper needs to spend his time on recruiting those headquarter companies, and when we have our homegrown small businesses and even some outside larger entities, it has been pmo, it has been Portland solutions, it has been the local small business districts who have kept them here, who have helped them find funding for the broken window, who've helped figure out how to bring an enhanced service district like Multnomah county, TriMet, and the city of Portland did in gateway as a pilot to say are the services that we have put in downtown something we can replicate into other business districts? One of the things that I really like about this, and it is harnessed in the way that councilor Ryan and I have talked about the micro downtowns that exist in all four districts, those micro downtowns, those business districts are the most awesome part of Portland in a lot of ways. The st. Johns downtown hollywood division, midway division, not midway. They give a vibe Multnomah village they give a vibe. And so Portland vibe. Being in this report, I think you're exactly right to use it, because the Portland vibe is actually when mr. Blumenauer came up and we hear stories about people have not been downtown in five years, it is not statistics that are keeping them from coming downtown. It is the vibe of trash, danger, vandalism, broken windows and a really bad experience five years ago that we have to change that Portland vibe. And for the first time, actually, I think in a generation we are advertising to our own regional, localized potential visitors because we have a localized potential problem in terms of the Portland vibe. So I, I'm not I'm, I am both hearing the concerns about it not being scientific. And yet I don't think it was ever designed to be scientific. So I want to thank you for the work. When I'm not surprised that there are members of the body, we all have the networks that speak to us. I'm not surprised. There are some who don't have a lot of business based conversations I happen to be. That is a lot of the network that comes to me, and I hear a lot about the things that I have seen now in this report and left, right, center, up, down. Having people at your window front or having people not leave your business is a concern. It doesn't matter your politics, it can be scary. And having to call the police at work is a scary endeavor and one you hope would actually be listened to. And so I've always felt that Portland solutions had done that, and that we gave voice to those small business districts and leaders of them through the the problem solver network. I also want to note that problem solver network is not just businesses. It is a lot of neighborhood associations. It's a lot of individuals who are the local do gooders. Yes, it works for the group who shows up and part of it is showing up. But part of my job is to read this and understand where and who is not showing up and trying to expand the successes to other places. Because I represent 165,000 people, multiple neighborhoods, you have given me what I think I can use as a way to say, how does that fit into a a funding model, into an organizational model. And so I want to say thank you. I'm not sure what the live wire was today. You all have done yeoman's work for the city of Portland for years. And thank you. You are probably the most advocated group by the public when I'm out talking to folks, and they're always concerned that your work doesn't get the credit that it is due. So I appreciate you. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Colleagues, we have two minutes. Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you. Lots of shade thrown today. I think that we do hear from different types of businesses and our districts are all very different, right? I mean, my district, one of the top bars in the area is a bar that's owned by all of the workers, and they share the profits, and it's a socialist bar. Okay. That's going to be a little different than some of the businesses that we see downtown. And the values there are going to be different. The assets they have are going to be different. Something that I want to echo of what councilor Kanal said is that a lot of the small businesses that I talked to in d3, the top things that I hear of their struggles are permitting and the cost of rent for them to actually be in the city. I don't expect this to be like a completely scientific report, but it also can't just be vibes based, because there was an article that was written a few months ago that talked about the folks who go downtown who actually walk through downtown, have a higher opinion of it than the people who don't live downtown, who say they would never go. Those people think downtown is dangerous because they're never down there. I am a five foot two woman. I'm not super muscular or strong, and I can walk through downtown at night just fine. So I think that we also have to acknowledge that narrative news, how we talk about Portland impacts the way that Portland is received by the public. When we are talking about the responses that businesses want, what I hear in district three is people do want emergency crisis responses. Is that always police know sometimes that's Portland street response. If they're dealing with people who are having a mental health crisis in front of their business, I'm not really satisfied with this report. I don't think that it is giving the level of data that I would like. And councilor Kanal is absolutely correct when it is a system where people are choosing to go into it, you're going to get different feedback from businesses who frankly don't feel served by these systems or who have different values from it. So I have questions about who was recruited, how this was done, the information that we've received to some people, that's not controversial. To me it is. And so I appreciate the work that was done. But I think that there has to be a happy medium between what is a scientific dissertation and what is a vibe based report, and I'm not really seeing that right now. So we do all have different constituencies, and I would appreciate it if our colleagues would understand that and appreciate that.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo colleagues. Councilor Kanal. I'm gonna give you 30s. And then I'd like to go a lightning round to get through our vote on this. And then we are going to adjourn. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thanks. Council president. I'm not surprised that there are members of the body. We all have these networks that speak to us. I'm not surprised that there are some who don't have a lot of equity based conversations I happen to be. That's a lot of the network that comes to me, and I hear a lot about the things that I didn't see in this report. Thanks, keelan.
Can we please call the roll call vote? Oh, do we report?
We'll need a motion to accept the report.
So moved.
Second.
Moved by Zimmerman. Seconded by Clark. Please call the roll.
No.
Smith. I no, no.
Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan I.
Koyama Lane sure.
Aye, Morillo.
Morillo.
No.
Novick.
Sure. Keelan. Yes or no?
Just to be clear. Thank you.
Clark I.
Green Zimmerman. I Dunphy. I the report is accepted with nine votes and three no votes.
Okay. We are unfortunately out of time. All items that have not been heard will be heard in a future meeting. I am adjourned, we are adjourned for the day. Thank you. Colleagues, I am adjourned.
Thank you. Thank you.