 howdy everybody i'm sam fifell i'm a journalist with the portland phoenix and uh... main beacon and a variety of other sources here in the state of main and welcome to pathways to progress this is a monthly show where we talk about progressive issues that affect the city of portland and the state of main and who knows maybe the country a large will find out uh... normally it's hosted by lisa savage she uh... is galvanting about the country and visiting with her grandchildren so uh... i am very happy to take over for her uh... joining us today as uh... every month is victoria peltier are you doing victoria i'm good thank you how are you i'm doing very well you are the district to uh... city councilor here in the city of portland we also have roberto rodriguez are you doing roberto doing good and roberto is our at-large counselor here in the city of portland and uh... you know i think what's on everybody's mind nowadays is that you guys are going to be back in person for the first time in what two years more than that's been a long time uh... what what are you expecting to happen now how do you think it's going to be different victoria oh my gosh yeah it's going to be strange because i don't think that they've been in person even the the counselors from twenty twenty that got elected i don't think i've been in person so it's going to be interesting i think for us all to be back um... and i know that i did see a picture of chambers and they have plexiglass in between all of us which will which is you know i think very specific specific of the times but yeah i mean uh you know part of me is excited to go back i think that the conversations will flow differently now that we're like back in person we can see each other's faces and look directly into each other's eyes um the public comment will be different as we you know get underway with people being able to come back into city hall and so i i'm hoping that it adds another energy and a layer of kind of more excitement for people to actually come in and see us and make their their public comment and get to watch us live uh you know person to person but i'm also it's like a little nerve-wracking that we won't be able to hide anymore we'll be like you know front and center just like turn off the camera can't turn off the camera yeah i know that's not possible now so it'll be it'll be interesting but i'm excited yeah and i think reberto the big question is what are you gonna wear great question right and so this is really interesting because you know and it has been two years it was march middle of march in 2020 when everything went remote the third march 13th is when the school's closed um and so in in zoom land everything changed like the etiquette is different um so a good example is in city council when the councillors speak you're supposed to stand up and speak oh but clearly in zoom that doesn't happen so now that we're going back you know is like it first of all makes you think like what's the point of standing is a tradition and i guess there's some maybe there's there's some sort of precedence for it but what's the meaning does it really impact the the quality of the policy that or your your your legislating ability probably not so um do we go back do we rethink what you know the in-person legislative looks like um obviously we're talking about the members of the public being able to engage via zoom so that's already going to be a difference um so i just think it's an opportunity to rethink how we how we legislate um i see a lot of value like like tory set right like being able to see someone in person um even as as we've returned in other aspects of life to in person like the shared humanity i think that that we have um shines through and that alone i think brings tons of value to to any kind of collaborative work and certainly public service so um hopefully hopefully it does you know sum up to us being better better you know elected officials yeah it's kind of hard to have in a spree decor when you're just seeing people through these video screens uh we've definitely experienced that uh some people might know i'm the chair of the school board up in grain and Gloucester and when we got back in person uh it definitely felt like we were all in this together in a way that we weren't you know and i i think we really appreciated seeing each other have you been able victoria do you feel like to build a relationship with other city counselors like do you do meet offline or you know how do you get to know them yeah i think that's the part that is tough um because we were in a pandemic but also all of us have jobs and personal lives and so like this is not the only thing that we do so i think it's really hard you know pandemic aside to like really meet and connect and like there's just so there's so much happening and i did say the other day after one of our meetings it was like a particularly difficult meeting i think we had in january or february and i was like we should do like a ropes course or something because we we don't know each other well and i think because of that it's hard to sometimes like collectively like come together when we're on a council meeting because like two we can only have two people be together at one time that are counselors and if we have three or more then it has to be a public meeting there has to be public notice about it and so i think if we could have something that's like a ropes course or some kind of like team building thing i think that would help for us to be more cohesive in a lot of the conversations that we have just to get to know each other better because it's like we have different people from different walks of life all suddenly on a council together making decisions and that really impacts like i think our personal relationships and we if you don't know someone and you can't really build that level of trust i think it's really hard so i think that trust is super important yeah we need outward about you know you want you want to have these difficult conversations right like you know you you want to believe that we're all coming from a different place and we're going to meet in the middle but if you don't trust someone to be sort of arguing in good faith or you know that can really affect your ability to extend yourself right absolutely and i think that again i think being remote certainly interferes with that um the nature of the work you know it's not conducive to that i think that you get pulled in so many different directions just by the the issues that we're dealing with the constituencies that we're representing um so you have to go out of your way to create those relationships and like Tori said we have jobs we live full lives well let's talk about that a little bit well let's talk about that right yeah i was gonna bring up the you know the commission's work right and and one of the sort of things that are swirling out there is you know paying counselors more or making them more of a sort of semi-professional council that kind of thing uh what's your opinion on that like you know what is it like to volunteer the amount of time that it requires yeah um so it's i think that there's a great level of privilege to just to be able to do this right like i think about the level of financial security that i have in my life that i can take a chance to do this job that takes up like ridiculous amount of hours that are really not paid for um yes we get a stipend um we get access to pretty good health health benefits oh i didn't know that's pretty yeah and then and dopest thing is that we get a parking pass so yeah so if i'm in if i'm doing city business like if i go out on me with a constituent having coffee having meeting someone for lunch or even now that we're gonna have to go to city hall for meetings you know you got a park on city on you know on on street parking and so the pass i think that's dope um and then um but for the most part you know you're you're spending ridiculous amounts of time on email we've talked a lot about emails in here um and you know that's not compensated time and but it's a responsibility that we take so again tons of privilege and me being able to do that with my time um i think that compensating us with the higher wage i think that that's one way to break the barrier to having more people have access to it i think that there's a lot of other things that interfere with why someone would want to run for office um the arena itself is not like inviting particularly for people of color this is not like you come in here and as much as you want to be an advocate like you gotta realize that this is you know white supremacy does not take a break when you get elected right the opposite it intensifies so when you're advocating for marginalized communities when you're advocating for equity you know this is probably not the most effective place to do it and it's it's you know it's it's a challenge for sure yeah but wages will probably have an impact and they'll probably open the door for many people to run for office yeah well that's been an issue i know uh with the charter commissioners right we've seen some of the you know commissioners of color talk about it seems to be there's a little bit of a different standard between the feedback that they get and the feedback that some of the white members get uh what's your benix your experience in terms of the feedback that you get do you feel as though you get a different kind of feedback than some of your fellow counselors uh yeah i i you know i get some different feedback and i think i talked about this at the last uh taping that i'll get we will get emails as a full council and i will get the same email from that same person very different tone from from that individual towards me uh specifically but i think you know when we're talking about when you're not to cut you off but when you're walking around the streets yeah do you feel like you're recognized as a counselor uh more and more and now and i think it's because i i came out you know with like a bank so i think more people are recognizing me it's not like i feel comfortable being recognized down the street as a counselor um you know yeah i depends on where like i've been you know recognized well like i'm on my morning jog and that's not a place that i really want to talk about politics um you know where i'm out to dinner and that's not really a place that i want to have a conversation about something that a vote that i made but i think that that's that is part of it and in a way i think that that is what makes leading in portland like really great for people is that you can you will see your counselors out and i think i said this at our last meeting like you'll see me out on a jog you can DM your counselors and you know that we exist and we'll we'll be writing you back you'll see us out to dinner and on a walk and whatever we don't live in this in this place where like we're shielded by security guards and we have bouncers and like you can't access us like you'll see us everywhere and i think that's what's really cool about leading in portland because yeah you can direct message your counselors on instagram and you know that we're going to see it and write back to you and i love utilizing that in order to communicate with people and i think that that makes portland really unique and the fact that we are very intense with politics here but we're also a large enough town we haven't morphed into this city where we can be anonymous and so like we can respond to people and like you'll see me out at your favorite coffee shop or like your favorite restaurant i'll be sitting down and doing the same thing that you're doing and i think like that adds until like we're just like you we're like regular people that happen to be counselors i always say that so you'll see me out you know eating my pasta and i'm doing the same thing that you're doing and trying to just exist and make portland a better place and i think that helps with humanizing us because i think people sometimes think like oh they're their counselors and they don't care about us they're like in another you know league they don't care about what what we deal with when the contrary is the reason i became a counselor is because i care so much that i want to make sure that i'm part of that conversation and i am a regular person that exists in portland that now has the counselor title but is really working hard to to make positive change and you'll see that and you'll see me out and about so yeah it's also something that you know some of the kind of anti-government libertarian people will push is that oh you know the political class doesn't care about us and i think it's important to you know be a person who is visible and make sure you know that people don't think that you're you know in some way you know above or detached it can kind of bite you sometime i remember when i was a school teacher i would go get a six-pack at the grocery store and the kid checking me out be like oh mr fife will have a party tonight you know it's like well thank you i'm just trying to six-pack you know um does that you know do you agree with victoria and you know talk a little bit also about um you know the small town means that you're kind of involved in everything like you're out there kind of commenting on the commission because you care about portland but you know you're a counselor and you you wear a lot of hats you know it's not like counselors the only hat you wear absolutely i think that um so i served in the school board for five years and so something that was always important to and and you know literally literally your attorneys would remind you you don't lose your first amendment right when you get elected right so you still have you still have an opinion as as an individual and you and you live in this city where you know you can you can potentially testify so for example testifying at the charter commission um even though i'm a counselor you know i have an opinion about an issue that they have i i'm i'm comfortable expressing it um but i know that there are people that might not necessarily agree with that um so i think that being able to identify as an individual and to and to think that you you have some sort of value to share um with your experiences and your opinions i think that that's separate of being a counselor counselor is being a representative right like there's a constituency that i'm trying to listen to and then i'm trying to um consider when i make decisions that impact everyone else and then separate of that there's this guy who's an individual in a small business owner actually you were talking about you know the the people that the way that people hold you accountable we've had you know people on the council who's you know your jobs your business um is having to pay consequences for both that you're taking like that's that line that is that that's that's a tough spot to be in right like you know who's people are going to accuse you of trying to feather your own nest people are going to try to accuse you of you know retribution against your political enemies all that kind of thing um and even something like the charter commission right you know how do you sort of think about are you just watching it and whatever happens happens do you feel like you have a voice in it um you know what do you think is the proper role for you as a counselor as this kind of big deal is happening over there i mean i prior to being a counselor i was like really invested in the charter commission race and like what was happening and like yeah i'm a counselor for we're counselors for three years but like that doesn't mean that like okay i'm a counselor now i can't i can't possibly speak on anything and i think again it goes back to people think that we're not like regular people that will be affected by this so i still you know speak at charter meetings when i can and i really try and make sure that everybody is aware of what's going on we're all gonna vote on it at the end of the day it's not like counselors get to abstain from these votes and so like we should get our equal say even the word we're counselors now and it's like oh my gosh well you're biased blah blah blah but again i think it goes back to like the pay conversation we're living in we're existing in this world's where we're expected to be on call all the time we're expected to answer emails all the time read the council documents and agendas and we be prepared and we're doing that on top of our regular jobs and so like talking about council pay i do think counselors should be paid i think that opens up a whole world of individuals that could run from like parents to service industry people to people that are working as baristas to people that are unhoused i think that we're if we really want counsel and leading in portland to be equitable then we need to start investing in the people that are leading the city and show that we value that opinion so whether it affects me or it affects the next generation of counselors i still think you know counselors should be paid and i think that we as people who will get to vote and who have free speech we are we have more of a right than anybody i think to to really be able to weigh in and i think people trying to take our voice away from us is just like you know it's just not realistic because again i think it goes back to yes we're elected council people but we still have a say and we get to vote just like everybody else so yeah you know uh we'll talk a little bit about how the two roles kind of interact right you're in budget season right now people might not know you know how the budget is developed and all that sort of thing so you're kind of monitoring over here something that might affect the budget right oh we've changed our city council you know pay or the city manager becomes a different type of role or we have a mayor all this sort of thing you have all kinds of economic forces happening how do you kind of compartmentalize the things that you need to think about right like when you're approaching the budget conversation how do you sort of figure out what you know your goals are going to be or what your role is going to be in that sort of budget development process i mean i think what's interesting is i'm never thinking about me i'm actually always thinking about the generation that's going to come after me and the path that i want to pay for young people and young people of color to come after me and so it's like i always think whatever we're doing is not going to have any effect on me personally i have a three-year term it's not going to really impact me but how will this change impact other individuals who want to be counselors especially young black people who really have have never had that experience before and deserve a seat at that table so i think in that is just advocacy around like how will this have an impact in portland in portland leadership how will this open more doors for young people and people of color how will this make city politics more equitable and it's never myself and i think like that's what's so interesting about these conversations is it's never like what is tori won and how can i get it it's more like what will this mean for the next generation of young leaders and how can i make sure that however i'm voting and whatever i'm advocating for will have an impact on that because like i could care less about me like i will always be able to like take care of myself i'm going to be fine i'm only a counselor for like a specific period of time but i want to be able to create a pipeline of younger people and again young people of color to be able to succeed and to be able to be parts of part of these conversations so when we talk about the budget when we talk about a mayor strong mayor versus city manager position when we talk about counselor pay i'm again thinking of how will this impact portland and the direction that we're going in to make sure that as we diversify that we are able to be a city that really champions for everybody and is equitable for everybody and if we can do that and if i can do that on my way through my council career to make it better and easier and more equitable for the people that come after me then like i'm i'm good with that like i can i can sleep i can sleep at night feeling like i i really did my part in that yeah that's great so i'm gonna ask you the same question right so you know along those similar lines it's budget season do you have goals for things that you'd like to see happen do you just wait for the report and kind of have an opinion on that how do you sort of approach your role you know and it's a big number for the city of portland even you know we were talking sort of before the taping just the schools alone right it's a big not always a big number but the number gets bigger every year and the state gives you less money every year so you know how do you sort of approach having goals versus we just got to keep the lights on here yeah so i think one of the biggest differences that i'm looking forward to experiencing in the municipal budget is in the schools budget as you know you don't have very many opportunities as a district to create revenue sources so you you rely a lot on what the state is going to give you for subsidy and in particularly in portland that amount keeps decreasing so creating a budget and schools tend to be really good right we're built for for having tough budgets we're built for for having really difficult decisions when we have when we have the city municipal budget i believe that we have opportunities for creating revenue so what i would like to explore is that right like what are things that we can do to create more revenue that then we can we can create programming to deal with some of the issues that we know are going to help our marginalized communities our bible communities particularly right now i'm interested in in having workforce development programming we know that there are jobs out there that are going to pay really good for people we just got to help people get those jobs so it maybe it's a certification maybe it's a cdl license we talked about the schools having open positions for drivers for months and now being able to fill them so get people these licenses get them a job a lot of these folks particularly in portland are immigrant members of our community or communities or excuse me members of the immigrant community who just need an eso class over at uh at adult debt so that they can get their cdl license and then they get a dope paying job for the schools or for the city um so we can we can make the investments so anyways one area to create revenue for example um parking in the city i've been talking to people about raising the enforcement time from 6 p.m to 9 p.m and particularly in the weekends that's good that could potentially create tons of revenue um and then that could that could create a you know less stress on the budget um that you know again allows us to think outside of the outside of the box another area i think also just key is to think about arpa you know federal funding that we have access to there's a reason that that money got sent directly to municipalities so like they want us to spend that in what we think is important you know every time that you get funding that goes through the state just like we said about the school you don't want to rely on the state to give you money that money's in our like literally in our bank account ready to spend however we want it um portland got 46 million dollars 23 has already been allocated so we have 23 million dollars that we're going to allocate in the next few months that's that could potentially have a big impact long term if we do it correctly and we focus you know again our communities that we know we've not invested in over the last 20 30 40 50 years yeah we'd love to hear some more thoughts on that right so you know a big conversation happening at the state level right now is uh governor mill says we've got a bunch of money i'm gonna send 850 bucks to everybody uh with my progressive lens on that doesn't seem particularly progressive right uh seems like we could use a big pot of money to target people who are suffering to really reduce harm 850 bucks if i got an 850 dollar check that's you know be nice i'm not saying i don't have bills to pay but that's not going to make a significant difference in my life how do you sort of make sure that when you do have a pot of money you target it towards things that will have a true impact in a progressive way yeah i i think again it is having conversations with the people that are going to be most impacted and really making sure that they're at the table of those conversations i i feel very strange when there's you know a dynamic of like we have this money and like you can have some and you can have some and like do whatever and it's like i would love for us to develop some sort of community conversation and really target areas that are going to need the funding and really target areas that are going to make that are going to utilize the funding to again create a pipeline for the next generation so whether that's investing in young people and investing in young manors so that they feel like they can they can put down roots in portland and and feel like they can have a have a great career once they graduate from high school or once they graduate from college and have kind of a a path moving forward where they don't feel like they need to leave main to make more money like i think that that's fantastic i think when we're talking about the workers of portland and again the people that have been working throughout the pandemic how are we showing up for those individuals i think when we're talking about you know the individuals of portland that are getting priced out through short-term rentals and air bnb is how are we making sure that we're allocating the this funding towards affordable housing and like real affordable housing but i think all of that comes with community conversations i don't want it to just be like we're on the council and like maybe you get some maybe you get some and and that's it i i really want us to like like roberto said be really specific about where the money is being allocated and have these conversations with the individuals that are the most impacted rather than just making the assumption that like we know what's best because we aren't living in those you know in those positions in those lifestyles in a big part of like what i do and like what i work in outside of the council is really making sure that we are amplifying and advocating and bringing people to these conversations and saying like well what would it look like for you if we had this amount of money what would you want to use it on how do we make sure that we talk about this in terms of like climate equity and public transportation and again housing and racial equity and investing in young people so that they don't leave main when they graduate and that's all we should be empowering the people that are gonna be affected and we shouldn't really just be sitting at the council level and saying like here's the decisions that we're making because again this is portland is still small enough where we can do these things and i want us to be able to do it and then utilize that money in a really you know impactful and specific way all together rather than having like nine people make that decision i love that whole idea process and i think one of the things that maybe we don't do a great job of in progressive circles is coming up with sort of process for you know having the most impact and doing the least harm right you know we tend to sort of go for the shiny bobble sometimes we say that's a big problem let's throw some money at that that's a problem let's throw some money at that right but there are a lot of big problems and do you think you have a good process or do you think you have ideas for a good process for identifying where a dollar does the most good um so i think but often you have to rely on like the people that are closest to doing that work so like in our in our case that tends to be department heads that tends to be city staff um there are a lot of people in the community that are also doing a lot of good work in in trying to identify different approaches problem solving um so you you try to i guess knock on every door like ask you know as many people to be involved in the in in the discussions ultimately i'm a strong believer that you gotta get to a point of action um and you have to kind of try things on um at one point if we keep searching like the perfect policy you'll you'll get you know kind of like that you know paralysis by analysis like you get stuck not making decisions and then you prolong problems um so we were talking before about how process can be a way to to disenfranchise people so i think that eventually i do believe that we have to have actionable things get it done try it on uh and then you know understand that it's a it's a learning process and it's a ongoing problems that we have to always reassess and figure out if our if our outcomes are um what we expect them to be and either carry on or change course yeah i mean i think there isn't enough of that uh humility sometimes to admit that we're testing and learning right is you know i think one of the problems with political discourse is sometimes it's you know people want to stick to their idea because they don't want to lose face like oh my idea was crappy right but sometimes we have to admit like we that was the wrong idea and we need to take a different tack so we've got uh just a couple of minutes here left sort of a mini lightning round victoria what is something that you are focused on over the next month that maybe someone doesn't know about if they're not in city government um i'm really interested in furthering the work of the racial equity steering committee i think that that is really important i don't want to lose sight of it i know we're going to be kind of talking about it in a couple of months uh but among other things i think that that's a focus that i want to have especially again as we're coming into 2022 it's been two years since george floyd was murdered it's been two years since we had that moment of saying like black lives matter we're going to start listening and learning and we're going to start being you know more uh intentional about what we're doing equity wise and so i think that it's a great moment for us to revisit it especially as we get into the summer of 2022 and really figure out how we are going to make sure that the things that were talked about in the racial equity steering committee are actually uh done at the at the council level and at the city government level great one minute Roberto same question it's budget season um our municipal budget will probably be a little bit longer of a timeline but immediately in the next month the school budget process is happening um he the superintendent just presented his budget last or this week i'm really want to make sure that we're all well informed in it the council has to approve that budget before it goes out to the voters that referendum um you know i'm a strong believer in the school's comprehensive plan and and the direction that we've been heading over the last five years since i've since i was served on the board and i know that there's a lot of investments that are going to be included in this budget that are going to advance a lot of the work that i championed while i was on the board um so i'm keeping a close eye on that i'm looking forward to supporting them and as a councilor being on this end of the transaction excellent well i want to thank you both for being here victoria appreciate the conversation thank you Roberto this was terrific we want to thank everybody out there in tv land for watching and for being engaged in a municipal government and we want to thank the portland media center for being our hosts here you guys always do a great job and hopefully there's plenty of money in the budget for the portland media center uh so for uh pathways to progress i'm sam fiefel and hopefully we'll see you next month thank you for watching