Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission split in two

The city of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission is being divided into two different boards — with one focused on sustainability, the other on planning and land use. The broad purpose of these boards is to help create policy and make recommendations to their specific city bureau. Willamette Week reporter Sophie Peel joins us to explain what led to this shake up and most importantly, why it matters.

Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission is being split into two volunteer boards, one focused on sustainability, the other on planning and land use. So why did this happen and why does it matter? Sophie Peel wrote about this split in the latest issue of Willamette Week, and joined us yesterday to talk about it. I asked her first just to explain what the Planning and Sustainability Commission is.

Sophie Peel: The Planning and Sustainability Commission advises city council on what it sounds like: planning and sustainability. And of course those are two very broad terms, but they advise city council on specific building projects. They help craft different building codes and requirements that builders have to abide by. So over the years that has very much expanded the scope of the commission, to also bring in climate resilience and climate planning as well as zoning issues and building codes, which of course are very inextricably linked, especially these days, as we continue to feel more potently the effects of climate change and how it inter plays with our city planning. But the commission has been a really integral part of the city for a long time and it’s been seen as an important commission that the city council gives a lot of weight to, and really has listened to in the past.

Miller: I’m curious about this part of it, because the words you mentioned earlier that it advises city council or the Bureau of Planning [and] Sustainability. How much power does it officially have?

Peel: So that was a big part of this report that Commissioner Carmen Rubio commissioned this spring and also got back this spring, that resulted in the splitting of the commission. It’s murky as far as what they can actually do and what powers they have and what powers they don’t have. And it sounds like commissioners both currently and over the years, sort of a rolling roster, people have been confused as to what they can and can’t do. People don’t know if their power is just to send a strongly worded letter to one city council person, to the mayor, or a bureau director, or if they have more clout than that and can actually kind of call the shots. So I think that’s always been unclear. And part of the report really focused on that there’s different levels of power that commissioners are observing. And there’s no real kind of rubric by which these commissioners can figure out or blueprint what they’re allowed and what they’re not allowed to do.

Miller: The language here is confusing because Portland’s government system is confusing, but when you say commissioners here, I think you’re sure not talking about elected officials like Commissioner Carmen Rubio or the mayor, but the volunteer members of this board which is also called a commission, right?

Peel: Yes. I truly think we need to come up with a novel word for people who serve on volunteer commissions, because it gets so confusing in our commission form of government. But the commissioners I’m talking about have unclear guidance about what powers they do and don’t have. Those are commissioners who serve on this volunteer board currently.

Miller: So you noted that Commissioner Rubio’s decision to change the structure of this commission, to split it in two, followed a report that she received from a consultant in April, and I want to dig deeper into this. What are the reasons that the consultant was brought in in the first place?

Peel: My understanding, just in talking to Commissioner Rubio’s office, is that in talking to commissioners, she knew that it was a problem. That there were various various issues, one that their scope was just too broad. These commissioners, I think, felt really, really overwhelmed about all they were tasked with. I mean, two of the most important issues in our city – I guess you could say that for a lot of issues in our city – but planning and sustainability and how those two are sort of overlapping. Again, we’re just seeing the effects of that, immediately right now with extreme heat waves. But she was talking to commissioners about this, and it sounds like this issue proceeded Commissioner Rubio as well, this lack of direction by the city council member in charge of who oversees the Planning and Sustainability Sustainability Commission. So, one, there was just a lack of leadership in general and that doesn’t just fall to Commissioner Carmen Rubio. I think it also has to do with bureau directors, I think it has to do with other city council members. I think it has to do with the mayor. But I think this commission just really felt a little bit lost as to what their mission really was, they felt it was too broad. Some of the newer commissioners who are a little bit more on the advocacy side, were really laser focused on climate resilience. Whereas some of the commissioners who had been on that board for quite some time or a little bit more, focused on land use issues. And I think it sounds like, according to the report, some of these people are kind of having a hard time finding where the middle ground was. So there was a bit of an ideological split. I think it was a bit of an identity crisis for the Commission.

Miller: What are some of the specific issues that turned into disagreements among commissioners as identified in the report?

Peel: Two come to mind, and I think I mentioned both of them in my article. One of them… right now I’m not recalling if it was in 2020, I think it was in 2020 but maybe in 2021. When creating some new building codes, there was sort of a split on the commission about whether to incorporate very specific language about the architecture of buildings and whether they needed to incorporate safe rest places for houseless people. The fact that this split was over one or two words in code, I think really shows the division in how this commission, I mean their job is to parse words. Their job is to do that and really dig deeply into these codes. That was one place where I think the commission were sort of split along ideological lines. The other one that comes to mind is that… This sort of gets a little bit more into what authority this commission does or doesn’t have. Last year, when the Bureau of Development Services was weighing whether or not to give Zenith Energy the land use compatibility statement, which it needed to continue operations at their oil terminal, the Planning and Sustainability Commission penned a letter to the director of the Bureau of Development Services and kind of took an advocacy stance that, ‘We think you should take into account tribal rights and the city’s climate action plan when weighing whether or not to grant this LUCS to Zenith Energy.’ The director – we had reported on this last year – sent just a really hotly worded letter back to the commission, basically saying, in short, ‘Stay in your lane. Rather than taking an advocacy position, actually work to create codes and regulations to get the results that you want.’ I think that was another, just a very clear example of almost ambiguity about whether they’re supposed to be an advocacy body or more of an advisory body.

Miller: Can you explain the solution that Commissioner Rubio came up with after she got this report?

Peel: Yeah. Actually pretty shortly after the report, she directed the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to split the commission into two. There’s not really a set deadline for that. I think there’s gonna be some community engagement as there usually is with these decisions, so again, the timeline of that is a little unclear right now. But, end game is that these are going to be two separate commissions: one that’s focused on land use and planning and the other that’s focused on sustainability. I think Commissioner Carmen Rubio’s reasoning behind this is that these are both big issues, and they both need to have as much focused attention on them as they deserve. Critics of that, which include former commission members – when I say that, I mean Planning and Sustainability Commission members – I think they’re worried [about] extricating these two things. I mean, again, they’re so intertwined, especially now, and they will continue to be more intertwined as we go on and we feel the effects of climate change. So I think they’re worried that once you parse these out that one is going to get less attention than the other. It’s interesting because the Planning and Sustainability Commission was formed in 2009. The Planning Commission was already there, but they brought sustainability into that commission because they thought it would give it more political clout to be in the Planning Commission, which already had a lot of political clout in a way in City Hall. A lot of people argue that it really did elevate sustainability to a level that it hadn’t been elevated before. So I think some people are worried that once you separate these out again,  planning is kind of going to take the lead and sustainability is going to fall by the wayside.

Miller: Sophie Peel, thanks very much for joining us today.

Peel: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Miller: Sophie Peel is a reporter for Willamette Week. We spoke yesterday.

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