This coming Monday Portland Mayor Keith Wilson will unveil his proposed budget. It will be watched very closely by transportation advocates because without a lifeline, key services and programs from the Portland Bureau of Transportation face existential threats.
At a meeting of City Council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on April 21st, we got a glimpse at the gut-wrenching extent of the cuts PBOT has prepped for. The agency needs to reduce $38 million from an already barebones budget — that’s nearly half of the total amount of flexible revenue they have each year. PBOT says that level of cuts would lead to 69 employees losing their jobs and significant cuts to popular programs.
Some of what many would consider essential services — like street sweeping, leaf pickup, striping crosswalks, and replacing traffic signals that get knocked down by drivers — would be completely eliminated.
“The transportation system is at a breaking point,” said PBOT Director Millicent Williams at City Council last month. If more revenue is not identified Williams said, “What we’ll be able to do is maintain minimal operability where possible.” She then repeated for emphasis, “Minimal operability where possible.”
This year’s cuts come after six years of reductions. “We’re not cutting to the bone. We’re cutting into the bone,” Williams said. And Jody Yates, PBOT’s head of operations and maintenance appeared to almost tear up at the meeting as she said, “It’s hard to actually talk about [the cuts] out loud, because they’re so significant.”
If there’s hope, it lies in the Mayor’s budget proposal and on City Council members’ creativity and willingness to do things differently and /or raise fees and taxes. We’ve heard very little so far about the former and just a bit about the latter.
What’s at stake
Below are just some of the notable cuts PBOT is preparing to make:
- $5.3 million from project planning and engineering programs
- Elimination of half of the funds ($50 million) currently used as local match for project grants. This means a halt to planned investments in projects like Outer Division, Outer Stark, Cully, 148th, 92nd, SE Foster, and Cesar Chavez.
- Elimination of the Street Plaza program. As I reported recently, this means even plazas where local businesses come up with funding, PBOT would not permit them due to lack of staff support.
- Elimination transportation wallet services in parking districts. The wallet is a successful program where PBOT gives deep discounts on bike/scooter share and transit if folks opt out of parking permits. PBOT then uses revenue from increases in parking permits to pay for biking and walking projects in those districts. This cut means they would no longer do those projects, which would make it even more difficult to pass parking rate increases.
- Portland would suspend its automated enforcement camera program. Existing cameras would remain, but there would be no new ones.
- 823-SAFE, a phone and email response service where traffic safety issues are addressed, would be severely reduced. Response time would be more than four months.
- If a signal gets knocked-down by a driver or other cause (happens more than you think!), it would be replaced with a stop sign unless the location was on a designated High Crash Network street.
- Elimination of striping bike boxes, crosswalks, and stop bars. Head of PBOT Maintenance Jody Yates told Council: “The striping of bike boxes will just continue to deteriorate and eventually will wear itself away with traffic.”
- All street sweeping would be eliminated.
- If a city-owned stairway gets cracked or damaged, it would be closed permanently instead of repaired.
- A $677,000 cut from Cannabis Tax revenue would reduce PBOT’s work on Vision Zero-related programs like intersection daylighting next to schools and spot safety improvements on High Crash Network streets.
- A cut of $113,000 in PBOT’s share of the General Fund would cut into Sunday Parkways.
After hearing all this, T&I Committee Chair Councilor Olivia Clark said, “This is the most depressing presentation I’ve had since I’ve been here.”
New revenue sources?
When discussion turned toward possible new revenue sources, it was clear nothing would come easy. Director Williams mentioned a possible increase in utility license fees given to PBOT, possible parking fee increases, and maybe even a partial bailout from the Oregon Legislature if a statewide funding package is passed this session. But all those things remain uncertain.
“I do have optimism about where we’ll go, but it’s tough for us to be able to, in this moment, speak specifically,” Williams said.
Williams also said PBOT is ready to have “potentially really tough conversations” about new revenue sources and that they have the data and information to back them up. Beyond having receipts to prove that Portland should price transportation a bit higher, another ray of hope exists in the recent findings of the annual Portland Insights Survey. When asked about the most important city services, streets and transportation came in second (with 67% rating it highest) — behind only affordable housing and homeless services (72%) and ahead of community safety (62%).
One place PBOT could see budget savings is in an effort by the Portland city administrator to consolidate core services among bureaus.
When asked about a specific fee (on Uber and Lyft trips) by Councilor Angelita Morillo, Williams said PBOT already levies over 400 fees and that she’d be willing to re-evaluate them, but, “the climate is not particularly ripe for people to see large-scale, broad, wide, sweeping increases.”
What comes next
Regardless of the political lift of increasing transportation-related fees, Williams sounded like it was an inevitability if Portland wants to keep up appearances with peer cities. “In places where you see infrastructure that we aspire to, there are significant fees charged across the board, and we look forward to potentially getting to that.”
Whether Mayor Wilson’s budget on Monday helps get PBOT closer to solvency remains to be seen. And keep in mind this is the very first city budget for our new form of government. While the Mayor will propose the budget, it will ultimately be the job of City Council to change and approve it. Mayor Wilson will only get to vote on the final budget it if a tie-breaker is needed.
Once the mayor’s budget is out on Monday, hearings and work sessions will begin within a few days. There will be Council Budget Committee work sessions the following week on May 14th and 15th from 2:00 to 5:00 pm. May will be full of budget meetings and opportunities for the public to testify. The council will make a final vote to adopt the budget on June 18th.
I hope PBOT staff and leadership rest well this weekend. Because things are likely to get very heated starting next week. Stay tuned and let me know what questions you have about all this so I can tailor my stories accordingly.