On Wednesday, Portland’s 12 city councilors stayed late considering a number of amendments to the city’s budget - both large and small.
OPB’s Portland city politics reporter Alex Zielinski was there and tells us what it all means.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Portland city councilors spent about 15 hours in session yesterday. Their big task right now is to pass a budget in the next month, one that addresses both the city’s $65 million shortfall along with the $25 million in additional unfunded costs to pay for Mayor Keith Wilson’s ambitious shelter plan. In recent weeks, councilors introduced more than 120 amendments to the mayor’s proposed budget. But yesterday’s marathon session was their first chance to actually vote on some of those amendments.
Alex Zielinski was there to watch it. She covers Portland city politics for OPB. And she joins me now. It’s good to have you back on the show.
Alex Zielinski: Great to be here.
Miller: I want to start with your headline from the marathon yesterday: “Counselors vote to use new police funding to maintain parks.” This came from an amendment from councilors Candace Avalos and Angelita Morillo. What had they proposed?
Zielinski: Their proposal focused on a $2 million increase to the Police Bureau that Mayor Keith Wilson had included in his proposed budget earlier this month. So they were looking at that money. This money was specifically set aside to help the police recruitment, but they were looking at that money to be put instead into the city’s parks maintenance fund, which is a bucket of money that Wilson had proposed cutting by $7 million.
Miller: What did Police Chief Bob Day say this cut would mean for the bureau?
Zielinski: He wasn’t very clear about this. The framing in Wilson’s original proposal was that it would help the bureau hire officers more swiftly and help retain them. This is something the city has struggled with for years. To be clear, the money isn’t for hiring new police officers, it’s just helping them get on board. But when Chief Day was pressed last night, he said he doesn’t know exactly how losing this money, the impact it would have on the department, aside from just a quote reduction in services. He seemed to really just take the decision personally. He focused mostly on talking about how the proposals signaled how counselors just didn’t respect him.
Miller: It’s really surprising that in the middle of a budget fight, the police chief wouldn’t have a sort of a snappy answer ready, a clear defense of this particular appropriation.
What about the other side? What did the park’s director say … what this nearly $2 million, if it were to go to her department, would be spent on?
Zielinski: Yeah, so the city’s parks director, Adena Long, had a laundry list of how this money could be spent. To be fair, she has been preparing for this for weeks, since the mayor had already proposed making significant cuts to her bureau. So she intimately knows what’s on the line, but she said the funding could restore maintenance jobs in city parks for people who clean bathrooms, repair playgrounds and lighting, take care of trails, things like that.
Miller: The debate over this amendment came near the end of the 12 hours that was devoted to the budget talk. What was the debate like?
Zielinski: Yeah, I will tell you I had written a very different story about how this council meeting was going before 11:30 p.m. That’s because counselors have been working through less controversial decisions without many fireworks, really just putting their heads down to get this done.
Miller: You had a pre-write, as reporters call it, thinking you knew what was going to happen.
Zielinski: Yeah, I had hoped to have this wrapped up quickly, but then sparks started flying. This Parks proposal was about to be bumped to a future meeting, due to time, but counselors kind of snuck it in under the wire. The crew was really lagging after this very, very long day in City Hall, but this proposal seemed to really invigorate them. Both Avalos, Morillo and others in support of this proposal said this was a smarter way to spend money if the council really cared about public safety, since neglected parks without good lighting, dangerous playgrounds, can be considered a safety risk. Others were a little bit more on the fence.
We heard from counselor Steve Novick, for example, who said he had spoken with someone from the Portland Metro Chamber, which is the local business lobby, who warned that the group might pull its support for the city’s park levy renewal if city council approved this. As a reminder, the Parks Bureau budget really relies on voters renewing this five-year levy later this year, and getting the chamber support can be really critical. He said he was contemplating that information, but it didn’t sit well with Morillo, especially because Novick had been generally in support of trading police funding for parks.
Here’s her response …
Angelita Morillo [recording]: So what I’m hearing from Councilor Novick is that apparently the Portland Metro Chamber gets to run this town and tell everybody, under vague threat, what we can or cannot do with our budget. This is not a cut to police. There will not be a single officer laid off. This was a $2 million increase to the police budget, which no other bureau received at this time. They have 91 fully-funded vacant positions. You have been one of the leaders on this discussion. I would hope that one measly call with a Metro Chamber wouldn’t shiver your timbers so much that you couldn’t vote with us.
Zielinski: So you could tell the counselors are getting a little slap happy here. It was late, they were tired, but this attitude really rubbed other councilors the wrong way, especially those who oppose this plan.
Here’s how councilor Eric Zimmerman responded …
Eric Zimmerman [recording]: I’ve never seen a city council or county commission in my life be so giddy to cut public safety. This is not a laughing matter. It’s 11:30 at night and I know that folks want to have fun, but this is serious stuff.
Zielinski: So this proposal passed 7 to 5, and the five who opposed it, including Zimmerman, were very stern and clearly upset about the decision. It was a pretty tense ending to a very long meeting.
Miller: Some of the city council members had used amendments, budget amendments, to try to introduce policy changes – as you’ve written about earlier this week – like when police should be dispatched or how overtime money should be allocated. What happened with those amendments?
Zielinski: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. There wasn’t enough time for councilors to discuss those amendments yesterday, which I realize sounds bonkers because they had 12 hours. But of the 120 or so amendments from councilors, about 30 were heard yesterday. That means the rest of them, including those policy-related amendments, will be heard on June 11, the next council budget meeting – which feels like it’ll be another long one.
Miller: I want to hear more about what has been punted for the future, but let’s talk about some things that did happen last night. Councilors Jamie Dunphy and Mitch Green had put forward a plan to withhold $13 million from Prosper Portland. That is the newish name for the city’s economic development program. What was their argument?
Zielinski: Yeah, so this one’s a little tricky to unpack. Prosper has a pot of money set aside to give small business loans. It has about $50 million in it and it only is replenished when loans are repaid. So Green and Dunphy proposed cutting that money you mentioned, which is Prosper’s entire annual operating budget – around $13 million – and told the agency to tap into their loan fund instead.
It seems kind of like a tidy trade, but there’s another hitch. The volunteer board that oversees Prosper Portland basically told counselors that they have no interest in taking money from this loan. And instead, would just use it to cut the program’s operating fund, which means a cut to more than 30 jobs. So Counselors Green and Dunphy were pretty frustrated that they could kind of make their own decision about how city money was being funded and wanted to use this as an example.
Miller: The amendment failed last night. What kind of pushback did it get?
Zielinski: There are a lot of small business owners who came out to oppose the cut, mostly people who had benefited from this business loan program. And then Prosper Portland leaders argued that these counselors didn’t reach out to them at all before making this big proposed cut and that it showed a lack of interest of actually wanting to support the department.
Miller: There were some testy moments, as we heard some audio from, and it is significant that nearly $2 million that the mayor had proposed for a budget increase for police will now go to parks. But we’re talking about a huge budget overall. In the big picture, how much has the council actually changed?
Zielinski: Not a lot. This is still an $8.5 billion budget. Councilors were really just chipping away around the edges. If there are no more big changes brought up by the next budget meeting in June that I mentioned, there will very likely still be layoffs, program cuts and pay freezes, all these things that Mayor Wilson used to balance his budget in the first place.
Also, I could mention that the $2 million that’s proposed to go to parks, that could be reversed still in these budget amendments that come in June. This isn’t set in stone.
Miller: So as you noted, only a few dozen of the more than 120 amendments that have been proposed in recent weeks were taken up yesterday. What are some of the other contentious changes that are going to be really hashed out in the coming weeks?
Zielinski: I think the ones you mentioned earlier around police will bring some heat. A proposal to move police and fire overtime funding into the hands of city council, meaning those departments will have to state their case to counselors about why they need to pay people overtime before they can use it. Another one would make the Police Bureau allow unarmed staff to respond to some low-level calls that normally elicit an officer response. So these will certainly be hot button items.
One issue that’s attracted a ton of outrage is a pitch from councilor Novick to close two art centers and use the $2 million in savings for parks maintenance. My sense from counselors is that this really has no legs, chance of passing, but it’s certainly gotten the attention of the public. And another one is a cut to the city’s urban forestry program coming from Councilor Zimmerman – 30 or so jobs cut in that proposal. That funding might be used on parks maintenance if it goes through, but that’s gotten some pushback from unions and environmental groups.
Miller: What’s the timeline for this overall process right now?
Zielinski: So these will all come up at that June 11 meeting and then the full spending package will go back to a final vote the following week.
Miller: Is it fair to say that last night, or yesterday into last night, was the most consequential of all the meetings of the new and newly-enlarged city council?
Zielinski: Sure, I mean, it’s certainly the biggest decision they had to make: the budget. And we haven’t seen a ton of fireworks like we saw last night in City Hall over the big policies yet, in the short five months in office. And this one pitting parks against police really highlighted some divisions on city council, and showed counselors digging their heels in on issues they cared about. It certainly felt different than any previous meeting of this new council.
Miller: Well, that makes me wonder, because we’ve talked in the past, you and I have – and I talked about this in a pretty clear way with the council president – that there are some factions at this point on the council. Not hard and fast, they may be porous in some ways, but there’s one block that’s more progressive, one that’s more moderate.
And I think we can see that dynamic in the vote to move the new police funding to parks maintenance. But did you learn anything new about this council in those 12 hours yesterday?
Zielinski: The one thing that stood out … I’ve seen a lot of clunkiness in how the new council moves around procedure and process, and how to advance things through this more expanded council and this new system. And one thing that stood out to me yesterday was that we saw counselors really figuring out how to pull the right levers to get their issues out in front. You saw a number of the more progressive counselors working in tandem to make motions and back each other up to get this proposal in before midnight. It was a strategy that I hadn’t really seen before. It kind of lays the groundwork for things to come. It makes things interesting.
Miller: In other words, more savviness or clarity about how to actually work politically with their colleagues.
Zielinski: Right, to row together.
Miller: Alex, thanks very much.
Zielinski: Thank you.
Miller: Alex Zielinski covers Portland city politics for OPB.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
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