 and I'm going to pull up my zoom to make sure that we are so we've got 19 people with us on zoom we have many people here with us in council chambers I want to welcome everybody in person and remotely this is the portland city council we're in a regular meeting tonight and I will call this meeting to order please join me if you will in the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america will the clerk please call the roll councilor fornier here comes to wrap your guys here council dion here council raleigh councilor zahro here councilor travaro is absent councilor pellets here here councilor phillips here mayor snider here and i did hear from councilor travaro earlier that she may be delayed and she is planning to be here tonight uh five public comment on items not on tonight's agenda so we have a lot on tonight's agenda in terms of communications and proclamations um which means we don't take public comment on those items so i just wanted to talk about that upfront um because that's uh i know that that these these communications and proclamations are of interest some proclamations will be received by members of the community thank you very much for being here um and so i just wanted to draw everybody's attention to that before we go to public comment on items that are not on tonight's agenda we do have a lot of content in those two areas of our agenda but if you are here to address the council on something that doesn't appear on tonight's agenda go ahead and approach the podium here in chambers or raise your hand on zoom please step forward and so if you wouldn't mind giving us your name and either the organization that you represent um or your address or the neighborhood you live in we'll be happy to hear from you and the clerk will keep the time uh it's a three-minute timer and she'll tell you when you've got 30 seconds left feel like i'm on a pellet court and which is what i used to do for 50 years my name is harley loon we had a red a green and a yellow um i live in the west end i live in ting street across the street from harbourview park i want to address you briefly on the issue of tents we do have two communications on our agenda tonight having to do with i saw it then um the only thing i wanted to make you aware of if possible and make a suggestion is that i was physically assaulted yesterday by some of the 10 people that are now harboring in harbourview park during the rain um they came out of the tents they were threatening they threw things they're defecating their needles in that area we have gone from one tent to 10 tents in the space of two weeks i'm in calling the police the police said you should only dial 911 otherwise they get internally reprimanded for taking any protective actions my simple suggestion is not to displace people to but you cannot address the situation by simply saying that tents are a humane solution when you have people defecating in front of small children when you have needles being traded and used it's impossible to say that this is humane any more than humane than taking them somewhere to sleep i spoke to one of them he hasn't slept on something in in four months on a mattress but my suggestion on an interim basis is that the very least limit the number of tents to a given location there's certainly enough green around i got ganged up on yesterday by three different people from different tents in that immediate area and was basically forced and the fallout is dreadful i can't walk my dog in the park anymore thank you thank you for being here um i i do want to acknowledge the important topic that you're talking about and i do want to let folks know that within uh communication 36 tonight we are planning a an information sharing and listening session next week which is a great opportunity to have folks come forward and talk with the council so i just wanted to put that out there as we head into this public comment period that there are items in the agenda that will get to these issues and the city's response so hopefully we can hear from folks who have items that are not on tonight's agenda and then we'll get into the agenda and we'll go more deeply into those issues thank you i wasn't aware of how deeply you were going thank you no problem no problem thank you very much for your comment um i just wanted to at least in case folks haven't had a chance to look at the agenda there's there is a lot of information in there we'll head over to zoom right now where i've got a hand up from george roe uh george roe uh west bay side i just wanted to wish everyone a national uh george we can't hear you okay you hear me now uter do you can you tell what's happening okay there's something funny with the screen down here george do you want to try again well i guess we'll pause there for a second okay let's try this again i think that um it looks like george dropped from the meeting maybe he was having some technical issues i don't know if it's us or if it's him is there any other public comment either here in chambers or come on and step forward please um you can just feel free to step forward anybody can get in line and also folks on zoom if you want to go ahead and raise your hand but we have somebody at the podium thanks for being here namena konte and i'm east africa but i lived in new york city for almost 30 years and during the pandemic um in my 60s and i have a long problem so my daughter was here going to school in college of art and she says mama you have to come here because i don't want to see you you know die there alone so you guys know how people were dying in new york so i ran and i came just to make her focus on her studies but to cut matters short i've been here since then so i went to the whole foods market and i saw this little this young man he's trying to buy um the drink that his parents sent him to buy so he was been profiled by the police so everybody you can see it everybody can see it and he was shaking so i went and i said to him what's going on and he says the police is watching me and i say i will stand by you buy your drink and i will go if you don't have money to pay i'll pay just just as i stood by him he finished what he was doing and he left and i didn't say anything i came so two weeks ago i went to the whole food store and i got i've been profiled i can see the police following me so i went to one of those the workers and i said do you know the profile black people in the whole food store and the gentlemen say oh yeah say they've been doing this since whole foods in here say even me when i go to eat they when i take off my car they watch me like i see if i stole the food so i asked for the manager i was a white lady and i said do you know they profile people like us in the whole food store and she said she's not aware of it and i said yeah you're not aware of it i said because they're not going to profile the profile in us i left the next day the police knows where i go in i don't have a car so i live down by the whole food store and i've seen everything i do i walked around the police is there i know you can see they will say they are doing their job but when somebody is following they aggressive last week saturday i wake up every morning six o'clock to do my work so i do the call i'm coming and right in front of me like that i'm not afraid but i just don't know why they're doing it as they know where i leave when i come out if i go to the fish market if i go to the post office if i go to my bank they're already there they will follow me aggressively so i don't know what to do i was in a clothing store and i was talking and a lady she gave me her full name she used to work and it says you see i don't like what i'm hearing i work in the city hall it's a good that it will leave a second warning and i that's why i'm here i don't know what to do who to go to and i'm just here by myself so that's why i'm here i don't know it's pretty scary i'm not afraid but it's it's really scary thank you very much for your for your public comment if you can stick around we'll make sure to check in with you okay any other public comment i so we've got george you're back with us on zoom let's try this again and hope that it was your connection can you hear me now any luck nothing so where are you hearing it because i can't hear it else you you can hear me or you cannot hear me that's what i'm just gonna ask jessica george i apologize we can't hear you so i'm gonna turn off my mic and we're gonna take a five minute pause here to try to figure out if the technology can be addressed here in the council chambers see brah okay which makes a hybrid meeting tough to execute if you can't hear the people on zoom they're crossing trade lines now the union don't like that but that's a remote on that okay we're if councillor fornier had a terrific idea i'm gonna turn the volume up on my laptop in hopes that we can hear the public comment and i'll amplify it with the mic okay so george um if you don't mind being uh kind of a a tester with us uh we'll start your public comment and i'm gonna unmute my microphone and you're gonna speak and we're gonna see how this goes okay can you hear me now uh yes okay so is there an echo or any feedback i just i can't see well i in the interest of making this work for for anyone else who wants to want to explain i'm happy to be a guinea pig but is is this working enough to be worth trying oh yes it is i'm but i mess it up every time i talk so just go ahead and i think we can hear you i'll interrupt if we can't okay well uh i just wanted to wish everyone a national Caribbean heritage month uh you're celebrating a number of things uh later in the meeting but that hasn't been recognized and i just wanted to to maybe uh note that maybe you could uh formally recognize that uh at your next meeting before the end of the month um i am speaking about uh this evening about the um the bayside master development plan that port properties has been unveiling the last few months at the planning board um i'm very concerned because it's effectively a joint development project uh with the city of portland the city of portland planning staff have been very very involved the public works uh staff have been very very involved in assisting port properties and in framing this and uh working out a lot of the infrastructure needs and details and i'm very concerned because this norm is project the the headline number is at 800 units of housing over a spirit a period of 10 years is uh baked into this plan and there's been very little community engagement in fact um you know people often talk including the bayside neighborhood association that bayside and west bayside in particular is comprised of most of the people who live there uh heavy percentage of them are people of color and people of very uh modest means or lower income socioeconomic levels and all of those uh stakeholders have been completely excluded from this planning process they haven't been reached out to in any meaningful way they haven't been brought into the process by uh city staff our district one city councilor and to my knowledge hasn't been involved at all as a leader as a facilitator as a convener and on top of that the board the chair of the planning board uh during his most recent uh effort to be on the city council took thousands of dollars from employees and principles of port properties and that and that has not bothered to recuse them even though they are clearly very involved in facilitating the interests of properties so this is a great example of a really broken planning process and neighborhood that is taking on the burden of housing portland while every other neighborhood virtually says no to housing thank you thank you for the comment okay um so as much as I love to talk about patience and sense of humor I don't think that's really a great way to run a meeting so I'm gonna uh upward and see whether or not there's any progress that may it sounds like you're making some progress up there with uh ish okay I'm getting this all right let's let's give it another try because I don't see any more hands up on zoom and I don't see anybody else stepping forward in chambers except for now if you do want to speak in chambers just line up behind the podium um no no need to to to wait go come on forward and uh we'll be happy to hear from you good afternoon or good evening I'm Robert Haynes home avenue here in portland three items first congratulations to the manager on your performance as permanent city manager uh basically she's the only one in the room that I know on this side of the rail because it's been eight years I think since I last attended a meeting I do know Councillor Phillips because of her family and a her neighbor second thing I want to talk about is the family immigrant housing and the fact that blueberry road seems to have fallen through I've made two calls last week and did not get a one of either of them returned I have a piece of land that's ideal it doesn't have a building on it and I don't know how quickly prefab could be made and placed on the property it's a little over an acre it's uh less than a quarter of a mile to a chain grocery store and probably a quarter of a mile maybe plus a little bit more to Thompson's point which are work opportunities uh what I really want to talk about is petitions uh petitions are not supposed to be easy to do but have to be doable the number that you have before you now was done in the phoenix or the uh ballard got it right was when you had to come into the clerk's office to sign the petition that made it very difficult to do people might have supported what you wanted to do but they'd be darned if they were going to come into city hall to sign the petition 10 years ago I advocated that the number needed to be changed I suggested 20 or perhaps 30 percent of the last voting in Portland during the gubernatorial election fell on deaf ears at that time the number now and I'll give credit to the I call them the communists but they're the people's democratic whatever of Portland we're coming up with the knowledge that with the group they have it's easy to get the 15 uh 1555 or whatever that magic number is now and then put it on the spring ballot when not many people vote and they can get all their people out 30 second warning okay it needs to be changed 10 seems very low to me but it's a lot better than what you've got now uh those are my thoughts on it again it's not supposed to be easy because it is the way it is now they are you surfing what you ought to be doing and uh but it has to be doable and if you get enough people out on a gubernatorial election a percentage higher than 10 percent ought to be doable in this city thank you very much and give you some things to talk about and think about good to see you thank you for your comment and welcome counselor travaro i don't think we have any more public comment i don't see any more hands up on zoom nobody's stepping forward in chambers so i'm going to close public comment and i'm going to let counselor travaro know we are having technical difficulties so we're heading into the next portion of our agenda with fingers crossed that um this hybrid works out okay so uh the next item on our agenda is announcements does anybody have any announcements this evening from my colleagues on the council i don't see any so we're going to move past announcements to recognitions will the clerk please read our first recognition recognizing deering center neighborhood association board member bobby cope and the veterans of foreign wars post six eight five nine for their leadership and honoring and mourning the u.s military personnel who died while serving the united states armed forces and organizing this observation of memorial day 2023 sponsored by mike mark dion counselor counselor dion thank you madam mayor members of the council bobby cope would you stand please now we're going to lead back you can come forward bobby with your team i just want to say a couple of words here thank you thank you bobby last weekend was memorial day and i had the pleasure and honor to participate in a ceremony that was held at evergreen cemetery to honor those who died in the service of the united states now i want to begin by saying city's work not because city hall gets it done city's work when neighborhoods get it done and bobby her team got it done on memorial day there are over 250 attendees that participated in the function the parade was something to be proud of it included different representation both military and non-military the most touching was a group of a dozen little girls and a few boys dressed in white carrying bouquets that were going to be laid at the gravesides of certain veterans it was a wonderful ceremony bobby you had great speakers you had music that fit the occasion i saw lots of tears being brushed from cheeks as we went through the entire program and none of that occurred other than for her force of will and her team to include the veterans of foreign wars there was some city staff that also assisted in terms of traffic control and providing space and support at evergreen cemetery this is like my fourth function that i've attended and it took me four years to get a place on the dais just to say something so it's a very select crew of individuals that granted the honor to speak on the question and responsibility we have to our war dead so i want to thank you on behalf of those who passed and service to our country for taking on that kind of work now why the recognition why i think it's important when neighborhood leaders step up and meet a civic responsibility we need more of that not less of it but i was infuriated that night had a great time i go home i watch a certain media outlet and they report that the whole thing was put on by the city of porland would nary a mention of bobby's work and her team and that was infuriating to me right i don't mind if we get credit for something we had an active role in making happen but we were less than a supporting actor in this one okay the credit goes to bobby and the others who gave up their day so that we could recognize a tradition that should carry on and that's why i brought this recognition forward to the council because i think it's important for us to acknowledge that and recognize the people who actually met their civic responsibility in their tradition of honoring our war dead thank you very much bobby thank you council for this moment thank you councillor dion councillor ali thank you mayor even though my colleague forgot to mention that i also was there and i march so bobby thank you and i have attended about five or six i only missed last year when do i get to speak thank you well thank you very much again both councillors and miss cope thank you so much for being here and bringing folks forward we appreciate your attendance do you have something you'd like to share okay i gratefully accept this recognition on behalf of the dearing center community and the dearing memorial vfw post represented here this evening by sergeant first class united states army retired steven veil thank you councillors dion and ali for your gracious acceptance of my invitation to participate in this important event with your help we presented a solemn program of remembrance for all armed service members killed while on active duty with special focus on seven young men whose bodies were brought back from afar and laid to rest at home in evergreen cemetery several of their families were in attendance which gave us the opportunity to make it personal for them and to acknowledge the momentous losses there were many who proudly fulfilled their civic duty to remember among them the dearing center girl scout troop and other community children who led by my granddaughter daisy cope daisy cope who is here today they laid flowers on the graves of two young veterans carrying on the 155-year-old tradition of decoration day we will continue this tradition each year and never forget those who gave their very lives in service to america thank you thank you very much um thank you very much for your leadership um and for as councillor dion said for the leadership from your neighborhood organization to bring this asset to the city of portland and to remember so thanks again for being here tonight and we do have another recognition this evening will the clerk please read that into the record recognizing public works employees stan mason and jesson cusack for their first place finished in the 2023 state snow plow rodeo competition by kate sider mayor and i have the opportunity to share a little bit about this this evening the main state snow plow rodeo is a timed obstacle course for trucks and drivers held annually at the scout hegan fairgrounds and hosted by the american public works association public public works um employees from portland stan mason and justin cusack bested 19 other municipal teams from across the state to win first place as the top team they will represent the state of main of the national the annual national snow plow rodeo competition in colorado in september so congratulations thank you and good luck and uh we'll move on to the next section of our agenda which is the approval of the minutes from the previous meeting is there a motion to approve the minutes from our may 15th council passage second councillor zara with a second from councillor ali and we'll go ahead to vote to approve those draft minutes councillor pornier yes councillor badriguez yes councillor dion just stepped out councillor ali yes councillor zaro yes councillor travaro yes councillor pellets here yes councillor phillips yes mayor snider yes uh those pass unanimously and we move into proclamations we've got three before us tonight i'm actually not reading any of them but my colleagues on the council will be so will the clerk please read proclamation 28 and i'll look to councillor zaro to read that into the record please proclamation 28 22 23 recognizing june 2023 as lgbtq plus pride month sponsored by kate snider mayor thank you madam mayor for allowing me to be honored to read this year's proclamation recognizing june 2023 as lgbtq plus pride month i believe this is the third time i'm doing this whereas the city of portland main is committed to being a safe welcoming and equitable community for all people across race ethnicity socioeconomic status age sexual orientation gender identification country of origin or any other identity and whereas many of the residents students city employees and business owners who contribute to the enrichment of our city are a part of the lgbtq plus community which includes people who identify as lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer questioning two spirit and more and whereas portland main has a strong lgbtq plus community because it has truly been a safe haven for the queer community over the years and whereas the stonewall riots began in new york on june 28th 1969 and are regarded as the catalyst for the lgbtq plus movement of uh for civil rights in the united states and whereas by pock trans activists silvia revera marsha p johnson and miss major griffin gracy are credited as the four mothers of the clashes with the authorities at stonewall that night launching queer liberation as we know it and whereas june 26 2023 marks the eighth anniversary of the us supreme court's decision in oberg fel v hodges that the 14th amendment requires all states to grant same-sex marriages and recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states and whereas june 28 2023 marks the 50 uh 53rd anniversary of the first gay pride marches in the history of the united states and june is now celebrated as lgbtq plus pride month nationwide and whereas june 28 2023 marks the 54th anniversary of the stonewall uprising on which occasion the lgbtq plus community recognizes more than half a century of the lgbtq plus movement celebrates and honors its accomplishments and raises awareness of its ongoing struggles now therefore be it resolved that kate snider mayor of the city of portland and uh members of the portland city council do hereby recognize june as lgbtq plus pride month in the city of portland main and we invite citizens of portland to honor the history of the fight for equality to celebrate how far we've come and to recognize the work that we have left in front of us and i'm going to take a moment we have um gga drew with us from a quality main and i'm going to take a moment to to share this and honor um the work of a quality main um and we will get you a much nicer copy of this thank you councillor zaro and will the clerk please read proclamation 29 proclamation 29 22 23 recognize in june 19 2023 as june sponsored by kate snider mayor and i will look to my colleague councillor pelleteer to read this thank you whereas the emancipation proclamation signed on january 1 1863 declared that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states are and hence forward shall be free and whereas more than two years later on june 19 1865 the last group of enslaved americans located in the city of galveston texas learned that the civil war had ended and that they were free from bondage and whereas black americans commemorate juneteenth as the day they were first recognized as citizens of this country it is a day of an enormous significance weight in power in which we remember the moral stain of chattel slavery on this country as well as its long legacy of systemic racism inequality and inhumanity and whereas juneteenth is a day in which we also recognize the many significant achievements and successes of black americans throughout our nation's history and in the present as we continue to walk the stony road towards racial equity and whereas the historic work of striving for racial equity has been led by abolitionists and educators civil rights advocates lawyers courageous activists trade unionists public officials and everyday americans including those dedicated to realizing the ideals of our nation and whereas the legacy of black american resistance to systemic inequality including suppression of the black vote redlining and police violence is a testament to the struggle courage and hope of the black community while reminding us that the fight is not yet over and whereas juneteenth reminds us that while we are moving towards equity equality and justice we still have more to do to advance true equity in all aspects of civic life and that we must always strive for a better future now therefore be it resolved that kate snider mayor of the city of portland main and members of the city council do hereby recognize june 19 2023 as juneteenth in the city of portland and invite residents of portland to join in celebrating how far we have come since the abolition of slavery while putting our shoulders to the task of fighting for equity equality and justice this day and every day signed and sealed this fifth day of june 2023 thank you councillor palatier next we'll go to uh last the clerk to please read proclamation 30 proclamation 30 22 23 recognizing the month of june 23 23 as immigrant heritage month sponsored by pi s le chair sorry councillor councillor ali we'll look to you for this one thank you mayor i am going to see proclamation recognizing the month of june 2023 as immigrant heritage month whereas generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe have helped build our country's economy and created the unique character of our nation and whereas immigrants continue to grow businesses innovate strength our economy and create american jobs in portland may and whereas immigrants have provided the united states with unique social and cultural influence fundamentally enriching the extraordinary character of our nation and whereas immigrants have been tireless leaders not only in scaring their own rights and access to equal opportunity but also in campaigning to create a fair and more just society for all americans and whereas despite the countless contributions the role of immigrants in building and enriching our nation has frequently been overlooked and undervalued throughout our history and continue to the present day and now therefore be it resolved that kate snider mayor of the city of portland and members of the portland city council do hear about proclaiming june 2023 as immigrant heritage month in the city of portland sudden so today june 5th 2023 thank you mayor thank you councillor ellie next we move into the appointments section of our agenda will the clerk please read order 225 order 225 2223 appointing william needleman as class b director of the portland fish change sponsored by daniel west any manager i see bill is here this evening um but we're just putting bill is that he's the waterfront coordinator in the housing and economic development department um putting him on to another board the portland fish exchange is our classy representative and he's held this position since june of 2022 when he was appointed to fill a midterm vacancy so we're just asking that that he be reappointed thank you very much um thanks for being here bill and we'll see if there's any public comment on this order 225 appointment we do have a hand up on zoom we're gonna hope for the best george go ahead george roe west bayside any luck we still can't hear you george um so i don't think we can proceed with a hybrid meeting unless we can hear folks on zoom we have any update from jessica makes sense am i still on peter no answers up there has anyone tried just reaching out to someone else to test it other than me george if you can hear me we cannot hear you so we're gonna give yeah um let's let's give it a try everybody mute your your uh microphone go ahead peter and george go ahead okay george roe west bayside is that coming through in any way we can try it like this are you asking me to continue do you like me to speak go ahead george okay george roe west bayside is it any sound coming through to anybody i think it's just coming from my laptop oh sorry okay go ahead okay george roe west bayside uh i think this might be take three or four um sorry about that george is uh so this is being recorded like people in the room can hear this is that okay um i just again i just want to make sure i'm not speaking into a even though you guys are making your best effort to to uh make sure i come through so i just had a question i know uh bill has been you know part of the waterfront team for for a very long time um but i i wanted to know whether i'm sorry i didn't interrupt you it it looks like the audio here in chambers is going in and out because we can hear you through my laptop but whether or not it's telegraphic part of the tv is is not consistent does that sense to people it's right at that's right where it is i don't it's that it's the it's not this it's that right well we would have to do that for every public comment around zoom then but i think the issue is my mic's working and my computer's working it's only sometimes making its way to the tv peter does that make sense i don't we've had so much time i don't um um peter i'm just going to ask you a quick question is this something that you think you can fix with some time if we were to take a break i have you been working on it since the beginning okay i just i don't want to ask for a break if it's not going to be helpful i think that's the trick is that might it might be somebody other than me to do it but mine was working sometimes and not other times so why would somebody else's mic and computer be different maybe it would i'm just asking why i think why don't we do this why don't we take a 10 and then a break and can't figure it out there goes our hybrid beating um so thanks everybody for your patience can you hear me peter i've unmuted myself on zoom peter i have unmuted myself on zoom i can't hear you i'm sorry but peter i have somebody on zoom who could act as a guinea pig if we want to try that it to i i have somebody on zoom who could who's willing to raise her hand it's a staff member and she could help us see if it's just george's mic actually no i'm in i can do it it's michael you want me to do it okay right i was thinking we could ask anthera gross to raise her hand as somebody who's remote and then see if she can be heard so i'm gonna okay and and you're good to talk um can you say hello hello can you hear me well we can hear you because you have your computer on no but that's and coming through the zoom so yeah right oh yeah but not here mute your computer okay okay okay okay so we're not getting hurry either on the uh the speaker okay thank you and okay so it's not i mean it's not jord is not anybody's microphone performance our audio hearing changes buddy here we're gonna get close to your appointment am i not gonna be some meeting on the 26th everybody to the audio and chambers if it doesn't work we're gonna have to cancel the meeting and cancel the zoom portion of the meeting it's canceling the meeting because if we advertise a hybrid meeting state law tells us that we have to have a hybrid meeting so our fingers are crossed again unless there's some technology breakthrough in the meantime with the smart board we're gonna try this one more time and if it doesn't work we're gonna have to cancel the meeting so we are mid appointment we are in public comment that's gonna be fun um George i hate to ask you to come back as a public commenter um i'll look for your hand in case you want to try this with us again otherwise we if we don't have other hands up on zoom we can just take public comment and chambers and move through this appointment and move on to our next item so we can kind of do what we've done up until this point in the meeting which is if we don't have public comment on zoom we can still do our meeting right okay i'm winging this here so any uh any constructive feedback is welcome so i'm going to close public comment on order 225 and i'm going to ask for a motion from the council back in councillor ali with a second from councillor zaro is there any comment i see none go ahead and vote councillor fornier yes councillor barriguez yes councillor dion yes councillor ali yes councillor zaro yes councillor travaro yes councillor pelleteer yes councillor phillips yes mayor snider yes thank you bill that was some appointment okay we really appreciate you being here bill and we will move on with our agenda uh will clerk please read order hold on a second here okay we've got a little bit of we've got some notes on will you please read order 226 order 226 223 appointing constables for the parks recreation and facilities and police departments and jetport chat port garage employees for 2023 sponsored by daniel west city manager and i'll look to the city manager for comment here uh thank you mayor this is just a uh annual appointment that we do um for parks rec and facilities and police departments they are just individuals who carry out enforcement of our various ordinances there is an amendment in the backup materials to add um several park rangers to this order so we would ask the uh some member of the council please move that so that we can get everyone um that we need appointed as a constable appointed thank you and i'd be happy to read that amendment into the record so that it can be included in the public comment period so we've been asked to consider an amendment to order 226 um that replaces the name maria goodstein with aiden foss um so again the order is in your backup um all we're doing in the second stanza is replacing one name with another so uh amendment to replace maria goodstein with aiden foss okay so with that i'm going to go back to zoom and i'm going to see if there's any public comment on this order or any public comment in chambers seeing none close public comment come back to the council for a motion please move passage second councillor zara with a second from councillor rodriguez i'd like to take the opportunity to offer an amendment to order 226 to replace uh maria goodstein with aiden foss is there a second second amendment for me seconded from councillor ali i'm going to ask for any comment or questions on the amendment we'll go ahead and vote on the amendment please councillor fornier yes councillor rodriguez yes councillor dylan yes councillor ali yeah councillor sorrow yes councillor travaro yes councillor pelletier yes councillor pillips yes ma'ear stanzer yes so order 226 has been amended is there any council discussion on the amended order before you we will go ahead and vote councilor fornier yes councillor rodriguez yes councillor dylan yes councillor ali yes councillor zaro yes councillor travaro yes councillor pelletier to councillor pillips Yes, Mayor Snyder. Yes. Order 226 passes unanimously. And last under this section, I'll ask the clerk to please read orders 227 order 227 2223 confirming Governor Mills appointment of John Henshaw to the Board of Harbour Commissioners sponsored by Daniel West City Manager. Thank you. This is just John Henshaw as the Executive Director of the Main Port Authority and Director of the Ports and Marine Transportation. He's been appointed by Governor Mills as per the statute to serve on the Harbour Commission. And so we have put this forward as a confirmation as per the Commission's rules before the Council. Thank you. Is there any public comment on order 227? Seeing none, I'll close public comment. Come back to the Council for a motion please. So moved. Second. Councilor Rodriguez, second from Councilor Zahro. Council discussion on this item. Seeing none, we can vote. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dionne. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Councilor Zahro. Yes. Councilor Chavarro. Yes. Councilor Piloteer. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snyder. Yes. Order 227. Passes unanimously. We'll move into the consent calendar on our agenda this evening. Will the clerk please read both orders 228 and 229. Order 228, 2223 declaring July 4th, 2023 as the July 4th Festival sponsored by Daniel West City Manager and Order 229, 2223 declaring Sundays from June 16th through September 23rd, 2023, the Open Air Sundays Festival on Lower Exchange Street sponsored by the Sustainability and Transportation Committee, Councilor Andrew Zahro chair. Thank you. And I'll look to the manager for comment on these two items. I will defer to Councilor Zahro on any comment he may have on the Open Air Sundays Festival, but with regard to the July 4th Festival, you'll see it's just basically authorizing fireworks. The fireworks will be in the same location as they are right now. And there will not be this year as in past years, any music or anything as part of this event, but the fireworks will occur. Thank you, Councilor Zahro. Everything's in the packet, but just to reiterate this went through sustainability and transportation recently Open Air Sundays it's a project that's being led by our friends over at Portland downtown. It is on Sundays only for I believe 10 Sundays if we approve it this evening. That's lower exchange street from middle of a four. Overall, we were told in committee that all of the businesses were in support of this with the exception of one business but they are closed on Sunday so it does not impact them. There's going to be an economic impact study to better understand after this programs over how it helped how it may have hindered etc. And Portland downtown is really excited to do a lot of programming in the streetscape you're at city cities are for people. So that's the intention of the Open Air Sundays to kind of energize and place make the lower part of exchange. So we unanimously supported it in our committee. And it is before us this evening for a vote. Thank you mayor. Thank you counselor and thank you for bringing that work through committee. Is there any public comment on either of these two items. It's terrible to think stories and on zoom, but I am curious also. We don't have any hands up on zoom for this one so I'm going to close public comment and we're going to come back to the council for emotion please. Move passage. Senator Zahra with a second from counselor for near council discussion on the consent items seeing non will vote to approve. For near. Yes. So Rodriguez. Yes. So Dion. Yes. So Ali. Yes. So Zahra. Yes. To borrow. Councilor Pelletier. Yes. So Phillips. Yes. There's neither. Yes. Orders 228 and 229 pass unanimously we head into licenses we've got quite a few this evening for the clerk please read order 230. We have a 30 to 223 granting municipal officers approval of end to tail application is for Parkland outdoor dining located at 29 exchange streets sponsored by Daniel West City manager. Thank you is there a public comment on order 230 seeing none I'll close public comment come back to the council for emotion. I moved. I can console. Leave the second from counselors are council discussion. Seeing none will go ahead and vote to approve. Yes, Councilor Redford against? Yes. Councilor Dion? Yes. Councilor Ali? Aye. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pelletier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Seder? Yes. Order 230 passes unanimously and if the owners of End to Tail are here with us this evening either in person or on Zoom, thank you for being here and also thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. Next we'll go to order 231 please. Order 231, 22, 23 granting municipal officers approval of green elephant vegetarian bistro application is for a class three and four food service staff establishment located at 608 Congress Street sponsored by Daniel West City Manager. Thank you. Is there public comment on order 231? I'm looking out here. Nope. Nowhere. No hands up. Close public comment. Come back to the council for a motion. So moved. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from Councilor Zahro. Council discussion. Seeing none we'll go ahead and vote to approve. Councilor Fornier? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Aye. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pelletier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Seder? Yes. 231 passes unanimously if the owners of green elephant are with us in person or on Zoom. Thank you so much for being here and thank you very much for doing business in the city of Portland. Your license is approved. Will the clerk please read order 232? 32, 22, 23 granting minutes officers approval of the Portland beer hub application is for class one food service establishment with outdoor dining on public property located at 324 Street sponsored by Daniel West City Manager. Thank you. Just forward to you. Thank you. 324 Street. Is there any public comment on order 232? I see none. I'll close public comment and come back to the council for a motion. Move passage. Second. Councilor Zahro with a second from Councilor Ali. Council discussion on this order. We can go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Broderick against? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pelletier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Seder? Yes. Order 232 passes unanimously and if the owner of beer Hub is high. How are you doing? With us, which you are, thank you for being here and thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. Order 233, please. Order 233, 2223, granting municipal officers approval of the Henry. Application is for indoor entertainment located at 375 4th Street, sponsored by Daniel West City Manager. Thank you. Is there public comment on order 233? Seeing none, I'll close public comment. Come back to the council for a motion, please. Move passage. Councilor Zahro with a second from Councilor Ali. Any council discussion? Councilor Phillips? Thanks. I just want to let Mr. Miranda know that Taichung, it's no longer the city council representative in District 3. I am. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Phillips. Any other discussion? Seeing none. We'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yay. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snider? Yes. Order 233 passes unanimously. Thank you very much for doing business in the city of Portland. Will the clerk please read order 234. Order 234, 2223, granting municipal officers approval of Commercial Street Pub. Application is for indoor entertainment located at 129 Commercial Street, sponsored by Daniel West, city manager. And is there any public comment on order 234? Seeing none. I'll close public comment. Come back to the council for a motion. I'll move to second. Councilor Ali with a second from Councilor Rodriguez. Council discussion. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snider? Yes. Order 234 passes unanimously. And if the owners of Commercial Street Pub are with us tonight. Thank you. And also thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. Order 235. Order 235, 2223, granting municipal officers approval of Riverton Station. Application is for outdoor dining on private property located at 1569 Forest Ave, sponsored by Daniel West, city manager. Thank you. Is there any public comment on order 235? I see none. I'm going to close public comment and come back to the council for a motion. Move passage. Second. Councilor Dionne with a second from Councilor Zahro. Any council discussion? Seeing none, we'll vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Mr. Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snider? Yes. That passes unanimously. And if the owners of Riverton Station are here with us this evening, thank you. And thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. Next, we'll go to order 236, please. Order 236, 2223, Renseing Municipal Officers, approval of East Ender. Application is for class 11 restaurant and lounge with outdoor dining on public property and indoor entertainment located at 47 Middle Street, sponsored by Daniel West, city manager. Thank you. Public comment on order 236. Seeing none, I will close public comment. I'll come back to the council for a motion. I'm moved. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from Councilor Rodriguez. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we can go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornner? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Mr. Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snider? Yes. And if the owners of East Ender are here with us this evening, either in person or on Zoom, thank you. And thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. And lastly, on our list of licenses tonight, will the clerk please read order 237? Order 237, 2223, granting municipal officers approval of Tolenton 2. Application is for Class 1 Food Services Establishment located at 782 Forest Ave sponsored by Daniel West, City Manager. Is there any public comment on order 237? Seeing none, I'll close public comment. Come back to the council for a motion. So moved. Councilor Ali? Second from Councilor Rodriguez? Discussion? None. We'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Pornier? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dion? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yay. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snider? Yes. Order 237 passes unanimously. And if the owners of Tolenton 2 are here with us this evening, thank you. And thank you so much for doing business in the city of Portland. OK. All licenses done and approved this evening. We didn't get to test our Zoom public comment, but we made it through that portion of the agenda. So that's exciting. We'll move on to our budget items. Couple things on this front. As was announced at the last council meeting, we will be postponing the budget items until our next council meeting, which is on a special date June 26. However, public comment was advertised for tonight on the budget. So we'll take public comment because it was on the agenda and I want to make sure that we're consistent with what's been out there in the public. Two things to note on that front. We will be taking public comment when the council takes action on June 26. So if you'd like to wait and hold your public comment until that time, that's fine. Again, we're just postponing the budget items tonight. If you do speak tonight, just like if you spoke at our last meeting about the budget items, we would ask that you not speak on the 26 and give folks an opportunity who haven't yet had the chance to speak. So what I'm going to do, initially, because we've got so many budget items, is ask if there's any public comment. If there is public comment, we'll hear that. And then we'll head into the many budget items before us for actions to postpone. I see nobody stepping forward in chambers. I don't see any hands up on Zoom. OK, I'm going to close public comment. And like I said, we're going to head into these budget items. Please be aware that we will be taking action on them on June 26. We welcome your comment at that time. And I also wanted folks to know that I'm going to be asking us to postpone order 224 under unfinished business along with the packet of budget items. It's the Authorizing Amendment to Downtown Transit Oriented Development and Omnibus Tax Increment Financing District, which is essentially a budget item. So here's what we're going to do. Do we need to read them all into the record? I can read them all into the record. Well, we can do one at a time, because maybe we'll vote on them one more time. Right. We have to vote on each and every one. We can't do them in a lump. So what's your preference? I would say read them all into the record, and then we will quickly make our way through the order numbers and the roll call votes to postpone. All right. OK, thank you. Order 209, 22, 23, approved fiscal year 2024, administrative fees for city parking garages and parks, recreation, and facilities department. Order 210, 22, 23, authorizing the city manager to enter into certain agreements to implement the fiscal year 2024, human resources and certain fringe benefits budgets. Order 211, 22, 23, approving the fiscal year 2024, self-insured liability program. Order 212, 22, 23, authorizing the director of parks, recreation, and facilities to set fees and enter into rental agreements for city facilities. Order 213, 22, 23, authorizing the city manager to enter in certain agreements to implement fiscal year 2024, health and human services budget. Order 214, 22, 23, authorizing the city manager to accept scholarship and trust donations and request and enter into trust agreements. Order 215, 22, 23, authorizing the director of parks, recreation, and facilities to accept donations up to 10,000 for parks, recreations, and facilities department programs and city funds. Order 216, 22, 23, authorizing corporation council to undertake civil actions to collect the delinquent personal property taxes. Order 217, 22, 23, authorizing non-union wage adjustments. Order 218, 22, 23, designating fiscal year 2024, funds for specific island services. Order 219, 22, 23, appropriating $3,611,343 in fund balance. Order 220, 22, 23, appropriating $276,000 from excess funds for Casco Bay Island Transit District. Order 221, 22, 23 amendment to the Portland City Code, chapters 24 and 28 regarding various fee increases for fiscal year 2024. In order 22, 22, 23, fiscal year 2023, 2024, appropriation resolve. They're all sponsored by Daniel West, city manager. And did you want me to read the other ones, which was again reminding me? Order 224, thank you. Order 224, 22, 23, authorizing amendments to downtown transit oriented delinquent and AMIA's tax increment financing district to increase funding for creative Portland, also sponsored by Daniel West, city manager. Thank you so much. Take a break for a second. Get a drink of water. I think what we'll do at this point is I'm happy to offer a motion to postpone, and I'll be looking for a second as we make our way through the list. So motion to postpone, order 209. Second. Councilor Ali with the second, and we'll go ahead and vote. So much for a press. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Councilor Zaro. Yes. Councilor Chavarro. Yes. Councilor Pelletier. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snyder. Yes. We have postponed order 209. Motion to postpone 210. Second. Councilor Rodriguez with the second, and we'll vote to postpone. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yay. Councilor Zaro. Yes. Councilor Chavarro. Yes. Councilor Pelletier. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snyder. Yes. I offer a motion to postpone, order 211 to June 26. You have a second. Council Rodriguez with a second. We'll go ahead and vote. Councillor Fornear. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dion. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yay. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Tavaro. Yes. Councillor Pilatear. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Turner. Yes. That's postponed. Offer a motion to postpone Order 212 to June 26. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornear. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dion. Councillor Pelletier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. That is postponed. I offer a motion to postpone order 213 to June 26th. Councilor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Aye. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Travaro. Yes. Councillor Pelletier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Councillor Mare. Yes, please do so. Yes, thank you so much. I believe we're gonna continue with a second. Mayor, come on. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zarro. Yes. Councillor Travaro. Yes. Councillor Pelletier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes that order is postponed. I offer a motion to postpon, order 215 to June 22. Second. Councilor Rodriguez with a second. Senator. Yes. I offer a motion to postpone order 216 to June 22nd, 27th, 26th, June 26th. Councillor Alley with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Alley. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chavarro. Yes. Councillor Pelleteer. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. That is postponed and I offer a motion to postpone order 217 to June 26th. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Alley. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chavarro. Yes. Councillor Pelleteer. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. That is postponed. I offer a motion to postpone order 218 to June 26th. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Alley. Yes. Councillor Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Trauaro. Yes. Councillor Pellettier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. That order is postponed. I offer a motion to postpone order 219 to June 26. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chavarro. Yes. Councillor Pellettier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. And that is postponed. I offer a motion to postpone 220 to June 26. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chavarro. Yes. Councillor Pellettier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. And that is postponed. I offer a motion to postpone order 222 to June 26. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chavarro. Yes. Councillor Pellettier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. That order is postponed. I offer a motion to postpone order 222 to June 26. Second. Councillor Rodriguez with a second. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chavarro. Yes. Councillor Pellettier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Order 224 is also postponed to June 26. So we can thank Zoom for all those roll-call votes. Right. We could take them in a packet, but we cannot. So that was a successful postponement of all budget orders. And we will move, continue to move through our agenda. Make sure I know where we are. Okay. Up to communications. So we have three communications before us this evening. Will the clerk please read communication 34. 2223 communication regarding city council's ad hoc search committee sponsored by Kate Snider mayor. This one's from me. This is really a very simple communication. As you can see from what is in the packet, I just wanted to clarify that the search committee was originally formed and named the city manager search committee. And that was some time ago. The city manager search committee was actually put on hold while the charter commission did their work and the. Citizens voted on recommendations from the charter commission during that time, the city manager search committee actually conducted the work to bring forward a process for the full council's consideration regarding the city clerks hiring last summer. And we are now embarking on the work. The city manager search committee. The city manager search committee. The city manager search committee. The city manager search committee was created some time ago. After a successful city manager search that culminated in a vote in May to name Danielle West. So the point here is that the city manager search committee that was created some time ago has. Really expanded its scope of work. And so as not to confuse anybody, we just wanted to be on the record to say that the city manager search committee is really has become known as the search committee. And so we are now on the record to let folks know that. The city councilors who serve on this committee, counselor for near counselor, Diane counselor Ali. And I will consider continue this work as a committee of the council. And this is very important work when we are conducting search processes. We do a lot of the process work on behalf of the council. And then of course decision making resides with the full commission. And so we are now on the record. The search committee is. The search committee. Any questions? It's a communication. No public comment. That's it. Well, the clerk, please read communication. 35. Communication 35 2223. Regarding decommissioning of the Portland expo as a temporary emergency shelter. This one is by Kristen Dowd, our director of health and human services. This is just a communication from her to talk about the process of decommissioning the exposition building, which we've been using as a temporary emergency shelter for asylum seekers. And she'll walk us through it. Thank you for being here, Kristen. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Can you hear me? All right. My good. It's been a while. I've been here. I'm Jack. I've been here. So we opened the expo as a temporary emergency shelter back in April. We knew that it would be top temporary shelter. And then other uses coming in September. Since then we have served about 394 unique individuals in the expo. We did hit capacity, which is 300 within the first week of the expo. So we've been able to do that. So we've been able to do that. So we've been able to do that. So we've been able to do that. And then we did hit capacity, which is 300 within the first week of opening. Like we thought that we would, but I just wanted to highlight some really amazing work that's been done by our city staff here in social services and in public health at the expo. Before we talk about the decommissioning, our public health team has been the one this time in 2019, we worked with the main CDC and public health nurses and the main CDC to do the health screenings. So this round, our public health division has been the one leading the screenings. We've done 336 medical screenings. And given 764 vaccines in total. We have 352 registered volunteers that have been completely vetted through our system. And we currently have 15 different service providers providing services on site for these individuals. So we did know that this was going to be temporary. So we have an emergency operations center going, which is why chief Coutreux was here as well. And he is, he is a part of the command staff for that. That is why quite frankly, this is really one run very smoothly. We were meeting daily for a while. We are now meeting twice a week. And everything we had then decided we needed to have a meeting to discuss the decommissioning of the expo and the closure of the expo. And so we decided to have the last day and the closure date be August 16th. And that will allow us or allow city staff time to restore the building. It's not meant to be a 24 seven shelter. For that amount of time. So there's, there is some definitely restaurant restoration that's going to need to be done to the building. So we decided to have the last day and the closure date be August 16th. And that will allow us or allow city staff time to restore the building. And so, that will allow city staff time to restore the building to the building to be done to the building to get it up and ready for, for that. That first event. And the way we have in the past when we have decommissioned or closed temporary emergency shelters, like in 2019 with the expo. And then most recently the days in South Cortland, we use this emergency shelter. We have to have a date where we can no longer take new on August, so what we do not want to have happen is on August 16th to have 300 people with no place to go. And so we have picked that date which happens to be today, actually the date of this communication, this we had our meeting a few weeks ago, but this is the date was today that gives us nine weeks to depopulate the shelter and get people into different emergency shelters for housing and different services. There's a total of 88 families there. We're still a capacity of 300, but a total of 88 families. And those 88 families will be focusing on over the next nine weeks. Director Dow, thank you so much for being here with us and for this communication. Are there any questions or comments from counselors? I want to extend gratitude to you and your staff, all the HHS staff, including public health, opening up the expo. As you did so rapidly, I know it happened so quickly. So you were able to act very, very quickly in order to meet the need, as you mentioned in your memo of people leaving a school gymnasium and giving them an alternative place in the city of Portland to be as we make our way through these challenging days where we just don't have enough emergency beds. So I want to thank you very much for that elasticity that you and your staff have shown. Okay. Okay. I think don't stick around, though. Will the clerk please read order? Communication 36. Communication 36, 22, 23. Regarding the city of Portland encampment crisis response team, also by Kristin Dow, our director of health and human services. So, Director Dow is here to speak to this item as well. This is just about the encampment crisis response team, which we kicked off last week. Kristin will give an update on that. There's also a letter that we've included in the backup materials, which the mayor and I sent on Friday, which I believe the mayor will speak to after Kristin. So thank you for being here again. Okay. Hello, all. So the encampment crisis response team, I first want to just address the name chain. We were calling it a task force for a while, and I know that I spoke with many of you on Zoom about a task force, and you saw the recommendation from the health and human services department on development of task force. But I think the term task force, really many of us have probably sat on one, where you just sit around and you talk about work that needs to be done and develop something that goes and sits on a shelf. And that's not what this is. So this is really a crisis response team that is action-oriented, action-driven, and will be moving something forward. So we spoke about it and really decided on the encampment crisis response team being the name of this team. We are working really closely with the technical assistance providers that have been provided by HUD. They don't work directly for HUD, but they are provided to us by them. They took the recommendations that we put forward and are supporting that. We have worked with them to take the structure that we have put forward once again, it's an emergency operations center structure. It is going to be co-led by health and human services, fire and police, once again, my chief patrol is here. And we will be leading that. We are developing seven different teams that will sit within the emergency and the encampment crisis response team. And those teams will focus on things like the mobile engagement center, housing inventory, housing placements, data, they're all listed in in the memo. But we had our first meeting with providers. There were, I think, 18 different nonprofit service providers from both local and some state that were invited to a meeting last week on the 31st, where we kicked it off. We asked that have we one service provider, one person from each organization that can help make a decision and really commit that organization to supporting this. That was something that we talked a lot about with you all. How do we get that level of commitment? And I'm happy to say that many service providers have not only signed up to be a part of the different teams, but have also signed up to help lead. I don't want this to be while the city is taking the lead and ushering this forward. This is an ownership of the entire community. It was really clear in our first meeting that the city of Portland can't do this alone. This is taking all of the good work that is currently being done by all the service providers and really channeling it into a targeted and organized way at each encampment as we look at them. And we have now taken these teams, which everyone signed up for on the 31st, and we'll be having our first team meetings with three of the three of the primary teams, which will be starting, which is basic needs, a basic needs team, the mobile engagement center, and then the inventory, the housing inventory team will be meeting this Wednesday, June 7th in the afternoon. And we have decided that the very first encampment that we will be looking at and focusing on is the Four River Parkway encampment. Thank you very much, Director Dow. Do you want to talk a little bit about next steps on that front or next steps? Next steps. So I think that next steps will be to meet again in groups and start to really work, focused work on the Four River encampment as Director Dow said. But also, I know the council, I think, and speaking with you as well as staff, we've heard a lot from the members of the public who really want to speak to this issue. And so in that vein, we've scheduled for June 13th from 530 to 8th at Ocean Gateway, a listening session where we will be giving some information, providing that to everybody, getting sort of consistent messaging out there about exactly what's happening with the crisis response team, as well as just addressing the facts of the situation in general. And then really want to hear from everybody in the public specifically about concerns or questions and listen to all of that. Like I said, from 530 to 8th on June 13th, I will be present along with most of the members of the council. And we really look forward to everybody being there. And I just also want to give a really big thank you to staff for all the work that they're doing on the crisis response team, but also to all the service providers. I was present at the kickoff meeting last week. And it was a wonderful showing of a significant amount of support from many, many service providers, almost all of them within the city. And so I'm really hopeful that we'll start to see some progress and be able to get people to help in services and housing that they need and really be able to address this moving forward. Thank you to the city manager. So I'm going to add a couple of comments here to this communication. I want to start out by saying thank you to counselor for near and the HHS committee members. Your agendas have gotten bumped a couple of times in order to accommodate both special meetings and our response to working through some of these issues. So thank you. And that's happening actually again next week on June 13th at the time of the listening session. Councilor for near graciously said we could go ahead and use that meeting time. Our schedule is honestly so jam packed. It's difficult to find evenings and we don't want to postpone. We already have to postpone so often, but we needed to find a time when we could notice it appropriately invite people plan for it and and and make it the evening that it ought to be. So like the manager said next Tuesday the 13th down at Ocean Gateway starting at 530 we welcome the community. And again my thanks to counselor for near. I also had the opportunity to attend the encampment crisis response team meeting last week to help welcome people but mostly to be a listener. And as director Dow said at least 18 serve community organizations were there with staff. It was an incredible turnout. I learned a lot by by being there. But I also want to shout out to the fact that we had director Dow chief Gatro chief Gorham. We had members of staff from DPW from parks and rec from leadership in the city of Portland is stepping forward with a tremendous amount of leadership and compassion and dedication. So I want to note that because sometimes we're told the city government isn't doing enough. But I will say that as I left that meeting on Thursday I thought I am awfully proud to be a Portland resident because our city government is doing Herculean work to address very big challenges. So thank you. So as we all know we've been struggling and the X the communication before this one about the expo is just illustrative of the fact that the city of Portland has been trying to meet needs and we haven't been able to we budget for and we staff for two municipally run shelters. The recently open and expanded homeless services center out on Riverside street 208 beds which is another 54 beds from the rented space that for so many years served as a homeless shelter on Oxford street and we also budget for and staff 146 beds at the Chestnut street family shelter. But so many times over the years and certainly during this past year the city has gotten very creative and elastic with resources and capacity and has done what we can to meet the increased need. And we all talk about it every single day and it is a huge priority for the city and as all of you know the city manager and I go up to Augusta regularly during this legislative session we'll be back up on Wednesday. We're trying to get up there weekly because there's so many important things happening. We've had the opportunity to sit with the governor which is a wonderful opportunity. We have open lines of communication with her staff with our legislative delegation and other folks up in Augusta but we also realize that being on record and sharing information beyond talking is so important and so last week we worked on this communication that we sent as the manager said to the governor on Friday afternoon. We did receive acknowledgement of the communication by email on Friday afternoon but I wanted to just take a couple of minutes. I think it's that important to walk through the communication that we sent. We talk about sorry just getting there on my computer. It's an information sharing correspondence. It's also a request making correspondence. So sharing into the record this evening we know that since the fall of 2021 thousands of asylum seekers have arrived in the city of Portland seeking shelter and services and since January of this year the average weekly census of new arrivals is 80 per week. So we're on average getting 80 people coming to the city of Portland every week both individuals and families and the majority of people coming from the southern border. We all know that Portland uniquely made a decision decades ago to operate a municipal shelter and since that time and in response to the state's general assistance law and the city's commitment to helping people in need we've expanded and grown our commitment both in terms of budget and shelter beds. At the moment we host 654 emergency shelter beds that are municipally operated shelters. So again 208 at the homeless services center, 146 at the family shelter and at this moment 300 at the expo. We do start out by asking Governor Mills to acknowledge and as we do that we are doing everything that we can to respond to this ever-increasing need for shelter of two very distinct populations. We've got folks seeking asylum and we've got folks who find themselves circumstantially unhoused and so right now the majority of the shelter beds in Portland are being occupied by asylum seekers and we know that a lot of folks who are in tents are not being housed and so we're struggling and we're asking for help. So we go on to say with the emergency shelter beds full hotels in the region either at capacity or no longer accepting unhoused individuals either due to the changes in COVID protocol or changes to local ordinances and of course the limited availability of affordable housing stock we just can't meet the need. We cannot meet the demand for emergency shelter beds even though we have 654 hosted and staffed in the city of Portland at this time and as a result more and more circumstantially unhoused people more than we've ever seen before have been sleeping outside in tents. At last count or at least as of last Friday we believe there are at least 130 tents throughout the city and we get a lot of outreach from constituents. I don't think anybody's saying that this is a good and fair response to being unhoused. It's not ideal. So we let the governor know that we are continuing to work as collaboratively as possible expand municipal resources leverage both state and federal aid and partnership and of course the community organizations that Kristen and her team have been able to pull in through this crisis response team. We really need more help. Unfortunately starting on May 8th 2022 over a year ago we did let folks know that people applying for GA in Portland are given information to conduct a self-directed housing search and this isn't where we want to be. We want to be able to offer people the shelter and the services they need to move through the challenge of not being housed. So we let the governor know about the encampment crisis response team. All the partners that are at the table, the fact that HUD has sent partners who are at the table, the convening is modeled on the structure of an emergency operations center which I know was employed during the 2019 use of the expo and our staff is clearly expert at doing this work and pulling together a plan and a team to inform the plan that can then be executed. So thank you for the expertise that you bring to the table. It's very very impressive. So we did ask the governor for continued support for the emergency shelter for asylum seekers that are in SACO and we requested additional state-level capacity to coordinate services and shelter for asylum seekers and to develop additional emergency shelters and or transitional housing with supportive services throughout the state in order to meet the needs of all manors who find themselves unhoused. We continued to ask for her support of LD 1644 and its fiscal note. This is the bill that would increase state reimbursement for general assistance from 70% to 90%. So we have a wonderful state government. We have good partnership with the governor and we wanted to make sure that she knows where we are and the struggles that we face. Right now the weather is warm but what we know is that last December, January, February there were freezing, freezing weekends and evenings and we didn't have the shelter that we needed and we have a crisis situation with folks outside intense at this point in time and so we have we have a lot to take care of in the moment and as we look to colder weather because it's our reality in the state of Maine and we have to we have to think ahead. So lastly, we did invite the governor to visit Portland. We would love to be able to offer a tour of the new homeless services center and other sites as time allows. So wanted to let folks know that we've done that outreach and I welcome any questions or comments from the council. Councillor Fornir, thank you so much. Oh I forgot I had my microphone on. So one of the questions I had not about the letter I appreciate that a lot. It's about the listening session. I want to be super mindful that often when we have listening sessions those who are able to access the meeting are the ones that are heard and where we are talking about a population that may not have access to a phone or zoom or even transportation to get to Ocean Gateway. I don't know if it's working with our partners who are currently on the ground working with these individuals or if there's any way for us to be able to help provide transportation to make this space accessible. I do think it's really important that we hear from everybody that's affected especially those who are living whether it's intense or in our shelter system. If it's a true community listening session I want to make sure we're including all community members. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Fornir. Other comments, questions on that communication? Councillor Zoro. Thank you Madam Mayor. I think the two will first I want to say thank you to Councillor Fornir for your flexibility with HHS and thank you both for this letter. I'm going to sit down it's going to be easier. You know one thing that's really sticking out to me and anyone who's watching the meeting in person or remotely is if you look in the bottom of the first page of the letter that you've sent I appreciate you breaking down the numbers because we talk about them a lot. You've been here director down a couple of times and they change so rapidly. I think people expect that Portland we tend to meet the moment and that's because you work really hard and staff does a really good job but I appreciate you outlining what the severity of these numbers are and that we are respectfully asking for some assistance from our partners because it is a partnership but I think even just breaking down the percentages and then we look at all of our unhoused neighbors who are desperately seeking services that we have the infrastructure for 654 emergency beds and so I think the reason I'm bringing this up is because I do want the community to know that city staff and the council and the manager and the mayor are trying really hard and even though we are doing everything we can and using almost every tool in our toolbox at the moment there there is still more and I'm going to I'm going to stay optimistic that we are going to work in partnership with the state and with the community but I just wanted to reflect on that for a moment because this is this is a marathon this is going to this is going to take a while especially with the previous communication looking at that we are limited in space with the expo having to be decommissioned I do to the director director Tao you pointed out that there are 18 non-profit providers representing six different sectors which is wonderful I'm wondering or it might be too early at this point do you know if there are any policy recommendations the committee and the council will be expecting from from these folks with you know expertise in the field we think that that's a possibility as we move forward with with the with the task force and do inventories and continue to work with the part our community partners and HUD TA there might be I don't I don't have anything right now but that could be something that comes from this as well that's good to know and obviously it is very early I would just be really interested in knowing because I think a lot of this as this work continues on I'm sure in HHS you're going to see it counselor quite a bit folks are going to have recommendations and thoughts of what the council can and should maybe try doing so I have nothing in mind right now I'm looking forward to the community leadership that you've created this space for so thank you for doing that thank you madam mayor thank you counselor other questions or comments counselor Phillips I just have a really quick question so there are six or seven individual teams that's correct yes and then there's the one big I call it a stakeholder of me know that quite the entire crisis team a response team how often are they meeting that whole group that whole group we are going to do regular check-ins we haven't set that I mean are the the leadership command staff the leaders of the different groups will be meeting multiple times a week but just this morning I sent an email out to that large group giving them an update so constant communication about what is happening and what to expect will be at least weekly with that group I would say it might not be a full meeting but even an email communication thank you thank you very much any other questions counselor Ali thank you Madam Mayor it's not so much of a question I want to thank Ms Dow for the work that she put in and thank you and the manager for continuously going to Augusta I should have say what I'm going to say now during the announcement section of the meeting I think last week I attended I represented the council at the GP Cog meeting and the director Dow and her colleague were recognized for the work that they've done not just for Portland but for the whole region so thank you thank you counselor counselor Diane thank you Madam Mayor Dr. Dow thank you for everything you do you know I'm a big supporter of you and your staff so I think some of the comments made by my colleagues are insightful and helpful and I too appreciate the efforts of the council for the year and her team have done in providing space for some of these meetings so we can get to the agenda the real agenda of the day so I'm going to make a request of you is that I'll be looking in the weeks and hopefully fewer weeks than many for some sense of how this response team will triage their engagement of the various encampments in the city I appreciate um counselor Zaro's marathon metaphor but if it's in your front yard or next to your business they're not feeling like it should be a marathon so I think we always have to be conscious that for some in our community there's a certain immediacy to the presence of the unhoused and the threat that they feel from it being there I recognize that some of them are clients and need proper intervention to address whatever challenges they're experiencing but I think it's incumbent on me as a counselor to also speak to those who are experiencing their lived experience of the unhoused is unsettling disconcerting feels like a threat so we have a community education challenge but I think it's important that some juncture at least we could give them a glimpse of how you and your team collectively will address that triage process because they feel all we've done is reallocate the unhoused 10 cities into smaller fragments and I understand why we did that so I think we it's incumbent on us to communicate how we're going to move forward not only in engaging the larger 10 cities that are now coming into existence or have existed in the city but the smaller ones as well because they're just as disruptive to the home neighborhood that they find themselves within so I just want to make sure we strike that balance thank you thank you madam mayor thank you counselor I just wanted to jump in for for one second on that because I just want to set expectations very clearly on what this crisis response team is doing they will be responding once we've specifically identified a encampment that's reached a certain level of public health and safety issues they will respond individually to those so it's not to address every single encampment in the city will almost be like on a case by case basis once an encampment has reached a certain tipping point I would say for lack of a better term so I think that but with that said what that this is why I feel very strongly that we had to do the listening session and why I sought to have that happen because I want to hear from the public and I want to hear what their concerns are what you just articulated counselor Diane and then at the same time I'm I'm also convening a what I've called the strategic planning meeting after our leadership meeting which involves all the departments that are specifically involved and impacted and try to think of ways in which and be creative about how we can get our arms around this issue which is a much broader issue than this and I think to go to what councillor Zaro said it is a marathon and it's going to it is going to be unsatisfying I'm not going to lie for a little while here where we're not going to have answers for everybody right away we're really it's taken us a while to get here and we're really trying hard to figure this out we have lots of bills as the mayor mentioned in Augusta we have lots of different strategies that I think we're trying to implement one of them is the crisis response team additionally we're also thinking about ways in which to develop housing there's a significant amount of money this council has put into the housing trust fund and so that can be helpful and then also trying to think creatively like I said just out of the box I mean this is a one-hour meeting that we're doing every week and I told the team at the beginning that I want you to come in with any idea and we're just going to start spitballing throwing them up on the chalkboard and thinking about you know what can we do that let's try this let's try that because we are trying to focus on this this is something that we know impacts the public impacts the individuals the unhoused individuals themselves and impacts almost every department that the city has right now so it's a big issue and it's one that we're very committed to I think the as the mayor mentioned the representation that we had across the board from all departments in the city at the first meeting of your crisis response team it was it was astounding to me and so I think we're going to try but I do want to set expectations very clearly that it's going to take us a little while to get there I would just add one thing to just talking about communication we worked with Jessica Grandin our communications director to develop a web a page on the website that talks about our response to homelessness the encampment crisis response team has a page on that and we're going to be working to develop that as the encampment crisis response team develops too so that will be another way for us to communicate with the public on what it is we are doing in our response as well but the city manager was correct with the way councilor dying you've got the floor thank you I'm not being critical manager all right I'm just offering a critique that exists in the community and I just it's important to address that that's all so I mean if if you want to call it a tipping point I'm okay with I just think when we do hold this listening session people are going to come in and they're not all going to possess a marathon perspective they're going to have a perspective that's linked to a certain immediacy and I'm just asking that we be prepared to have some reasonable explanation as to what we do in the immediate sense as well as the long term this is almost an intractable problem so I agree with you there's no one way out of this right but I think there has to be some parallel initiatives to be considered during your spitball spitball sessions I like that that's all I mean I just can't maybe I'm a contrarian sometimes but I just can't get on and say okay it's a marathon we're all set go ahead do what you gotta do I I think people elect me to also speak to their concerns and they have a different perspective and I just want to be able to put it on the table so we can work with it but please take it as a critique of how we might move forward not a criticism because I've been an ardent supporter of DHHS leadership and more importantly their point of service staff on how they've been trying to address that thank you thank you counselor counselor Rodriguez thank you mayor um I guess first thing I'll say is um since the letter to the governor is not a council action item just want to go on the record um and saying that I am certainly in support of this letter and I appreciate the work that went into it um so I'm glad to see it going out um then Dr. Tao just wanted to say and in back of what the city manager just said we had the conversation about you know ultimately housing a lot of these individuals is an unattainable goal so mitigating the health and risk um you know concerns that are coming out of the encampments being the goal so I'm glad that we kind of reiterated that um we talked also about having some sort of um measurement or gauge of what is that um you know what when does that encampment become a health and safety concern that requires the task force to come in and then when does the task force then say okay we we've got to physically move because you know like I said we cannot house folks we're not going to get rid of the encampments people need to be really clear about that because there's just isn't enough places to house folks so again how do we objectively measure whether or not there is a health and safety concern so we actually talked about that at the last week after um I mean we talked about the metrics so what metrics have to be met uh in order for us to to determine because that's when we determine okay what what encampment will we be looking at um you know it is really in terms of scope and size and I know you're looking for very clear concrete right now and we are we are still developing that but it is something that is on um on something we are focusing on it's really about the size of the encampment the number of calls for service at the encampment um I definitely am taking in provider feedback as well because the people who are on the ground out there every single day working with uh the individuals who are on house they'll know where where we should focus our efforts and they they definitely said that the floor river parkway uh encampment was was where we should uh one of the ones where we should definitely start focusing our efforts on so that is another thing but uh we will have a much more concrete metric uh to go by but yeah that we are definitely working on that I appreciate and just I don't think that I I right now expected of you know that level of detail um I guess I'm trying to to help frame the conversation because as we said you know we need to be clear about what is the task force uh expected to accomplish um and just communicate it clearly so I appreciate that at this point we don't have that level of detail but I did want to frame the conversation into what we really are trying to do and I guess when we have that listening session I'm sure we will all process what we hear from the community based on the reality of what we can actually achieve through the task force so again continuing to talk to the community about the challenges that we're facing thank you as well thank you counselor Kristen something optimistic happened last week when I was at that meeting and there was discussion about um actually some folks who had been in the homeless services center who had been housed and therefore making space at the homeless services center for people who are intense and I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit yeah so um as you all know we started our prevention and diversion program which is located at 39 Forest Avenue and the way our our shelter works now um at the homeless services center is and ever since we've opened the prevention and diversion program you go to the prevention and diversion program and if there's a bed available then we will move you over to the homeless services center it's really a case by case basis right now when we're full if there might be a bed available there might not be and we were noticing that there were a lot of people who are unhoused who are not accessing beds because of that format so we started working with really closely with our service providers uh to identify those specifically who are unhoused in the community who we know are sleeping out who would be interested in in a bed if it became available and we did that about two weeks ago really targeted and in two weeks we were able to bring 17 people in from sleeping outside and encampments into the shelter so and just this today staff called me and said I can't believe it we have six female beds available and one male bed available and so they were working with service providers to get six women who are unhoused in to the hsc as well as one gentleman and so one might make the leap that they're with those beds opening at the homeless services center people are either finding family to be with a housing situation can you talk a little bit about that what happens to those people who vacate a bed at the hsc absolutely I mean as as shelter beds become available it's because doesn't someone no longer needs emergency shelter which means that they have you know moved on with a family member or have found permanent housing um or have found some transitional housing whatever the case may be but they're no longer able they're no longer need emergency shelter so as one be fed becomes available it's a success story of someone else being housed so that really struck me because we the fact is we don't have enough housing we know that we don't have enough emergency shelter beds we know that but there is great work happening and those data points are important and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you you know if you're if you're able to share at this point how will you be able to communicate to the council and to the community that kind of movement that's happening because this encampment crisis response team is all about moving folks from um being outdoors to to getting a shelter bed and so how will you be able to communicate that to us because I you're good at this work and it's happening as we speak and and I know we'd all love to learn more about that yeah I will I talked about it a little bit at our meeting last week that I really want to work with the service providers we'd love to have a dashboard on the on that website that we um have but I want to be very mindful to protect those that are unhoused so what information we share where we want to we want to share information with the community to let people know but we want to be careful about what exactly information we are sharing so we are going to work with our community providers we'll definitely be sharing the data um and and creating a dashboard of some sort I'm just not sure what that data and information I know your your plate is full but I wanted to I wanted to highlight the fact that you did share great information last week about about movement and I think that that's significant I guess I'll just wrap up by saying um well I think what we all know is that the work of this encampment crisis response team um is critical and it's not going to be as fast as we'd all like it to be um but it's it's it's happening and it's critical and it's a piece of the work and it can't be the only thing we continue to need help from other towns and cities from the region from the state and so um I I think it's just terribly important to underscore as we make our way through various responses that the city of Portland is leading or implementing that the need is growing continually and we and we need more help so thank you and I look to my colleagues on the council to see if there's any more discussion okay I don't see any so we will wrap up this communication and again thanks for being here and we just have a few more things on our agenda tonight we move into the resolution section will the clerk please read resolve nine solve nine twenty two twenty three reaffirming a sister city relationship with Capetian Haiti sponsored by PSLE counselor thank you and I'll hand it over to counselor Ali to share the content of this this resolution before us this evening thank you mayor I think uh in uh on september 18 2002 uh the city of Portland and uh the city council voted to pass a resolution resolve three two zero three supported the establishment of a sister city relationship with Capetian Haiti this resolution seeks to reaffirm the city of Portland's commitment to that resolution um so I'm going to read it and then I will share a a request from the Kumbi Santé group resolution reaffirming a sister city relationship with Capetian Haiti whereas Kumbi Santé is a Portland based nonprofit healthcare organization established in 2001 for the purpose of developing a sustainable healthcare system to meet the need of the Capetian community and whereas Capetian has been a sister city of the city of Portland since the passage of resolve three zero two three zero three on september 18 2002 when this Haitian city had a population of 150,000 and today has a population estimated to be 190,000 and whereas relationship established through mayor's volunteer work at Kumbi Santé have developed a broader exchange program with Capetians residents including cultural educational and governmental interactions and whereas Capetian and the rest of Haiti are now experiencing an unprecedented political crisis leading to many disruptions not least in its ability to care for the healthcare of its people and whereas deterioration security and port upgrades has disrupted food and fuel supplies around the country and inflation has reached an unprecedented high and makes life even harder for the majority of Haitians and whereas Kumbi Santé is celebrating its work an international connection with a virtual event call stand with Haiti move with Kumbi Santé which starts on June 1st and continues to July 31st 2023 in order to raise funds for its work delivering medical supplies and improving healthcare in nothing Haiti and now therefore the each result that the mayor and the city council reaffirm the city of Portland sister city relationship with Capetian as well as its partnership with Kumbi Santé and commit to celebrating and depending the connection between the two cities thank you mayor the executive director of Kumbi Santé happens to be someone that did work for city of Portland a few years ago and she did request that if we can some of us she'll set up a profile on the fundraising and I am going to do that I I'm going to speak to state senator Joe Ducin who happens to be the mayor when this was established to see if she will join me and I'm inviting my colleagues on the council to see if any of you is interested so that we can support the people of Haiti thank you thank you councillor Ali and this is an action before the council tonight this is what we'll be looking for approval on the resolution so with that I go out and see if there's any public comment on resolve nine george roe west bayside I got off a plane around 330 today and I was looking forward to participating by zoom but you guys made that impossible apparently okay so my questions about this resolve is anybody from actually the sister city cap patient itself been communicated with in any regard obviously the country of Haiti is still in a great deal of turmoil I literally walked by a newspaper in an airport in the last 24 hours that had a big front page story about literally neighborhoods having to band together to fight off criminal gangs and again it's not clear exactly who is the good guy whether it's the vigilantes or whether it's the criminal gangs so I think this is a great gesture if we've had a relationship that's been dormant or that's been set aside for a long time there's no better time than national Caribbean heritage month to restore that relationship and renew it but it should be a real renewal and not just a symbolic thing earlier tonight it's very clear that Portland is struggling with a lot of things that your attention in my opinion is not nearly focused on enough as evident by the fact that in some cases you don't even have questions to ask about what's going on in our own city but yet you are reaching out to other parts of the world again hopefully we can have more balls in the air than just one at a time but it really concerns me that this is you know symbol over substance that there isn't really necessarily a real constituency in Haiti or in this community that is really directing this and providing a real meaningful you know next step we had a relationship with a port city in Russia and of course for various reasons very little ever happened with that and now it's even more clouded because we don't really have diplomatic relations with Russia because of the war in Ukraine so again please what can the city council do you often are asked we can't do everything but yet you have the time to do things like this and if it's just a piece of paper I really wish you could focus your attention in some other place and again there are ways to celebrate and nurture our relationship with the Caribbean and with Haiti but maybe this isn't it thank you thank you for your comment any other public comment on resolve nine okay I don't see any on zoom or in person so I will close public comment and I'm going to come back to the council for a motion please I got councillor Ali in a second from councillor Fornir any discussion questions councillor Ali I was going to I was going to ask you to talk a little bit about the the connection that you have and the request that came to you to sponsor this for us tonight thank you mayor I think I receive an email from to zeta is her name she used to work for a city of Portland's public health department I didn't even know that she was for a conviccante in that email she copied two individuals who are the one is the retired executive director and the other one is the founder of conviccante who both live in there and I met with her and she told me that this is why they are doing and they want to support from from the city and so I refer her to the city manager's office and we work with her to do this reaffirmation I think they have an interest in reviving or the connection between um kept keeping in Portland uh in the next few weeks this few months yeah thank you very much councillor did you have a comment beyond that I'm sorry I thought I saw your hand go up and then I interrupted you uh no the question okay but I would have to thank them and um thank city city staff for uh doing this great thank you so much any other questions or comments from the council okay seeing none we can go ahead and vote. Councillor Fornir? Yes. Councillor Rodriguez? Yes. Councillor Dion? Yes. Councillor Alde? Yes. Councillor Zauro? Yes. Councillor Trevorrow? Yes. Councillor Pilatier? Yes. Councillor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snyder? Yes. Resolve nine passes unanimously we did postpone order 224 under unfinished business until our next meeting on June 26 so we have just a couple of um orders before us tonight um before we have some first reads will the clerk please read order 238. Order 238 223 accepting the Cumberland County and City of Portland analysis from pediments for two fair housing sponsored by the Housing and Economic Development uh Councillor Piazzauli Chair. Thank you and Councillor Ali would you like to speak to this? Yeah normally I think Mary shall have spoken to it and since Mary is not or she may be on Zoom or not I don't know Mani did you want to speak to me? I don't see Mary on Zoom oh there she is oh she's up she's up I'm sorry Mary I'm looking at my attendee list okay we're gonna we're gonna hope for the best here good evening Councillors can you hear me there we go this is our first since we had our break and we are unable to hear you can is that that go ahead try try again Mary and good evening Councillors try again I mean Councillors go ahead Mary good evening Councillors my name is Mary Davis I'm the housing interim housing and economic development director um as a recipient of funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development the City of Portland and the Cumberland County Home Consortium are required to comply with uh Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 known as the Fair Housing Act the Act requires recipients of federal funds to affirmatively further the policies and purposes of the Fair Housing Act um the obligation to affirm affirmatively further fair housing requires that recipients of HUD funds like Portland and Cumberland County um that we take meaningful meaningful actions to overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics which are race color national origin religion sex including gender identity and sexual orientation familial status and disability um the planning process that we use to identify these barriers is called the analysis of impediments to fair housing the process evaluates various things like zoning and land use private private sector loan practices and a review of community demographics to identify areas of opportunity to increase fair housing the process is generally undertaking undertaken as part of the required HUD consolidated planning process um the City of Portland and Cumberland County as members of the Cumberland County Home Consortium jointly contracted with a consulting firm named Root Policy to undertake this analysis Root Policy analyzed local zoning and land uses conducted a survey and held several focused groups to identify the barriers within Cumberland County and the City of Portland um Heidi Agler from Root Policy is here with us um and would be will be available to answer questions as we go forward um the consultants completed extensive county wide outreach to municipal staff residents with lived experience and organizations representing underserved communities groups and organizations that responded and spoke with a consultant included town leaders planning and economic development staff from communities throughout Cumberland County public sector providers such as pine tree legal assistance community housing of Maine Portland housing authority westbrook housing authority Cumberland County public health and Portland social service division alpha one disability rights of Maine new england ADA center opportunity alliance the city's office of economic opportunity assisted the consultant with outreach to organizations supporting BIPOC and LGBTQIA plus organizations and people living with disabilities this outreach effort resulted in focus group with with a in a focus group with seven participants for women single parents and seniors focus groups for the BIPOC and LGBTQIA plus communities were scheduled with two organizations signed up to attend um the BIPOC focus group and one person signed up for the LGBTQIA plus focus group however no one attended either either of these group meetings a member of the consultants team was able to speak with several monolingual Spanish speakers the city's zen city formerly civil space platform was used to gather survey data 40 percent of respondents were from renter households and eight percent were respondents who were precariously housed the report identifies actions the city and region can take to alleviate the identified barriers the fair housing action plan matrix which is in the packet backup outlines the action items for Portland and Carmelin County specifically as well as action items for two for the two organizations jointly at a high level these include increasingly supply of affordable housing addressing gaps in home ownership attenement and addressing barriers to equalizing access to opportunity I won't read through each of the recommendations but I'm happy to answer questions any questions you may have and as I mentioned Heidi is here with us to answer any questions that you may have as well thank you very much for that thorough introduction and I will at this time ask for any public comment on order 238 george roe west bayside I think that I had put in a public comment while I was traveling actually this weekend just pointing out just literally just randomly flipping through the pages of this very large set of documents in front of you on this agenda item that it's it's just a lot of mistakes and a lot of bad history and a lot of distorted history and it's a shame because I'm pretty sure these consultants you know were earnest and were trying to do a good job and a lot of money was spent but this flew under the radar I don't remember I'm not a big social media person I'll remember any counselor on this council back when this started or since highlighting how important this exercise is and how involved they wanted this community to be and digging deep into this exercise and you know there's little things little facts like did the Portland renewal authority have anything to do with union station getting demolished in 1961 the answer is no but yet somehow this report says that they were but you know when they get little facts like that wrong it really questions who was advising them where were they getting their information we already heard in Ms. Davis's introduction that there were attempts to have community outreach that basically literally produced almost nothing and there's references again and again to stakeholders and individuals being quoted literally quoted but none of them are identified we have no idea exactly what the universe of people that informed this report and it doesn't name names it doesn't name all of you in the city that has literally produced blocks after blocks after blocks of housing opportunities in most of the city and a great example is right now there is a huge site that main med just sold in the west end on west and carlton it is almost 40 000 square feet and right now there's nine luxury homes that are slated to be redeveloped on that entire lot including the redevelopment and renewal of a historic carriage house you guys also and have before the planning board a proposal for almost the exact same size parcel of land for 200 units of affordable housing and that is going into bayside so there's your racism there's your segregation 201 units down the hill near the highway far away the nice neighborhood the west enders district two the promised land the oasis they get nine units of luxury housing and they don't have to take any burdens of traffic or congestion or new neighbors they get the pick of the lot and a two million dollar new family who can afford that so this is a meaningless exercise you've made it that way thank you torch and it's it's it's wrong thank you thank you for your comment any additional public comment on order 238 this evening okay seeing none i'm going to ask for a council a motion from the council the moved and a second second counselors are with the second counselor ali with the motion counselors are with the second the action before us tonight is to accept this analysis of the cumberland county and city of portland impediments to fair housing i look to my colleagues for discussion any questions comments counselor for near thank you i guess my first question is if we're accepting this now where does it go so one of the recommendations right off the bat is that there is a denial of rental housing housing choice voucher holders that seems like a very clear like identified issue so now where does that go who takes that up who starts to work on that who starts to create approvals instead of denials so i guess i'm i'm a little unclear i'm happy to accept the report and dive into it but what i think to the public common point is we get a lot of these very robust studies which are wonderful full of lots of information but i think we're all frustrated by the lack of housing so if we get a very large report like this i'm just curious kind of if we could outline what are the next steps or where where does this go thank you counselor do you want to address that or should i look to mary mary i'm going to i'm going to give that to you i know you discussed this in committee so if you wouldn't mind answering counselor four years question that would be great certainly so the fair housing action plan matrix that i mentioned which is in the pot in the backup packet lays out action items for the city of portland and cumberland county individually and as the two organizations together and so we'll be working on and how it will require us to address these actions and to report the the work that we do to take up these items and find solutions and implement those solutions on those items typically we report in our annual action plan to hide and our consolidated annual performance evaluation reports the accomplishments that we achieve on these action plan items thank you any follow-up on that okay any other questions or comments from the council counselor ali thank you mary mary i have a question when do you have to do this how often do you do this exercise and the exercise is typically part of the consolidated planning process which happens essentially every five years if you'll recall we completed that process last year and due to a variety of of reasons this plan is following a year behind so essentially it's an every five-year process thank you thank you counselor other questions comments from the council councillor zero thank you madam air i'll be brief i just i'm curious mary if i understood correctly when you answered councillor fornie was question about additional reporting and making sure we are you know diligent in in following the newly adopted you know standards does hud then chorus does that correspond with you know additional funding from hud i'm just trying to connect the dots on on on the now what right like what what what does this other than giving you more reporting to do do you do you get you know what's the incentive what's the carrot that you're getting here um the this is a requirement of receiving the entitlement grants at the city already it receives the community development block grant and the home program grant um so there really isn't any additional funding there's no new carrot or extra carrot that we get um it's a way that we identify um what the goals and priorities are for the program that we're already administering and the funds and grants that we're already administering oh it's not working at all i think we're having microphone issues tonight he's back oh okay thanks peter i think we're good okay thank you councillor zero any other questions or comments okay seeing none we'll go ahead and vote to accept um this uh analysis council morning yes yes council dion yes peter did you mute everybody again councilor zahro yes council travaro yes council pellets here yes council phillips yes mayor snitter yes order 238 passes unanimously we have one more action item before we get to a several first reads so i'm hoping our mics can hang in here through this one um last action item for the council will the clerk please read order 239 order 239 22 23 approving changes the tax increment financing policies about housing and economic development committee councillor payasali chair and again councillor i'll go to you first uh thank you madamio i will refer you to mary again uh i'm sure that she's here this time around she thank you sorry about that thank you sorry about that sorry about that okay um the city of portland tax increment financing policy requires firms employed in the construction fees of a tiff assisted project um so this would be um organization receiving uh tax increment financing through a credit enhancement agreement um um contractors uh involved in the construction fees of that project have to compensate using the greater of state prevailing wage rates in portland or portland minimum wage during the construction um many of the affordable housing projects receiving a tiff credit enhancement agreement also have other funding sources which require the use of federal davis bokeh wage rate requirements the double requirement can be costly for affordable housing developers both in reporting time and in practice of the 17 active affordable housing tiff districts 13 projects have been are or will be subject to wage conditions which requires the greater of state prevailing wages or portland minimum wage to be used during construction um as i mentioned several of these projects also have other funding sources as such as project based vouchers which require the federal davis bacon wages to be used the davis bacon wage rates and state prevailing wage rates are different in terms of labor classifications and wages paid to each classification these differences can make it challenging for contractors to identify the appropriate classification and wage determination for each worker there are cases in which the davis bacon wage rates are higher than state prevailing wages and vice versa for projects required to use both determinations developers are paying significantly more than a project required to use either davis bacon or state prevailing wage to decrease the burden on affordable housing projects staff is proposing the following changes to section b3 uh II of the tiff policy the current language reads any firms employed in the construction phase of the tiff assisted project must compensate all employees the current wage rates and fringe benefits as required under applicable state prevailing wage law um the proposed language would be um any firms employed in the construction phase of a tiff assisted project must compensate all employees the current wages and fringe benefits as required under applicable state prevailing wage law if a project is required to use davis bacon wages as a result of another funding source davis bacon wage rates will suffice to meet this requirement provided the minimum wage for each job is greater than the portland city ordinance um the tiff policy with the proposed changes is included in the backup these revisions will lower the costs and administrative burdens of developing affordable housing in portland while still ensuring workers um on these projects receive fair wages we have included in the backup information from three developers who provided data of how the requirement to use both davis bacon and prevailing wage has affected their projects in addition to the analysis provided by these developers we have anecdotally heard from contractors and developers that can greatly complicate projects to use two different wage requirements on one job for one project the overall cost to the project for state prevailing wage requirements in addition to davis bacon is approximately 75 to 100 000 the labor classifications do not line up um and that can cause difficulty in identifying the appropriate worker classification um the developer also analyzed actual wages being paid and noted that in 70 of cases the actual wages paid to workers exceeded the davis bacon and state prevailing wage rates from a city administrative perspective um housing and community development staff are currently managing 77 affordable housing development project projects this number includes projects that have received some type of city financial assistance including affordable housing tiff financing and are in various forms of completion from those that are currently occupied and being monitored for long-term affordable housing compliance to those in the pre-construction phase and this does not include any projects that may be awarded funding in the 2023 allocation process at this time 22 projects are in the pre-construction or post-construction rent out phase we have two hcd staff reviewing certified payrolls from may 8 through may 30 they received more than 350 certified payrolls that required review and approval these payrolls are from affordable housing development projects only and do not include any payrolls received for cdbg construction related projects on average um these staff are spending each about 10 hours per week on wage rate requirements including developer and contractor training document production interviews and payroll reviews um and uh so this recommendation is brought before you um with the request that the uh council adopt the amendment thank you very much for that mary i appreciate it is there any public comment on order 239 comment triggered something to me um about the staff time being uh being utilized and that is does this change eliminate the need for that staff time because it wasn't really clear there but you know is that what we're basically a save on on city staff time and on developer staff time in having to prepare all these reports is that what this change is going to accomplish thanks thank you for your question your public comment any other public comment they're nade house with a vest of housing um i want to speak to this item tonight it's kind of a rare opportunity when we get to see um something made simplified in the affordable housing world uh we deal with a lot of resources sometimes as many eight in the capital stack they all have contradictory sometimes um duplicative requirements and this is a great example of that where you have wage rates two different wage rates that have to be complied with um because of one affordable housing tiff and they're contradictory in some cases and as mary was saying 70 percent of the wages are actually above the day could davis bacon threshold so i think this change is a great way to simplify the process i would have loved if the original legislation had just been written to davis bacon i can't believe i'm saying that we used to avoid davis bacon like like crazy we would try to avoid having to do davis bacon just because it's so much of a reporting requirement um but this situation is actually worse than that so we would rather have davis bacon to comply with than trying to figure out which wage rate we need to comply with with this dual system thank you thank you for your comment additional public comment either on zoom or in person seeing none i'll close public comment on order 239 and come back to the council please for a motion second councillor ali with a second from council rodriguez and i look to the council for discussion uh council dion i just want to say when mary briefed us out on it i i concur with the gentleman for the best uh in other comments i mean i really had to think about this and trying to balance both wage models all the collateral reporting that has to occur you know there's an assumption in some quarters that folks are not getting paid appropriately and then you wonder why it requires a fleet of lawyers to come in and try to sort out what might be the fact so i supported because it's one model i'm not sure it's going to save any money i don't like making those kinds of promises but i think it'll make it more efficient for both partners both the developer and the city in terms of managing their relative relationship and being clear about expectations around labor questions that often comes up when we want to spend money or participatory in the financing is what is labor going to get paid is a fair we can have an intelligent conversation now under this proposed model so i think it makes administrative sense for all the parties involved and if we should save some money that's a wonderful benefit but i think we're going to save a lot of headaches confusion and frustration thank you madam mayor thank you council dion other i want to do my best to get to the question that was asked during public comment i think the spirit of the question and correct please anybody jump in and correct me if i'm wrong here is is the efficiency making for city staff or for developer staff my sense that it's for both but mary if you have any comment there i'd be happy to hear it um there is a whole issue around efficiency so in some cases developers are hiring outside firms to help them manage this process if we are using one wage rate you don't have to do the cross-reference and this is for every not only general contractors but every subcontractor involved in a job so essentially that means you do the cross-reference every time a new subcontractor steps on site and so um developers are spending time with their contractors they're hiring outside firms to help them meet this compliance then from a staff perspective we're also trying to double check and make sure that the proper wage has been paid um and once you have done that initial review for a subcontractor it's easier to review their remaining payrolls as they come in on a weekly basis but you have to do that with each subcontractor so i do believe it's going to save time for both city staff and for the developer and just as an aside we're looking at ways to make the process that we use in our office more efficient um so that we can free up staff time to do some of the other work that needs to be done thank you mary okay uh counselor zero thank you madam mayor um i'm i'm i think i'm almost there this one's pretty confusing mary are the costs that you are referencing are the added costs that you are referencing simply because of the administrative overhead trying to reconcile those two uh wage rates um no it's not only the administrative overhead there's the difference in the wage rates between the two um uh two forms whether it's the Davis bacon or the state prevailing wage in some cases as i mentioned one is higher than the other and so it using one or the other increases the cost to a project um not every project is required to pay Davis bacon wage rates um and so in those cases they would use the state prevailing wage but in the case of a project where they have other financing sources that are requiring requiring them to meet Davis bacon they would be able to use just that one source okay thank you i think um i'm just trying to understand if this adoption is is this overall have you been able to crunch numbers on overall how is this going to impact work for wages because one minute i was reading this and i was thinking oh this looks like this actually going to increase and then i read it again it's like wait it looks like it could potentially decrease you look at the part where it's you know for carpenters it was 1313 an hour higher than state prevailing wages while electricians wages were 778 higher in state prevailing wage than in Davis bacon so do you have a general like catchall or is it really industry trade specific um it's a good question i don't have an um overall catchall to say that it's going to um as far as dollar wise impact projects um at a specific amount there are cases where um one wage rate is higher than the other and um you know cases where the state prevailing wage is higher than Davis bacon or Davis bacon is higher than state prevailing wage um so there are going to be cases where they're all going to be paid um either through the federal prevailing wage or the state prevailing wage so there are going to be prevailing wage rates used um there will be cases um where the use of the state prevailing wage might have provided um the uh workers with a higher wage there'll be cases where um using the Davis bacon wage would would pay the worker a higher wage um so i can't give you a definitive definitive dollar amount i i i appreciate you entertaining it i think my my last question would be and this is just now i'm throwing the spitball on ideas city manager you gave me idea you um is there ever a scenario in which because we're talking about affordable housing here and that we want we want to increase affordable housing um is there ever an opportunity to mitigate those added costs through the jill doosan housing trust fund that we have over nine million dollars and i think my my hesitation my only hesitation is i just don't want to be responsible for lowering wages for any workers and i and i don't know if that's what we're doing but it feels like there's a possibility and maybe i've just overthought this too much but um but uh yeah that's that's where i'm at i think there might have been a question in there for mary um i think in essence we are um seeing the impacts of those um additional costs um we see higher requests for um subsidy through either our home program or housing trust fund um program um we see higher requests for the percentage of the credit enhancement agreement that's return to the developer so i think we are compensating um for those um higher amounts um being 100 honest i can't tell you that uh workers wages won't be impacted um by this change um i think it's about the complexity of trying to put together affordable housing uh deals and trying to find ways in which we can make it um uh easier for these deals to get in the ground and completed um and um this was uh just one of many um discussion points that we had in our office that we wanted to bring forward um they're definitely um you know like i said i can't say that there won't be cases where workers may be paid uh less than they would have with state prevailing wage um there are probably cases where that will happen thank you mary uh thank you councillor zaro councillor dion over to you just want to make a comment um we're speculating in economics right but let's put it on the table no matter which wage index you take it's the best guess right we hope it's fair there's argument for both sides i support this proposition this evening because it consolidates the decision making onto one index here's a second assumption much like tonight we passed the idea of closing lower exchange street we're gonna have miraculous returns hopefully right better commerce better relationships less cars there are alternative answers to all those suppositions this allows the developer to say okay i've got one yardstick but the yardstick doesn't control the labor market go hire some people that hang sheet rock right now or master electricians or craft plumbers the market dictates what they really cost what this does for the regulator which in this case is the city and for the developer is they will share a common yardstick in order to assess the wages that they're offering under a particular project i don't think the market is of a nature today that'll support any employer with the idea is i'm going to shave my labor costs right down to that floor okay it's how far away from the floor am i actually going to have to go so i think if we're willing to experiment with economics we could do it with this and see what the result is but i i do believe it's more effective it's more efficient pick one or the other and in this case we've made a decision with the staff recommendation as to which yardstick to apply but i'll be shocked if we read anything in the housing committee that suggests that wages are going to be cruising at the floor you know they're they're willing to pay whatever right now to get anyone to do the trades thank you thank you counselor i have a question mary um it has to do with these um we want people to make good money and we want affordable housing and so my i understand the the simplification and the using one benchmark um appeal i also want to know a little bit more about uh how the complexity may serve as an impediment to project completion or even project contemplation so we don't want to slow down the development of affordable housing and i'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit so that we can understand how we how we look at these competing needs that we have the need to pay people well and the need to build affordable housing um so um as nate house from a vesta housing mentioned affordable housing is a complex endeavor anyway um he mentioned that often there's uh could be eight or more um resources in the capital stack financing the project each of which has different requirements that come with it um the issue here with the different wage rates is um that in some cases it does cost more um to use the uh state prevailing wage rate um it's uh administratively takes more time to ensure that the proper wage rate in each job classification is being paid um and so the more levels of complexity that we add to the resources that we have for affordable housing um makes um it more difficult to um implement those resources so um for instance um we it was mentioned tonight that we have nine million dollars in our housing trust fund our application is out um and has been out since april and we only have two applications in there's there are a couple more that are being processed in our new um online web portal um but we've only received two full applications since the application was released um the complexity of just the regulations on the federal side with home with the home funding um our local requirements for how we use our housing trust fund resources and um the tax increment financing um it's just all complexity that a developer has to take on when they're undertaking um the affordable housing development um i support um the regulations that we have um and ensuring that the city is making the best use of its resources and that we're using the resources to fill the needs and the and the gaps and the priorities that we've identified here in our community um but if there are ways that we can make it easier for those resources to be allocated um in you know i support those um so um i think this is just one example of we're we're trying to make sure um that uh the people are are getting fair wages on um the projects that we're investing in um but maybe making it maybe making that too complicated um again not every the federal davis bacon wage rates are um are established on a nationwide basis um and those are regulated by the federal government um it's a well known um form of wage rate compliance um uh it's a resource that has been around for a long time and people are familiar with how that works um the state prevailing wages um are also a well known product and when state funding is invested in projects they have to comply with that the two systems determine what those wage rates wage rates are um very differently and so the the data behind how those rates are are calculated are are very different um so i think from my perspective it's um we have a lot of resources we have a lot of needs um let's make the use of those resources um as easy as possible while um meeting the needs and the goals of the community uh thanks mary so just to summarize i think what i'm hearing is that you and your team brought this forward for the committee's consideration in response to wanting and needing to simplify the process to build affordable housing in the city of portland we've got two fair wage standards that create complexity um potentially that complexity slows down the process to build affordable housing and i don't know if i've gotten that exactly right but that's sort of i the fact that we have so many fewer applications than normal is concerning i think that um you know costs are high we know that i think there's complexity in the city of portland um but i so i appreciate you and your team bringing forward creative solutions to try to encourage building affordable housing in the city of portland and it's it's tricky i'm stuck on the you know wanting to make sure that people get um get paid well but as i as i said i think what we're doing here is we're talking about two fair wage standards and you're saying let's pick let's pick one of them to use as the benchmark so um i appreciate where you're coming from and i understand it thank you other councillor phillips did you have your hand up and then councillor pelleteer thanks mayor um when this this when this is brought to the housing economic development committee um we asked several questions um on one of them specifically about the wage um and so i appreciate councillor zaro um asking so many questions because this is really intuitively very confusing um on this and so um although and i would also agree with you may that on the one hand we want affordable housing and on the other hand i don't want anybody to lose any money and so i do think we have to look at the economics um because i do not want anybody in this day and age nobody should lose money and i understand there's two different wage sets and we're choosing one um and we're going to hope that nobody loses any money um and so i don't want to you know i i'm not sure i this is very complicated um and um i still need to be convinced that this is that i should go for it thank you councillor pelleteer thank you um yeah i'm i don't know i'm a little concerned i guess i i echo what was said about never wanting to slow down affordable housing of course but also worried about the wage decrease for workers if we move forward with this and i guess i'm just thinking about we're trying to do a good move but it could have a negative impact that could be really significant for for workers i don't know i'm feeling uh uh yeah i i'm i guess this is a little bit more challenging than i actually thought it would be so i'm not sure i'm thinking out loud i don't really know how much more i have to add to add right now because i'm like processing this in real time but i think i'm just a little bit concerned about moving forward in a direction where we feel like it may result in more affordable housing but in doing so it may have the a negative impact that none of us want so um yeah that's where i am right now thank you councillor other comments before we move forward councillor ellie uh thank you mary um mary i have a few questions for you i'm here mary can you hear me yes i can okay mary uh let's presume that um we're not making these changes right and uh you mentioned that there are two different type of uh wages that uh people have to pay correct correct okay so uh one is higher than the other in some cases yes it's gonna be hard uh because i'm trying to mic her through my microphone so if you could ask her your question and then i'll i'll put the mic down so she can respond um rather than doing it in real time that would be it would be a little easier for me so maybe in lieu of asking the questions i am going to ask corporation council questions um if we chose not to move this forward um because of the technicalities that we are having and think it's uh and say that um we should move this like a postpone it to well like a better word i'm going to say that it's something that is not good kick down the can to this particular can to like two meetings um uh so that the conversation can be held in person or so that the questions that my colleagues have because at a committee level we did have this discussion and i think uh uh those of us who voted to move it forward did think that by moving it forward uh it will be it's not a perfect situation but it will do more good than uh not doing good i think councillor phillips did raise the issue of uh if people were going to lose money and mary said uh if i remember i don't think she said people will lose money um i don't even know why i'm going with this uh will end to you councillor phillips and councillor uh palatier will some sort of like uh which i don't think we have the space to do that about some sort of like uh workshop can help you councillor can i just um i just want to weigh in on one little piece i think that's important this is just setting the minimum and i think what councillor diane was saying was that we're always above the maximum this is going to just reduce i think what mary was saying it's going to reduce the amount of work for the developer and for staff to try to determine between which wage rate um but it's just set in the base not not as high i mean i think i think it would be really difficult i don't want to speak for mary for staff to try to determine specifically um if workers would lose anything and there there may be a situation i think she was just trying to put out a caveat that there may be a situation that that happens but it's going to be pretty few and far between given the prevailing wages that are being paid right now for this type of work okay well thank you thank you i'll set councillor okay um thank you other hands up from council members councillor foranier thank you it's just real quick on the reporting requirement i think it had said that in the original um policy that the report would be provided with an update of all of this um annually and so i'm wondering normally all of it is done i think based on the previous one is in february and so i don't know would this be a year from today we'll get an update on this or would it be in the annual report in february mary here i don't um so normally what we've been doing is we've been noting in the tiff annual report that whether or not the projects were in compliance with the wage rate requirements the report doesn't include a detailed analysis um by job classification or um the comparison between the two what we're trying to do here is that the state prevailing wage rate will still be the benchmark except for those cases where a project also has to comply with davis bacon wages and one of the things that we found um is that in some cases um workers are being paid above both of those wage rates already um because of the um economic environment the construction industry now where it is um all of those reasons workers are generally being paid higher than those two rates um but we do the reporting in the annual tiff policy but we don't do it in the detail for each job classification and we're not doing a comparison with the davis bacon wage rates so i'm wondering just for this first one so that we understand the impact is there a way to be able to break that down or this first annual report of making this change just so we can understand if there is any sort of adverse impact i know that's a lot of work mary i'm sorry but i think just listening to everyone else's concerns just to make sure that there isn't an adverse impact it sounds like really the market's going to be about this and so i think it is a small concern but i just want to make sure to voice that mary you want to do you want to respond to that yeah um i would be really um i would be reluctant to say that that would be a task that we could take on um so wage rates change um the state prevailing wage rate changes um i think only on an annual basis but davis bacon wage rates can change um multiple times throughout the year so it'd be we could take a snapshot in time and show you a comparison from that snapshot in time but an overall actual um uh comparison for a real project in real time um that would be um a lot of work and i'm not sure that we could provide you with the data that you're looking for thank you mary okay other questions comments from the council before we move to a vote on order 239 okay i think we're ready ashley councillor fornier yes councillor brad gregas yes councillor dion yes councillor ali councillor zaro yes councillor trabaro yes councillor pelletier oh my god yes councillor phillips yes mayor snatter yes order 239 passes unanimously thank you everybody and before we adjourn i'd like to ask the clerk to please read orders 240 through 246 into the record order 240 22 23 approving residential parking for islanders sponsored by daniel west city manager order 241 22 23 accepting and appropriating united states environmental protection agency brownfield assessment grant of up to 500 000 sponsored by daniel west city manager order 242 22 23 adopting development program for portland downtown for fiscal year 2023 2024 sponsored by the finance committee order 2024 20 order 243 22 23 establishing maintenance and implementation assessments for portland downtown fiscal year 2023 2024 sponsored by the finance committee order 244 22 23 approving agreement between city of portland and portland downtown for fiscal year 2023 2024 sponsored by the finance committee order 245 22 23 approving the amended wage scale to the collaborative bargaining agreement with the police the now the relevant association sponsored by daniel west city manager and order 246 22 23 approving the amended wage scale to the collective bargaining agreement with the portland police superior officers association sponsored by daniel west city manager thank you very much is there a motion to adjourn so councillor redriguez with a second from councillor ali and we will vote to do that councillor fornir yes councillor redriguez yes councillor dion yes councillor ali yay councillor sorrow yes councillor travaro yes councillor palatier yes councillor phillips yes mayor sider yes we are adjourned thank you very much everybody