 Peter, I'm ready when you're ready. We're good. I'll take the poncho off for the moment. Okay. Okay. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. This is the Portland city council. We are meeting at five o'clock in council chambers for two workshops to back to back workshops. The first is a workshop that will focus on the development of the FY 24 budget. And the second workshop will focus on. The creation of a municipal clean elections program. So first we will head right into FY 24 budget. I want to thank people who are with us on zoom this evening, which I do have loaded here, but it doesn't seem to be showing up on my screen. Oh, internet issues. Possibly, but we are going to, we're going to hand it right over to our director of finance, Brendan O'Connell, who is with us and so again, first hour or so will be FY 24 budget. Thanks, Brendan. All right. Can you guys hear me on the microphone? I think I've got everything rolling, but I at our last budget workshop on January 30th, I had presented to council a list of all the budget challenges and budget opportunities that we knew about at the time with some estimated figures. So I'm going to start tonight off by writing some updates to those figures with in most cases, actual numbers based on final estimates from the state, final charge numbers from the county and what actually came through in our department requested budgets. And then we'll talk through just about what inflation actually was in 2022 and look at rolling 12 month inflation over that period. And then we'll look at what was requested by our departments. And that's really our starting point for the city manager's recommended budget. So each department goes through a vetting process and vets all the requests from their various divisions and things that they do. And I'll talk about what that request was. And also what our best estimate of the role for the city manager is. And then we'll actually look at what was requested by our departments. And that's really our starting point for the city manager's recommended budget. And also what our best estimate of the roll forward budget was based on those requests. I'm going to go ahead and share screen. Okay, so you'll recognize the slide deck. And this was what I had presented back in January with a lot of TBDs and estimated amounts in there. Now that we have more final numbers, we'll go ahead and share screen. And then we'll go ahead and share screen. And then we'll go ahead and share screen. A lot of these numbers have begun to take shape. So our pension obligation bond debt service, that number we've known, we've known it since 2021. That's set by a fixed debt repayment schedule. It's going up by $1.1 million. A mill rate impact of 0.08 or 8 cents. The collective bargaining agreements and salaries and wages. I now have a more updated figure for this by, by the way, I'm going to go ahead and share screen. And then we'll go ahead and share screen. And then we'll go ahead and share screen. Any upgrades to positions. And any other contractually obligated increases. And that's 3.8 million or another 26%. The expiration of one time general assistance funding. And this was what we talked about as probably our single biggest budget issue this year. Last year at the last minute, a potential change in general assistance reimbursement from 70% to 1.2 million. One time funding of approximately $10 million would be a divvied up amongst the communities that share the largest burden of general assistance. And Portland continues to shoulder by far the biggest burden of general assistance responsibility. Our numbers of asylum seeker arrivals have continued to be very large in the current year. And so this set loss of 7.4 million is the single biggest budget issue in my mind and what's going to happen. And so with additional state aid, the property tax increase would just be crushing on local property taxpayers as we try and comply with the general assistance requirements from the state. This item alone represents an increase of 50 cents to the mill rate or about a 7.6% to the mean increase to the municipal real mill rate 3.7% overall. The next one reduction in FY 23 to FY 24 ARP revenue of $5.75 million. That represents about a 5% increase to the municipal real mill rate, a 32 cent increase. And then we talked a little bit at our last budget workshop about the increase in sheltering costs. I had estimated around 4 to 5 million. And the final numbers are in in sheltering costs based on department requests and operation of the new homeless services center will be an increase to the city in sheltering costs. The city's commitment on sheltering costs of $5.4 million. So our spending from Oxford street to the new homeless services center is going up by 5.4 million. We're also going to have some significant increases in costs at the family shelter about a 25% increase. We've had a lot of use of the overflow space and that has resulted in a lot of overtime. So we're budgeting for that next year at $658,000. And that's a lot of use of the overflow space. And the new sheltering costs of $5.3 million is nearly doubling next year with an increase of about 6.6. 05 million. 41 cent increase to the mill rate. 6.6% increase on the municipal side of the mill rate. 3% overall. We talked a little bit about potential revenue loss at Ocean gateway as a result of that parking lot being reduced from $5.4 million to $5.4 million. And that's a lot of use of the overflow space. And that's a lot of use of the overflow space. And that's potentially not being impacted until the tail end of this budget year. So the impact has gone down from around 500,000 to only around 200,000. The valuation and other changes to Cumberland County tax. So Cumberland County typically does increase our taxes each year. And this year they have an increase that's close to $5.4 million. And that's an increase that one time six month costs. And we did inquire with them about whether they would be willing to let us pay that off over more than five years. And the answer was no, they felt like the interest free option over five years was as generous as they could get. So that is a $1.6 million increase. The referendum. And charter changes related to citizen initiatives. And we'll hear a little bit more about that tonight in the second half of our workshop. We're going to talk about some of the new areas of the budget where we're seeing cost increases. One, we're seeing a need for increased headcount and primary inspection. So we can actually comply with the requirements of some of those past referendum from November. And then we're seeing some significant increases in the clerk's budget related to additional funds and contractual services that we're going to have to budget for. So the total is close to $600,000. Just for those items. We have seen the state of Maine. We've seen it for more than a month. And you may have seen my email. We have seen the final or the updated revenue sharing estimates. For the state of Maine. And because our local. Because our state of Maine equalized valuation increased. By nearly $2 billion. We are seeing a decrease in estimated revenue sharing dollars. Of about $1.7 million. It's a 16% decrease from year to year. So that's another. Big budget. Driver that's pushing. Pushing us. In terms of the tax rate increase. And then. The other item on here, which. Is somewhat optional, I would say it's not, not a set budget challenge in advance was the total new FTE requests that are non homeless services center. Not. And non housing or referendum related was only about $1.9 million. And in many cases, it's departments who are simply trying to build back to where they were pre pandemic. And, you know, any new position requests will obviously be heavily scrutinized in the city manager's recommended budget, but I know a lot of them are strongly supported by the manager and department heads. So, you know, all in all. These mill rate impacts are about a buck 99 of pressure on the mill rate. Now we do have some offsetting factors to this. So, you know, we have a lot of revenue is bouncing back to pre pandemic levels. But all in all, these total about a 14.7% impact to the, the overall mill rate. And this does not even include the other. Change related to our valuation that impacts the school side of the budget. The $2.4 million decrease to school educational subsidy, which is another 15 cents impact on the mill rate that they're struggling with on their side of the budget. So, you know, we do have a lot of money to spend on that. So we do have a lot of money to spend on that. Because that was a lot of information on one slide and just take any Q&A. On that. Thank you, Brendan. And I want to make note of the fact that we have both counselor Ali and counselors are with us on zoom. So the council is fully present. We've just got some of us here. Oh, wait, counselor Phillips. I don't see her on zoom. Yet. Okay. So. I think we have a couple of questions. If you've got a question at this point in time. Looks like we have an opportunity to jump in. Okay. I have a quick one. So you mentioned the revenues bouncing back and that's good news. Of course. In my mind, what that goes to is less reliance on the need for ARPA funding to make up for that revenue loss that we've experienced over the last few years. And I think that is a, is that a fair assumption that. They're not bouncing up and beyond where we were necessarily. They're just decreasing our reliance on the federal funding. That is time limited anyway. And I will say in some departments, we're not seeing the full bounce back. To pre pandemic levels, most notably the barren center is still well short of where they were pre pandemic. Parks and rec is getting close. Parking has exceeded. And then waterfront cruise ships is still not quite back to where we were, but in general, we're seeing positive trends in most departments. Okay. One other quick question. November 23 referendum, the charter changes where we have $600,000 here. I'm assuming that's not reflective of, for example, a clean elections fund and potentially some of the changes that were identified for. We may not need to budget them in FY 24, but we would over the course of FY 24, as we plan for those changes, is that right? Or do I have that wrong? Well, what the department's budgeted for was the full amount. Okay. So you'll hear more. I believe that does include some money for the clean elections fund and some software related to clean elections. It includes some new position requests in permanent inspections, specifically related to requirements of the past referendum that we are currently doing and need to start doing based on those referendums. Okay. The only thing I would add is that I believe that the amount that the department has budgeted for for like clean elections has to do with what was recommended by the charter commission. So if the council were to increase that amount or want to increase that amount of money, that is not reflected in this number. I do not believe. Okay. So just to clarify, civilian police review board ethics commission, are those reflected in the 600? Not sure about that. We haven't finished the department reviews in those specific departments. So I'm not sure. I don't believe that specifically the police citizen review board or the ethics commission would be included in departmental budgets just yet. Based on my understanding of where they're coming from, but I think that because those require potentially the establishment first and then additional monies, we may have to stick an extra. An extra figure in there and Brendan and I will circle back on that. So those are two things that are still hanging out there. I believe. And I'm just looking back at the November 30th memo that we have stat from staff about the implementation. And so I just don't want us to lose track of that fact that we may want because we've got. Two positions identified under the civilian police review board. And we've got staff support required for the ethics commission. I just don't want to forget about those things. Okay. Thanks. That's it for me at the moment, counselor tomorrow. Thank you. With regard to GA funding and revenue sharing, those two kind of state buckets. How set in stone are those in the context of the state budget at this point? So the formula for revenue changing. For revenue sharing is unlikely to change moving forward. What we have seen in the past is adjustments to the state's estimate of total revenue. And there are a couple of bills out there that pertain to revenue sharing. One of which would change the total bucket of revenue sharing up to 8%. I believe. I don't have high hopes for that particular one. And another one would give a municipality the option to opt into a revenue sharing to 10% of the sales tax collected in that municipality. And again, I think that one might be too big of an additional appropriation required at the state level. So I'm not hugely confident that we're going to get any adjustment with the exception of a potential increase to the overall pool. If that happens, we have seen some significant shifts in years past. They do come out with multiple iterations of the estimate and we'll be watching. But as of right now, I'm not hopeful that there'll be any major other changes. The only thing I'll add to that is that for general assistance, we have put forward a couple of bills and looking to increase reimbursement to 90% is one of the big significant changes. Not similarly, not sure if that will get through the legislature, but we have, we do have sponsors for that. And that that will be put in front of the legislature this session. Councilor Zaro on zoom. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Councillor Chavarro asked one of my questions about the re reaffirmation of the GA reimbursement. And I'll just add to what the city manager just mentioned with an offer for lack of better term, if there's anything we can do manager West to to help be supportive of that reimbursement, please let the council know how to do that. And because I know we are all very much committed to making sure that that, I know the side's not in front of us, but I think that was an increase of what three. I forget what percentage was the lack there of thank you so much. That one was seven, seven point six percent. So that, you know, that's that's significant. I hope people watching this are following up on this later understand just how impactful that is. And so that that request, obviously we want to be supportive of. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. My other question is, and this might happen after the department. Requests come out. But I know we have the 40 position. Addition for the full-time equivalent mostly because of the homeless service center. Do we know if the 260 give or take vacant positions are being pulled over in the department requests this year? Or are we going to, how are we going to be looking at those in context of this? So in general, we don't cut positions that the department actually needs. You know, in, in most cases, the work related to these positions has continued to get done, whether it's other people doing it on overtime or other staff, you know, just working like 10%, 20% more. So we'll look at chronic vacancies and make that determination at the city manager level. You know, we obviously, if you're cutting positions, you always look at the vacant positions first, but we also look at vacant positions in terms of that position maybe need to be upgraded in terms of it's not competitive right now with the market. So right now, most of the roll forward positions are included. I think with a few exceptions at the Baron center, they've made some cuts based on the likelihood that their census is actually going to get back up to the level that we had it budgeted for. That's really the only place where I recall vacant positions being cut. Thank you. That's helpful. Yeah. I mean, I understand that, you know, there's a multitude of variables and that those head counts, you know, came from years and years of hard work and, you know, obviously the significant decision to make. I, I, I mean, I look forward to what that actually looks like when the departments are sharing their proposals with us in finance. And I think maybe just an advocacy to look at those positions and which ones are chronically vacant, you know, versus which ones do we know we need and if they're receiving overtime, etc. You know, if we can consider increasing the pay of those and in doing so being able to really look at the vacancies that we know have existed over multiple years. That's all for me. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Councilor. Any other questions before Brendan proceeds? Nope. Thank you. So right now the total department request, based on what we got from the departments is a $16.5 million increase to the mill rate. That's approximately 17% on the city side. A little over 8% overall, because we represent just under 50% of the overall mill rate. It's a buck 12 increase to the mill rate. And that's our starting point that we are going into the city manager reviews and having to reduce to get down to a city manager's recommended budget. Now it's very difficult to determine what exactly is the rolled forward budget, but you can look through and see any new items. We have some flags in there for new items, new capital items, new positions, and pulling out those was an increase to drop that increase down to 14.8%. So that was my best estimate of what the actual rolled forward budget is. And one other thing I will note here is that the homeless services center makes it difficult to look at the rolled forward budget because a big part of our increases the move to the new operations. And then department requests include a net increase in FTE of approximately 40 positions and majority of the user related to the opening of the new homeless services center and past referendum requirements. We do have scattered others across the departments, but there are few and far between. So this is just an overview of what tax rate increases overall mill rate percentage increases due to the median homeowner. I didn't even put where we're at right now on the slide because I feel like that's unacceptably high, but a tax rate increase of 10% would add $510 to the median homeowner. An increase of 5% is an impact to the median homeowner of $255 and 19 cents. So for every 1% we're going up basically $50. And this is a direct result of a question that I got in one of our joint city and school meetings. So I've added this to the budget frequently asked questions and answers memo, which we have available online. So for every 1% increase it's 50 bucks for every homeowner with a $375,000 home, which is the rough estimate I've used for a median home value. Inflation for calendar year 2022 using CPI for the Boston Brockton Nashua area, which is the closest index to us was 7.1%. It has been going down slightly for the first couple months of 2023. So if you look at the most recent data for the rolling 12 month period, it is down to 6.4%, but it was as high as 8% at parts of 2022 for that 12 month rolling average. So this is the work that we have ahead of us. So right now the current FY23 municipal mill rate is 653, about a $96.5 million collection that we collect from property taxpayers to fund municipal operations. Right now the department requests have that mill rate up to $768 or about $113 million. So if we wanted to have no tax rate increase on the city side, we'd need to have a combination of revenue increases or expenditure reductions of the $16.4 million. If we wanted to get down to say a 5% increase, that combination of revenue increases and expenditure reductions would have to be $11.6 million. And if we wanted to get down to something closer to inflation, it would be, you know, between a $9.7 and a $10.6 million reduction. And, you know, when I think about what it would take to make expenditure reductions, you know, I can't even imagine the level of service cuts that we would have to sustain to get us there with just expenditure cuts. I mean, we would talk about major services that I know people would be up in arms about having to get rid of. So I think this conversation comes back around to what can we do to work with our legislative delegation and the state to express, you know, the burden that we're shouldering on behalf of the entire state in terms of general assistance and asylum seeker arrivals. And hopefully we can reach some sort of compromise that gets us a few more million dollars of funding to help us get towards this goal. So I think that was where I had left it with my updates. I know we want to get into some Q&A, and then I know Danielle wanted to pass along a message before we got into detailed council discussion and budget guidance. Yeah, given the time, I just want to remind everybody, we only had an hour scheduled for this. So I think I would combine questions and answers with your guidance, if that's all right with everybody. And I'll just sort of conclude this by saying, you know, this is obviously going to be tough. We've talked about that. There's a lot of things here in front of us. And so that's why I definitely need your guidance on where you're comfortable with in terms of a tax rate increase. It's difficult as you're putting this together to know, you know, where to go unless I hear from you all to see what you think is the right amount for the average taxpayer. Additionally, I think I had sent you all an email, one other piece of that, that I would appreciate some guidance on is, I mean, obviously it's even if let's, I'm going to take 7% increases an example. That's still going to require me to cut $9.7 million out of what we have in front of us. That's a lot. And I want to make sure I understand what your priorities are. So I would ask when you give your guidance, if you could also add in two or three priorities, whether that be core sort of municipal functions or roles or departments or things that you're focused on, that would be really helpful for me as we try to get this together. And in the last piece of that is just to remember that those, those have to do are still, still exist. We still have to do all the things of the citizen initiatives and the charter changes required. We still have to be able to obviously deliver certain services that were required to do under the law. So there's still some things out there that no matter what, we're going to have to do. And so we'll be looking to maintain those obviously and be able to do that moving forward. And you know, we're, I know the legislative committee is working pretty extensively to try to work on some of the legislative fixes that could help us as well to find and plug those revenue holes. And staff and myself included will continue to help them do that. But just know that I really just need you to drill down on that guidance just about what that increase would be for you. And then those two or three priorities. So thank you. And we're here if you have any questions. Okay, great. Thank you for that context. So I want to look to my colleagues on the council, both in chambers and on zoom. So I think we're going to be moving to, like I said, we're, I think we're rolling up. Any remaining questions from the presentation and the guidance that we know that we've been asked to give this evening. And, you know, I'm always tempted to ask 10 questions, but I realized that we do have upcoming finance committee meetings that we can do that at. So. I will do my best to summarize questions. So I'll break the ice. How about. And offer some thoughts that that I've got. So I think these are. These are pretty sobering numbers to know that the roll forward budget represents an increase of 14.8%. I think is really significant that. Thank you, Brendan, for that. I was wondering, okay, so we've got, you know, sort of the aspirational, the, the, the delta between aspirational and roll forward is, it's not that big. So that's really significant. So to the city manager's question about core municipal services, I know that I'll just say that it's, it strikes me being at city hall a lot over these past few years, the importance that it's so important that we get staff in place that we are hiring permanent staff people where we currently have interns and that's, I feel like we're, we're hitting that place from the pandemic years where we've had for a variety of reasons, we've been unable to, to really fill positions permanently and we're, we're hitting right into that place right now. And so as we head into FY 24, I think that replacing that staff capacity or filling the capacity in a permanent way, both at the city manager level and corp council level, but also throughout departments leadership in that way. So making sure that we've got, you know, those key staff positions filled. I'm thinking about, you know, economic development and various departments that have that need. So that feels really important to me. I just lost a train of thought that I had, you know, as I've been thinking about overall impact to taxpayers and we've started to get some feedback from people in the community. The, the time that we're in right now feels precarious and yet not wholly unfamiliar where we've got inflation, we've got a lot of things happening out in the world that are impacting people's sense of job security, banking security, just, you know, the everyday reality of inflation, whether it's putting gas in your car or having heating oil delivered or groceries in your cart. So I think that the, the fact of inflation is a real, it's a, it's a context piece that we need to pay attention to. So as we've kind of over the last couple of months contemplated the, the budget I've thought, I think we need to be below the rate of inflation. I know we've got some, you know, we've got somewhere between, I think it's 6.4 and 7.1. As that rate, I mean, I was, I was coming in here tonight thinking I'd be more comfortable at 5%, which probably as we look at the historical trends is not an insignificant increase year over year when we contemplate the municipal budget. The frequently asked questions that's in tonight's packet and that constantly gets updated, I think is a great place for us all to direct our questions. So I actually have directed that question to our director of finance so that we can look at the year over year budgets in terms of, you know, percent increase as we go from year to year. So on page two of the FAQs, we can see a lot of information about the breakdown between municipal portion, school portion, tax levy, but I think looking at the overall budget year over year is important to me. And that's the thing that I think drives the question of how much are we asking our local taxpayers to increase the revenues that go to support both the city side and the school side. So yeah, I guess I'll, I mean, the other thing is like you said, city manager, there's there's a lot of non-negotiables heading into this budget. I'm looking at this page right here in tonight's packet that talks about an increase of approximately 40 new positions. So it'll be interesting as we move through this to understand those positions and how they break down between homeless services center and the referendum requirements. And I know it's not just the charter commission amendments. It's the referendums from November that and maybe even some carry forward from the November 2020 stuff where I know that we've got some capacity in various departments that are needed to support the work of those ordinance amendments that we've seen as well. So I'll ask that question more formally as we move through this, but some of the, I think flexibility that past councils may have had, I think has been, you know, our focus right now is making sure that we do what we have to do based on the voter approvals that we've seen lately. Councilor Dion. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to have some random thoughts. So they're not in any order of priority, but I want to make sure I get them out there. There's been a tradition in the council, at least in the relationship with the manager. Well, I've been in office that the manager solicits a conversation with each of us to determine what we consider to be a priority in our district for consideration or budget. Before coming to council chambers this evening, I saw her in her office and I told her I have no such list. And good faith. I can't carve out an individual agenda for district five when my primary concern is whether or not we have a budget that makes sense for the whole city. Maybe another cycle, another day. I'd have the luxury to advance that kind of proposition with my constituents, but today I feel more compelled to protect their economic interest in terms of how we define our relationships via property tax. I too, in prior conversations with some of you, I'm going to fall down on 5%. It's a place to start the conversation. And I think what haunts me, and that's probably not the right word, but it's working right now, is that's half the number. I don't know where we're going to get to in working with our counterparts at the board of education. I'm encouraged by our first steps at collaboration and looking at the budgets. And at least in one meter report, they've suggested 9% increase. So there's work to be done there, but whatever consequence comes from the final budget document is what I'm concerned about, and we only have half that picture. In terms of vacancies, I would hope to discover from the manager's office at some point, the distribution of those vacancies. A lot of those from the Barron Center, and then the ancillary numbers come from our departments. It's important to know that because I think a good administrator has to question how valid a particular service strategy remains if you can't staff the positions to get the job done. Maybe that mission has to be shelved or reconsidered or reconfigured to the reality that we find ourselves in today. It was nice what we did before pandemic, but we're in a different place now. And it's a required new thinking about how we deliver services. So when I look at the budget moving forward, we've talked about this concept of what our core services. This is my own individual opinion, of course, but I think our first responsibility as a municipal government is to keep people safe. So our resources as they involve public safety, whether it's med queue, the fire service, police, we should make sure that they're adequately funded or staff to meet the demand that the public has long come to expect from those components of city government. I mean, that's, I have led law enforcement outside of the city. And they, they were having response times that I knew would never be tolerated by the residents of Portland. And I think it's our best interests that we maintain that level of service. The next core department that I pay particular attention to is public works. I think the second role of municipal government is to make sure people can go about their business in the city. And I don't mean that necessarily economically, but just to be able to move about freely, the roads are paved, sidewalks are maintained, the streets applaud. We saw on a recent snowstorm, there was a delay in some parts of the city because although the manager and others have been pretty public facing about their discussions of reduction of staff at DPW, I don't think it resonated with everyone till they saw the snow was there much longer than they experienced in the past. So I would want to make sure to focus on that. And I told one constituent, my street was almost 12 hours before they got to it. And I knew exactly why it happened. And he was honestly unaware of the challenges we were facing at DPW. So those to me are the core services. I mean, I am a big advocate for recreation. I'm a big advocate for health and human services and more so around what we're doing for the unhoused. But those are the second ring of what I think are core services to begin with. And I'll close with this. I think a lot of our families, our individuals, our seniors, those who live on fixed income, this inflationary spiral or hill that we've been climbing has made them feel unsafe. I mean, these are economic threats that make people psychologically anxious. Okay, because then they're faced, they're forced to make really hard choices. We have to make hard choices. And so far, I'll close with this. That's the constituency that I will continue to advocate for is, I don't want to continue to press some theory about their capacity to continue paying upwards as far as their property tax is concerned. And I was saying I was going to close and I will with a comment on general assistance and other revenue streams from Augusta. I think it's in our best interest that we lobby, advocate, arm twist, whatever is acceptable to get them to make the right decision. But I would welcome those monies as a windfall. I would like to think that we did our hard work and things that we had to say no to, suspend, retract or constrain were subsequently refinanced because of the state windfall. But I think it's incumbent on this counselor and hopefully joined by others around this horseshoe that we need to give a hard number to the executive so that she can build her budget and we can see where the results are. As I said, 5% is my start number. Let's see what it looks like. I mean, I'm simple. I think if I go to my neighbor and say, look, 5 to $1,000 more next year, it's not going to be well, it's not going to be welcome because other things are happening. I mean, so I'm going to close with that because as I said, I can be guilty of ambling along some vocal highway. I'd love to hear myself speak. I guess it's my sin. Thank you very much, madam there. Thank you, counselor Diane. We are recording. If I look right at you, right? Counselor Fornir. Thank you. I don't really have a whole lot of polished words. I think a lot of this is still sinking in. And so I think just what I will share is, you know, we, my own household is a household of six and our, you know, adult sons to live with us because they can't afford to go out and rent any place. And so anytime I'm looking at increases to our property taxes, I'm thinking about how that's going to affect our household budget and how we're going to afford, you know, making sure that groceries happen or that we can afford the CMP rate hikes that keep going up or keeping oil coming in. And so I'm, I'm very mindful of and we'll feel this directly with whatever we settle on. And so understanding and thinking about. Where we've been in the past, I know, last year we were considering, well, zero to five would be great five being the high mark. And this year it's like, wow, anything below five just seems unattainable without cutting some significant services. And so coming in, as we reviewed this last time and reviewed the materials before today, I think I'm in the place of, I would love five to be where we could be also understanding the rate of inflation is higher than that. And so looking at what we would have to cut, maybe a little bit painful. So I am more of a range, similar to counselor Diane where five is a good starting point, but I would like to keep it below the rate of inflation. So really between five and seven percent would be ideal for where I'm coming in, still understanding that's a hard number to get to as well as the services we have to consider would be really, really challenging. Just a couple of additional thoughts that I had just to close this out is anytime we've had to do budgeting in any organization that I worked at. And I hate the word efficiency review because I think it's terrible, but I do think, you know, that's one of the places that I would say as we're doing these department budgets and I'm sure this is something that's, you know, happened along the way, but if we've had similar also to what counselor Diane said, if we've had open positions for a number of years or for a long period of time, how can we reorganize that department or reorganize the services that are provided? What are the things that we absolutely have to do, at least until we're able to get things under control. And that feels very challenging. But if I'm having to look at my own budget, there are sometimes the nice to haves that I can't have. If I don't have the money coming in. Of course, as a member of the legislative committee, we are looking at all of the legislative. Solutions that are hoping, hoping not guaranteed to happen, but we're hoping will happen. But again, that's not guaranteed money coming in. So I think we need to make the plan based on what we have and what is guaranteed money. And if the additional comes in, then great. That's when we can start to budget for the nice to haves rather than what we have to provide. So I think the, the last thing that I'll close with is looking at our council goals and I pulled them back up just as a reminder for me that when we talked about everything that we do this year, we're using always using a lens that prioritizes racial, social and justice equity. And of course we want to focus on housing homelessness, climate and sustainability. But I think as we're making these decisions on what needs to be moved or changed, increased or decreased, that we are sidewalks, you know, there is absolutely a social justice and racial justice and equity issue there. And so making sure that we're keeping those things as our frame as we're doing that work. So I don't know that I was very helpful outside of really trying to keep it between that five to seven percent understanding how this impacts my household budget, what that's going to feel like and that it's really, really, really challenging when I see so many others struggling and we're trying to prevent foreclosures and we're trying to prevent evictions and we're trying to keep people where they can age in place. And I want to make sure that that commitment is something that we're really trying to uphold as we work on housing, homelessness, climate and sustainability. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Rodriguez and then Councillor Chavarro. Thank you. So my sense is that we're probably all going to land within a certain kind of friendly range that's already been discussed. What I'm going to say is probably going to land somewhere around what we've already heard. So the disclaimer that I'd like to give so that there's no surprises. I did in how we look, by the way, like guidance for the increase is also against guidance to us for like the appetite of what we need to discuss for cuts. So that 5 to 10%, excuse me, 5 to 7% gives us like between nine and 11 mil worth of reductions that need to be identified. So that's frightening to begin with, particularly with the next discussion of core services. There aren't going to be any big surprises. I think perhaps there will be some big surprises of what we identify as core services. But I do want to, in case it's lost and it won't fit when we give this context, it could be. I do want to say that the schools are a core services. And clearly when we talk about not just the educational piece, but remember that our schools feed a lot of our students and families who are experiencing food and security. So in some of the places that many of our kids finally can have a safe spot to be. And of course they do so much more than just provide education, which is why clearly during the pandemic, shutting them down was a lot more complicated than just moving to like remote classes. The services that go along with that. So schools are certainly to be considered high on my list of core services. And clearly that's the piece that we have the least influence on. Actually, no, we have quite a bit of influence. But it's a piece that in today's discussion, we're not able to have a lot of context to guide us with. I'm sorry. I just want to add one quick thing on that. Just would know we have joint finance committee meetings coming up. So we will have more discussion on that. And specifically, we'll also be looking at the audit to, which impacts both the schools and the city. So I think that those future meetings, which are all in the city calendar would be helpful. Absolutely. And in the context of like the guidance tonight, I might not necessarily, we don't have it available, but certainly I know that we will through the, through the development process. The next piece, I guess I wanted to talk about was. When we look at Brandon, this is more of, I guess, in your area, when we look at the increases that contractual obligations that we have year over year. I also worry about creating like a huge gap next year. So like if we're really conservative and increase this year, but we have the contractual obligations next year, then like fair to say that, then we have to make up a bigger difference. So in with that in mind, I guess. And acknowledging how difficult it is to see the year over year budgets, it'd be helpful to get some idea of what we're looking at for like FY 25. And I don't know how much further you feel comfortable giving us some sort of guidance against to, to avoid that huge gap of like, if we don't make a big enough increases this year. And hopefully knowing what the homeless services center will have help us develop, you know, over year versus what it was like this time looking at last year. And then the last thing in terms of guidance for us to make decisions, when we look at the open positions, I don't know if this is helpful, but when I think about budget, particularly for like a business, not a municipality. When I look at the salaries or payroll expenses, you know, we we classify them separately, right? Like you have the wages that are on your cost of good souls and you have your wages that are part of your operational expenses. So in the city's operational budget, when I think of the wages that are on the cost of good souls, those are kind of like your programs and services versus your overhead expenses, your overhead wages are, you know, the people that work in the offices and in cankel road and such. So I don't know if that helps us, but kind of given that differentiation to me, at least when I look at the nine to 11 mil worth of reductions, you know, clearly wages or other fees will be considered there. So that'd be one layer that might help me differentiate it. And I wonder if that does that weigh differently in the budget, the two or no, right? Because the labor burden is the same regardless. Well, we have a separate part of the budget that is fringe benefits. And then we have salaries and wages and overtime in the in the payroll part of the budget, but we do have a good handle and we'll go through that in detail at the finance committee about which contracts have recently settled. Many of those did include market wage adjustments, but we do have other ones that still have yet to have any market wage adjustments. So we'll be highlighting all of that. Perfect. Yeah, excellent. And I think that's, I guess if I wasn't clear earlier, the five to seven percent range is what I think would get us into the conversation that I believe needs to be had, which gets us between nine and 11 million worth of reductions to identify it. That's all. Thank you. I hope that's helpful. Thank you, counselor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to you, counselor Travarro. And then we'll go to counselor Pelletier. Thank you, mayor. So I, I don't know how you find $10 million. Like I, this is, I've, you know, I have eight years experience on the finance committee for the schools plus one on the finance committee here. And I've never seen anything. I think four and a half was like the biggest deficit that I've ever seen. And I recall how challenging it was to. Find that. And so, you know, just looking at this. I, I don't, I don't know how we get to a five percent. Increase, to be honest. I think I would. Probably be more in the range of a seven, which still puts us having to find $9 million. I have a couple of questions. I was wondering. Could you talk about the criteria for the program that we have for seniors. To be able to get a rebate based on their income and their housing expense. So are you talking about the existing piece that program or the upcoming program that would freeze property taxes for seniors. I was talking about the one in existence, but act, but maybe, maybe you could talk about both. So there is a state program, which allows a rebate of up to $1,200 for seniors who meet certain income criteria. And the city will match the full amount of that credit with our own local program. We currently have about 200 people who have qualified for that program and anyone who has qualified in the past automatically receives a renewal. But we did, you know, when this program first came out, reach out with a mailer to everybody and really tried to get people signed up for that program. So that's one good opportunity for low income seniors in our city. And it's actually age 62 or below. I know the definition of seniors that might be different amongst certain things, but it's age 62 or below. And it's a rebate of up to $1,200 at the state level up to $1,200 at the municipal level as well. And what's the ratio for income to housing expense that qualifies them. I don't know that one off the hop. My head of changes each year at the state level. So they just simply have to send in their qualification form. And that's what we're going to do. We'll put that in the. Okay. And theoretically, I mean, if we raise taxes, it could potentially push more people into that category so that they. They could qualify for that where they hadn't before. Potentially. Have we ever looked at, um, done any projections about expanding that program to either include people. Um, just purely based on income without the age restriction or any other kind of deviations. We haven't looked at the criteria, but we did look at increasing the amounts. And so what it would do when we increase the amounts in the past. Okay. So we have some of those projections. Okay. It might be, I don't know. I think it might be worthwhile to kind of look at, you know, I just feel like our, um, you know, Historically, we have not raised taxes to the rate of inflation. And to me, um, That means that we're never fully supporting our needs. You know, for, for the city budget. You know, we're like the one budget that doesn't grow with inflation. You know, so, um, we're consistently having to find areas to, to trim. Um, I mean, it's, I think we've kind of snowballed to a point where like, we really need to capture revenue. Um, And so I'm interested in just kind of looking at what something like that might look like to be able to protect the people that we want to protect while also being able to capture, uh, revenue that's needed. So, um, that was one question. I guess the other question I'm wondering is if we have any, or if there is published anywhere objective data to give us a sense of really economically, how Portland residents are doing. I mean, I know we, you know, we have medium median household income, but do we have any further breakdown that would let us know like really what is our residents capacity to afford? That's really the only data that I'm aware. We actually include that data in our financial statements by year. Um, so that's the one I have, but I can certainly look in to see if we have any other more in depth data. Thank you. Um, yeah, so I think those were my questions as far as guidance. I, you know, I, you know, I think my colleagues know that I'm typically on the higher level of tolerance and I would, um, I would go with somewhere around a 7% probably. Um, or anything I wanted to say. Yeah, I think as far as, you know, what our core services, I think they've been outlined well by my colleagues, um, counselor Dion, you know, um, safety and public works. I think that the key to our goals is really that they're embedded within our core services that, um, you know, the policies within our departments are equitable policies. And, um, so I think that, you know, they're not necessarily like one or the other. We're not pulling away from equity to get to core services, but really that we're implementing them through our core services. Um, and I guess the only thing I would flag as a core service, maybe to add onto that is, um, that part of the parks department really does a lot of work cleaning up the parks. Um, and I think that's very, very sorely needed. Um, you know, the, the trash that accumulates as soon as it's picked up, um, is really, you know, it's a challenge to keep up with for sure. So, and I hear from that, hear that a lot from constituents. I think it's a, you know, an issue of sanitary even everything. So I guess that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. And next to you, counselor Pelletier. Thank you. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't know how much more I have to add in in terms of my colleagues saying it all. Um, you know, I, I feel like five to seven feels like a starting point for me and I'm, I feel like I'm in a similar boat than everybody else. Um, you know, and as a renter, I'm maybe the only renter here. Um, you know, that's a significant concern as well because those costs will ultimately in many ways be passed to, to the renters. Um, so I'm thinking about that. Um, and I'm thinking about like a five to seven percentage is still between 11 and $9 million in reductions. And so it's hard thinking about the core services component of it because, you know, I understand what everyone has been saying about our goals that will be embedded into the core services. We will make sure that there is equity within the core services. Um, but I mean, it's hard to, to balance and quantify because our current progress, our current in progress racial equity department is a core service for me and our parks and rec department is a is a core service for me. And our sustainability department is a core service for me. And I think it's, it's tough because we all have different ideas based on our different experiences of what is a core service. And I often think at times with the discussion in terms of human rights and the alignment with racial and social impacts. Um, a lot of these things that I think we're trying to do and the things that we talked about in our goal setting workshop. I am concerned that the, the goals that we have won't have a chance to thrive and won't really have a chance to make it off the ground based on some of these determination determinations that we're going to make of the budget. So again, I'm just concerned that even with these percentages, there's going to be significant cuts to the things that we prioritize. And I also just want to put a plug in that. I know it's not according to how we normally do things, but I think it would be great to move our goal setting workshop to after this conversation with the budget, maybe next year because I feel like we get all jazzed up about setting our goals. And then we are hit with like a heavy dose of reality. I know we're just like looking at the floor. But, um, it's, I mean, it's hard because we get really excited and then we, we have this conversation and then it's a little bit like, okay, we need to change gears or at least figure out what we're able to do. And then, you know, I haven't even talked about the overwhelming amount of vacancies that we have at the city level. And I don't know if that number was shared or how many vacancies we currently have a number that you have off the top of your head. So that's also in my budget frequently asked questions and answers memo. It's around 256 for our last count. And we've been able to do that for a couple of months now. They calculated it at some point in February. Okay. Hopefully that's down a little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Right. You know, 250 vacancies that we have. And so it's like, you know, we also need staff to be able to do the things that we want to do. And then I, this was mentioned as well. I'm concerned that if we are really conservative with the budget, there will be a gap next year and a trend will, we'll start as well with, with being conservative and not. Allowing the things that we have prioritized to have a chance to take shape, which take time. It's going to take years for the things that we want in terms of racial equity, in terms of social equity. And aligning again with our, with our goals that we, we listed in the December workshop. So. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know that I have a ton more to add. And I, again, I think that we can talk about five to seven percent as a starting point, but that's again, it's still such a large reduction. And I, I just don't, I, I'm just kind of wondering where, where that will come from and where that will leave us afterwards for the things that we really have said that we want to do at the beginning of the year. So yeah, that's kind of my, my current mindset at this point. Thank you. Thank you counselor. And we've got counselor Ali on zoom. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you everyone for your input. Oh, there's two of me might have been searched about what can be cut or where people feel comfortable. I will begin by saying that I think five to seven is a good start, a good place to start. I also think it's going to be difficult for us to look at all the services that we provide. Because I believe as one counselor that the role of any municipal government is everything that we provide, whether it is from public safety, the quality of life that we provide to residents of our city, our parks, education department, and every aspect of what we do is a core service component of what we do. And none in my opinion is more important than the other. And whereby we are at a situation where we have to pick and choose what we will fully fund and what we may not be able to, even though we wish we could, I will be more comfortable streaming almost every aspect of the service that we provide than fully funding one aspect and cutting over one other services. So I will encourage my colleagues at a finance committee to all the full counsel to look at how can we spread the pain throughout our departments instead of fully funding one aspect of what we see as core service and overwhelmingly cutting or significantly cutting, taking away from another department. I think we are capable of creatively looking at streaming a little bit from almost everyone to get to where we are. And then painfully reduce some of the service, every service a little bit across every department or every aspect of the service that we provide the city. Thank you. And as I said, I open to having this conversation and anything between five to seven is comfortable with me to start from. So thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Councillor Ali. Next we go to councillor Zorro. Thank you, Madam Mayor. It's really hard for me to assign two or three priorities in this context, you know, we are a municipality that is notorious for punching above its weight class. As many of the folks listening to this conversation and others know like we do far more than core city services when compared to neighboring towns. And even in the region of Northern New England, we are known as a city who cares. We show that in our budget every year as it's the document that does guide us. For me, that's actually why this is really challenging, you know, in practice versus you and we're just kind of talking about preparing for giving advice. You know, what is fair when we're giving a general guideline for a percent increase this this at this stage in the budget process, you know, after the this presentation and the discussions that I've had with city staff, I honestly think a 5% increase is a best case scenario at this point. I know we have a long road ahead of us on budget work. And I want to be mindful that we're focusing on city services that are responsible for delivering to constituents. And I think I've heard that for most of our colleagues tonight. People look to the city council for trash pickup, filling potholes, keeping the streets, you know, easy to navigate ensuring that street lights are kept on. And, you know, ensuring the city is safe. We see that we hear that all the time as a district counselor, I feel like, you know, district counselors hear that all the time as we are the most constituent facing, you know, people want a city that they can be proud of. And I think a lot of that is objective. But the core services that we are tasked with stewarding are what most constituents, I think. I think that's what they're thinking about at night when they're worried about their finances and balancing their tech books. They're thinking about what they're getting out of their city. And when it comes to core services, when they're wondering where their tax dollars are going. I think that's what they're thinking about at night when they're thinking about what they're getting out of their city. For me, I can speak. And as many of you know, sustainability initiatives are my top priority for the most part, but also I believe that return on investment is obvious and exponential. That's just my opinion, but I know everyone has their own. Again, we're a city that cares deeply. I think I've been working with the city manager and the finance committee in this work over the next couple of months. But to sum it all up, I, you know, I will agree with my colleagues, 5%. It's a good place to start. I do think that's best case scenario at this point. But I look forward to working with all of you. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Zirou. That's okay. That's life. All right. Thank you everybody for providing guidance and feedback and some input. I want to hand it over to the city manager as we, before we segue into our next subject to wrap this portion up. I really do appreciate all of your thoughts and we will be, you know, following up like I said with the finance committee and really looking deeper at the school's budget as well and understanding that this is going to be a balance. I think a balance across the board with, with, with them as well and trying to understand the impacts of that. And we'll be doing that work with the finance committee. Additionally, Brendan and I have, I noticed my calendar is pretty full for the next month or so, where we'll be diving in pretty deep with our leadership team to, to look at budgets and ways in which we can try to deliver what, and meet the needs that you just articulated. So we will do our best. It's going to be tough. There's no doubt about that, but I do appreciate your thoughts tonight. Thank you. Thank you. And Brendan, do you have anything you want to say before we wrap this up? Okay. I think the, the next finance committee meeting is on March 28th. It's a joint finance meeting, committee meeting with the city's finance count, the committee and the school's finance committee. So March 28th, five o'clock on zoom, not, not five o'clock. Thank you. Joint. Oh, so five o'clock city council. Finance committee. And then starting at 630, we'll be meeting jointly with the schools. 630 is the start of the joint meeting and on zoom. Okay. Great. Okay. Thanks everybody. So we're just, we're making pretty good time, I would say, as it goes, it's 11 minutes after six. We're going to switch into our next workshop this evening, which is a workshop to discuss the creation of a municipal clean service program. I'm going to get my packet for that. So I know that we have attorney Katza Ficus with us this evening and Jim, I think I'm going to look to you and your colleague from Perkins Thompson, Brandon Mazer and Emily. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How'd I do. For an introduction, but before I do that, I'd just like to lay out the plan for the next. Little bit of time. So we're going to get an introduction. From folks who supported the work of the charter commission. Thank you for being here and thank you for offering that to us. Then we're going to go into a public comment period and we built, we uncharacteristically built this into the workshop session tonight because we wanted to make sure. To get feedback at this stage of the game. So we're going to have a public comment period tonight, believing that that's important. We will have public comment when the council takes action as well. So there will be that opportunity. So what we've done is we've limited the public comment period tonight to 60 minutes. I don't know if we'll get there or if we'll need the full 60 minutes, but the reason we did that was just to, you know, kind of keep track of our time and be respectful of everybody's time this evening. And I also note that this isn't your only opportunity for public comment. It's not your only opportunity for public comment. It's not your only opportunity for public comment. It's not your only opportunity between now and when we take action on a municipal clean elections program, we do encourage people to submit public comment and writing. So that's always possible. And I noticed in our packet tonight, we've got some published public comment already. So if you're, if you're unable to speak to us tonight during the public comment portion, please submit your, your comment as the council looks to take action. And so after the public comment period, we're going to talk about the mains clean election law as an example. We're going to talk through that a little bit. And so again, this is kind of night number one with regard to municipal clean elections. And with that, Jim, thank you so much for being here and I'll hand it over to you. Thank you. Thank you, mayor Snyder members of council. My name is Jim Katzificus. I'm with the law firm of Perkins Thompson. And my name is Jim Katzificus. My colleagues are here tonight who have been working on this with me, Brandon Mazer and Emily Arvizu. And so we're going to split this up. We're going to be efficient because we know you have a lot on your plate and we don't want to waste any time here. Last November, as you know, the charter commission acted and brought a measure before the voters, which the voters passed. That was question three. the Clean Elections Fund, and it has to be available for this election cycle. So that means by July one of this year, we have to be up and running to make sure this is ready for November 2023. Candidate participation in this Clean Election Program is voluntary, but we need to have the program in place. And under the charter, that Clean Election Fund must limit the amount of funds that participating candidate can raise. It has to be limited to candidates who meet certain requirements. They sign a form that will say that they intend to participate in this Clean Elections Program, that they agree to participate in a voter event, a voter education event or a city-sponsored forum, and all unused funds will come back and go back into the Clean Election Fund for future use. That question three also included some campaign finance rules, one of them being a prohibition on business entity contributions to any candidate for public office, prohibition on ballot questions or expenditures from any entity that's substantially under foreign influence. And both of those are in the State Clean Elections Act and just added this year, but they were added as well to Portland's ordinance. And then that the city clerk create a searchable online database using information from registration and campaign finance reports. So we've been asked to help the city with this task to implement the charter revision by drafting a clean election ordinance. To do that, we wanted to make sure it's something that can be efficiently implemented and be comprehensive enough to get in place for this year. We've met with the city clerk, we've met with the elections administrator, we've reviewed the recommendations of the main citizens for clean elections. I believe you've all received their memorandum from earlier this year. And both really recommend starting with Maine's clean election law as a starting place. We're all familiar with it. Candidates are familiar with it. It's something we can use as a basis and then it can be changed on an iterative basis as we see how that works. There are some differences though between state elections and municipal elections that we have to pay attention to. The, for the state races, if you are running for the legislature you begin to get your nomination papers available in January. Here it's June 15. There are primaries at the state level. We don't have that here. So there are some differences and there's actually a very compressed election schedule here. We have 127 days for an election under Portland's charter. So it's a little challenging. And so we've started with that state clean elections act as a basis. We've also looked at, that's okay. Echoing a little bit, sorry. We've also looked at other ordinances in other communities that have implemented a similar type of system. We've looked at Seattle as was suggested and we've looked at Santa Fe, New Mexico. And Brandon will talk about the features of those different ordinances. But we're primarily drawing from the main clean election act and the Santa Fe ordinance with outlines and basic concepts. Emily will take us through those and we want to make sure that they mesh with the city's elections timeline so that the clean election program and the normal election program can be administered together with decent administrative efficiency. And so Brandon will show us a timeline as to how these might be coordinated so that state and city election law could be easily implemented. We recommend that these clean election program be article five in chapter nine to the city ordinances. And then these new election finance rules can go in as article six. Following the presentations, we know there'll be an opportunity for questions, for comments, input from the council, from the public. We look forward to that. With that input, we will be back here in two weeks for a second workshop. We can talk about some of these details and a proposed ordinance at that point and that would allow for first and second readings. We hope during the month of April that this can be up and running and candidates can think about whether they want to be participating candidates in advance of when nomination papers are available in June. With that, I'll be quiet and turn this over to Brandon and to Emily. Thank you. Thank you. And while you're switching spots, I'll just flag what you just said, Jim, which is we have a second scheduled workshop on clean elections on Monday the 27th. So two weeks from today, we'll be back here. We'll have a little more content that we're able to respond to and it'll be really a working session for the council. Excellent. Good evening. Mayor Snyder, members of the council, Brandon Mazer here to follow up with Jim. A little bit of technology being in person is always a challenge other than being in Zoom. So as Jim just went through, why we're here, the charter revision required that. So I'm gonna skip through this slide. Scope of our review, as Jim alluded to, we looked at sort of three worlds. We looked at the current main clean elections act and the associated rules. We looked at the Santa Fe public campaign finance code and on a selection Seattle. And I'm gonna briefly go through each of those just for the benefit of the public as well as the council that may not be as familiar. So main clean elections act, which is found in 21A is what's known as a block grant system, which is a system whereby a candidate goes out, collects a certain number of qualifying contributions to qualify as a clean elections candidate. And those we'll get into some of the details later on, but it depends on whether you're running for governor, state senate or state house of representatives. Upon verification, the ethics commission executive director who has sort of been in charge of implementing the system certifies those candidates in issues, payments, immediately upon that certification. And there's also a program that allows supplemental financing further along the timeline. We came across Santa Fe's public campaign finance code as we were doing our research when this was given to us as a project. And their system is similar. It's a block grant system, very similar actually to main clean elections program at the municipal level. Santa Fe is a community that's about 88,000 people. So not horribly different from Portland. Again, candidates go through a process of becoming certified and then they receive disbursement from a clean elections fund. And it's enforced in that community by an ethics and campaign review board. We also, during the charter process, the idea of Seattle was alluded to, raised, discussed. Seattle is very different. Seattle is more of a voucher program whereby every registered voter as of December 31st of the prior year receives what they call democracy vouchers. And those are issued either via mail or email depending on the voter's preference. And then those vouchers, I think it's in $25 increments can then be assigned to candidates and signed over to those candidates to be exchanged for public funding. So as Jim mentioned, we have opted to recommend, generally following the main Clean Elections Act and creating a new article five within chapter nine. And as Jim said, the public and potential candidates are likely more familiar with the current state system. The timeline allows for what we believe will be a faster implementation to meet charter requirements. Compared to the voucher system, this requires less public education, less procedural systems. And I think you all received early on some correspondence from the main citizens for Clean Elections. They've also suggested a similar iterative approach for this first year and then we can reassess. We're not completely discounting the idea of a voucher program, but again, we're in a condensed timeline. We are also recommending creating a new article six, which is not gonna be the Clean Election Fund but really addressing those charter changes that had to deal with candidates overall. Campaign finance reform in general for foreign expenditures, foreign contributions, what can be spent on ballot questions and the like. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Emily to actually go through the process of what we're proposing. All right, thank you all for having us here. My name is Emily R. Visu. So I'm gonna give you just kind of a high level overview of what it would look like for a candidate who decides to participate as a Clean Election candidate. So what we're proposing, as Brandon said, is a block grant system that would be similar to Maine's Clean Election Act. And so to participate in that, the process would be as follows. So first, the candidate would declare their intent to run as a Clean Election candidate and this would involve filling out and filing a form that would be available with the city clerk. And on that form, the candidate would need to affirm certain statements. So that would include, for example, that the candidate will comply with the restrictions and requirements of the Clean Election ordinance and that they would participate in at least one city-sponsored forum or voter education event as is required by the charter. Next, the candidate would then be able to start collecting seed money contributions. So seed money contributions are used to defray the costs of collecting qualifying contributions, which I will explain in just a minute. But seed money contributions would be limited to a certain dollar amount for each contribution and then also limited in the total amount of seed money that can be collected. Then from there, the candidate begins collecting qualifying contributions. So the qualifying contributions are these small contributions that are intended to show that the candidate has public support. So then by requiring candidates to collect a certain number of these small contributions, the candidate demonstrates that he or she has buy-in from voters. So the ordinance would specify the amount of each contribution, as well as the number of contributions that would be required. And this can vary similar to with the main Clean Election Act, this can vary depending on whether somebody is running for mayor, running for council, running for school board. Then from there, the candidate, let's see, sorry. The candidate would then apply to be certified as a participating candidate. So Brandon will talk in a minute about the timeline, but this would be a little bit farther down the road. They would submit certain required documentation to the city clerk and then also submit along with that in application for certification. The city clerk would then review and verify all of the signatures and all of the documentation. And this process would take place in tandem with the nomination and petition review and verification process. And then finally, once they've been approved as a certified participating candidate, the public funds would be distributed to the certified participating candidates. They would all be distributed on the same day for everyone. And then from there, they would run their campaign and after election, they would be required to return any unused funds from the Clean Election. And Brandon's gonna talk next about the timeline of this process. So the timeline is relatively tight and some of this is dictated by charter for the general election as well as the budget and the fund being available this year. So election day is November 7th of this year. And I wanna be clear, we're proposing this for at 2023. There's a question later on in a later slide about feedback about maybe trying to adjust this timeline in the future, but we're talking about 2023 this evening. So June 30th, 2023 is when nomination papers become available. That's dictated in the charter. So in the charter, it talks about 127 days prior to the election is when nomination papers can be made available. Nomination papers can only be turned in in a certain period between 85 and 71 days prior to the election. Again, this is dictated in the charter. So that's August 14th through the 28th of this year. And then there are two major pre-election reports that are required. The 42 day pre is September 26th. The 11 day pre-election is October 27th. So down below you see our proposed clean election dates. We are proposing that nomination papers and qualifying clean election papers be released on the same date, June 30th. We then, as Emily mentioned, are gonna require that qualifying papers become due and certified simultaneously. That makes the clerk's life a little bit easier. Sometime anytime between August 14th and August 28th. Seed money, which Emily explained, would begin once you pull your nomination and qualifying papers and run through August 14th. So you can only collect through that first sort of day that papers are due. There will be a requirement to report seed money as part of the reporting. That would be due on the 15th, the day after that the collection date ends. Then the clerk's office will certify everything. September 8th is the date that we are recommending that clean election funds be dispersed to everyone. That'll give finance enough time to cut the checks and get them out to all the candidates. Because of the tight timeline and because funds won't be available until September 8th, we are not proposing any sort of supplemental period, which may factor into what you all decide for a policy of how much is given to a candidate right out of the gate. Because the state allows, when it's a longer timeline, as Jim mentioned, it allows additional signatures to be collected, qualifying contributions to be collected to trigger additional supplements. Our timeline's just too short and the administrative burden that we think is gonna be too much at that point. So that then leads us into our last really two slides, which we've pulled together as discussion purposes for the council in terms of the details that we're looking for as we try to draft this ahead of our next workshop. There will be, of course, additional questions that we'll have and additional details that we'll need to go through that's the difference between state and local. So a cap on the fund within the budget. Santa Fe actually has in their ordinance a cap to fully fund the clean election fund. It's $800,000. It is, they continue to contribute 150 each year, but if it gets to 800,000, they are not required to put in any additional money until it goes below that amount and then they have to refund it in a future budget. And then we're gonna need some guidance on how many qualifying contributions are required to participate. Some of the context here to keep in mind, our state are at large and mayor races are bigger than our state Senate districts. Our district seats are bigger than our house races. So it's not apples to apples when you're comparing these numbers. So for a main house seat, you need to collect 60 qualifying contributions. For a main Senate seat, it's 175. I've given you for context our nomination petition requirements. For mayor, it's 300 valid signatures. For a net large, it's a similar 300 valid signatures. And that is also for the school board. And then for a district race, it's 75 valid signatures, which also includes school board races. Another thing that we're gonna have to discuss is the amount of the qualifying contribution. The state's been $5 since the get go. There's no, we can stick with $5. There's nothing that requires the city to stay with $5. It may help with some of the funding of it if it's more than that with Azure previously discussing the budget considerations. Seed money contributions and limits and amounts. So under the current state system, it's a $100 contribution and house candidates may not collect more than 1,000. Senate candidates may not collect more than 3,000. If there's, and we haven't spoken to the state about this, if there's any seed money left over after the candidate qualifies, the amount still in the seed money is deducted from the amount given to the candidate out of the Queen Elections Fund. So there's a differential there as well. So those numbers, again, just giving you for the context, what the state has. And then finally, the question of how much each candidate gets. Distinguishing between contested races versus uncontested races. Again, we don't have primaries. So I don't know that we've ever had a completely uncontested race, we probably have, but these numbers are what were given to the state program for general election. I did not include primary numbers here. So for a contested house race, the initial funding was 5,475 with the ability for a house candidate to get 11,000 more in supplemental funding, bringing it to about 16, a little over 16. Contested Senate race was 21,850 with an additional $43,800 in supplemental if you qualify for the max amount. Again, those required additional signatures, additional $5 contributions, and it was sort of staggered up. And then again, we'll wanna discuss possibly trying to anticipate a timeline for future races given this tight timeline. And then finally, working on the second workshop, there'll be some differences that we're gonna have to anticipate given that we don't have a party system here. The state limits what the funds can be used on, challenges, recounts, those types of things typically cannot be used, clean election funds at the state level cannot be used. We may need to anticipate clean election funds being used, but that is what we anticipate the sort of real nitty-gritty weedy details for workshop number two. So with that, we will step back and allow the council to ask us any questions or the public hearing to start. Okay, again, thank you all very much for being here and for that presentation. So that concludes the introduction section of the agenda tonight. So we'll launch right into our public hearing. It's 6.35 and we are happy to hear from you in person or on Zoom. We've got a hand up on Zoom, so I'll start there. And if we could just stick to our usual kind of guidance regarding public comment, please give us your first and last name, the organization you represent or the neighborhood that you live in and we'll give you three minutes on the clock and our clerk will remind you at 30 seconds. So again, we'll hop over to Zoom first and toggle back and forth if we've got folks in chambers who would like to speak up. First, Marfene Chan. Hi, Marfene Chan, one of the at-large charter commissioners who voted in favor of this proposal. Glad that it is being taken up by the council. I just had a few suggestions for the council to consider. Number one, similar to other federal taxes and state taxes, including an option for property taxpayers and people paying fees to contribute a small amount to the Clean Elections Fund for the city. And then the second, I know there's mention of $5 qualifying contributions. I was wondering if the council would consider a sliding scale for, you know, we're living in a time of inflation and economic hardship. So $5, believe it or not, can be a lot for someone. So a sliding scale for folks who can't quite make that $5 contribution, but also I imagine some folks would want to give a little bit more as well. Glad you're taking this up and looking forward to watching the proceedings. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Marfine. Okay, now we'll turn to our next speaker in council chambers. Good evening, Mayor Snyder, members of the council. My name's Anna Keller. I'm the executive director of Main Citizens for Clean Elections and the resident of Portland. Main Citizens for Clean Elections is a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to make sure our campaign finance and election laws are in the public interest. And we have been involved in the state clean elections effort since its early days in the 90s and are obviously big fans of the Main Clean Election Act as a model, as well as of course being involved in the bringing this charter change to Portland. In the memo that you all received in which we'll make sure we submit for official public comment. So it is on the public record as well. We put forward some proposed qualifying contribution amounts and distributions to candidates. And while I won't go into the specifics of those amounts right now, I did wanna flag for you our process for getting there. And what we did was we looked at both the amounts that are at the state level and the signatures and thinking about how that might be made relevant to the size of districts in Portland. But we also looked at the historical pattern of spending and races because the population size doesn't necessarily tell you how competitive these races are and how much money candidates have historically needed or felt they needed to run competitive races. So for that reason, you might see that an at-large city counselor, an at-large school board member and the mayor, though they're all representing the same number of people, perhaps should have different amounts of qualifying contributions, different amounts of funding that they can qualify for. So I'd encourage you to make sure that that historical record of what is needed is also part of how you look at this proposal. A couple other things that come up looking at this timeline tonight. This is a very tight timeline and some of that is an immovable object with the calendar that we're dealing with this year. I do have some concerns that the lack of any supplemental funding could be a problem. And so I'd encourage you to think about even if it is allowing additional qualifying contributions to be turned in at the same time as the regular ones, allowing some way for candidates to right-size their campaign. Because not every election is the same. Some districts at some times will be much more competitive than others and allowing candidates some flexibility is essential to making sure that the program has high participation and high participation in this first year, even with all the limitations we're dealing with is gonna be really essential to the long-term success of the program. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, any additional hands on Zoom or in the chambers, feel free to step forward. I don't have any hands on Zoom at the moment. So if you're here in chambers and you'd like to offer public comment, we would welcome that. Hi, everyone. My name is Catherine Buxton, Reed Street in Portland. I was also on the Charter Commission. So don't hold that against me. I am very excited that you all are taking this up. And I mostly wanna encourage the council to utilize the breadth of resources that we have locally in addition to your legal counsel, Anna Keller, the League of Women Voters, main citizens between elections have all been named. The Charter Commission did extensive research and especially as you are designing this program, I wanna echo the thoughts that were presented in the memo that you received around creating a pilot program now with space to change and grow and incorporate other forms of public funding as we see the changing needs of voters in Portland. And there's a lot of really great resources linked in the Charter Commission's final report and on our website. And I'm happy to reshare those with you but I think going into this process with a broad sense of what are the possibilities will help you design a program that can meet the needs further in the future. The last thing I wanna draw attention to is that foreign contribution ban that Jim brought up as one of the stipulations in the Charter. It's not currently in the main state law. However, there are examples of this in other cities and I think it's really important for the council to think hard about creating a program that restricts foreign contributions from multinational corporations. We've seen an uptick in recent years in spending from corporations like Airbnb and Uber, et cetera on ballot questions specifically. And this clause takes advantage of a small window of opportunity that we have here in Portland to actually curb the influence of those corporations. This isn't an attempt to limit new manors from participating in democracy. It does not limit the ability for individuals to get involved and donate. It simply restricts large corporations that have foreign influence from spending on our elections. Seattle, for example, which this was somewhat based on limited contributions from multinational corporations with multiple foreign owners, 5% or more or 1% with a single foreign owner from donating to candidate campaigns. And they were intentionally incredibly restrictive in order to prevent companies like Amazon from spending on their elections. And so I would really encourage you to do some more research. Just a morning. Thank you. I'm happy to also connect with you outside of this meeting, but thank you again for your time. Thank you for your comment. Okay. Thanks everybody for commenting. I don't see any other hands up on Zoom. I don't think I see anybody else standing forward, stepping forward into council chambers. So that was a quick public hearing, but thank you to those who came forward tonight and offered your perspective. I'm gonna close public comment as we have that listed on the agenda tonight. And we will move into the next section of our workshop, which is the review and discussion of clean election laws. And so this really opens us up. And for question asking and sharing thoughts and one of the things that we were just, I was trying to reground myself in is our timing here. We had originally thought we would do workshop one tonight get information, have time between workshop one and workshop two, which is on the 27th to move us toward action with a first read on April 10th and a final action on April 24th. If we had to move that because that is pretty tight. If we had to move that to a first read on April 24th with a council action on May 1st, I think that's a possibility. So I'm just putting that up, but that's our intention is when we started to put these plans together after the voters voted in November, we know that we'll be taking action on the budget in May. So that piece of it will be ready once the council has done that work on May 15th. But our intention is to make sure that this program is in place in ideally in April, May 1st at the latest so that people really can get their heads around it well in advance of those papers being available on June 30th. So a little bit of context there. I'm gonna open this up to my colleagues both on Zoom and in chambers to ask questions and offer thoughts. Councilor Tavaro. I'm just wondering if we have the Perkins-Thompson memo. I didn't see it in there. The one that was just presented. The presentation. Yeah. The memo state. It would be great because I'd like to have just the timeline in front of me. Thank you. Thank you. And maybe we can get that added to tonight's agenda so that anybody who goes and looks at the materials from tonight will be able to see that. I just have a couple of quick starting questions which really, this may be just a question for the clerk and people have asked, this isn't specific to the creation of our program or the details of the program but what if there's a candidate who has funding from a past election? So savings from a past campaign, are they able to use that funding before this program gets put into place? So that's one of the decisions that needs to be made when we make this program is if a candidate currently has funds from a prior election and they're still doing their reporting, they're still holding funds and or they're out there actively getting contributions under the thought of being traditionally financed as it's set up now. One of the decisions that we have to make is if they're gonna have to dissolve that before they opt into this. Okay, thank you. I have a whole list of questions that are kind of simple questions but I'm happy to save those and I expect my colleagues will have a lot of them too. So counselor Pelletier. Thank you. Yeah, I'm just jotting just random questions down. I just noticed, is there a minimum amount of qualifying contributions for means clean election law? It says it's $5 that's said is that the lowest that it can be? Is there a minimum? No, that's the amount. It's just $5. Okay, okay. Got it, thank you. Counselor Ali has a hand up on Zoom. Thank you, Mayor. I think you asked one of the questions that I was going to ask. If for whatever reason, a candidate does have some funds left over from previous campaigns. So I have a follow up question. What if that candidate doesn't want to do the public financing? That is one. The second one is that did the time to pick up papers for elections changed from July to June? If yes, if there's a candidate that says that I don't want to do the public funding, I want to raise my own money, do they also have to take up papers in June? Yes, so the paper, the timeline to take up nomination papers has not changed. It's always been the June 30th. And if a candidate does not want to opt in for this clean elections, they do not have to. They can still be a traditionally financed candidate under the same rules that they have been able to be in the prior years. So it's an either or. Yeah, thank you. Okay, thank you, Counselor Ali. Counselor Fornir and then Rodriguez. Thank you. I actually don't have a lot of questions as everyone may know, I know quite a bit about this from before my counsel these. What I would just offer just really as more of a follow-up statement to what we're hearing today is this is a really short timeline. And so I would propose as we've heard a type of pilot for this year, just trying to implement it as closely to what the state has available so that we have a good roadmap with the understanding that as we move forward, we have opportunities to adjust and correct. But knowing I'm shocked that it's March 13th already. So just thinking how quickly we're trying to move knowing what our meeting schedule is and all of the other things that we have going on. My suggestions would really be to model it as closely to the state program as possible. And then again, do those adjustments. I love the idea of a sliding scale to be able to let everyone participate. I think from the reality of implementing that year one with such a short timeframe, I don't know that I would be supportive of that right out of the gate. I do like the state has that $5 entry and being able to do that. And I think the big questions for me and really that's I think going to be a discussion with all of us is what is the limit for how many signatures you need to get in order to opt into this. I'm really excited that we're doing this. And then the other question that I would be interested in just that restriction on fund use, like how are these funds able to be used? But other than that, I don't have any other questions. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Rodriguez. Thank you Mayor. Same thing, kind of like all of the place questions probably not in intelligent order. I suppose the voucher program is kind of like beyond reach, but I'm still interested in finding out if there is a municipality the size of Portland that does run a voucher program. Seattle is disproportionately so much bigger so it's hard to even compare just from a beginning observational kind of point of view. I didn't understand the Santa Fe having a cap on the fund. I don't think I fully understand what's the rationale behind having a cap. Maybe it's obvious and I'm not getting it. We didn't speak to anyone specifically in Santa Fe. It's just looking at the ordinance itself. I think the intent is they have determined that 800,000 is enough to run the fund. So every year, year over year when they're doing the budget discussions, if the fund has 800,000 they are not required to budget more money into that fund. If it goes down below that, then that next budget year they'll have to fund it. So it gives, I think that council, I think it's a council, some flexibility would not feeling like they have to create this. If you're mandated to put $150,000 to $100,000 every year and it's not drawn down, you could have a fund that's overfunded. Nancy, great. I think I also agree with the differentiating on the types of races, not just within like at large but rather what office we're running for because there is a big, and look in historical data to help us guide that I think we're gonna find some really hopeful context there or data there. As far as the pilot program on the first year, I guess I'm unsure how much then we could deviate from a pilot program or how much a pilot program kind of sets us into a precedent that then we can switch from. And I also, I'm sorry, I know I'm throwing questions. I did not expect answers. I also, I wanna heed the advice or rather the call for the first year's participation being really important. So I'm wondering how does having a pilot program reconcile the work that goes into trying to incentivize people to get into the program hence having a successful first year because I guess, yeah. Again, given that there might be a completely different or a very different program in the future. Again, it's just a thought. And then, sorry, I'm looking for a question out there or an answer. And then I'm also, I'm interested to hear more. I'm from a ideal point of view. The foreign contributions piece, contradicting them seems to be important to me. Interested to just learn more about how that plays into it and how much of that can be worked into right from the beginning or how much or do we have to be a little bit more thoughtful about that because it is kind of newish territory. And what else did I have here? Oh yeah, I guess we anticipating their, perhaps I missed this too, that there being an ethics committee that oversees this or it's all going to fall on the clerk's office. I have that question too. I don't need answers. Are we talking about if there was an issue? I guess there was an example from the Seattle one or Santa Fe that has an ethics committee that oversees it. So I didn't know if we were anticipating that a similar kind of oversight body for ourselves or would it just fall on this city clerk's office? If I may, there's also an ethics commission in the sense for the state program as well. What we are thinking of is that perhaps if there are any appeals from decisions of the clerk, like not to certify someone or revocation of someone's certification because it violated the terms of the agreement, that perhaps those appeals initially would go to the city council because there is no ethics commission yet to go to. And that perhaps that would be a task for the ethics commission that will be created at some point in the future. Thank you. Okay. And then the last comment, I appreciate seeing or revisiting the number of signatures that are required for each of the different municipal offices and even the state offices. I'm not entirely sure that I understand what to draw from it in terms of like, how does it correlate to the amount of qualifying contributions that we'll be requiring? It's, yeah, cause like asking for signatures is a little bit different than asking for even five bucks as it was stated. So for that reason, I appreciate the proportional changes or differences that we can see from the different offices. But I just don't want us to start thinking like, oh, we're gonna ask for 125 five dollar donations. And that being the number that we're starting with, none of that's, I don't even know how to measure how that sounds. That's all I have. I know I asked some questions and made some comments. I'm just sort of kind of think of how the important things or the things that stood out to me today. That's all. Thank you. Jim, can I ask you a question? Would you recommend that the creation of the ethics commission happened earlier in order to address that issue? Could, I mean, you would need this as a body, but to think that the ethics commission, having worked on the charter provision for that, to think that that could be created when get consensus the four July one of this year. I know it's impossible. I'm with you on that. I'm just trying to understand the, I understand it would be a pilot program, but it sounds like that may be a necessary piece of the puzzle. So I'm just trying to understand how they all fit together. Yeah, it would be awkward for city counselors to be hearing appeals from persons who are seeking funding to run for city council, whether they're running or not. That was exactly what my concern was. And we appreciate that. That puts people in a very awkward position. On the other hand, I don't see how you could have an ethics commission ordinance adopted by July one and have people in place. It just would be quite difficult. Can I piggyback on that? Because we've been trying to sequence the work that the voters have prioritized through the charter commission's amendments. And the ethics commission that was envisioned by the charter commission, I don't believe it's the same as an ethics commission with election. So at the state level, we've got the commission, which is the commission on governmental ethics and election practices. Were election practices specifically called out in the amendment to the charter that was approved by the voters? I don't think anyone was thinking that far ahead on that particular issue. Right, so I don't think it is. But ordinance, perhaps, I'm spitballing. Perhaps by ordinance, that's something that could be added. Okay. I was wondering, Jim, because of the sort of broad parameters that seem to be provided there, if they could dive into that as one of the things that they would look at. The important thing is too, when you look back on the ethics commission part in the charter that was adopted, the ethics ordinance comes first. And then the creation of the commission to enforce it. So... I've actually asked staff to walk me through this because I want to do my best to understand. So from what I understand with the ethics commission, we have to form an ethics commission by ordinance, almost like we have formed a planning board by ordinance. That's not the ordinance governing the ethics commission. It's the ordinance to create it. And then you got to nominate and appoint the ethics commission members. And then they actually help to develop a code of ethics. So we don't adopt an ordinance here at the council level without that ethics commission in place. So there's three different steps before we get there. Right. And without the elections piece being called out in the charter commission's recommendation for question eight, I think that we are running into a sticky situation here with that oversight element from the state. Like you said, especially if we've got council candidates. Well, if you want, we could work on putting together an appellate body for decisions of the clerk as part of this ordinance. We're suggesting the council is a stopgap measure thinking that perhaps it could go to an ethics commission. It doesn't borrow you from doing anything different in the future. You could give the duties of this elections appeal board to some other body perhaps down the road if it's appropriate. But we can work on incorporating now an appeal step and body into this. So you may have already addressed this and maybe I missed it, but let's say we've got a certain number of candidates, council members who are candidates for district seats, mayor, at large, whatever. If this body were to be overseeing through that ethics commission capacity, would those folks have to recuse themselves from any work? That would be an interesting question. And we're not quite ready to go there today. Okay, I'm going to just flag that as a question. Understood. Okay, I actually, Councilor Rodriguez, I feel like we jumped in on you or are you? Okay. So that was one of my questions about the commission. Another just quick question that you don't have to answer now, but I'm going to toss out there is, do we have the capacity to have a local option for a tax checkoff program? So when with the state, you can make an additional contribution when you're paying your taxes. Is that a local option? Could folks make a contribution to our clean elections program? Not as a matter of statute and we all use forms for municipal tax collection that are approved by and generated by the state main revenue services. So I remember that the property tax, although it's collected and used locally as a state program and we just administer a state program. So I would be very wary on that one. I figured, but I thought it was worth asking. That's my job. But no, I'd just be a little concerned about your ability to do that at this point. Okay. Well, actually just quick, as we, there's an urgency here, like you mentioned, Jim, there's an urgency to get the work done, but we also want to plot it out carefully enough that we all have time to do what we're looking to do. So I'm thinking about current council members, would there be any reason for a current council member who intends to run for office to, I think I'm answering my own question. It wouldn't be a problem to vote on this because probably people won't have taken out papers by the time this council takes action. Okay. So asked and answered. That's a question that potentially has raised. I've been discussing it with corporation council's office and I'm sure there'll be some more authoritative advice to provide as that gets closer. Okay. Earlier, Jim, you said, or maybe Ashley, it was you who said, we would need to decide this. So let's say a candidate has funding from a previous campaign and they want to start doing something with it in the next couple of months. You're saying we need to decide that as part of our program. So is it kind of like caution, don't spend money right now? Well, that's one of the things if they're opting in for this clean elections, are they going to be able to carry any funds? I think that the answer is going to be no, they should be dissolving their funds, but that's a, all that. If I may. So we have given the timeline, we have started putting some meat on the bones of a draft ordinance and looking at the state. I think the short answer is if a candidate is going to be running in this cycle that already has a registration and private funds, they probably should hold off on spending those funds. The state has some ability to disperse of those funds. I think one of the recommendations that we're going to make is that it could be donated to the allowed uses as though you were ending any other campaign, but also perhaps donating it to the clean election fund. So in essence, you'd be giving the city money back to take money out, but there are some disqualifying expenditures and that's sort of the nitty gritty for workshop number two that we will be discussing. But I think the safe answer for now, so there's no question is probably don't collect money and don't spend money. Okay, don't collect money and don't spend money. This is the last thing from me for the moment. So I'm looking, again, back at this kind of summary memo from November 30th with regard to council requirements as it relates to the charter amendments. And so we need to establish an ordinance and fully fund a city of Portland clean elections fund. So we'll do the funding through our budget work and that'll finalize hopefully on May 15th. The ordinance, we gotta do it, we're required to do it. So whether we call it a pilot or not, I think it's gonna be an ordinance which could be amended. And so I just wanted to throw this out there as a, I mean, we could kind of throw the context around it and say we're establishing this ordinance and we intend to take it up again and amend as we make our way or you had mentioned another option there. Yeah, I don't know if Jim, I mean, I'm not sure if this is not something I love to do, but I was thinking about a sunset period just so that we would have to look at it again. Well, you could do that too. I think the idea is to have a solid enough program as a basis in the first place so that you wouldn't want to necessarily sunset it. But I think everyone's intention is to put something in place and see how it operates. I mean, you want as much buy-in as possible to make it successful. And that's why it has to be a strong program at the beginning, but we know that there will be some changes that will be made along the way. Either way works and let us know what you prefer and we can put a sunset on that as well. Okay. Sunsets make me nervous because you never know what's coming down the pike. The only positive with the sunset, and I'll just put this out there, is they actually make me feel a little more comfortable because I know it's gonna end. I have to look at it again and I don't want it to fall off anybody's radar screen. I'm not gonna say it's going to, but that was the only reason I was thinking about it. But I think either way works. Okay. I think it's just good to put it out there. The other piece, I guess, and Brandon, maybe I'm looking at, you don't have to answer this, but for our next workshop, we've talked a little bit about the prohibition on foreign contributions and that's pretty well spelled out in the Charter's work, isn't it? Yeah, and I may have skipped over this in the presentation. We were actually proposing two separate ordinances. So within chapter nine, article five, which will be the clean election fund. And then in article six, that sort of hits all of the things that were part of section 13 in question three, because the Charter language does say the city council shall by ordinance and after prohibition on ballot questions or expenditures from any entity, et cetera. So there's, instead of trying to mix metaphors for lack of a better word with the clean election fund, some of these restrictions will affect candidates across the board. And some of the language is spelled out pretty well already in the Charter, but no problem. If we're gonna create article six, we can reiterate everything. So when people go, one of the things I learned through this process is I went to chapter nine and there's not a heck of a lot there and had to go to the Charter. So if everything's sort of nice and neat in chapter nine as well. So that's the proposal. You'll be seeing actually two separate sections within chapter nine. That's helpful, thank you. I'll search for a. For tonight, are you looking for feedback on like specific guidance on numbers or is that for next week? Is this mainly just questions? Well, if you have some, some preferences at this state that you'd like to mention, that would be great because I've come back with some proposals at least people can react to. Okay. So I think I'm ready to get close to that at this point. I think the suggestion by me and clean elections about looking at kind of historically how much has been raised and spent in each of these elections as a guiding point is a good one. I am looking at the table in their memo that was provided to us that gives sort of basic total or potential totals for each seat. And I think it is based on what people have raised and spent historically. I don't know if I would quite go. I think that this is going to be a heavily utilized program. And so I think that there may actually be an opportunity to kind of curb election spending and curb election finance through this program overall. And so just going with kind of what has been like the total amount of what has been spent in recent campaigns, we could probably come down from that a little bit. You know, I mean, I serve in a district seat and I think, you know, $10,000 for my seat is plenty. It's exactly what is needed. And in terms of number of $5 contributions, I think it's a tight time frame. I can't remember exactly how much time was allotted, but I would say like if it's one month, maybe compare how many months do the state candidates have for that and how many do they have to collect in that period of time and then adjust it accordingly. But I would say too, that we could probably add on to that because we do have larger districts and we have higher density that number applies to districts equally across the state and many of the districts across the state are much more rural than Portland. And so if a candidate is going door to door, they have a potential, I think, to collect more and more quickly. And then as far as seed money, I mean, I don't really have a huge, I think what's outlined in the memo is a decent idea on that. I think the thing to think about is when this money is gonna get dispersed, did you say it was not until September? Yeah, September 8th given the time for the clerk's office to certify and then to go to the finance department to get the checks actually cut. September 8th was working with the city clerk, the tightest we could get given, backing into it. Yeah, so I mean, I don't know, because that's late, you know, candidates are all ready. I mean, I think you can, can you still put your signs out in August at this point? So where has that changed? The rule is it's, what is it, 12 weeks? 12 weeks total. So from the day your sign is out, you're only allowed to have it out for 12 weeks. I don't know what that would calculate, but if it's in August and then, you know, what signs is an expense that you would incur before you even get your distribution. So I think perhaps that's something to think about in terms of seed money, because seed money would be for your initial expenses, I guess. If I may, just one other thing too, that we're trying to anticipate in the ordinance itself is, you're gonna fund it with X amount. We don't know how many candidates may or may not be running for each seat for mayor. So if there's not enough money in the fund, we are anticipating sort of a pro-ration adjustment of that. Councilor Tarara, in terms of your seed money, that's part of the timeline for the future. We can certainly try to look at it based on your feedback. The state system, you're technically a candidate before you can even really start doing the seed money collection and they have the longer runway for the primary. We were trying to avoid a very complicated ordinance whereby if somebody starts collecting seed money, what doesn't qualify as a candidate, but it has so it's a lot of moving parts that we've been trying to anticipate. The easiest simplest was to just line it up with sort of the nomination section, but we can certainly try to look at that. Okay. I think those are basically the pieces. I did have one question. So the state, if I'm remembering correctly, they now do, or they did this last time, do disbursements in cycles. So you collect so many checks, you qualify for your initial disbursement and then you can collect up to X amount more in order to qualify for additional. Was that, because I don't think that was the way it always worked, was that by virtue of how much of a pool they had available or, I don't know if you have the information on that. Maybe it is the way it always was. Supplementals, others might have a better grasp of that piece, but the point is that, and I'm sure they'll get right up and say something and I want to hear it. I think that the question here is at the point when you're having early voting and your work is putting together the ballots and you're trying to manage the election, that may be difficult to take care of supplemental. Now I know there was a suggestion maybe supplemental could happen at the same time you come in with your initial qualifying contributions. That's all something we can work on, but that was the reason why we omitted it. Right. And I'm not necessarily, in my mind, I'm not necessarily thinking about it in terms of, because that's a way we want to structure it, but I'm thinking about it in terms of how we could potentially deal with and over budgeting. I wonder if I could perhaps call on Ms. Keller to answer that question. If she knows the history. Yeah, so there's been, you're right that the supplemental funding system that's in there now is not how it was originally set up. When the Clean Elections Act was passed in 96, there was a provision for matching funds. So what happened then was if you were running Clean Elections, your opponent was running privately funded, they raised more money than you, you both filed your reports, you saw they had raised more money, you would automatically get more Clean Elections money to bring you up at the same level up to a cap, but that that would happen automatically. That provision was struck down in Arizona's Clean Elections law by the Supreme Court. And so the 2015 statewide Clean Elections referendum was to create this supplemental funding system. And it was created partly because without those matching funds, participation was tanking because you could get very outspent. And so we're talking a much shorter timeline here. It looks almost more like the Clean Elections at the state level in a primary where there aren't supplemental because it's just April, the June. But I will, I won't advocate more in this space but I think that looking at the ability to have those supplementals could be important and certainly something that you would want to include if you were looking at a longer timeline for future years. Thank you, that's helpful. That's a good refresher. I think that that's everything I have for now. Thank you. Did you have something, Ashley? Okay, we have a hand up from Councilor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a feedback that due to staffing challenge, we know that when you order yard science, it takes a long time. So if the time of dispensing the funds is put in September, it will put a lot of candidates at a disadvantage because it takes close to five weeks for lawn and yard science whereby palm cards can be printed locally. So I have a question. Can a candidate borrow money to fund the yard science in the process so that when the city's clerk's office start dispensing the funds, they can pay whoever they borrow the money from. So if we're matching the state system, borrowing money is like a contribution so it would likely be prohibited. The intent though with the seed money and it may be worth exploring a larger seed money level is to allow for those type of necessary expenditures early on. The other thing that we're contemplating that we've been discussing is there's nothing that prohibits taking on debt until you're funded. So ordering signs of being invoiced through your campaign will likely be allowed. You just wouldn't be able to cut the check to your website designer or your sign manufacturer until that check comes into your bank account on September 8th. So those are the two ways I think of addressing that in the current, every end of that work we're working in. Thank you. Thank you. Brandon. Yeah, counselor, I'll leave back to you. Yeah, thank you. That's all. It's just feedback on a question. Okay, thank you. And so we're ready guys. Yes. Thank you. I need just clarification on when we answer, when we ask the question about, I think we asked it like putting fees in place to help fund the program. Could we go over the answer? Do we say that that's something that is not an option or which is said based on the timeline putting that in place right now seems but long-term could be as opposed to possible. Well, I think that the timeline is one issue but more importantly, the state has real control over the property tax administration. We get to hire the assessor and send out the tax bills but the state tells you what's on the tax bills. And so if we could for us to put on a check off, for example, a dollar or $2 for this, we might have to go to Augusta for that one. What if it's not a tax, it is some other voluntary fee that folks can just literally like a donation. Well, people can always donate to the clean elections fund. That's something that's permissible. But that wouldn't be necessarily something when we put as a fee, which is being like an actual election. Okay, thank you. Thank you, counselor. Do municipalities that administer a clean elections program, I guess or even the state of Maine, do we limit the number of qualifying candidates or like you said earlier, Brandon, does the pool of money get distributed differently depending on the numbers? Or could it? Possibility. And now I'll look to Emily as well. Everything that we looked at had sort of a probation. I don't remember seeing anything in what we reviewed of a municipality that limited the number of candidates that could participate. If the funding wasn't there, it got less. And I believe that's in Seattle as if I remember correctly. And us, I know it's in Santa Fe and maybe a couple others that have this sort of probation. Okay, so I guess bear with me here for a second. So let's say we had $280,000 and we said, here's what you get if you're a district candidate, here's what you get if you're an at-large candidate, here's what you get if you're a mayoral candidate and we lay it all out. And more people than we thought or just a heck of a lot of people run and so that funding, those funding designations aren't possible. So that's when the proration comes in and we say, oops, actually. So does the, I'm looking at the state of Maine law and there's their actual numbers in their law. So would we do that in our ordinance and just how do you handle proration if you've got funding amounts articulated in an ordinance? I think it would be in the dividing it out and figuring it out. We can try to keep it as simple as you would prorate it based on the number of candidates within the certain district, certain type of candidate by the amount that's in the fund. That's how Santa Fe does it. And I think this also helps support at least the funding because we have that short timeline at least for this year having all of the disbursements made at once because we'll know how much needs to go out. And admittedly it's later than I think a lot of people would want it's sort of the world where we're trying to live in. But yeah, I think it would be a simple math equation. So we know how much of mayor's candidate can get, how much an at-large can get for school board versus council and how much a district's will work for council. If it's 10 candidates over the course of that 280,000 it may be prorated less out, which I think we would anticipate allowing at that point a candidate to withdraw as being a clean elections candidate. So that proration language and the opt out could live in the ordinance. I think it does in Santa Fe. Just to give you that sort of that clause. And then I also like the, just this is a little bit of feedback. I like the contested versus uncontested. So we may wanna think about that in our local ordinance. If you're in an uncontested race maybe your funding looks different than if you're in a multi-person race. Thank you. Yeah, so just to jump in on the question. So Santa Fe, the way that their ordinance works, I believe is they lay out the dollar amounts for each different race. But then along with that they have a provision that says, in the event that the amount required to be distributed out exceeds what's actually in the fund then all of these will be prorated. So you can draft it right in there. And then what was the other? Oh yeah, right. And then along with that it does give that option for candidates to withdraw at that point. So I think it's very possible to set forth the dollar amounts, but also make it clear within the ordinance that we're anticipating that there may become a situation where these aren't possible in which case it will be prorated but you can withdraw. So thank you. Yep. That's helpful. Councilor Rodriguez. Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh, that's a good question. Can a candidate withdraw after they've received their money from this? We haven't come across an ordinance that allows that. I think it would get very complicated to have a clean elections candidate return the funds and then become traditional and then how do you handle what's been spent? I mean, I guess I could envision somehow drafting but I think it would be an overly complicated system and burdensome for the clerk's office, especially this initial year. Yeah, I'm just picturing if you do see this inevitable kind of ridiculously outspent race with your opponent and there's no other way out. So I just, that's why I asked him. Carrying on with that, if I'm just wondering if somebody qualified and got their disbursement and then said, oh, I don't really want to run, could they kind of fall into this unspent revenue category where there's a report or they could, I guess we have to maybe think about that possibility that somebody could do all the steps and then well into the game say, I actually have to pull my candidacy. I guess potentially the one thing I wanted to add was similar to the nomination papers that are released, you sort of certify that you're not gonna withdraw, you're not, there's a certification at the state level to once you sort of submit to be a clean elections candidate. Now we don't, the state doesn't have the budgetary restraints that we may be looking at but they sort of certify you are gonna be a clean if you qualify, you collect the $5, you collect your seed money, you're in. So it's trying to come up with a hybrid, maybe difficult but that's your sort of, if you're in, you're in. It's generally the how it works once you've qualified. And given that qualification for the program and certification from the clerk happened simultaneously, you are a candidate on the ballot no matter what. So you could just qualify for that reporting on unspent funds if for some reason you sort of pull back on your campaign. We've seen that happen where people kind of decide maybe close to the election, they don't actually warrant the seat but they're already on the ballot. Yeah, so you could also draft in a provision that would allow for whatever, I guess, appellate body to revoke the certification. So if you have somebody who qualified as a participating candidate and went ahead and got certified and then wasn't able to, I don't know, some way fulfill any of the requirements, that appellate body would have the option to revoke certification. And then at that point that candidate would, they would have to return all the unspent funds within three days of that decision and then also require all funds, return all funds that were distributed to the candidate. And then you also could have that candidate subject to a fine as well. So there are definitely provisions that you can build in again to address those scenarios. Thank you. Any other comments, questions at this time? So when we get together a couple of weeks from now, it sounds like we'll be looking at two draft ordinances as starting points. Just looking at my notes here. We've given some feedback. So you've got that to work with. I wanna look to the folks from Perkins Thompson and ask you, do you need anything else from us at this point to be ready for the workshop on the 27th? We have enough guys. I want to adjust some of the knowledge. Okay. Okay, I'm looking at Zoom. I'm looking at my colleagues around the dais. I think everybody's, I think we're good for now. So I wanna say thank you so much again to the folks who came for public comment, to you all from Perkins Thompson for being here with us tonight and for helping us with this body of work. And of course to my colleagues on the council for engaging in this as well as city staff. So with that, our workshop, it is 737-28. Our workshop number two is adjourned. Thanks. I don't really need the gavel, do I?