BudgetMania! Part II

A little more conversation, a little less action.

First, I went back on Andy Chandler’s NW Fresh podcast (again!) to give the Portland City Council a 6 month evaluation. We used the budget process as key performance indicator.

I think it’s a great episode but I really love the sound of my own voice so... If you want a bit more detail, I’m going to try to break the final “half” of the budget down in a manner similar to last time:

BudgetMania!

Day 2 - The Public, The Trees, and Doing Live Math

On Jun 10th, the Portland City Council held a Special Session to receive some of the additional public comment that was cut short back on the first big marathon session. They also discussed two amendment packages: the Councilor Eric Zimmerman Tree Inspection amendments and a package which Councilor Steve Novick referred to as “The Green Nihilism Amendment,” aka Green 9.

Public Comment

Comment begins around 37min 12sec. Just like last time, most of the comments were on public safety cuts plus even more parks employees/allies showing up to blast the Zimmerman Tree Inspection plan as a march toward climate apocalypse and the abandonment of trees. The specific public safety issues were the $2 million transfer from police to parks and the next big cut proposed by Councilor Candace Avalos: a $15 million transfer of the police overtime budget over to council control. A few Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members popped back up to remind us that, in fact, ACAB + Tax the Rich is the only way out of this mess.

Eric Zimmerman Slays the Lorax

Discussion begins at 3hr 6min. Obviously I’m joking about the Lorax. This was the parks funding amendment Progressive Caucus (P-Cauc) wanted to pretend didn’t exist last time. The amendment, in its original form, would have made park maintenance whole without screwing around with public safety money. The DSA and Comrade Avalos hopped the queue and rushed a vote last month, probably just to be dicks.

It’s hard to explain in an interesting way because it’s the dry sort of governmental stuff you need councilors like Zimmerman for. It started as a plan to cut the bloated tree inspection branch of parks to refund parks maintenance. Director of Parks Adena Long, along with her ally Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane threw a big stink, slow-walked figures, obfuscated funding, and launched a ridiculous public campaign painting the amendment as something it wasn’t - a massive cut to urban forestry that would leave our tree canopy unprotected and lead to inequity and the slow collapse of Portland’s trees.

Part of Zimmerman’s response to that:

 I want to just highlight that I gave every opportunity to that director to clarify that, but while folks have thought that the Parks Bureau budget entirely was gonna be cut with this change, I want to just highlight this is Urban Forestry. This one line is the 2 million from levy funding, but Adena Long told us that levy funds are not being used…

I think if Portlanders continue to read stories like they read in the Willamette Week and the Oregonian in the years as we go to a parks levy, I think we're gonna lose that levy and we might deserve to lose that levy given how this program is being administered in Portland. But when I go to Portland Permitting and Development, I've learned some things over my time in the city, and those code compliance officers are applying a holistic approach of many codes, many safety regulations, and they're doing it in a culture that is trying to solve problems versus protecting one thing.

So I think that the code compliance professionals that exist in our other bureaus can probably save this program in the long term. I think that's gonna be really important because right now I think they're out of line with the public. And I say, again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the planting, the outreach, the maintenance of trees.

So much time and energy was spent on getting this thing killed. Instead of digging in, Zimmerman pivoted, worked with his fellow councilors to reshape the package into something a bit cuddlier (it was fine before) and passed both pieces of it.

Votes: Z.13 ✅ Passed 8/4 → Aye: Kanal, Ryan, Clark, Green, Zimmerman, Dunphy, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney → Nay: Koyama Lane, Morillo, Novick, Avalos; Z.14 ✅ Passed 7/5 → Aye: Kanal, Ryan, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney → Nay: Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy

A good moment for sanity but one last thing: I dunked on Director Long and Teacher Tiffany last time over this issue, and now suddenly… “Parks Director Adena Long Is On Administrative Leave” - WW

While the City Council was able to spare the parks bureau from about $7 million in parks maintenance cuts in this year’s budget cycle, bureau leaders sparred with various councilors (most notably Councilor Eric Zimmerman) who called into question the transparency of parks leadership and the information they’d supplied to the council.

Curious.

The Green Nihilism Amendment

Council Passes Amendment That Unknowingly Puts Proposed Budget $734,000 in the Red - WW

The Portland City Council on Tuesday passed an amendment to the budget that directed bureaus to reduce their external spending on contractors and materials by 2%. The directive, Councilor Mitch Green said, would create about $1.5 million in savings, which would then be reallocated to other priorities.

This one was a mess. I went through all the numbers and notes and it’s boring, y’all. Essentially the idea was to do an across-the-board cut to external spending assuming there’s probably tons of little things that are wasteful or can be fiddled with throughout the year to save money. Almost everyone fell for this plan. It was rough, back of the napkin math and guessing. Even Zimmerman fucked up. He was way too friendly with Mitch on this one.

Councilor Dan Ryan held the line. Avalos ended up looking smart. Her gut was “no” and she was right. Novick has never been more himself, but in a good way?

Councilors who voted against the proposal expressed concern. “The day I start governing by anecdote, and assuming there must be a bunch of waste in government so I’m going to vote to make random cuts and hope somebody else will find the waste, is the day I’ll join the Republican Party,” Councilor Steve Novick said. “Hell no.”

They had to fix this whole mess the next day and it was a low point. Bonus points for Mitch Green’s team for throwing Sameer Kanal under the bus on this one. They blamed his additions for sinking the plan.

Votes: ✅ Passed 7/5 → Aye: Kanal, Morillo, Clark, Green, Zimmerman, Dunphy, Smith → Nay: Ryan, Koyama Lane, Novick, Avalos, Pirtle-Guiney

Dan Fucking Ryan still out here hitting homers.

Day 3 - The Final Slog and the Snake Strikes Again

Things kicked off with Terrence Hayes firing verbal shots at the P-Cauc, especially Avalos and Jamie Dunphy. They will try to make him pay for that, but we’ll get to that story soon.

Here’s Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney opening up the amendment discussion:

 Before we start, I just want to remind us all that we have about nine hours today. We are scheduled to end this afternoon at, I believe, six o'clock... so a little less than that actually. And there is a lot that folks still want to do. So I would just encourage us all to say what we need to say to get our points across and then stop.

We don't have rules that suggest that we respond to everything. Some comments can be left alone. We don't need to speak to every vote if we've already spoken about why we're gonna vote a certain way first and we don't need to... bloviate.

EPG is respectful and follows her own rules counter: 1

Do you think it stopped at six o’clock?

It was actually pretty tedious. I watched all 11+ hours. They had to fix their Golf Program meddling. Pirtle-Guiney was much spicier, which I appreciated. The Green Nihilism disaster from the previous day still needed to be fixed, and there was a hard deadline approaching.

Zimmerman’s Tree Amendment came back up for technical FTE fixes and Tiffany Koyama Lane took the opportunity to keep peddling her nonsense:

 I wanna point out that when I asked Councillor Zimmerman questions yesterday, he really couldn't answer them about who he's collaborated with on the administrative side and want to remind folks that I don't believe due diligence has been done. And there are many organizations that you have letters from, including Willamette River Keeper, Trees For Life, Oregon Bird Alliance, Columbia Slough Watershed Council that are really concerned about this.

So, I encourage you to think about your values and what you believe is right and put aside considering what you're gonna get from someone else or any trading that might happen. And make sure that you're voting with your values. And if you're doing that, then you could sleep well at night.

She really is a piece of work. As I said on NW Fresh: we really got to see the DSA throughout this process. They win like assholes, and they lose even less gracefully. The technical fix passed 10 to 2.

Votes: ✅ Passed 10/2 → Aye: Kanal, Ryan, Morillo, Novick, Clark, Green, Zimmerman, Dunphy, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney → Nay: Koyama Lane, Avalos

It’s important to understand that there was a planned flow to the proposals because of the time crunch. Everyone got a chance to put forward their top amendment in each category, then budget notes came up again, and finally they could (theoretically) go back to amendments. This was Pirtle-Guiney’s attempt to make things as fair as possible. Remember that she tried.

Many amendments got left on the table — especially amendments from Elana Pirtle-Guiney herself. I’m stressing this so you understand how ugly the end of the day was.

Candace Avalos Tries to Defund the Police: Round 2

Starts at 1hr 30min. Avalos Amendment 3 moves $15 million from police “Overtime Dollars” to City Council oversight. It’s just accountability y’all!

 This is not cutting police funding. We're just adding accountability to spending that's consistently over budget.

- Councilor Candace Avalos

Here’s the main problem (other than it being needlessly combative): there’s no such thing as Overtime Dollars. The money for overtime comes (mainly) from “vacancy savings.” That means Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has vacant FTE positions, so they use the money they aren’t paying for those positions to pay overtime occurring, in part, because of the vacant positions. As they hire more officers, the vacancies go down, and so does the overtime. So, if you lock that money behind a wall of council oversight you…

C’mon we all know this one…

Affect PPB’s ability to recruit! That’s right. Good job! Figuring that out doesn’t mean you’re smarter than Candace Avalos. She knows exactly what this will do. She just doesn’t care.

Add to that the fact that we are going into a protest season and this would be quite bad. It would also, just like last time, fit the definition of defunding. Taking $15 million away, even if you might give it back, is defunding. Once again, Morillo paints it as something else. We’re just looking at it incorrectly.

Just because we throw the word defunding around because it is politically charged now, does not mean that everything is defunding as much as we would like it to be for political gain. You can separate things out in bureaus so that the money is retained in separate accounts within that bureau.

That's not a defunding. I don't know why I have to keep emphasizing this — we are literally the city council. We have the power of the purse and we can direct agencies and bureaus to act in accordance to our budget notes and our amendments, which are again, as legally binding as a resolution is.

So, it seems very convenient when we say that we have direct oversight power and when we don't, and for some reason that always happens when we talk about holding the police accountable. So I will be supporting this.

- Councilor Angelita Morillo

It’s just accountability you NIMBY shits. Gah! We can do what we want! Morillo was unhinged throughout the day. There’s probably a supercut coming if I can stomach it. It should be more fun watching her implode but it’s just annoying.

Avalos was clearly rattled by Terrence Hayes earlier. I was happy to see Mayor Keith Wilson stepped up to caution against this move.

One last little Morillo outburst before the vote:

 The overtime goes towards over-policing protests that don't exist. We spent millions of dollars on protests that did not come up last year and now we're in a big budget deficit. So, uh, I think this is a very basic request and it's well within our power to request it.

Votes: ❌ Failed 4/8 → Aye: Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos → Nay: Kanal, Ryan, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Dunphy, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney

Steve Novick Tries to Save His Own Ass, Eats the DSA’s

Starts at 2hr 3min. Novick was the swing vote on “The Main Event” from last time. Prosper Portland had a little chat with him and he starting looking for ways to plug the $2 million back into PPB. The DSA couldn’t allow that, so we get this circle-jerk.

Novick puts forward Novick 12, transferring police underspending from this year’s budget. Remember that Morillo quote about “over-policing protests that don’t exist?” Well, here’s City Budget Director Ruth Levine:

 So this is underspending that sort of became known in the last couple of weeks. And the reason for that is that… so you'll recall that in the spring technical adjustment ordinance council allocated 3.5 million to the police bureau.

And part of the reason for that was potential needs for overtime surrounding Mayday and the Rose Festival, which have now passed and didn't require significant amounts of overtime. So essentially this wasn't forecasted at the time of the mayor's proposed budget, it's sort of new year end underspending.

Very interesting. Okay, so the DSA can easily block that so how did Novick get it done?

He didn't. He allowed Mitch Green to propose a “friendly complete replacement” that amounts to a weird compromise around putting the $2 million into “public safety” more vaguely. This is the DSA still defunding police for their base while allowing Novick to try to save the parks levy in the future.

Shout out to Councilor Loretta Smith for calling this bullshit out in a friendly way. Additional shout out to Councilor Angelita Morillo for being an absolute fucking psychopath during the discussion around this. Stay crazy kid, but remember to wipe the froth off your chin.

This was not a refunding to PPB. Mitch Green made that very clear. This was a soft-compromise to Prosper and Steve Novick.

Votes: ✅ Passed 11/1 → Aye: Kanal, Ryan, Morillo, Novick, Clark, Green, Zimmerman, Avalos, Dunphy, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney → Nay: Koyama Lane

Winners and Losers

Kanal VS Himself

Councilor Sameer Kanal tried to mess around with the police budget again, got smacked down for the most part. What was he after? Overtime spending on “crowd control and community engagement” to fund great stuff like CHAT and Ceasefire. It didn’t really work because several councilors don’t trust his math after the Nihilism Bomb.

Pirtle-Guiney VS Her Own Responsibilities

Then, Elana Pirtle-Guiney had her first great moment of the day. She had a fantastic amendment: Pirtle-Guiney 16. Watch the linked clip. She gives a beautiful argument in favor of the Office of Violence Prevention and the Ceasefire program. Unfortunately, the money she had planned to use was gone by the time she put the amendment forward. When Avalos and Smith pushed her to move the amendment anyway Pirtle-Guiney replied:

 Colleagues, we are $700,000 in the hole on general fund right now because one of the amendments we passed yesterday — we were told was in balance and it was not so I am now going to withdraw my amendment.

EPG is respectful and follows her own rules counter: 2

Zimmerman and the Mayor VS Avalos (for no reason)

Next up, Councilor Zimmerman put forward funding for a sobering center (which we badly need) out of opioid settlement money we receive each year. It was popular, but there was a problem: Candace Avalos already had plans for that money. You notice the difference? Pirtle-Guiney lost funding for her popular proposal due to timing and the incompetence of others but she moved on. Now Avalos is about to lose something she wants, so how does she behave?

By making Zimmerman’s amendment an argument about her amendment. Loretta Smith joined her petulant whining about the County and the funding for a sober center failed, for now. Avalos won.

Votes: ❌ Failed 4/8 → Aye: Ryan, Koyama Lane, Clark, Zimmerman → Nay: Kanal, Morillo, Novick, Green (strategic), Avalos, Dunphy, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney (strategic)

Children. Another false choice. This was an ugly bit of business. If you want to know why we aren’t getting a sobering center again this fiscal year, you can look at those ‘nays’ except Green and Pirtle-Guiney. It’s the only good thing Green did all day.

Avalos VS the Mayor and Zimmerman (again!)

Eventually they got to the Mayor’s Affordable Housing and PadSplit plan. It’s affordable housing stuff including funding for setting up an app to help with home sharing. Avalos had plans for this money too! She proposed taking the money Wilson set aside to fund an existing affordable housing system in N/NE instead. It’s actually pretty dull stuff that I could probably flesh out a whole article around but the context is a little difficult. Maybe a podcast where a housing expert explains it. Avalos lost.

Votes: ❌ Failed 5/7 → Aye: Kanal, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy → Nay: Ryan, Koyama Lane, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney

Morillo VS “Sweeps Teams” and Reality

Angelita Morillo proposed cutting an Impact Reduction Team (Sweeps Kill NIMBY!) to fund more eviction protections and rent assistance, which should be the county’s job. Loretta Smith called this out; this was ARPA money that is going away. Morillo’s argument was that we need to keep doing Covid relief stuff we no longer have money to fund. This is the opposite direction that the Mayor wants to move. Dan Ryan also called out her repeated use of the term “Sweeps Teams.” Morillo is very interested in respecting city workers unless you’re one of the jobs she doesn’t think should exist.

Morillo was characteristically ugly and emotionally manipulative.

  It's not just about garbage. And frankly, a lot of the encampments that I've seen are actually pretty well maintained and they still get swept no matter how well they behave or what they do or if they don't do drugs. That's what what I've been seeing. And sometimes I kind of think that, I don't know, maybe this is too personal to say, but it's weird bantering with people in the hallways that I love and care for and knowing that when I was houseless in college, if you found me on a park bench, you probably would've called the cops on me and made sure I was swept.

This is who you elected District 3: a serial fabulist who shows open disdain for you.

So what’s the cost to doing Morillo’s plan? Cuts to cleanup crews and other impact reduction services. EPG had to leave the dais for a moment and we got a little taste of what an Avalos + Koyama Lane run council would look like. It wasn’t pretty. There was a sort of creepy nice-ness to the whole thing.

Loretta Smith proposed a friendly amendment to fuck over the county instead. Her war continues.

Votes: ❌ Failed 6/5 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy → Nay: Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney

Time/Order

Zimmerman, Ryan, and Dunphy try to move amendments that are not in EPG’s order. She strikes them down. Zimmerman points out that she let shenanigans rule the day during the “Main Event” last time. She acknowledges and takes control again. EPG urges speed and efficiency so that everyone gets a chance to put forward more amendments. She will not get it. Remember this for the end.

EPG is respectful and follows her own rules counter: 3

Avalos VS the Mayor, Zimmerman and EPG?! (Round 3)

Candace Avalos brings her Fora Health amendment — the amendment she killed the sobering shelter for. Zimmerman pushes to bring the sobering center discussion back and EPG joins him. This should be a county issue but Avalos wants us to pay for everything. Mental health, shelters, treatment. Remember her entire ethos: more.

The argument was drawn out. You could almost feel EPG straining to drag the meeting forward. Avalos won.

Votes: ✅ Passed 7/5 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy, Smith → Nay: Ryan, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Pirtle-Guiney

And with that, the sobering center funding died a final death.

Final Avalos VS Mayor & Friends Count: 2-1 Avalos.

Budget Notes

Several notes, including:

• Zimmerman put forward a very popular sanctuary city note.

• Ryan put forward a great partnership with US Tennis note.

• EPG landed a very firm but respectful note for the county.

• Novick pushed for moving welfare checks away from armed police officers. PPB is friendly to this budget note.

• Kanal proposed studying vacancy fees.

There was a piece of Koyama Lane’s Vision Zero notes that got dropped for time and the teacher was salty about it. EPG held firm with all councilors and reminded them of the Nihilism Bomb and time constraints.

EPG is respectful and follows her own rules counter: 4

The End of the Line - Et tu Tiffany?

The evening was wrapping up. So much got left on the table, but overall the DSA had a bad day. The non-DSA councilors seemed less open to cooperation with them, having seen their true colors on the first night.

 Counselors, I know there is a lot being left on the table. I think everybody up here is disappointed and frustrated. And I have asked us many times today to move quickly and speak less, and I think for some of our colleagues that did not sink in. And I am gravely sorry for all of us that that is the case.

- President Elana Pirtle-Guiney

EPG is respectful and follows her own rules counter: 5

EPG was pushing for a close to everything, just like last time. Staff wanted to go home. They were already way over the time limit agreed on. They struggled and argued over fixes to the Green Nihilism disaster from the previous day. It took almost 45 minutes.

Then, right before the close, this happens, AGAIN:

That’s right! Sameer Kanal, the Snake of Camas, pulled his favorite little Robert’s Rules abuse! When EPG called it out and blocked it, the DSA triggered a point-of-order and then an overruling of the President. They were such little shitheads about it. The only (mild) surprise was Tiffany Koyama Lane stepping on EPG. Go watch the whole thing (starts at 11hr 6min). This is how they act every single opportunity they get. Don’t just listen. Watch their faces.

Morillo was back to playing her role as psychotic goblin of the troupe:

 Okay. Point of order. I think we should just move this ahead because it's gonna take 90 seconds to pass it because it's literally just a technical adjustment for Vision Zero that needed to happen earlier and was rushed through. Let's just get it done.

This is the “It will take me one minute to get the votes I need to move 2 million from police into parks.” of this session. Just shut up EPG! Let us do what we fucking want. Never mind all of the amendments and notes everyone else left in the dust because of time and out of respect for their colleagues.

Fuck these kids. I’m sorry EPG. You didn’t deserve this shit:

 EPG: Multiple of our colleagues asked me if there were time for additional things. Multiple of our colleagues had other things they wanted on the table.

One set of people are trying at the last minute to move something through and nobody else has that opportunity. I try to operate in a way that provides opportunity for each of us. That is why I made this ruling.

Morillo: This is a huge waste of time. Let's move on to the vote so we can pass it and go home.

In other words: Fuck your rules. We do what we want.

If this is what equity looks like I’d like a refund.

Aftermath

I won’t step on the NW Fresh episode by giving you my ranking here, but the big winners of the day were EPG, Ryan, Clark, and Zimmerman. Do you want to really like President Elana Pirtle-Guiney? Listen to this at the 7hr 58min mark. She can be impressive.

The biggest losers were Avalos and the DSA. Dunphy and Novick were pointless. Smith disappointed me.

The budget process was a lot of yapping, some real ugliness, and an end result that was pretty close to Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed budget. The process was full of grandstanding, brinkmanship, and lying. In other words, politicking. I spent probably 50 hours of my one precious life putting this together. If this doesn’t pay off in 2026 I am going to cry.

Here’s the Willamette Week version of events: Budget Season Reveals Two Clear Voting Blocs on City Council - WW. Even though I’ve lost a lot of faith in their ability to cover this council, it’s worth a read.

There’s also Stump Talk where Maja Viklands Harris invites Shane Dixon Kavanaugh (Oregonian), Sophie Peel (WW), and Alex Zielinski (OPB) to relax in a giant bowl of chili and discuss the budget process. Shane is the single voice of sanity in the room. I’d skip it if you’re easily annoyed.

Day 4 - The Approval

One last little bit of business on the budget (I hope): the vote to approve. I’ll talk more about that Wednesday Night session next time when we go over the Police Accountability Board. For now, I’d like you to listen to Dan Ryan’s speech (at 1hr 56min). Then listen to Angelita Morillo after him. (at 2hr 3min).

Those two little speeches pretty much sum it up. The Police Accountability discussion that took place in between was a perfect microcosm of current Portland politics, so look for that piece soon.

According to Morillo we’re politically center-right (actually she probably considers Dan Ryan center-right and I’m the far-right writer who supports him). In fact, this is a pretty center-right city if you think about it... after attending enough of voluntary reeducation camps study groups. I’m pretty done caring what the communists and grifters who tried to destroy our city think about me. I was here before them, and I plan on outlasting them. I won’t need to lie, cheat, and steal to make that happen.

Final Votes: ✅ Passed 11/0 (Dunphy abstained because his wife got paid by a budget amendment)