This week, Portland City Council finalized a city budget totaling over $8 billion in spending for next year.
It includes more funding for alternative shelter sites and an expansion of Portland Street Response, but cuts to the office of Civic Life and less funding for the Portland Police Bureau than the mayor had requested.
Mayor Keith Wilson joins us to discuss his plans for executing this final budget. We’ll also discuss the Trump administration’s calls for increased immigration enforcement in West Coast cities and the protests at Portland’s ICE facility.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross, in for Dave Miller. The city of Portland has a budget. Earlier this week, the City Council voted to pass an $8.6 billion spending plan. The vote was unanimous, 11-0, but don’t think getting to adoption was easy. It came after months of long, tense meetings and fiery debates. As council member Candace Avalos put it, “The budget process has been hard and messy. But that mess was democracy in action.”
Here to talk about that messy process and the challenge of implementing that budget is Portland Mayor Keith Wilson. Mayor Wilson, welcome back to Think Out Loud. It’s good to have you.
Keith Wilson: Nice to be here, Geoff. Thank you for the opportunity.
Norcross: There’s a whole lot of democracy in this process. The first budget enacted under the expanded 12-member City Council, long meetings, a ton of public input … How do you feel about how this budget came together?
Wilson: Long meetings, you’re right. Well, we achieved something, I think, spectacular. We’ve met the moment. We achieved what we set out to do. And I’d say for the most part the budget is solid, it’s sound, and we’re able to address the needs of our community with it. So I’m pretty proud of what the counselors came out with and certainly what we ended up with.
Norcross: All of the council members agree that they would like to see a more organized and less rushed process the next time. Do you agree with that assessment?
Wilson: Yeah, no doubt. I mean, we need to start earlier. By charter, I’m mandated to present it to council by May 5. I believe we delivered it to them just a day or two prior to that. It just simply wasn’t enough time for them to go through hundreds of pages, an $8.6 billion budget and for them to make more in-depth comprehensive review[s] and amendments. So, we’ve got to start … I’m confident working with my team, after the fact, that we can deliver it earlier for them so they can have a better opportunity to provide clear mandates, clear amendments, clear reports from resolutions. So, we’re going to do better next year.
Norcross: You proposed a budget in May, as you said, and the one that was adopted this week is pretty close to the one that you proposed. There are adjustments though. You proposed [a] $7 million cut to Portland Parks and Recreation. The council moved money around to erase that. How do you feel about that?
Wilson: I understand. That was their priority. We started with a $23 million hole in parks. So when you think about it, I was able to deliver the budget with a $7 million hole on a $170 million program or bureau. We were pretty darn close. They really wanted to focus on maintenance, programs, community centers and such, which I had already addressed. They made some changes to tree enforcement and other areas, which I thought were wise, and they had additional revenue that they found for it. But it’s their prerogative. That’s the area they really want to focus on, and I applaud them for that.
Norcross: Council members also found a way to give a few million dollars more to the public safety bureaus to step up recruitment efforts. How about that?
Wilson: I had budgeted in a $2 million increase to public safety, which was primarily for police. But we’d already increased the funding for Portland Street Response. We’re adding 14 more individuals there to go to two full shifts. We added more funding to Fire [and Rescue] to add 10 more officers. We really needed to focus on police to continue their progress with staffing. That was taken away and in turn $2.2 million was added to the public safety service area for recruitment. While it’s not all for police, it’s for all the different departments, I’m happy with it. I mean, we get to the same ends, just a different process along the way. Now, we still have to go back and ask for allotments, which is gonna be a challenge as we move forward to continue that recruiting for police.
Norcross: In this budget cycle we saw the council’s more progressive members band together to advance each other’s priorities. So, there was some alliance building on this newly expanded council. Do you consider this kind of coordination a sign that the new government is working?
Wilson: That is democracy, when you think about it, to find those coalitions and then to address those shared values. I did see some divisiveness throughout that process though. I saw individuals with, well, individual priorities. My hope is that we draw back, and we continue to focus on community health and safety. It shouldn’t take alliances to deliver on those key things that Portlanders want.
Norcross: The budget funds your key campaign promise, which is to open 1,500 new shelter beds for the city’s homeless by December 1. How confident are you that you’re going to be able to achieve that now?
Wilson: Well, we’re moving forward. I’m confident. I’m really proud that the counselors … they stepped up and said, “we believe in the plan, we believe in the process.” It’s time to turn the city around and they agree. Leaving Portlanders to suffer and die on the street is not who we are, it’s not Portland. We’ve essentially fully funded the plan. Now, we still have to wait for the state legislature. There is still funding asks that the county and the city have before them, so that’s that last part. But for the most part, we’re 80% funded, we’re moving forward and I’m happy to say we have multiple shelters getting ready to be opened now. Our target’s 1,500 beds by December 1. We have 164 days left. Our goal is to deliver the turnaround that all Portlanders want to see and be a part of.
Norcross: If you hit that date, if you get all the funding sources that you’re expecting and you hit that 1,500 shelter bed figure, when will you then direct officers to begin enforcing the city’s public camping rules?
Wilson: So, we are focused on that December 1. We need to make sure that we’re not going into winter with people suffering on the street. If a person needs – wants – a bed, we need to have a door ready for them. Enforcement codes are already happening. We are enforcing our no camping codes, but it’s in an ad hoc fashion. It’s not en masse.
I would hope once we have enough open shelter beds – a couple hundred extras – when we know we can guarantee somebody a safe night’s sleep, lifesaving care, that we can start helping people out of business corridors, out of their tents, out of makeshift shelters and RVs … using our outreach workers. We tripled the budget for outreach workers. So, that’s not police, that’s outreach workers saying, “I want to help you, what does it look like? You can’t stay here but have a better place than here.” It starts with outreach workers.
Now, if an outreach worker isn’t able to get through to somebody sleeping in a business corridor, officers are there to roll by and help. But the goal is to not arrest our way out of this, ‘cause that’s a false narrative. You just can’t do that. But we need lifesaving care. So those things work in tandem. I’ll let you know in the next several months how the whole thing unfolds.
Norcross: You point out in a piece that was published in Newsweek.com just this morning that we have to agree to provide a safe, warm bed for every person every night. How confident are you that you can meet that goal, not just on December 1, but always?
Wilson: Geoff, we have to meet that goal. As a community, up until just a few weeks ago, Multnomah County was handing out tents. In a person’s worst time of need, we were fostering the behavior that we’re trying to end. I’m happy to report that they’re no longer doing that. So, you’re seeing the tide now. That’s what adding the shelter beds is all about. But it’s not just the Portland shelter beds. County has committed to shelter beds. We have private people coming with shelter beds. It’s not just nighttime shelter beds, it’s 24/7 beds. Bybee Lakes just opened 50 beds this past Saturday. Those are recovery beds.
We have got to do this. It is a mission critical focus. We cannot continue to go year after year with dwindling families leaving and businesses failing and think that we can have thousands of people living on our street. It’s a sign that we’re helpless, that we’re not guiding ourselves, that our city is not governable. And that’s just frankly not the case. We have to hit this goal.
Norcross: Mayor Wilson, I want to ask you about something else and that’s the public demonstrations against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. They led to riots being declared at the ICE facility on the South Waterfront over the weekend. How involved do you think Portland Police should be in those demonstrations, if at all?
Wilson: Yeah, it’s a question that the community’s having right now. But what I want to start with is just what happened on Saturday was Portlanders focusing on our core value, and that’s peacefully protesting. We had 50,000 people on the streets of Portland on Saturday.
Norcross: In the “No Kings” march.
Wilson: Exactly. It was one of the most well attended, well organized and safe protests that we’ve ever experienced. That’s what Portland’s all about. That night, Saturday night, you’re right. We did have some direct action at the ICE facility. Chief Day and I, as well as the governor, community-based organizations [and] faith-based leaders had a press conference on Friday. We came together to explain to Portland, we appreciate peaceful protests, but we cannot support people being assaulted. We can’t support rocks being thrown, others being vandalized, or violence. So we really addressed that circumstance.
If we saw probable cause with criminal activity … You saw our Portland police officers go in and make targeted arrests. But then we pulled back, Geoff. We aren’t going to be at that front line separating our Federal Protective Services and the peaceful protesters. But, if we see criminal activity, we are interceding. It did get to a point where the crowd was getting too tight and entangled, so we stepped in. We saw some criminal activity and we addressed it, but then we stepped back out.
Once we notified the riot, by the way – because we wanted to not lose control on it – we saw something really special. The crowd temperature went down and stepped back in a way. It’s changed since 2020. We see an opportunity where we respect people’s ability to peacefully protest, and they’re doing it more so now than ever. But that excessive force or standing in between the federal buildings and the protesters, we’ve stepped back from that. Frankly, I’ve been impressed with how we’ve been able to get through these very difficult days.
Norcross: President Trump has shown he is willing to mobilize the National Guard, even the U.S. military, against demonstrators as he has done in Los Angeles. What is your message to him if he’s considering a similar action here?
Wilson: Well, I mean, that would be an overreaction. It would without a doubt be overreach. When we look at what’s going on in Portland, we’re talking about a two-block area. Do we really need the National Guard to be deployed in that sort of way? I mean, we’re being very clear. We want the federal government to commit to not deploying troops on Portlanders or on Oregonians on Oregon soil, just like it should be across the nation. We are asking them to stop threatening to halt funding to Portland – to Oregon – when we give so much back to our national government.
So, if they’re trying to create a pretext to deploy troops, it’s not necessary. We have everything under control. You’ve seen the arrests that we’re making. You’ve seen the protests. They’re peaceful, outside of ICE. There are some targeted issues, and we’re stepping in and addressing it where necessary. The city has changed since 2020. We have everything under control.
Norcross: National Guard or no, the president has threatened to increase immigration enforcement in West Coast cities. And that is, I’m sure, due to our sanctuary city status that we have here. Are you preparing for that stepped-up enforcement in Portland?
Wilson: You know, we’re alarmed. We see the reports where people are being apprehended at our courthouses and on our streets in some cases. What I can focus on is that we’re a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state. What I can commit to you is we’re prohibited from assisting Federal Immigration Enforcement. We’re going to not assist them and we’re going to continue to address that. When there’s overreach, when they go too far, we’re gonna fight them in the federal courts.
We’ve proven time and time again – Attorney General Dan Rayfield has proven – we will sue, and we have won constantly. We’re going to continue that process because we’re not going to compromise due process. We’re not going to walk away from the laws we have and we’re gonna hold the Trump Administration accountable to those laws.
Norcross: Mayor Wilson, thank you so much for the time.
Wilson: You’re welcome. Thank you.
Norcross: Keith Wilson is the mayor of Portland.
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