After months of debates and deliberations, the time has come for our 12 city leaders to vote on a balanced budget. Today, using the Mayor’s proposed budget as a starting point, councilors will take a vote to approve the city budget.
What are the stakes for transportation-related funding? Before I get into the amendments being discussed at Council today, it’s worth knowing a few basics about the starting point:
As I reported earlier this month, the Mayor’s proposed budget helps the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) avoid the worst of the cuts and layoffs they had prepped for. He does this by raising fees on parking, rideshare app users, and leaf pickup fees. Mayor Wilson is also counting on $11 million from Salem when/if state lawmakers to pass a gas tax increase this session.
Back to today’s action…
I’ve been tracking the conversations and have reviewed the 100 or so amendments councilors have proposed. I did a short overview video on Instagram yesterday afternoon, but since that went up the full list of amendments has been made public.
As we get ready for what is likely to be a 12 hour council meeting today, I thought I’d share a list of the transportation amendments below. I found about 15 amendments from 7 different councilors. Check them out below in alphabetical order (note that a “Budget Note” is more of a policy intention statement that doesn’t have a financial component):
Councilor Olivia Clark (D4)
Develop a “Community Partnership Framework”: Clark wants to invest $160,000 into the Public Works Service Area (one FTE) to create a new program that would empower citizen volunteers to take on programs and services. This could mean a group like SW Trails or Bike Loud PDX could take on a more substantial role in doing things like trail maintenance or bike lane sweeping. This could also become the program that, for instance, helps a group of bike bus leaders secure “Road Closed” signs to create a safer route to school.
Add a budget note to improve SW Trails and address the Red Electric Trail: Clark wants to raise the profile of the 4T Trail (maintained by SW Trails, a nonprofit group) from the OHSU Waterfront campus to Pill Hill. This note directs the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to identify funding required to improve the trail and bring a report outlining their findings to the Transportation and Infrastructure (T & I) Committee by January 1, 2026. Clark also wants PBOT to bring a plan to design and complete a segment of the Red Electric Trail (from Terwilliger Blvd, through a newly acquired part of George Himes Park under Barbur Blvd, then north on low traffic streets to Gibbs St and across the Hooley Bridge, to arrive at the south waterfront) to the T & I Committee by the same date.
Councilor Mitch Green (D4)
Transfer Council Office Funds to FY 2025–26 for District 4 Pedestrian Safety Projects: Green wants $75,000 in one-time General Fund dollars to spend on “selected pedestrian safety projects” in his district.
Councilor Sameer Kanal (D2)
Increase the TNC fees from $2 per ride to $2.21 per ride and swap $1,620,000 in TNC Fees for PBOT General Fund: Kanal is one of several councilors eyeing an increase in fees for rideshare users as a way to backfill the PBOT budget. TNC ride fees are currently 0.65 cents and the Mayor’s proposed budget wants to double that to $1.30. Councilor Angelita Morillo has an amendment to increase that to $2.00 (see below). Kanal would use the additional $1.62 million raised from his increase to bolster PBOT’s General Transportation Revenue (a discretionary source of funding from state gas tax and other fees that is used for basic maintenance and operations).
Add a Budget Note to Study a Package Delivery Fee: Kanal wants the city’s Revenue Division and City Attorney to explore the feasibility of a new fee on last-mile deliveries to fund transportation. Kanal’s fee would exempt prepared food deliveries.
Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane (D3)
Amend the Budget to Restore Funding for Vision Zero: The Mayor’s budget proposed a $277,000 cut to Vision Zero (VZ) work. Koyama Lane’s amendment seeks to boost VZ spending by $500,000. To pay for that she recommends cutting other PBOT programs or using bureau contingency funds.
Amend the Budget to Support Vision Zero Programming: A separate Koyama Lane amendment seeks to move PBOT’s top Vision Zero staffer (which I believe would be Clay Veka) to the Deputy City Administrator of Public Works’ office. The move is intended to more fully integrate VZ across multiple bureaus and give Veka more power. This would also include an increase of $216,000 from the General Fund to the DCA Public Works office to kickstart VZ efforts.
Vision Zero budget notes: Lane wants to re-affirm VZ by requiring PBOT to more clearly identify funding needs, increase the frequency of reporting, update the VZ Action Plan, and make sure all VZ actions are rooted in PBOt’s Equity Matrix toolkit. A separate budget note calls on PBOT to create a funding and staffing plan to reconvene the VZ Task Force and report back to Council by September 1, 2025.
Councilor Angelita Morillo (D3)
Increase Transportation Network Company (TNC) Fees from the Mayor’s proposal of $1.30 to $2.00: Morillo’s proposal would raise an addition $5 million for PBOT beyond the Mayor’s proposal.
Amend the Budget to Support Critical Traffic Safety Measures in District 3: Morillo wants $800,000 in one-time funding reallocated from the Portland Police Bureau to PBOT in order to complete a safety project on Calle Cesar Chavez from SE Powell to SE Schiller. Morillo’s intention is to improve safety on the stretch of Cesar Chavez where Tuyet Nguyen was hit and killed while walking back in January and where Jeanie Diaz was killed in 2023.
Transfer New Police Funding to Support Traffic Safety Infrastructure: Morillo wants to use $2 million the Mayor had set-aside for the Police Bureau to support PBOT “traffic safety infrastructure.”
Amend the Budget to Transfer New Police Funding to Explore evidence-based, place-based environmental interventions that can be implemented to reduce crime and gun violence in high-risk or hotspot neighborhoods: Morillo is seeking $500,000 from the General Fund to support the Safe Blocks program. Her intention appears to be similar to how former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty (Morillo’s former boss) used PBOT and Portland Parks interventions to decrease crime and gun violence in Mt. Scott Park in 2022.
Councilor Loretta Smith (D1)
Amend the Budget for Funding for the Sidewalk Improvement and Pavement Program (SIPP): Smith seeks to pass an ordinance that would allocate $200 million for the Sidewalk Improvement and Pavement Program (SIPP) passed earlier this month. The funding would be raised by selling $50 million worth of limited revenue bonds for the next four years. Smith wants the $8 million debt service on these bonds to be paid for by funds the Portland Housing Bureau pays to Multnomah County as part of Joint Office of Homeless Services.
Councilor Eric Zimmerman (D4)
Amend the Budget to Provide $50,000 of one-time General Fund to community trails group for signage repair, replacement, and updates in the SW and NW trail system: Zimmerman wants to help fund repairs and updates in the “SW and NW trail system.” I’m not yet clear on what specific trails he’s talking about, so we’ll have to wait and see how this one shakes out.
That’s it for amendments. Council will deliberate all of these today in what could be a meeting that runs close to midnight. If you want to follow along, check the meeting page with all the documents, and/or watch the livestream on YouTube. The Council will morph into the Budget Committee at 11:45 am.
Keep in mind, today’s vote is to approve the budget. The final budget will be officially adopted on June 18th. Between now and then, they can make only relatively minor adjustments.
I’ll have the budget meeting playing at Bike Happy Hour tonight, so come by Rainbow Road from 3:00 to 6:00 pm if you want to talk about it. If you have any questions about the budget, just ask and I’ll be happy to share what I know (or find out if I don’t). And stay tuned on Thursday for a recap of any transportation-related fireworks.
Thanks for reading.
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If Olivia Clark can actually get the Red Electric trail built, so we no longer need to take Barbur or Terwilliger to get downtown from SW and vice-versa, that will be a game-changer for cycling and walking.
As anyone who reads BP knows, SW has been sorely neglected in the development of cycling and walking infra, so I hope the other councilors support Clark in these efforts.
I think a lot of the Red Electric trail is pretty good and would serve a pretty similar purpose to greenways on the east side of the river (that is, mostly low traffic shared streets). It will enhance connectivity to some of the schools along the route and help connect some of the neighborhoods better through ROW shortcuts.
My issue with it is the alignment (https://swtrails.org/trails/red-electric/) that uses SW Slavin Rd and SW Corbett. Slavin Rd is a circuitous route with an inconsistent gradient and Corbett is a car sewer. This will not be a game changer to connect Hillsdale to downtown via bike.
What really needs to happen is to take away one of the severely under-utilized 3 downhill car lanes on Barbur, move those existing jersey barriers from the side of the road to between the car drivers and suddenly you have 15ft path protected by giant cement barriers which is plenty wide enough to accompany bikes and pedestrians.
Plus, if they want to keep the theme of Red Electric, Barbur is the logical choice since that was the old Southern Pacific alignment that the Red Electric trolleys used
For everyone in the last article about Councilor Koyama Lane up in arms about proclamations and task forces being meaningless, I’d like to point out that she is allocating money to Vision Zero too. Maybe councilors who care enough about Vision Zero to make a proclamation and task force also care enough to allocate money to it, what a concept.
I’m glad to see she is doing something more likely to have an impact.
A number of folks apparently told councilors that the city – despite Wheeler asking us all to pitch in – actually hates volunteers doing anything but performative, feel-good things… like pull ivy in a small patch one day a year, or scrub graffitti for 3 hours. City attorneys nix many things due to liability fears, and even when a bureau WANTS to do something, they don’t have the FTE to staff or coordinate. There are union rules about work a dues-payer should be doing rather than a volunteer, but realistically there are not enough staff/dollars to get everything done solely by city employees.
To be clear, even that performative work is great, but it isn’t enough. If we have no money, residents will need to help out, and instituional barriers to that, as well as financial excuses, need to be removed. The city stopped doing a number of things in 2008, and I started doing some myself, usually illegally. Sometimes I’ve been asked to stop, sometimes the city came in and finished the task, sometimes they pretend they don’t see. I loved telling dubious staffers “Wheeler and Hardesty told me to!” Hey, if some idiot wants to clear the Barbur shoulder of blackberry canes for 2 miles, let them! The ‘framework’ part comes from figuring out how it actually works without causing headaches elsewhere… that moron clearing blackberries? If she just left the canes there she’d create a fire and other hazards, so someone needs to be detailed to haul it off or mulch it.
Adopt One Block is a good model, and hopefully Portland won’t over-think things.
Zimmerman’s trail things might be more/repaired signs for SWTrails and Forest Park?
At first glance, I support all of these. I think we all agree that making roads less amenable to speeding makes us safer, and swapping temporary police enforcement for permanent infrastructure that reduces need for that enforcement is a better deal.
The money is there at PBOT to construct bikeways, fix potholes, and improve safety.. The fiscal management and executive leadership with proven management acumen is not.
Ah yes, micromanagement of the city administrator by each city councilor. Same as it ever was.
Wasn’t the whole point of the change of government structure to eliminate this sort of micromanagement by elected officials? That professional employees would manage government operations?
These are amendments, not directives from ‘the boss.’ If they don’t get enough votes they don’t get enacted. You are talking about a former process where a commissioner was pretty much allowed to rule their own sandbox. Try not to splash yer shoes when pissing on everything.
You need to actually read some of these amendments, many redirect jobs from central administration to council administration, re-creating the government structure that y’all ho-so-wisely thought you had eliminated.
Welcome to the smelly sewer of budget politics. Sorry about the ammonia smell, but I’m not the source, y’all are yourselves. My puddle is here in NC.
Is providing feedback on the city budget out of the scope of the city council’s role? That would surprise me.
Ms. Morillo: We already did the police defunding thing in Portland. How did that work out for us?
https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffing-crisis
I mean the project JM is alluding to in this article at the Mount Scott triangle was definitely a success from my memory. If we can spend $800k to permanently fix a public safety problem via infrastructure, that’s a better investment than having a cop respond to the same issue cropping up over and over again.
So Portland has some of the highest taxes in the entire nation and we need volunteers to “take on programs and services”. I have to ask: “Where is all the money going?”