 We're running a couple of minutes behind. We were in executive session, so we had a little transition. Welcome to City Council Chambers. Good to see you. This is the Portland City Council meeting in a regular meeting. Tonight's regular. It's April 24th, and I will call this meeting to order and invite you to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. My Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, the nation of the God invisible, the living and the deathless pearl. And we do have Councillor Travara with us on Zoom. So I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll. Councilor Fornir. Here, Councillor Rodriguez. Here. Councilor Dion. Here. Councilor Ali. It's here, but he must have stepped out. Councilor Daro. Here. Councilor Travaro. Here. Councilor Pelletier. Here. Councilor Phillips. Here. Mayor Seder. Here. It's five o'clock. A couple of minutes after five o'clock. If there's anybody here or on Zoom who would like to address the council on items that are not on tonight's agenda, now is the opportunity to do that. So go ahead and raise your hand or step forward to the mic. If that's your intention, we'll start here in chambers. Please give us your name and either the organization that you represent or the neighborhood that you live in. We'll start right here in chambers with you, Stephen. Stephen Sharfa, Bracket Street in Portland. I have two items I'm gonna speak to you about. First is the, I went on to get the agenda over the weekend and it's like a new website has popped up on me and I'm like very confused by it. I've finally figured out just now how you get to the agenda package, the old style agenda package packet so that you can actually see the paragraphs for what you're presenting to the public as an easy access is not what we should be presenting. We should be presenting that agenda packet so people realize that it's there and they can easily access it. What you've basically done is it looks like more 2023 but it's not, we need it's a clean and simple agenda package for people to really understand what's on your agenda. I've always appreciated the fact that you put paragraphs of information about what the agenda item is about and that should be easily accessible to the public. The other thing I wanted to speak to you about is I'm really concerned about an article I saw on the paper today about a new business being opened on Exchange Street. Spent a lot of money importing doors from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Installed them and found out that they're not historically accurate. Can you please tell me where in the old port anything is quote, historically accurate? I'm sure he can walk around and eventually find some other non-historically accurate doors and use them as examples. Our historic preservation department is out of control and needs to be reined in. We need to accommodate that business and immediately tell him that he should keep his doors and the doors are beautiful by the way. Absolutely beautiful. I have no idea why anybody would object to them. So that's my request to you is to immediately reach out to that business owner and tell him his doors are perfectly fine and that we quote made a mistake. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Steven. Peter, I'm gonna connect with you up there. We have the clock facing the gallery. Should we flip that around so that you can get it on the camera? Okay. Oh, thanks. Thank you, Steven. Thank you. Appreciate your help. Perfect. I want, because I know that people look for that when they're on Zoom and that gives them the opportunity to see their time. For anybody in chambers, we'll just give you the 32nd warning as usual. Okay. Thanks for that pause. We'll head over to Zoom. We've got a hand up from David Ritter. David, you'll have to unmute yourself. Okay. We're gonna move on. Is there anybody in chambers? Yeah. So go ahead and line up right behind the podium if you're here to speak so that we don't have to pause and we know that you're here. We'd be happy to hear from you. Go ahead. Sorry about that. No, that's fine. Hi, everyone. My name is Taylor Cray. I'm from Preble Street's advocacy team. And I know you have an emergency meeting tomorrow night to discuss housing, but I wanted to come forward and read a statement from Preble Street about the current encampment on the Bayside Trail and the proposed clearing of that encampment. Oh. Sorry. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, great. Okay. So the encampment on the Bayside Trail is a visual representation of the fact that we are in the midst of a homelessness crisis, a crisis that is occurring all across Maine, not just here in Portland. It is absolutely devastating that so many people are left living outside and unsheltered due to a massive shortage of shelter beds, a lack of affordable housing and insufficient resources for people with mental health and substance use disorders. Every day we see individuals suffering the severe health consequences of living unsheltered. And our partners at the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council just released a study showing that continuous displacement by encampment sweeps leads to even higher rates of mortality, overdoses and hospitalizations. It doesn't have to be this way. We need to advocate for more of emergency shelter funding, site-based housing first programs and treatment programs for people with substance use and other mental health disorders. So that is the Preval Street statement on the encampment sweep. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your comment. And we'll head back over to Zoom. Mr. Saget. Yes, hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, this is Richard Ward, Parkside Neighborhood District 2. Leftist media keeps pushing the LGBT narrative to confuse children and it's sick in our society. The Western world is the only place where this filth is tolerated. We need to take a stand against the pedophilic degenerate cold. An Islamic nation would never tolerate this and us Americans shouldn't either. Let us not forget just recently in Tennessee a mentally ill transgender person gunned down three children and three adults. We don't need gun control. We need to crack down on the violence from the left. Democrats country-wide celebrated the killing of innocent Christians. Where was the comment from the city on the Covenant school shooting? But they had a comment when it was about George Floyd, AKA Fenton Floyd. It's disgusting to see leftist cheer for drag queen shows with kids to convince children they are the wrong gender and to encourage surgical genital mutilation. Leave the children alone. What is a woman? The Cambridge dictionary says a woman is an adult female human being. Does taking hormone blockers make you a woman? Does castrating yourself make you a woman? Does dressing up make you a woman? Does believing your own make you a woman? No, doing all these things just makes you a mentally ill man. It's wrong for society to cater to a seriously ill minority of people and expect us to go along with their delusional thinking. When someone suffers from schizophrenia we don't reinforce the delusions as truth and we shouldn't for transgender as an e... Seriously, when they don't even know what gender they are. Transgender women are men. Transgender men are women. When they are in their graves 200 years later if scientists dig up their bones they'll know that the transgenders were men. Pills, surgery and imagination won't fool scientists. Your DNA won't change just because you have an unhealthy fascination. Pushing this stuff on to children is child abuse and we shouldn't condone it. Why do children need to learn about gender pronouns when they can't even tie their shoes? Why are teachers telling students not to tell their parents about the topics of discussions in school? Not push the transgender narrative. We wouldn't have so many confused people. The LGBTQ plus cult is a cult which is a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister. The mentally ill minority must not be allowed to rule over the rest of us. Where do we draw the line? Child castration, having children taken from parents for not going along with the mob, having sex offenders teach children. At this point, nothing is off the table for the degenerate woke leftist cult. For being a group that wants acceptance they are quick to advocate for violence against anyone who disagrees with them. We will never cower and fear to the terrorists. We will not surrender our country to a left wing scum. Only two genders 30 second warning. The amount of tantrums will change that. Sometimes the truth hurts and some of you need to hear it. How can regular people just who just want to be left alone coexist with a group that literally want to rape and kill children? If liberals can't abort babies, they'll try to rape them. Thank you. Any other public comment from chambers? Is Sarah Lynch. I live at 27 Arlington street. And I just wanted to say that I unequivocally stand with our LGBTQ plus community and all of the other marginalized groups in Portland. And I'd just like to take up equal space right now from what we just heard. So thank you. Thank you for your comment. We'll head back over to Zoom and we will hear from Bill Higgins. It's like, hello, it's Bill Higgins from homeless advocacy for all and a public resident. I want to speak out against the proposed clearing of the supportive tent community along the Bayside trail. I'll call that our tent community rather than the camp. And sweet, we should be sweeping trash, not people. I agree with the Prandtlville street statement. We have no shelter space available in this city. That was the result of the ESAC member meeting as last Thursday. We should create a site where the camping could be could be set up here in Portland and also provide bathroom facilities a way to wash for people to take a shower and to wash clothing. That would help them not lose their dignity and also they could keep their documents to help them find housing. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comment, Bill. Anybody else in chambers who would like to step forward? Okay, we'll head back to Zoom. TJ Malone, please. Yes, this is TJ Malone from the Liberal Revolution and I'm representing the LGBTQ community. And we just heard a slew of transphobic and homophobic hatred from Richard Ward as we in the LGBTQ community know him as Dick Ward. Okay. Sorry, when comments are directed at a person we're not allowed to take them. Right? Or swearing. Okay, I ask once again if there's anybody here in chambers who would like to speak. I see none. We'll head over to our next speaker. This hand just went down. Okay. Thank you everybody. I'm gonna close public comment and we will come back to our agenda. Are there any announcements from the council this evening? Councilor Ali. Thank you, Mayo. I have been asked by the community. So the past few days, Muslims from all over the city and the state and the country and probably the world fasted for 30 days. And we had Eid. So congratulations to all those that have done that. However, the community leaders on Eid at Fitzpatrick asked me to publicly thank city staff, Kevin McPhee, that every year, even though they rent a space, he goes above and beyond to make sure that people are accommodated. He's very helpful and that they appreciate the work that he puts in every year when the community comes and rent a space from the city. So Kevin, thank you. Thank you very much, Councilor Ali. Are there announcements from any other councilors? Councilor Phillips. It's not really an announcement, it's a comment that I, you know, after listening to public comment, I know that we have some procedural things or rules and regulations around what people can say when they call in. And I think what we need to do from this point on is just remind people exactly what they can and what they cannot say when they come and make public comment. Everybody is allowed free speech. I'm not saying that we should squash free speech, but there is some decorum that we have to have in having to sit here and listening to public comment. So from now on, I say that whenever, before we're going to do public comment, that we remind the public what they can and what they cannot say. And that will allow us to be able to be able to listen better. Yeah, I appreciate that, Councilor Phillips. It's awfully hard to navigate up here when we're managing free speech. Our council rules are vague. We can certainly change those to be more specific if we'd like to govern behavior here in chambers, the way we do with some of our other rules. But I'm gonna turn to Corporation Council at this moment, if you wouldn't mind just to talk a little bit about that struggle that we have when it comes to free speech and public comment in the chamber. I think with the open comment period that we have, we have, it needs to be viewpoint neutral. And if we are going to accept public comment on any non-agended item, it needs to be, we need to allow all viewpoints to be able to present themselves. There are, we are allowed to put bumpers on that in the rules and maybe some clarity on those rules would be one way to address it as you suggest, Mayor. Is public comment on non-agended items required? No. Thank you. Councilor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. Corporation Council, you said that we can set bumpers through the rules. That's correct. I mean, I think we have to keep in mind that it's not, this open public comment period is something that the council has included in its rules and allows to the extent that the council wants to tighten that up, it can do so. It doesn't need to allow the public comment at all. There are times when there are particular statutory requirements, there are particular statutory requirements where public comment has to be allowed, the public has to be given an opportunity to be heard. If we are going to have an open public comment period, we are able to put some guardrails on that, but it does have to be viewpoint neutral. I wouldn't want to take away the public comment on non-agended item. I don't want to take it away. Oh, you don't want it? I want it to be because it increases engagement and participation. However, if we want to move forward and put some rail guard as you mentioned on the non-agended public comment, do we have to bring it back because the rules committee have been, do we have to create a new rules committee or? Yeah, I mean, the rules committee is the committee that needs to draft the proposed revisions. And so that would be, I think that would be the first sort of procedural step would be having the council assign it to the rules committee to review and draft some revisions. I think I'm asking because we don't have a rules committee anymore. We, in the past few years, we've developed a rule committee as needed. So annually, because obviously we have to revise our rules and approve them every year at Inauguration. And then we've also had a rules committee ad hoc whenever we need it. So we can certainly form a rules committee to take this on. Okay, well, thank you. I will suggest we should go into that direction. Making a note of that. Thank you, counselor. Any other announcements this evening, councillor Pelleteer. Thank you. I know we've talked about process a little bit with the public comment conversation that was really helpful to hear just in terms of what we're able to do. And I know that that was really hard to listen to for a lot of individuals on the call. So this is just me again, I feel like we talk about this every meeting now. I've probably said this every meeting, but just like always standing in unequivocal support with my LGBTQ plus community of Portland into the black and brown community of Portland, I see you, I always stand with you and you are very much welcome here. Thank you, councillor. Other announcements from the council, councillor Fornir. Thank you. And we might not have it for this meeting and I think that's okay. But one of the things I was struck by in that comment that was made is the number of false falsities that were included in that, which I'm not sure that false information is protected under the First Amendment. And so I'm not necessarily for this moment, but maybe as we're continuing to discuss where those guardrails are, is how can we interrupt comment when that happens? I think it was unfortunate that the individual who is speaking, yes, he did name, you know, the community member who had spoken before that in I think a tongue-in-cheek way. However, I do think in the past we've corrected people to say, please address your comments to the chair rather than ending the call because I think the rest of there, and I could be assuming what I think the rest of what they would have shared would have been more in support of the community. So just, I think something to keep in mind there. And as the parent of a trans child, that sucked to listen to. And I very much know that my child is very aware of my service on the council, listens to council meetings, and for all of the youth in our community who are part of the LGBTQ plus community who have to hear that and know that that exists in our city, that's incredibly harmful. And we know that the rates of suicide and self-harm and mental health with that population are incredibly high. And so I think it is our responsibility as elected leaders who hold these different identities to also reassure them that, we are here for you, we are here to support you, we will not continue our giving up the fight to find a way to limit the hatred that's coming towards us. And I do think that there are different ways that we can explore this. I absolutely first amendment protections are there, but I think there's a fine line between first amendment protections and emotional abuse of our community members and harm and hate towards our community members. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. Do I see any other hands up at this time? Well, I certainly took note of the creation of a rules committee which we can get right on. And I do my best to adhere strictly to our rules and to look to corporation council when things get tricky as they have many, many times, sometimes, you know, differing, well, let's just say it's been challenging across the board to try to manage my mute button or navigate comment in this chambers. So greater specificity within our rules and also greater familiarity with our council rules would be helpful for everybody. And it's always awful to be part of a situation that is not only hard to navigate, but I know is hurtful and hateful. So not thrilled with that in this public chambers. We'll move on to the approval of our minutes from our previous meeting. I have a motion to approve the minutes from the April 10th council meeting. So moved. All right. Counselor Ali with a second from Counselor Zaro. Is there any council comment on the draft minutes? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote to approve those. Counsel Pornier. Counsel Rodriguez. Yes. Counsel Dion. Yes. Counsel Ali. Yay. Counsel Zaro. Counsel Travaro. Yes. Counsel Pelletier. Yes. Counsel Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Didn't hear it. Does Counsel Travaro? Okay, great. Okay. So those pass unanimously and we'll move on to proximate. We don't have any proclamations on the agenda this evening. I thought we did. No proclamations. Okay. We'll head into appointments. Will the clerk please read order 175. Order 175, 22, 23, 23, 24, election year sponsored by Ashley Band City Clerk. Great. And I'll look to the interim city manager for comment on order 175. I think Ashley could comment, but I'll comment for her. I think this is just a regular order we do every year appointing all the various wardens and ward clerks. And so it's just normal course of business. Thank you. Public comment on order 175. Seeing none. In chambers or on zoom, I'll close public comment and come back to the council for a motion please. So move. Second. Councillor Rodriguez for the second from Councillor Ali. Is there any council discussion on order 175? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote to approve that order. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yay. Councillor Zauro. Councillor Travaro. Yes. Councillor Palatier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Councillor Ali's read order 176. Order 176 2223 appointing members to various boards and commissions sponsored by the legislative and nominating committee. Mayor Kate Snider chair. Thank you. I'm actually going to jump right in here. I think it's okay for me to do that. We have had some requests for information with regard to this action on our agenda. The nominated legislative and nominating committee has been made aware of those requests for information. We need an opportunity to talk about response from corporation council's office with regard to the request for information. So I'm going to offer a motion to postpone this at this time. And I look for a second. Second. Councillor Dionne with a second. Is there any council discussion on those? Oh, sorry. Motion to postpone to May 1st. Council discussion on the motion to postpone. We'll take it up next week. We'll go ahead and vote on that motion to postpone. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dionne. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Chabarro. Yes. Councillor Pelletier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Thanks everybody. We just didn't have time to react to that. So the next two items on our agenda are consent items. Both orders 177 and 178. Will the clerk please read those into the record? Order 177, 22, 23, setting the time for opening and closing the polls on June 13th, 2023, regarding municipal election, sponsored by Ashley Van City Clerk and order 178, 22, 23, declaring June 10th, 2023, the shipyard, old port, half marathon and 5K festival sponsored by Daniel West, interim city manager. Thank you. So consistent with our consent calendar, we take public comment on any items that are on the consent calendar at the same time and we act at the same time unless there's a reason that we need to break them apart. So any public comment, please on orders 177 and 178. Seeing none, I'm going to close public comment and come back to the council for a motion on both orders. So moved. Second. Councilor Rodriguez with a second from Councillor Dyon. Are there any questions or comments from the council about these items before you this evening? Seeing none, we can go ahead and vote to approve both. Councillor Fornear. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Trevorrow. Yes. Yes. Councillor Pellettier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Both pass unanimously. Thank you. Next, we head into the licenses portion of our agenda. We've got several before us this evening. We'll start with the clerk reading order 179. Order 179, 22, 23, granting municipal officers approval of LB kitchen. Application is for an outdoor dining on public property located at 255 Conger Street sponsored by Daniel West Interim City Manager. Thank you. Is there any public comment on order 179? We have a hand up on zoom from Nialot Biliu. Am I okay? Yep. Thank you. I just want to say, if y'all approve this, it'll be pretty insane to approve a private business use of public land, but not the unhoused folks that need actual housing and need actual public space to be able to live and get their needs met. So I just think it's funny that these private businesses are allowed to be able to utilize public space, but real people aren't. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Any additional public comments on order 179? Okay, seeing none, I'll close public comment and come back to the council. I'll offer a motion. I look for a second. Second. Councilor Dianne with the second. Any comments or discussion from the council? This license that's before you tonight, we'll go ahead and vote on it. Councilor Forner? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dianne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Chavarro? Yes. Councilor Pellettier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snyder? Yes. Order 179 passes unanimously and I want to acknowledge if the owners of LB Kitchen are here with us this evening in person or on zoom, looking around. If you are, thank you very much for being here and for doing business in the city of Portland. Will the clerk please read order 180? Order 180, 22, 23 granting municipal officers approval of hard shark distilling company. Application is for a class A lounge with outdoor dining located on private property located at 53 Washington ab sponsored by Daniel West, interim city manager. Thank you. Is there public comment on order 180? I see none. I'll close public comment and I will offer a motion. Look for a second. Second. Thank you, Councilor Dianne. Is there any council discussion? I see none. We can go ahead and vote on order 180. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dianne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Chavarro? Yes. Councilor Pellettier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snyder? Yes. Order 180 passes unanimously and thank you to the owners of hard shore distilling company for doing business in the city of Portland. Will the clerk please read order 181. Order 181, 22, 23, granting municipal officers approval of Flatbread Company. Application is for an indoor entertainment license located at 72 Commercial Street, sponsored by Daniel West, Interim City Manager. Thank you. Is there any public comment on order 181? See none. I'll close public comment. Come back to the council for a motion. So moved. Second. Councilor Rodriguez with a second from Councilor Zahro. Any discussion on 181? We'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Chavarro? Yes. Councilor Pellettier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snyder? Yes. That passes unanimously and I'd like to take a minute to recognize Flatbread and thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. Will the clerk please read order 182. Order 182, 22, 23, granting municipal officers application is for a class A lounge located at 59 Washington Ab, sponsored by Daniel West, interim city manager. Thank you. Is there any public comment on order 182? Seeing none, I'll close public comment and I'll come back to the council for a motion please. So moved. Second. Councilor Rodriguez with a second from Councilor Zahro. Council discussion. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote to approve. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Ali? Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Chavarro? Yes. Councilor Pellettier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snyder? Yes. Order 182 passes unanimously and thank you to nightmares for doing business in the city of Portland. Will the clerk please read order 183. Order 183, 22, 23, granting municipal officers approval of room for improvement application is for outdoor dining on public property located at 41 Wharf Street, sponsored by Daniel West, interim city manager. Thank you. Is there public comment on order 183? I have a hand up from William Higgins. I have a question. Will that impinge on public access to for walking on sidewalks and stuff? I'm sorry, Bill. Do you mind repeating the question? Will that impinge on access to for the public to walk on sidewalks and such? There's one thing we need to stay aware of. Thank you for the question. I'm happy to bring it up during council discussion. Any other comment on order 183? Yes, Stephen Sharpe of Bracket Street. I'm gonna comment essentially on the same thing. I'm just looking at the diagram for this property and they wish to actually cover the entire length of sidewalk or with the sidewalk and then they war street the only walking place. Yes, war street is strictly a walking street except for deliveries. Actually, we should further limit deliveries on war street, but that's a different issue. So I actually have significant concern with this outdoor dining application. I think you should look at it carefully and analyze. I actually think you should table this or the outdoor part and look at the situation more closely. I also didn't look at the other one that was commented on but they are putting their dining on the outside of the sidewalk because of a tree well. I don't think there's actually enough room in there for that other one, but you already approved that one at this point. So unless you're gonna go back and rescind that approval and look at it more carefully, I think we need to be very carefully looking at the various locations and saying, is there really enough room for people to pass? Just because it says four feet doesn't mean that's really enough room for people to pass and be comfortable passing by people who were eating on the side and sidewalk here or sidewalk, et cetera. So just wanna express those concerns for future outdoor dining permits. And the other issue I have with outdoor dining permits is that they tend to be staked somewhere but those barriers creep out further on the street as time goes by. And we need to make sure that that doesn't happen. There are certain places on Congress Street that like to allow their barriers to creep out further into the sidewalk. So thank you. Thank you for your comment. I'm having a little zoom glitch here because none of my attendees are showing up. Sorry, I do see that but I'm only, I don't see the name of the person. So Jessica, if you could let- Yeah, Mayor, the name is Brenton Dupri. Okay, great. For some reason, my attendee list isn't populating on Zoom. So I'm gonna move my wifi which oftentimes just doesn't connect in here. Okay, thank you. Hi, Brenton Dupri, East Bayside. I think the outdoor dining is a cool idea. A lot of cities made it work. We can make it work too. I thought one of the best parts of COVID was the outdoor dining through the city. Yeah, I really support the outdoor dining. I think it's a good idea. I hope it happens more and I support it. Thanks. Okay, thank you for your comment. Other comments in order 183. Okay, I don't think I have any. Jessica, can you double check? I don't think I have any hands up on Zoom. I'll set there are no more. No funny. Okay, my attendee side is not showing up at all. So I'm gonna rely on you for that unless the wifi improves. We'll close public comment on order 183 and I'll come back to the council for a motion, please. Move passage. And I will second that. So motion by councilor Zaro second from me, council discussion on 183. I do want to, I think we have, let's see, do we have Zachary with us? I just wanted to, oh, great. Zachary, Leonard, would you mind addressing the comments that were offered during public comment as we contemplate this license approval this evening? Yeah, any applicant that does submit after approval, our health inspectors go out and mark the space. And at that time, they'll make sure the design standards are being met of the not exceeding 60% of the sidewalk with maintaining the four feet. Any of those trees and obstructions also maintaining five feet around corners and the space around those obstructions. So very often what happens after approval is the space gets modified a little bit smaller than what's approved, drafted once we get out there and start marking it out, measuring it. Thank you for that. Maybe some questions coming your way. Are there any questions from the council specific to that councilor Fornir? Thank you, Mayor. The question I have, and I think it's a really good point that they brought up, I've walked down Worf Street myself and I never walked down the middle cobblestones. I have weak ankles. So even in the best tennis shoes, I am likely to fall or twist my ankle going down that middle. So I am always walking on the brick sidewalks and the way that this plan reads is on the side that room for improvement is, it's an eight foot clearance from the building to where the cobblestone begins and that will be completely blocked by this bar. And so certainly someone could go on the brick sidewalk on the other side, but I do worry with our community members or visitors that are in wheelchairs, that are in motorized scooters that are using any sort of assisted walking devices, they would be forced to walk on the other side but still going across that cobblestone. So I am not excited about that completely closing off that side of the street. I don't know if there's any way to reduce that from eight feet so that there is still the opportunity for individuals to walk on that side. I too enjoy dining outdoors and like the ability to do that, especially in the summertime here, but I do hear and share those concerns for our community members who feel that completely closing off that side is not in the best interest. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Any other comments or discussion from the council on order 183? Seeing none, it looks like we're ready to go ahead and vote. Councilor Bornear? No. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zauro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yeah. Mayor Snyder? Yes, order 183 passes eight to one. And if the folks from Room for Improvement are here in chambers or on Zoom, thank you for doing business in the city of Portland. Will the clerk please read order 184? Order 184, 22, 23, granting municipal officers approval of Allagash Brewing Company. Application is for outdoor dining located on private property at 100 Industrial Way sponsored by Daniel West, Interim City Manager. Thank you. Is there a public comment on this order? Seeing none, I'll close public comment and come back to the council for a motion, please. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from Councilor Zauro. Are there, is there any council discussion on order 184? I see none. We'll go ahead and vote to approve. Councilor Bornear? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dionne? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zauro? Yes. Councilor Trevorrow? Yes. Councilor Pilatier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snyder? Yes. Order 184 passes unanimously. Tonight, thank you and thank you so much for doing business in the city of Portland. Next, we move to budget items. So will the clerk please read order 185. Order 185, 22, 23. Receiving and referring to the finance committee, the Portland Board of Public Education Fiscal Year 2024 budget estimate and setting a public hearing there on sponsored by Daniel West, Interim City Manager. Thank you so much. And would you like to tee up what we're gonna do next? Certainly I see our friends from the schools here this evening, they will be presenting the board approved budget that will be referred to the finance committee. And so I believe Chair Sarah Lentz is here to provide some information on what the board has looked at and what their recommendation is to the council and the finance committee specifically, as long as co-superintendents are also here as well. And so I'm sure they'll assist as needed, but thank you so much for being here tonight and for all your work on this. Thank you all very much. And myself and the superintendents are gonna be presenting kind of a narrative of the budget that we're putting before you. And I also just wanna recognize the other board members that are in the room and online tonight. This has been a very collaborative effort. So just wanna recognize that across the board. So without further ado, Mayor Snyder and members of the Portland city council. On behalf of the Portland board of public education and in accordance with the city charter, I along with interim co-superintendents Malia Nally and Erin Townsend are presenting our recommended fiscal year 2024 budget for the Portland public schools. The board approved this budget unanimously on April 12th. I'm sorry, April 11th. Our 143.8 million fiscal year 24 school budget is responsive to the incredible vast and often conflicting needs of the Portland public schools at a time of daunting budget challenges. We feel strongly that the budget we present to you today is fair and responsible given the current circumstances. This budget reinvests in core operations such as finance and human resources while also investing in student facing staff to support all of our students including our many newly arrived multi-language learners. Within this budget, we've also done our best to anticipate and plan for the fiscal year 25 budget. When the district will no longer have access to federal COVID money and will likely face decreased funding from the state level. This budget does all that while simultaneously being mindful of the tax burden on Portland residents and a year when inflation is higher than most can remember. We began the fiscal year 24 budget process facing formidable fiscal challenges. Inflation and other factors resulted in higher costs coupled with an unexpected $2.4 million loss in state subsidy and other revenue adjustments. Initially it would have required us an 8.7% tax increase just for our rollover budget. Adding in other important programmatic budget needs and requests would have required a tax rate increase of 15.5%. Instead, the budget we present you tonight entails a 5.7% increase in the school tax rate. The process to get to that figure though has been thorough and demanding. This budget is the result of many months of hard work on the part of the board and district and school leaders and staff. It reflects many difficult choices informed by voices across our community through public hearings, emails and conversations with the mayor and city counselors. While we tried to uphold as many as we could, ultimately many investments have not been included in this budget. Our recommended budget does however, meet our three key priorities for the 2023-2024 school year. Those priorities are maintaining the commitment to the Portland Promise goals of achievement, whole student and people, all intertwined with the fourth central goal of equity, being responsive to the needs of all students, especially those newly learning English and improving operational effectiveness in such areas as finance and human resources. Our budget is also responsive to Portland taxpayers making use of a significant portion of previously unanticipated funds from a higher state subsidy than expected and a healthcare savings to reduce the impact on the school tax rate. We learned on March 28th that the state had miscalculated its education aid to local school districts and that our district's fiscal year 24 adjusted subsidy would actually be $3.6 million more than expected. The initial budget proposal from co-superintendents Naly and Townsend on March 17th was built on information from the state that we would receive $2.4 million less in state aid than in fiscal year 23. So this additional net of $1.2 million more in state subsidy was very welcome news. In addition, our health insurance rates were recently confirmed as lower than budgeted resulting in another $400,000 in savings. Our budget uses more than $1 million of these unanticipated funds to reduce the impact on local taxpayers with the rest used to preserve core programming. When the board approved this budget on April 11th, it was expected that our budget would result in a 6% increase in the school portion of the tax rate. However, the district learned today, April 24th, that as a result of an update to the city's property valuation estimate, our budget's impact on the tax rate will now be lower than 6%. Our recommended one, this is a tricky number, so 143,810,343 dollar budget and $43 budget for fiscal year 24, which is up $10.7 million over this year's budget, now calls for a 5.7% increase in the tax rate. That is in line with inflation. It also is a significant downward revision from our original 15.5% needs assessment increase. The 7% increase in our superintendents initially proposed budget on March 14th and the 6.1% increase our board finance committee recommended on April 3rd. Our budget would raise the overall school tax rate by 40 cents for a total of approximately $7.5 per $1,000 valuation. It would increase the annual tax bill for the median family in Portland, valued at $375,000 by $150 per year or $12.50 per month. In the spirit of our collaboration with the council throughout the fiscal year 24 budget process, the 5.7% school tax rate increases our budget increase in our budget is within the 5 to 7% range of budget guidance provided to us by city councilors. Good evening everybody. So our budget uses the remainder of the unanticipated new revenues to preserve core programming and enable flexibility in managing the challenging budget outlook for the FY 25 budget. That upcoming budget year is expected to be particularly difficult because our district will no longer have available ESSER, which is the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund money granted to school districts during the COVID pandemic, even though the effects of the pandemic continue to remain. And we could have less state education aid due to the city's continued rising property valuations. To help prepare for FY 25, we are beginning work to initiate strategic significant cost savings structural changes while continuing to advocate at the state level for adjustments to the state funding formula. With the additional unanticipated revenues for FY 24, we were able to make a number of revenue and expenditure investments and adjustments to the budget that was originally proposed. For example, our budget returns community coordinator positions, which are the people who manage the volunteer program at the local schools back to the local budget and returns a number of core services that have been shifted to ESSER in earlier stages of the budget. These include math coaches in elementary and high school, elementary and high school classroom teachers, high school youth development positions and adding a literacy teacher leader and the equivalent of 1.5 positions to human resources and a grant accountant to further support improvements to our operations and finance teams. Such local budget investments serve to free up about 2.8 million of resources and remaining ESSER funds to invest in key budget priorities for next year. The revised ESSER budget contains additional investments to advance elements of the Portland Promise strategic plan in the next year. These include additional resources for summer learning, curriculum and staffing. Our budget also includes additional investments to be able to address the influx of newly arriving students with intensive language development needs. These investments include adding additional language capacity at the school and district level, as well as providing for additional instructional capacity to serve students, including a dual language learner teacher at the pre-kindergarten level. In addition, the budget contains funds to support non-ESAL and that's English for speakers of other languages, educators to acquire their ESAL credential as we take steps towards supporting all PPS educators to have the skills and knowledge to differentiate from multilingual learners. Other key highlights of our budget include increased investments in district employees that total just over $4 million to help attract and retain staff during the nationwide labor shortage and to ensure hardworking employees can meet the inflation-driven costs they face every day. We settled contracts this past fall with bargaining units representing teachers and educational technicians that included wage increases. I'm gonna pass it over to co-superintendant Townsend to share the additional detail. Good evening, everybody. Higher operational costs are also a part of our budget. Due to staffing turnover and shortages and systemic problems with our payroll system, the district had difficulties beginning last fall and paying all of our more than 1500 employees in a complete and timely way. While most of the immediate problems have been resolved, we continue to work on a long-term solution by outsourcing payroll, a move recommended by the recent audit from Spenglass. The budget includes about $775,000 to cover the costs of hiring payroll processor ADP and increasing staff in the finance and human resources departments, also recommendations in the audit, as well as for shoring up transportation facilities and school meal services. The budget also uses ESSERF money to add a few one-year-only positions to address class-size challenges at a few grade levels and a few elementary schools to maintain our ratios in grades K through three. It also includes additional resources for the equivalent of 1.5 new teaching positions at Portland Adult Ed to respond to significant demand for programming. PA may choose to use some of that funding in the short term to provide more compensation towards hourly teachers for the preparation work they do outside of the classroom. This budget also reflects an increase of $2 million for out-of-district special education costs for students with specific IEP needs. The district is unable to meet in its schools. These costs are required by law. It also includes debt service costs for the renovations to the four elementary schools in the buildings for our future bond approved by Portland voters in 2017. Weisseth Elementary was renovated in 2020. In renovations to a second school, Presum Scott will be completed this spring. The remaining two schools, Reiki and Longfellow, are less than a year away from completion. Through careful financing and use of reserves, the district has been able to defer the impact of debt payments for these projects over time. But this budget does include a $2.2 million increase in debt service for fiscal year 24. In summary, our budget is balanced and reasonable one. Invests in all our students, including our newly arriving multi-lingual learners, provides fair compensation for our hardworking staff, ensures up core operations, including finance and human resources, while being mindful of taxpayers. As we stated earlier, there are still a lot of needs not fully resourced in this budget, but it accomplishes some important goals and we are confident it is the best we can do under the current fiscal circumstances. We ask you to join us in supporting this budget and sending it to Portland voters for final approval on June 13th. The Portland community has shown at the polls year after year that they believe strongly in the importance of public education and also in the goal of the Portland promise to make sure that all of our students are prepared and empowered for college and career. This budget reflects those values and we encourage you to approve it. Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here. It's good to see you. We appreciate you taking the time and sharing the information with us that you have. I do want to, before we go to public comment, I want to remind people that tonight's public comment is on the council's motion to receive and refer. So we're not actually taking public comment on the content of the Portland public schools budget tonight. We're taking public comment on the council's action to receive and refer. And what we're doing is referring this to the, to the finance committee that will continue the work. So that's an opportunity for engagement and input on that, on that budget, but just a reminder. So I opened it up for public comment on order 185. Again, the council's action to receive and refer. And we'll go to Christian mill Neil on zoom. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you so much. Christian mill meal. Resident 45 Smith street in the East Bay side. Thank you for all, especially the school board for your work on this. I just wanted to encourage the city council. To push back a little bit on the school board and ask them to restore all the student facing positions, especially at Ricky and East end school, which I think we all know are going to expect a huge influx of. Christian. Sorry to interrupt you. We're just taking public comment on the council's motion to receive and refer. This sounds like we're getting into the content of the budget, which we'd be happy to get an email or come to a finance committee meeting or on the first, we'll have a public hearing on this. I will do that, but I just wanted to let the whole council know that, you know, I'm hoping that we can be more ambitious. In the context of the asylum seekers, we're expecting to come into the school system next year. Make sure that they're fully staffed. On the topic of the tax burden. I also just wanted to, sorry. Here we go. So we're back. The council's action tonight is receiving and referring. So we're not talking about the public comment tonight is not focused on the content of the school's proposed budget. That's what we'll have a general comment on the city budget. We're not doing that either. I can't speak on any subjects that's not directly related to the motion at hand. Right. In this particular instance, we already took public comment on items that are not on tonight's agenda. So the item on tonight's agenda is a receiving and referring motion, but please know there will be plenty of opportunities to provide comment on the specifics of both the school budget and the city budget. I will follow up with an email to the full city council. But thank you. Thank you. Any, any public comment on the motion before the council. This evening. Councilor Rodriguez. I think you had a hand up. I was just going to ask for the date. So when public hearings would be taking place. Yep. Yep. So that in our packet, we've got the first reading and public hearing of the FY 24 school budget. So we're going to have a public hearing. And then we'll have a second hearing and another public hearing here at the council on May 15th. So we will have the opportunity to do, to do two full public hearings. And councilor Dion, I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you once this is referred to the finance committee, do you want to speak to any work that's upcoming in the committee to get this voted out and over to you. Council. You have put me on the spot. Sorry. Look, the committee will go through its normal process. We'll, we'll take a look at the budget. We'll accept public comment. I've already started receiving emails. For constituents advocating for increases in the school budget. I've received some that are asking us to slash the budget. I'm sorry. So it seems like a typical year, but I will say what is different for the committee moving forward is the experience we had during this cycle, working in collaboration with our colleagues at the board of education, the finance committee, their chair, the chair of the board of education itself and the superintendent. So I think we're going to have a public hearing. The chair of the board of education itself and the superintendent. So I think I'm, I can say with confidence that we have a better understanding of the school budget process and the contents of that budget than we had previously experienced in other budget cycles. So from that point of view, thank you to everyone that I've mentioned from the school side of the process. So we will move accordingly. There is a timeline that we have. I don't have it at my disposal. We will stay on time. The train will get here to the council and you can vote it out accordingly. Thank you madam. Thank you. I appreciate your work. I was just going to follow up and provide you with the schedule. It is on the city's website under the finance committee webpage. And so specifically you'll see that the. You can find all of the dates and information there. Great. Thank you. Councilor Diane do. Yep. I was just going to say, thank you. Okey-doke. Okay. So. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So additional public comment on the order 185 motion to refer. Okay. I said, I do not see any new hands up. So I'll close public comment. And I'll come back to the council for a motion. Motion to refer. Second. Councilor Diane with a second from council Rodriguez. On this motion. Again, I do want to thank. Co superintendent snally and Townsend for being here tonight as well as chair lens. And I see many other school board members out here in the audience and also on zoom. So thank you again for your time for all the work that you've done. Hopefully there's a little relief in tonight. Knowing that you're passing it over and we will take it up from here and we'll look forward to. So thank you again. And I think we're ready to go ahead and vote. Councilor for near. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snyder. Yes. Order 185 passes unanimously. Thank you again. And we will move on. We have order 186 before us. Will the clerk please read that order. Order 186 2223 receiving and referring the city managers to the fiscal year 2020. Four municipal budget to the finance committee. And setting date of public hearing on fiscal year 2024 municipal budget and the fiscal year 2024. Appropriation resolved sponsored by Daniel West interm city manager. So we're finally, finally here. I was just saying today that I feel like I've been working on this for three months because I have, and I know this is the first time. I put in front of you the FY24 budget. It includes a 6.1 tax rate increase, and I'm just going to give you a little bit of the history and specifics. All of the materials obviously are in the backup, and we're just referring this to the Finance Committee so that the committee can really dive into the department's specific information and details throughout the month of May. But as you all recall, when we started this, the rollover budget, as I like to refer to it, had a 14 percent increase that would have been very significant, and I heard clearly from the council, through your guidance back in March, that you would obviously rather see, and clearly all of you unanimously would rather see, a five to 7 percent rate increase that we would send to the taxpayers of the city. We went back to work, the finance and budget team and really worked hard. We had to shave about $11 million off of what was in front of us and come back to you with that 6.1 percent tax rate increase, and it was extremely complicated and difficult. Some of the challenges we faced, which I know we talked about back in March, were the expiration of some one-time funding that we received from the state last year, 7.4 million to address the asylum seeker issue, and expenditures related to that. We had a reduction of 1.7 million in state revenue sharing. We also, as you all know, are phasing out our use of ARPA funds, our federal funds, and so this is the last year we'll be able to use those, and we're using less of those than we have in previous years. Then the last, I think, really significant hurdle that we continue to face as we've talked about a lot is staff vacancies. We've been running roughly 250 staff vacancies pretty consistently this year, so it's extremely difficult to manage that and try to deliver all of the services to everyone in the city within the confines of what we have put forward today. To go back to that initial asylum seeker and slash homelessness issue that we've been facing, it's a very obviously unique challenge that we have been facing and I think one obviously that the country is facing at a national level, but obviously is a very dire situation as we've talked about here. We've recently opened the expo. We reached capacity within a week of opening the expo. We are still operating a family shelter that's completely at capacity and our brand-new homeless services center is also at capacity. We are with all of those facilities and with our use of a couple of hotels within the city. We are housing about 1200 people a night and so that's a significant issue that we face at a regular basis. We focused because of those issues, a big chunk of this budget on providing social services, emergency shelter, public health, and other care to our neviest and most vulnerable population. It's important to remember that we shoulder 30 percent of that cost to provide those services. Seventy percent is provided through that state general assistance program that still gives us a significant expense to bear. Considering the numbers that we are seeing, so we've been working the mayor, myself, the legislative committee, as well as our delegation very, very focused and significantly over the past couple of months to try and work with our legislative delegation and legislators in Augusta to get additional funds to address that significant need. One thing you'll see right off the bat in this budget I put before you, is that I make a presumption that we're going to receive those additional funds, and that's a significant note, because that's a $4.2 million assumption. It's a significant assumption and I want to draw it to everybody's attention because it will mean we would be passing out a much more significant tax rate increase to the taxpayers if we weren't making that assumption. The tax rate increase, as I mentioned at the beginning, was 6.1 percent. If we aren't able to secure those funds, we would be looking at a 10.4 percent increase. That is that significant, and that would either be the increase or we'd have to go back to the drawing board with the Finance Committee and look at ways to reduce expenditures. Another thing this year, as I mentioned, we have the ability to use ARPA funds. We are using about 4.75 million this year, and that obviously has helped reduce the impact as well. We will not have that ability next fiscal year. Every year, department directors take a significant amount of time to really look at their budgets and determine the best way that they can continue to provide those services and achieve cost savings. They really did an amazing job this year of trying to do that. We really worked hard to reduce the existing expenses, while at the same time making sure that we are continuing to provide and have a sufficient full-time equivalent employees and staffing needs being met. That's a significant focus for us given those recruitment and retention issues I've talked about. Also, I think I heard that from you all during our discussion in March about the need to continue core municipal services providing those. I understand you all have a slightly different definition potentially of what that means, but making sure that we do that, obviously we need those employees. That has been a focus of all of this to try to deliver that budget within those boundaries that you set, but continuing to make sure that we have the staff and support the staff that we have currently to be able to provide those services. I think that that's a summary of where we're at. Like I said, we'll get really into the details of each of the various departments and the specific highlights of what we're proposing. I just wanted to go over just a little bit about FY23, just as a recap for you. I think some of the big highlights that you'll see, obviously we open the homeless services center, which was extremely important, and also reflect some changes that you're going to see in this FY24 budget, some of the big cost drivers. Obviously, the Health and Human Services Department is a significant portion of this budget, and those changes at the homeless services center and those costs are reflected in that budget specifically. We also had a significant number of housing units that were approved through the Planning and Urban Development Department. Approximately 1,500 housing units are under construction. Of course, that's the product of a significant amount of review and work done by staff over just the past few years. Additionally, some other big things, as you all know, housing availability has been a focus for the council and for city staff as well. We continue to work on with the housing staff, ways in which to make sure we can open up all of those funds that you programmed over through ARPA to the housing department. We're well underway in that process. Permitting and inspections continues to see its workload increase. You'll see in this budget this year as well that we have put forward additional staff to address those needs. Obviously, we weren't able to do a lot of additional staff. Very few additional staff ads across the board permitting and inspections. That department is one department in which we did provide additional staffing to address the citizen initiative changes as well. Also, I see Paul Bradbury out in the crowd tonight. He must have been here specifically to remind me to shout out for the JetPort. They continue its record for customer service in 2022, winning the easiest airport journey and most dedicated staff in North America Awards. I mean, Paul, thank you very much for being here tonight. That's a great award and happy to shout all the great team out there out at the JetPort. Then we continue in this budget. You'll see reflected and I know in this past year, we've really focused on continuing to focus on our sustainability and one climate future goals. We have focused a lot and achieved a lot of successes already, but we'll continue to work on our Electrify Everything program, as well as Electrify Bikes. I know is coming in the future and DIY Electrify as well. We continue to deploy our EV charging stations and infrastructure throughout the city, and we'll be launching a summer-long campaign to educate the public about the city's land care ordinance. There's a lot of different things going on in that department as well as our Parks Rec and Facilities Department, which also has worked to make, obviously addressing our parks a priority, which is their focus, but you'll see in this budget this year that I've put forward one additional staff person, an Assistant Parks Director to help them to be able to move along a lot of the projects that they have on their plate so that we can see more of those park improvements come to fruition throughout this upcoming fiscal year. I think those are the big highlights. I just would note, obviously we have included in the budget specific monies for, as I mentioned, the Citizen Initiative Ordinance to address those needs, but also the charter, the passage of the various charter provisions. Specifically, I would like to highlight, you'll see a significant increase in the city clerk's budget to address the Clean Elections Program. We have included right now 260,000, as was proposed, plus a $30,000 one-time allocation for the software for the database specifically. So there's $290,000 in that. We've also addressed various other wage adjustment issues and things that were contractually obligated to in a wage adjustment line and various specifics. You'll notice all those various additions on pages seven and eight of the budget letter. I think that is the, in conclusion, I just wanna give a big shout out to Brendan O'Connell. He's our finance director and his team and all of the budget team and the department directors who've worked really hard to try to put this together to bring this in within your guidance and really look forward to addressing and answering all the questions and really getting into the details of every department with you all in the upcoming months in May, specifically with the finance committee. And I also will just, it would be remiss to not recognize all the various city employees that work so hard every day to make sure that all of the services that are reflected in this budget are delivered in a wonderful way and get done. I know Councillor Ali shouted out a parks rec and facilities employee this evening. And I just wanna indicate that that's just most employees that I work with the city that that's what they do every day. They go above and beyond. So thank you so much for all the work that they do. And I really look forward to discussing this all further with you in the finance committee. Thank you very much. Interim city manager West for that, teeing that up again, what we've got in front of us tonight is a motion to or an action to receive and refer. But we have a couple of things to do before we get to that. So I'm obligated within the charter to make some comments tonight, which I'm prepared to do. I won't take too long because we've got a ways to go on our agenda tonight, but I did wanna take this opportunity and offer some comments from my perspective. So the, first of all, I wanna say thank you to the interim city manager who has been at it now for 17, if not 18 months in this interim role. It's a big lift. This is your second budget as our interim city manager. And it is, these are not easy times. And so I wanna start by thanking you because it's no exaggeration that you have been focused on this for three months now, if not longer, and I see it every day. So thank you. I also know that there's so many staff people that support the city manager's work to put this before us tonight. You mentioned Brendan O'Connell, you mentioned various directors, Paul Bradbury's here with us. If you're in chambers, I'm gonna shout it out. So I just wanna start with thanks because I know that everybody takes time from their normal everyday work and make sure that they're focusing on the municipal budget development during these winter and spring months so that both the council and of course the community have an opportunity to understand what's going on. It really is a very, very big lift. We, I wanna also thank you for the inclusion of me and the council. You're required to work in partnership with me on this budget document and we do that work together and I appreciate that. I also know that you engage each and every one of the councilors one-on-one and that's really important work. I also want to mention that I believe that tonight's budget presentation from our manager is a very clear response to the council guidance that was given at various times, but certainly in workshops where we were discussing the budget and where the manager sought our guidance. And so I don't want that to go unsaid that there's a whole lot of work to get within the guidance that we provide. And so it's a way to say thank you for taking that seriously and thank you for being so responsive to our priorities. So as I got ready to make these comments as I do every year, I sit down and I try to read as much as I can about where we've been and what's the context that we're heading into. And I'm really not looking to make specific comments tonight on the budget itself, but because we'll have the opportunity to do that. But I started looking at the past few years and the comments that I'd given on this night in past years. And I came across my notes from last year and it struck me that I could have just taken those and read them tonight because a lot of things haven't changed. We are still very much in a transition to what will be as a result of COVID. There are so many things that have impacted our budget and our work together broadly that, we haven't recovered from and that we are still working through. So one of the things that I highlighted last year and this is a quote from my statement last year was the biggest factor in this year's budget is the HHS budget and how we as a community plan to be compliant with the state of Maine's general assistance obligation, which is currently 70, 30. That's still true. I also shared this that we're very grateful for action by both the governor and the legislature that seeks to address with one time or one fund investments in emergency temporary and permanent housing. That's still true. As the manager mentioned, it is still our work while the legislature is in session to be keeping an eye every single day on what's happening up there and engaging as actively as we can on the issues that address us, namely general assistance and any other bills that have to do with housing. I also shared this, the past eight months have proven to us that we can't know and we can really can't predict the number of people with emergency needs. And therefore the municipal obligation associated with our state's general assistance law, that's true. We've been talking about this since the fall of 2021. We can't predict it and we don't see a slowing down of the number of people coming to the city of Portland seeking asylum. That's a whole realm of response that the city is constantly working to address. We just can't predict it. So again, that was last year's sentence. It applies this year as well. Last year I said the city of Portland takes, we take our GA obligation very seriously. We have a dedicated HHS staff working under strain that is frankly unimaginable. And that we have been told, this again was last year's words, we've been told repeatedly we can only offer the most basic supports at this point in time we're at capacity. So as then, we are now at capacity. City of Portland's FY24 budget, FY23 budget rather, budgets for shelter beds for both individuals and family. Up until recently we budgeted for a hundred and, well, how quickly we forget, 154 beds at Oxford Street, gosh, and 146 beds at the family shelter. Last month we opened the homeless services center and increased the number of beds by 54 for individuals to make 208 beds total out at the homeless services center. And we continue to have our family shelter at 154 beds. We all know those beds are full. Those are what we budget for. That is the emergency shelter for which we budget for facility and staff. And yet the expo has been opened and has 300 people in it. And so the point that I'm making here is that we are constantly looking to stretch our budget and to stretch staff because when we look at what we actually budget for our two municipally run shelters, one for individuals and one for families, it hasn't been able to meet the need by far for so long. And so we don't change our budget when we accommodate another 300 people at the expo, but we have to figure that out. In this case, I wanna shout out to the community that has been hugely generous with volunteer time and funds raised in response to that community fund to help us run the expo. But that's brand new. And I just wanna call out that the city has been doing this all year, making sure that we are responding as well as we possibly can. And in conjunction with community partners who are also stretched then, but doing such important work. And I send my thanks out to all of them who help us respond in moments of critical need, which is always the case. So with regard to, I mean, we have incredible challenges when it comes to the need for emergency shelter and homelessness. And I wanna call out departments of the city that are constantly on call, health and human services, department of public works, parks and rec, fire, police, and all the city employees who help to work our small city respond to the needs and the resulting challenges. It touches, I think, every single department in the city, some more than others, but it's significant and it's worth noting. So as we've heard, there have been challenges to revenue. There are changes from FY23. We'll get into that as a group within the finance committee's work. And when we deliberate here as a council, these challenges include the fact that we have had some one-time or limited term revenues that have concluded or will be concluding. So we wanna keep our EZRI on that. We know this isn't gonna be an easy budget to navigate. There are so many needs and priorities. Our council stated priorities focus on homelessness, housing, sustainability and climate. And of course, our budget always with a lens, always using a lens that prioritizes racial, social and justice equity. So we have a challenge in front of us. We've got the city manager's budget that came in at 6.1%. And so where do we go from there? It's, I know that it was a challenge to get there. And so I look forward to working with you all as we navigate our own priorities and the council's stated goals and priorities. Other challenges include the fact that we have incredible employee vacancies. So we have to focus on employee recruitment. I also think we need to focus on employee retention and investment in our employees. As policymakers, we count on city staff every day to implement the work that we contemplate here in chambers. So that's so important for us to keep in mind as we look at our budget and how we support the work that we all do for the community. And of course, as was mentioned, we've got charter amendments that happened that were approved at the polls this past November and we prioritize making sure that those voter approved changes are supported through our budget and that those changes are reflected through dollars that are put in support of those voter approved initiatives. So lastly, I just wanna thank my colleagues on the council for the hard work that you all do and that the hard work that we will continue to do together between now and June 5th when we take final action on the municipal budget. I wanna thank councilor Dion for your work as the finance committee chair. I know you've got a big lift over the next six weeks. So I appreciate that. Is it six weeks? Seven, maybe eight. You got this. Keep adding. You got this. Members of the finance committee, thank you. I know that you're obligated to be there at each meeting. So I really appreciate that. And again, as was mentioned, we'll continue this work on Thursday evening at five o'clock at the finance committee. So thank you again. And that concludes my comments. Okay. So here we are again, public comment on the council's motion to refer and to receive and refer. So I will open up my Zoom screen to see if anybody is here to comment on the council's action to receive and refer. We have a hand up on Zoom and I'll go to Christian Mel Neal on that council action again, not the content of the budget, just the motion in front of the council. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Thank you. And I'll stick to the topic hit hand on the subject of referring this item to the finance committee so that the mayor won't have to interrupt me so much this time. So when you're, when the full council is referring a budget like this to the committee, this is a great time for all the city councilors, especially those who aren't on the finance committee to provide some direction to your colleagues who are on the finance committee so that when it does come back to the full council, this we're all on the same page and we know that this actually does reflect the priorities and the priorities of the full city council. So I would love to hear from the full city council some feedback and some direction to the committee as they refer this item to let us know does this budget in fact reflect the city council's priorities? Does it treat homelessness and the climate emergency as the priorities that they deserve in the budget? Or are there city councils who would like to offer some guidance and more direction to the finance committee? So I would love to hear that at that point. I think this would be a great early opportunity for councilors to provide some feedback and help set up the finance committee for some success. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comment. Other public comment on tonight's motion to receive and refer. Stephen Scharff of Brackett Street. I support the motion to refer to committee. I don't necessarily support the content of the budget but just wanna point out one thing. There's a very nice chart in the middle of the budget narrative from the interim city manager and I would like that to be put on your Facebook page for the whole community to see because the important thing of that chart is it shows that this budget is gonna go up. The entire city budget is, the tax burden is gonna go up by $14 million. And I think that's a significant point to be made in terms of the city budget and the school budget and the tax burden put on by the county that never gets talked about. The last thing I wanna be, there was supposed to be a finance committee meeting tomorrow night that apparently has been canceled and according to the agenda page, it's there but canceled. And secondly, Thursday night's meeting has no agenda attached to it, no details as to what you're actually covering at Thursday's meeting. So that should be put up online tomorrow morning. So it's available to the public. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Other public comment on order 186. I do not see any. So I'll close public comment and I'd like to come back to the council for a motion please. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from councilor Zaro. Any council discussion? Councilor Dion. I just will click a quick comment in response to the statement made by the Zoom participant. Zoom participant. It's a practice of the finance committee while I've been chairing it for two years and I remember for three years is all city councilors are invited to attend, many do. Their insight, their opinion, their conclusions about what sound budgeting allocation should be are taken into the full by the committee as a whole. So we don't practice in isolation and then report out to the city council as a whole. As a matter of fact, it's been my goal to make sure that when we bring back a final budget everyone's pretty much aware where we're going with that particular document and what the consequences will be. So if counselors want to lobby the committee that's part of the process and we welcome it. It's a no surprise budget procedural. So I just want to put that out there in case someone thought we did operate behind the curtain. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Dion. And just a quick reminder to everybody that the first read and public hearing will happen on May 15th. The second read and public hearing and council action will happen on June 5th. Okay, I think we're ready to go ahead and vote. Councilor Borneo. Yes, councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yay. Yes. Councilor Pelletier. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Order 186 passes unanimously. Again, thank you very much. Interim city manager West. We will move on to the next item on our agenda. Will the clerk please read communication 32. Communication 32, 22, 23 amended rental golf cart rules and regulations by Daniel West, interim city manager. This just updates the rules with regard to golf carts primarily, well within the city, but mostly operated primarily on the islands. This is just to update the council on those amendments and it includes clarification of processes by which the rental golf cart registrations are renewed and transferred as well as how the administrative rules will be shared with the public. If you have any questions, be happy to answer them but all the materials are in the backup. Great, thank you. So we do have this communication in our agenda packet. As this is a communication, we don't take public comment or have any council action, but if anybody has any questions or comments, now is the time. Okay, I don't see any hands up by my colleagues. So thank you for the communication. Appreciate that and we'll move on. Will the clerk please read resolution eight. Resolution eight, 22, 23 opposing federal preemption of municipal pesticide regulations sponsored by sustainability and transportation committee, Andrew Zaro, chair. Counselor Zaro. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So this item is a resolution in response to right now at the US Congress, there's a consideration of the 2023 farm bill which includes a range of policies related to ag food and land use. If passed, it would prohibit local governments from regulating pesticides. As you know, we actually voted last year to change our P-MAC to an L-MAC. So we just began that about a month ago. So given this, we would like to, and I'm happy to read it if you would like me too, Mayor, this resolution opposing federal preemption of local pesticide ordinances. Would you like me to read it? I don't think you have to read the whole resolution unless you'd like to. Oh, I'm happy to save my voice this evening. But if anyone has any questions, it's pretty straightforward. And I would really appreciate the full council support on this. Thank you. Thank you very much for offering that context and introduction. Before I come to the council for any discussion, I'll see if there's any public comment on order resolution eight. Okay, I don't see anybody in chamber stepping forward. I see no hands on zoom. So I'll close public comment on resolution eight and I will ask please for a motion. Move passage. Second. Councilor Fornir with a second from councilor Zaro. Is there any council discussion? Just a clarification opposing the preemption, not the actual bill. Thank you for that clarification. Councilor Zaro, any other discussion from the council before we act? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dionne. Yes. Councilor Zaro. Yes. Councilor Chabarro. Yes. Councilor Pellett here. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Thank you again unanimously. Again, thank you councilor Zaro for your introduction there. I see that we have director Moon with us on zoom. So thanks for being here. Troy, I know you're always here in case we have any questions. So I appreciate that. We'll head into unfinished business. Will the clerk please read order 170. Order 170, 22, 23. Accepting and appropriating federal aviation administration administered airport improvement program and airport infrastructure federal fiscal year 2023 sponsored by Daniel West, Interim City Manager. Come on up to the mic, Paul. That's why you're here. Paul Bradbury, the Jetport Director's here this evening to give you a little background on this item. Sure, I will be, thank you so much for your time. And no, it was great to be here for the plant budget as well. But Paul Bradbury, Airport Director, this is a unique opportunity that we get every year for AIP. One unusual thing this year is that we have the bipartisan infrastructure law funds that are that AIG. FAA has to have everything as an acronym. So it's AIP, Airport Improvement Program, AIG, Airport Grant Program, which is backed by the bipartisan infrastructure law. So it gives us twice as much entitlement money this year it did last year and for the next three years, which is great to help us catch up on the safety and infrastructure needs at the Jetport as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law. Twice as much entitlement funding each year to help us to catch up. So with that, I am here to answer any of your questions and really appreciate your consideration of this item. Thank you so much for being here, Paul. Is there any public comment on order 170? I see none. I will close public comment and I'm gonna come back to the council for a motion. So moved. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from Councilor Rodriguez. And now do we have any council discussion or questions on this item before you tonight? It's great news. Thanks for being here, Paul. As always, I think we could just go ahead and vote to approve order 170. Councilor Pornier. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Sorry, Councilor Dion. Yes. Yes. Councilor Zaro. Yes. Councilor Trevaro. Yes. Councilor Pelleteer. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snyder. Yes. Order 170 passes unanimously. Even with Councilor Dion. And I will ask the clerk to please read order 171. Order 171, 22, 23, amendment to Portland City Code chapter nine, regarding clean elections sponsored by Keith Snyder, mayor. Thank you so much. So we've got, I think I'm gonna look to corporation council for comment here, which I know may end up with, well, Michael, will you take it away? Sure. Yeah. This is mostly just a brief introduction as I think everybody knows last fall or last year, the Charter Commission recommended an amendment to the charter to add a clean elections ordinance that was approved by the voters in November. And so it was as ballot question number three. We've brought in outside council, Jim Katzafikas and Brandon Mazer to assist with this. They've already worked tirelessly through several workshops. This item, because we're gonna be approving an ordinance requires two reads. The first read was at the last meeting. Today's the second read and public hearing. And I'll leave it in Jim and Brandon's capable hands. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Snyder, members of the council, Jim Katzafikas and Brandon Mazer from Perkins Thompson, here's outside council for this project. This is an outgrowth of the charter, requirement of the charter that via clean elections and campaign finance ordinance adopted by the council. So we started this process back on March 13th with the workshop, just a general overview of what this ordinance might look like. On March 27th, we presented a draft and we used the Santa Fe, New Mexico ordinance clean elections law as starting points for an ordinance that would work for the city of Portland. We were trying to mesh the requirements of a clean elections program with a couple of other things. One of them being campaign registration deadlines and reporting requirements under state law and then your own community, the charter required deadlines for getting nomination papers, filing them. So we're trying to run all three tracks on something that we hope will be coordinated. So we put together an initial draft that provided for one round of funding distributions would be distributed at all at one time. We had used the main citizens for clean elections numbers as far as the amount of qualifying contributions, the amounts that would be distributed to candidates, the amount of seed money. And also we adopted from Santa Fe the idea of a proration so that the fund doesn't run out if it's running low then amounts that would go to candidates would be prorated. That's what we brought in for the March 27 workshop. On April 3, there was further discussion of that and it was focused on the amounts, the numbers of qualifying contributions, the amounts that go to candidates and how many rounds of funding there might be with the supplemental funding. And so the council reached consensus on a proposal that Councillor Trivaro had put together. That consensus is the basis of the draft that's in front of you tonight for first read that was in front, actually it's my first read on the 10th and is before you tonight for consideration. And I'll just briefly outline some of those features and then Brandon will be talking about possible amendments and what these might do. The important things we think that the departures from that first draft that we brought in on the 27th would be these. First, this version in front of you right now reduces the overall number of qualified contributions necessary to qualify for the initial round of funding. So for example, for Mayors 300 to 200 qualifying contributions to get that initial distribution. But I say initial distribution because we've gone from one distribution to an initial and then three supplemental distributions. You have to get more qualifying contributions to unlock each of those, but you can get up to three supplemental distributions on that. Also, as was suggested, the date when you can begin receiving distributions is moved up. In our draft, it had been at the point where you submit your nomination papers, should be as early as August 18. But that would be the earliest, the earliest you could get any funding. This moves up the initial distribution date to July 17, a month before people are qualified to be on the ballot. So for that reason, you would have to sign an affidavit pledging to repay any amounts should you decide or should you not qualify as a candidate. Also with that initial distribution and the up to three supplemental distributions, you'd have to qualify, you have to submit more qualifying contributions to unlock each of those payments. There would be no proration under this. Instead, funding is first come first serve. And if the fund runs low or runs out, then candidates would be able to turn to private financing up to the amounts of the limited amounts for clean elections. So you'd go to private financing, but your total amount raised would still be the same as if you were in the program. There's an annual budget requirement. The council would be required to pay $500,000 to appropriate $500,000 per year. Please understand that there's a principle municipal law and administrative law, congressional law, constitutional law that one legislature can't bind future legislatures. So this year's council can't bind future year's councils to actually spend that amount. You can put that in the ordinance. It's not going to be enforced. So those are the features, the basic features of what we're dealing with here with this draft that's before you tonight. And I know there's been one amendment that was submitted as part of and was included in your package. Brandon, do you like to take us through that please? Thank you, and we're here for any questions. And I've circulated the packet. There was some comments made that it would be helpful to have the paper form. So that's what's in front of you. It's nothing that's outside the packet at this point. And I also have a panelist capabilities on my laptop. So if there are any specific documents that we've talked about over the past workshops, I'm happy to share my screen and bring those up. So over the last couple of weeks, we've received one specific amendment that's part of the packet this evening from Councillor Havaro, which I know she's joining remotely and can give further details. I wanted to give sort of a high level review of what that amendment seeks to do along with one other addition that we added with her permission. So you'll notice that the amendment maintains a $500,000 budget amount, as Jim mentioned in mayoral years and lowers that in non mayoral election years to 250, no less than 250. We also clarify in conversations that we had in our office with the city clerk's office clarify the timing of the first round of distributions. In our original draft, we had it a little bit rigid that it would be no later than a certain date. That initial distribution will actually be rolling. So putting that restriction on was a little bit too rigid. So with the Councillor Havaro's permission, we've added some language clarifying that it would be as expeditiously issued as possible after certification, but no later than the date certain. And the other aspect which changes the proposal that you saw originally was the shortfall provision. There's under the original provision, it was a first come, first serve situation for the initial and supplemental funding. And after, if in the instance that there was a shortfall in the fund, then those candidates would be able to, in essence, collect their qualifying contributions but then go and become, for lack of a better word, a traditional candidate raising up to that $500 amount. What the Councillor Havaro's amendment seeks to do is creates a procedure that requires the council by resolution to at least take up the option of appropriating additional funds. And in the event that additional funds are not appropriated, then that candidate would be able to go and be treated, in essence, as a traditional candidate. There's some language in there that I pulled directly from the budgetary process that's found online. So there's language of unencumbered funds that may be a foreign term, but it came straight from the city's process and procedures, we can tweak that language if needed to more accurately reflect the parlance that's used. And really that is the formal amendment before you. We also have from the mayor a proposal that wasn't officially part of the packet or an amendment and I've got copies that I can circulate. Now is the appropriate time. Yo, great, a few of copies, yeah. Okay, good. And just as an explanation, I think that I was working on this and finished it at 3.57 this afternoon, like two minutes before we went into executive session. So thank you for offering that help to me as I, do you want me to tee it up? It's up to you, mayor. Yeah, I will. So thank you for that. So again, I apologize to bring something from the floor. I welcome, or I appreciate your consideration. What I have been trying to do and I wish I could have gotten into it sooner, but was, oh, great. You don't have the little spreadsheet. Mayor. I do not do this. Mayor. Yes. Would it be possible for someone to email that to me? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, we'll make sure that happens. Brandon, is that something you could email to counselors at Travaro? And it'll have to come from my Gmail account and not my office account, but I can try to. Okay, or I can do it. I just want to take this opportunity. So again, not always ideal to bring something from the floor, but that was my option. I just didn't have the time to get it out before now. So, and here's why I did this. I'll explain to you why I'm offering an amendment from the floor tonight. As I rewatched the workshop that we had as a group on March 27th, and then I watched, no, March 13th, and then I watched the workshop on April 3rd. I steeped myself back in the original workshop documents that we had and the feedback that was given at that time. And what I looked at on April 3rd was the packet that was put together for the council's consideration that responded to the council's feedback at that time, which asked for us to contemplate lower distributions or lesser funding in FY24. And so that document was presented to the council on April 3rd at the workshop. It's in the backup material and it has alternate proposals in the back. So I pulled that back up from the April 3rd workshop. And then I also listened to discussion at the April 3rd workshop that had to do with whether or not we've hit the right funding amount. And so I took a stab at this. You can take it or leave it. It's an amendment. Happy to put it before you. So I'm not gonna argue for it. I'm just gonna tell you what it is. So what I've done in this document here, which is the spreadsheet document, is I've reduced the amount of funding in FY24 from 500,000 out of the annual operating budget to $351,000. And I'll tell you kind of rationale for where that came from. So the number of candidates was based on from what I understand, looking back over the last 10 years and having a good sense of how many candidates qualify for the local ballot. I think we got that from main citizens for clean elections. Is that right? No, the number of candidates from the clerk's office were re-analyzed. That's right. Okay, thank you. So the 16 candidates that are contemplated there was based on an average over the last 10 years. I then looked at the funding amounts that were in our April 3rd packet that came in response to the council's feedback from March 13th. And I looked at the alternate proposal one, which had a distributed amount of $75,000 for the mayor, $25,000 for an at-large city council candidate, $10,000 for a district city council candidate. And then I actually increased what they had recommended from 5,000 to 7,500 because I listened to the feedback on April 3rd from councilors with some concern about too little funding for school board candidates. So I increased that from 5,000 to 7,500. And I stuck with the school board district amount of $3,000. And so what that did is it created a fund that would need $367,000. Of course, however we proceed, there's gonna be a certain number of qualifying contributions that would be an offset. Whether or not the council even wants to think about a change in the qualifying contributions, I did make some increases to what is in our first read or maybe, sorry, the better way to say that is I made some changes. And the qualifying contributions are laid out in such a way that of course we can tweak as a group, whether or not we're in the right place or not. But that would bring in a certain amount of funding. So again, my intent here was to try to lower the overall annual operating budget allocation FY24 from $500,000 down to $351,000. I know that the voters had a price tag of $260,000 that was in the Charter Commission's final report. And I know that that's what's in the city manager's budget. So trying to help us achieve that different budget, that different budget approach. Again, for your consideration, I look forward to discussion of this amendment if you're interested and also other elements of what's before us tonight. Thank you. Just one point of clarification. The only change in the actual red line is the monetary amounts. I did not adjust the qualifying contribution requirements which would adjust the mayor's chart. You too many moving parts. And this may have been my miscommunication mayor, but I only changed the amounts. That's fine. I mean, I think that, yeah, that's fine. We can talk about it. It was really just an attempt again to find a kind of a compromise between the 260 and the 500. Councilor Travaro, I had a chance to speak to my amendments. I know yours were covered by Mr. Mazer, but would you like to jump in there before we take public comment? Yeah, he covered them really well. Basically, my original proposal had 500,000 allocated annually for this and in looking at it, I don't think that that is going to be necessary. I think that that is really like an upfront cost. And so I changed it to just the mayoral years and then after that, it would be 250 annually. And then the other thing was basically to give the council an opportunity to replenish the funds if the fund ran out, if we under budgeted and candidates were left in that situation where they turned in all their clean election checks, they qualified for the ballot, they were due money, but we just didn't have the money and the fund to give them before they then turned around and started raising money privately. The council would have an opportunity to see if we can fund it from other sources to replenish that money and make good on what they've qualified for. So that was the thinking behind those. They're kind of, you know, little more just tweaks. And yeah, they're in the form of one amendment but it really does sort of those two major things. Great, thank you, Councillor Tavaro. So at this point in the agenda, we will, we've got the first read before us, we've got a couple of amendments and so we'll take public comment on any of that content and before we open it up for council discussion. So if you're here in chambers and you'd like to step forward, go ahead and then we'll head over to Zoom where we've got a hand up. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for your proposal, Councillor Tavaro's proposal. My name's Anne Keller. I'm the Executive Director of Main Citizens for Clean Elections and we are supporting the proposal that was brought to the first read and Councillor Tavaro's amendments today. It is, our bottom line here is that this program needs to be successful in its first year and successful means that candidates are able to trust that they can use the program. They will have enough money to run competitive campaigns and that it will be administered in the sense that they'll be able to understand what the rules are, how things are going to operate going in. All of that implies that there needs to be enough funding in this first year and not have doubt about it. So when we look at what's been historically spent in the last few years in mayoral races, we've had multiple candidates spending well over $100,000. We have seen that 80,000 is, in some cases, the smallest amount spent in a race, not the average or the largest amount. And so when we look at what's needed for this year and what's a reasonable estimate, knowing that we're all making guesses at this point, there are a lot of things that we're trying to figure out that we simply don't know how they're going to turn out. It's better to overshoot. I say that knowing that this is a tough budget and that this is not 500,000 is not the amount that was put in the original proposal. That said, when we were thinking about this originally, we thought there would be years of the fund building up before we ever got to a mayoral race. So 500,000 in this first year, the fund will then build up. It's unlikely that candidates spend all of the money that they receive when we look at the state. There's usually money returned to the fund at the end. That helps to build it up year after year. This startup cost of having a higher amount this year is what will set us off on a good basis moving forward. And it's unlikely to need to be repeated at that high level, even in another mayoral year in the future, if we can set it off well now. Again, thank you for the dedication and thoughtfulness that you're putting into this and happy to answer any questions if that's helpful later in the process. Thank you for your comment. And we'll head over to Zoom, Jay York. You with us, Jay? You'll have to unmute yourself on your end. Yes, Mayor, would this be an appropriate time to speak to the Poland Housing Authority's request to change the zoning for Franklin Towers? No, it isn't. We're actually in a different order right now on our agenda and that will be coming up a little bit later in our agenda. Okay, thank you very much, Mayor. Okay, no problem. Any other public comment either in chambers or on Zoom? Great, good evening, Mayor, Councillors. I'm Ben Chipman, I represent Portland and the main state Senate and live on Mayo Street. First of all, I'd like to start out with just saying I have a significant amount of experience with clean elections. One of the first petitions I ever worked on when I was in college in 1995 was to establish the state system that we have now. I've run for legislature seven times. I've used clean elections every single time and I would not be a legislator if it wasn't for clean elections. I don't come from a wealthy family. I'm not connected to people with a lot of money and I ran as an independent, my first brand and didn't have any connection to party, didn't have a lot of people wanting to give me money. So without clean elections, I wouldn't even be in legislature. I'd like to say, I guess there's been a little bit of, I think confusion and misunderstanding maybe what clean elections is about. The purpose of clean elections is not necessarily reduce the amount of money spent in campaigns, although it's great if it does accomplish that. The primary purpose is to reduce the influence of private money in our political system. So to have a system that's publicly funded where candidates are using that system so that when they're elected to behold and only to the voters, not to private donors and special interests, that's the primary purpose. The need for funding in the campaign cycle early, I think is really important and that's what I think is really good about the proposal that's on the table that was endorsed unanimously at the last workshop. Having that money come a little bit earlier in the middle of July as opposed to waiting to the end of August early September is very beneficial. No serious candidate running for citywide office this fall or in the future is gonna wanna use this if they have to wait till the end of August or early September to get their first disbursement. It's a lot that happens early on in campaigns that impacts the ability of a candidate to be successful in the end. The timeline and plan endorsed by the last workshop strikes a good balance in three ways. First of all, the timeline of when funding is available. The number of private or qualifying contributions required to qualify for funding at each level of funding that's based on the state system if you look at the number of $5 qualifying contributions required and the amount of money that candidates get they're very similar to what candidates for state Senate or state house have to collect in order to receive funding. And finally, the amount of funding that candidates qualify for is also a good balance. And I'd like to talk for just a minute about the amount of money raised and spent in campaigns here in Portland. We've heard some comments the last workshops about the money being too much particularly candidates for May are raising spending too much money. I agree. I had a real problem with the amount of money raised and spent in the first May all raised in 2011. And in 2015, the amount of- 30 second warning? Money that candidates could receive from individuals of $850 per individual $1,700 from a couple. I sponsored and passed a bill to reduce that to $500 because I thought it was too much but we can't argue with the data. The amount of money that candidates have been raising and spending particularly in the mayoral race in 2015, averaged $125,000, 2019 averaged $131,000 despite the reduction in the campaign contribution amounts. That's what they raised and spent. So if we want a system that candidates are gonna use if we want our next mayor this fall to be elected to be beholden to the people and not to special interests, we need a system that they're gonna use and having a system that has insufficient funding too many qualifying contributions and late distributions of funding, candidates won't use it. And I think we want a system that's gonna be successful. I think we want something that people are gonna use. And if we have all of our viable candidates for mayors and other offices not using this, I think it will be seen as a failure and that would be really unfortunate. I think we want this to be successful and in order for it to be successful, we need- Thank you so much. So I appreciate your time and sorry, I went over by a few seconds. Appreciate your comment. Thank you, Senator. Other comments on, I have so much paper here. Any other public comment at this time? Okay. Seeing none, I will close public comment and I'm gonna come back to the council for a motion, please. Move passage. I think I had a second. Sorry, councillors Zara with a second from Councillor Fornir. Okay. And so we will open this up for council discussion. Like I said, as we know, we've got a couple of amendments before us so we can look to take those up as we often do initially and move on to the either amended or unamended for street material. So I'll offer my amendment. If anybody would want to offer a second, we can discuss it. Second. Councillor Dianne with a second and so that's open for discussion and I'll weigh in with my, I guess what I would call my advocacy just for the amendment for your consideration. So hopefully I was clear in terms of where this came from and the spirit behind the amendment. I think it's actually quite interesting to see we got an email that came in at 4.25 this afternoon looking at historical data. Thank you for that. The winning candidate in 2015, looks like spent 61,000 in 2019. Looks like I spent 72,000. So I actually think the historical data is an interesting snapshot at the funds raised in the last couple. There were more funds raised and it was certainly a competitive environment. But again, I was trying to be sensitive to the conversations we had both on March 13th and then the conversation that I listened to on April 3rd, talking about the annual operating budgets support for the new clean elections program and whether $500,000 was the right amount. So I put these numbers before you and thank you again, Brandon for your help and putting, I don't have the red line and what that would look like. So it's a starting point. I know we're gonna have lots of conversation as we get into the ordinance that's before us tonight but I again, thank you for your consideration and any input you have, happy to hear it. Counselor Zaro. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think I'm gonna try to speak obviously only to your amendment, but I think this does sort of apply to both of the amendments that we're looking at. I think, well, first off, and I shared this with many folks this weekend as we were preparing for this meeting, amendments on Friday and from the floor make me feel like the work isn't done yet. And I believe we have a little bit of time before we have to have this vote, but I'm not gonna lie, we have a lot of paperwork in front of us with a lot of red ink. And that tells me we're not there yet, but I'm noticing a lot of trends that is suggesting that we're close. So I'm just gonna name that before I dive into any specific questions. I personally don't think we are there yet. I would be comfortable with moving this to next week. However, we should still have the conversation. So I think my first question that I will ask for both is can someone help me understand the process that's going to shorten the overlap between qualification for clean election that would give you whether it's one round or the other multiple rounds, specifically the first threshold, that qualification where you receive your first amount of funding. And when you qualify for the ballot, because at this point, if we're looking at July 17th with the second one, Mayor, what is the date on your qualification? So I actually, the only change that I'm offering you tonight is financial. Okay, so the same date. So what is the different, like how are we going to, the reason I'm asking that is because there's gonna be about a three week period, three and a half week period where someone might have funding not qualify for the ballot. And then we are gonna rely on an affidavit that someone's gonna give that money back and I guess does that mean the clerk's job is to find them? Can someone help me understand what we're looking at and then how we're gonna fix it? I think we have to send that out on the ballot. Yes, Ms. Could I, I'll just jump in there since we're talking about my amendment in particular is that I intentionally didn't address all those other elements that are in the big red line document, which is the ordinance. So, cause I think that we can talk about that during council discussion of the materials in the first read. So that's why I didn't call it out is because I just was focusing on this one element knowing that we'll be talking about the whole ordinance as we go. Okay, then I'm happy to retract that inquiry at this point. So if we're looking just at your amendment and your numbers, I'm somewhere in between where you are and where councilor Travaro is. I guess my question is maybe for my colleagues. How do we get there this evening if we have competing numbers in front of us? So less of a question that has an actual answer and more of a, I think we need to let this cook a little bit more. Okay, thank you, councilor Zaro. I've got a hand up from councilor Travaro. And then I think my next hand is councilor Dion. Thank you, mayor. Sorry, it took my second to unmute. Yeah, I wanted to make that clarification to see if you were changing any of the timelines but it sounds like you are not doing that. That's not, I think it's something I'd really like to discuss but I didn't prepare an amendment specific to those. So no, the only amendment that I'm putting before the council tonight would change the dollar distributions and the annual operating budget allocation in FY24. Okay, so I definitely, I mean, this is the first time I'm seeing this amendment and just on a cursory glance, it does seem to significantly reduce the funding to a level that I feel is uncompetitive and will drive candidates from seeking to use the program. So it's definitely not something I would support tonight and they're probably not numbers that I would support overall. And just to kind of answer councilor Zaro's question about the timeline. So we discussed this extensively in workshop. The idea was to try to figure out some way that we can get an earlier disbursement to candidates before basically Labor Day. One data point that I've been shown was that in the last mayoral race, actually Mayor Snyder's campaign had spent $15,000 or more actually by June 1st. And so the idea is if we're allowing privately funded candidates to spend money at any time, but we are not giving any disbursements to candidates that are clean election funding until basically Labor Day, that puts a huge disparity between clean and privately funded candidates. And I think it's our obligation to try to figure out some workable way for this program. And so the idea was that in future years we would do an amendment to the charter to change the ballot qualifying deadline so that it didn't have this sort of archaic timeline that you can't turn in signatures until the end of August. And that would fix it, but that for this year only you would be able to sign an affidavit that would allow you to get clean election funds once you qualify at a slightly earlier date of July 15th, which is still quite a bit later than spending actually occurs, has been occurring in the traditional campaigns in the last two cycles. But the risk, I mean, it would be an enforceable affidavit and they would only be able to get a disbursement in the amount equal to the uncontested amount. So the risk would be limited by those two factors. So that's what I have. I think my feeling is that if we're going to postpone this we ought to kind of reaffirm because we did have a pretty substantial discussion about the structure at the last meeting and it seemed to make sense to everybody. So rather than opening up the entire can of worms again I would like to reaffirm kind of a commitment to that structure and see if we can work on the numbers a little bit. Okay, thank you, Counselor Travaro. Again, we're just talking about this one amendment at this moment, Counselor Dianne. I could favor your amendment because it's driving the price down. I can't escape the fact that we have to pay for this in a budget and I feel like we're on the track that we need perfect in order to be satisfied as opposed to good. I share Counselor Zarro's reluctance this evening. That's how I'm perceiving it to have a vote because I too have questions. I mean, I see this idea of prorating that makes sense to me that way you maximize the dollars against the backdrop of multiple candidates. They all don't get a perfect sum but they get citizen support. The idea of an enforceable affidavit. I don't know. I don't know how you enforce that. You gotta get a judgment and you gotta collect a judgment. I mean, it just seems we're stretching so hard to make it perfect. If I can't explain this, this will probably take a 10 story elevator ride to explain it to a constituent. I'm not doing a good job. It's becoming incredibly complex. I've championed clean elections repeatedly in the state legislature and ran under that status only once because I needed staff assigned just to manage clean election reporting requirements. If a mayoral candidate spent money in June in a bid to be mayor, some of my political experts would say you spent your money too early. No one's paying attention, right? Nothing happens till after Labor Day in May. That's the problem with clean elections. There's so many myths, legends about what happens. I've seen people collect a lot of a lot of money and they're still citizens. They never won. People can see through the money. I share Councilor Rodriguez's concerns about how much money we're gonna spend because I don't think money determines who gets elected. I agree with Councilor Ali. It's shoe leather, knocking at doors, having a message that resonates with people. They need citizen support. And as much as I admire my former colleague from the Senate, my seatmate, as a traditional candidate, if I was beholden to someone, they never knocked at my door because I thought it was regular people giving me regular money. And as one often said to me, if you're gonna ask me for five, I'll give you 50. If you're gonna ask me for 25, I'll give you 100. But there was no quid pro quo. So I'm really reluctant to throw this much money on the subject of this, on the assertions made by a mathematical table and we call it historical data. And therefore we're supposed to rely on it like a talisman. It's the only way to go forward. I can't do that. So I wanna read the, do we correct the foreign country piece? I mean, we haven't. All right, this is a rhetorical question you can answer later, but I wanna make sure that 1%, if someone owns 1% of corporation that was established in Delaware, I can't ask her for money. But then I could. I mean, are we so frightened of Canada? I guess that's the subtext. Somehow they'll influence the mayoral race in Portland. I don't know. I don't know. These things concern me. So I need to read all of this, right? And I'm sure Councilor Phillips, this is complicated. Councilor, I wanna use your term. It's complicated for me. I've gotta read this through and mull it over and see if Delaware is excluded. I know it sounds like a silly comment, but was that really the intent? 1%, that's a substantial and 1% don't equate. Substantial to me is 60 or 70% ownership in an entity. You know, why are we afraid of that? I don't know. So I support your amendment, Madam Mayor, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to vote this evening with clear conscience and clear understanding of all the terms that are incorporated in this body of paperwork. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comment. Next, I'll go to Councilor Rodriguez and then Councilor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. So I think I agree with what I've heard that perhaps most of us would appreciate more time to dive deeper into the actual amounts. However, I agree with Councilor Chavarro that today perhaps we could reaffirm our guidance on the actual structure of it and even perhaps some of the questions that Councilor Sahar brought up. So with that in mind, given that we have your amendment on the floor right now, which is pretty much only addressing the numbers, should we consider either withdrawing it and postponing or so that way we can have the substantive discussion about the model and not the amounts? We're trying to move us forward tonight. Good question, we can. I think we can, how to proceed really, what's the best way to do that, Michael, we've got an amendment on the floor. Do we want to kill it, postpone it? Usually we don't postpone an amendment. That's why I'm asking. Got a lot of lawyers in the room. Daniel's looking at me. That's what the y'all are talking about. That's what the y'all are talking about. Michael's gonna let me jump in. Thank you, Michael. You're pacifying me. I think that if you wanna talk structure, I would say withdraw the amendment and talk structure and then postpone that and come back to the amendment so that you can get into it. I'll happily withdraw my amendment at this time. I second. Okay, thank you. However, so Councilor Rodriguez, you've got the floor and I do wanna hand it over to Councilor Ali because he had his hand up earlier. Well, because my comments were meant to give us guidance on that amendment, I will kind of pause now and see where the discussion goes. I do have some other thoughts about the model, but I don't think we're quite there yet. Great. So we can get into that discussion, but Councilor Ali, do you wanna pause also because yours were specific to the amendment? Yeah, because you were drawing your amendment changes what I was going to say, but I'm gonna throw it out there. I am looking for the possibilities of your amendment and Councilor Travaro's former. Okay. Something like that, yeah. Great. Okay, everybody, we're good to move on. Okay, I think procedurally what we would, oh, Corporation Council. We'll finish that and then I just have a question. Okay. So I think procedurally what we would normally do is look at the amendments that's in our packet next. Councilor Travaro, you've got an amendment. Do you wanna make a motion so that we can talk about that content of that amendment? Sure. I guess I would move the amendment at this time. You, did you wanna? Okay, because we have to decide whether, so are you thinking we wanted to go straight to the main motion without the amendment? Sorry about this little procedural input here. I guess all I was wondering is if you're, if you wanna talk structure, I would say dive into the details of the proposal in front of you. I think this amendment's focused on funding. I believe Councilor Travaro, it's more funding focused. Yeah, so I would say that I would hold those, hold those talk structure, get guidance there. We can move to postpone everything after that. If that's the way the council would like to go. That's okay with me. Is that, I'm looking around the dais. Councilor Travaro, does that sound okay to you that we'll take up the main motion and then we can talk about amendments later? Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, the floor is open for discussion. Oh yeah, we do have a motion and a second on the order in front of us, which is order 171. So we do have so much paper from the various workshops on the memos and all of that. I wanna acknowledge that, but what we're acting on tonight is this, 21 pages of ordinance language. Spent a lot of time here this week. Yes, yes. So the action before the council tonight is amendment to Portland's city code chapter nine, clean elections. So every, the 21 pages we've got in front of us is what you all looked at at the April 3rd workshop and what constitutes the first read. First to council Rodriguez, then to councillor Zaro. Thank you, mayor. So to this draft that we have, I will say that I am in favor of what's presented of us and I think it's representative of what we discussed in the workshop. And I just wanted to speak specifically of the, what I think is one of the quote unquote points of contention, which is the date of the first distribution. I am personally satisfied with what we have currently in front of us, which includes the affidavit that the candidates would sign. And also the other, I forgot the words that council Zaro used to describe both of these things. I guess like risk management strategies. The other one being that we only limit that distribution to the uncontested amount that we've indicated on the package. So again, just want to say that I'm speaking in favor of what's in front of us. Yeah, I guess that's it, that's all I have. I didn't want to get into the amounts. No rush, councillor Zaro. Thank you, madam mayor. Okay, so just to reiterate what I was saying before, I agree with what someone said in public comment that we need this first election to be successful. And I think if we're having trouble explaining, a little bit of the dates, the funding, it might not be successful in the same way that it might be if it were underfunded, which is the other alternative. So I feel like maybe we are over complicating a little bit at the moment because there are a lot of variables in front of us. I do have a couple of concerns about the amount and I've been pretty open about that. I think we do need to come down a tiny bit on a couple of the positions, especially as we're looking at the budget. But again, we want to be really intentional about it. So looking at what has been proposed this evening and the general reaction of our colleagues looking at the sheer volume, I don't know how we can reaffirm our commitment to something without taking an actual vote, but I do believe that we could move forward in good faith to postpone this to next week, get together, iron out the final details. It sounds like there actually are a few more that folks have even brought up this evening that I hadn't thought about yet. So again, I just want to reaffirm that. I really appreciate the leadership that you and Councilor Tavara have put into this so far. Really, really do. Thank you. But that's kind of where I'm at right now. We can get into it. We can start throwing numbers from the floor. For one, think that would be a really bad idea considering what this journey, the journey that this just went through to get on our desks this evening. So what's one more week in the grand scheme? Thank you. I'm gonna jump in. Thank you, Councilor Zorro. So I spent a long time getting familiar with this document this weekend. I'm not gonna talk about numbers at all. So my intention here is just to dive into the ordinance, the city ordinance that would be before us for action tonight, and I have a few questions about it. We learned that the intention regarding the affidavit, which would be employed if the funds were distributed, so municipal funds distributed to a potential or an intended candidate. So you haven't yet qualified for the ballot, but you're gonna get a distribution of funds. The intention, again, is that there would be an affidavit sign. So if for some reason or another you drop out of the race or you don't get the required number of signatures to land on the ballot, that you would need to pay that back. Is there a language in this ordinance draft that is specific to that so that everybody could be very clear that that provision is only a one-year provision and that the intention is that there would be a charter amendment sent to voters to move the deadlines so that distributions could happen earlier than the dates right now, which the first date to turn in papers to qualify for the ballot would be August 14th. So I have a few questions, that's one of them. Does the ordinance language make clear that this affidavit provision is just a one-year fix? I think the short answer is no. We did not attempt to imply any sort of charter division or amendment in this ordinance. So the way that it's written, and I think it's page 301 of your packet, if you're looking at the packet page numbers, the timing of the initial disbursement bottom part C in the event that the initial disbursement prior to the candidates being able to qualify for the ballot, the amount of the initial distribution shall be the amount specified for uncontested races and subsectionary. To receive this initial distribution, a certified candidate must sign the affidavit required above if the certified candidate has not qualified for the ballot and has no opponent. The remaining balance owed to the certified candidate for the initial distribution shall be distributed by the city clerk as soon as possible, once both the certified candidate and an opponent qualify for the ballot. So this was intending to be a, to counselor Diane's point, not trying to get it perfect, but this is supposed to live on its own in case this council does not take action on changing the dates. Just a question, what page are you reading from? From the packet, it's 301 to 302, it's section. Could you refer to the page number of the packet that you handed out, maybe? Since everybody's looking at your, okay. Oh, great. Oh, I'm looking at it. It is, okay. I found it now, thank you. Oh, great, okay. Is there an extra one? Do I have that? It's 301, 301, down the bottom. Pack it. Okay, thank you for that, that's helpful. So it would be incumbent on this council probably then to amend the ordinance after year one to reflect that. And it would also be incumbent on the council to make sure that there's a charter amendment that goes to voters in November that would affect the following year's election. Yeah, yes. And I guess the other caveat would be if this council decides to postpone, we could try to have amended language for to anticipate that for next Monday, trying not to open up the canterworms too much for us to have a bunch of amendments over the next week. But we could try to, that's something that this council picked up on. We could try to work on it as one of your sponsored amendments. Yeah, a couple more questions if you want to hang by the mic. So section, cause I think if we were to postpone until next week, we, I would, I'd love to use tonight to have as much discussion as we might need to because a week is not that far away and whatever we would be, unless there are changes to tonight's first read, we'd have the same first read in the packet on Wednesday or yeah, on Wednesday. So I want to be thoughtful about that. So on page 292 at the bottom, there's section nine dash 63. And I wanted to be clear here. So my understanding in the current structure is that you do not have to be qualified as a candidate in order to receive municipal funding. This provision of the ordinance amendment in front of us says that eligibility for participating candidates to qualify as a certified candidate eligible to receive and retain payments from the fund, a candidate must, and then number one, meet the requirements to be listed on the ballot as a candidate for mayor city council or the school board pursuant to the provisions of article four of the city charter and article four of the city charter talks about how we get on the ballot. And so it seems to me here that I could be mistaken but I want to be just explicit. It looks like you have to qualify for the ballot in order to get the distributed clean election funds. And I would want to be really careful about that before we move on it. And if it's not something that you can answer now, I'll flag it as a question. I know this was talked about at the workshop, so I don't, I don't. Mayor. While he's here of it, while he's researching the, may I ask a quick question of corporation council? Sure. In regards to the Zaffa Davis and the monies that should be returned to the city, if the candidate just refuses to do so, can you give us just a primer of the practical mechanical process you'd have to engage into at least attempt to recovery or just write it off from the beginning? Well, I mean, yes, it certainly may be difficult to collect those funds after they've been spent. It's all gonna depend and, you know, you can go through the process of asking for it nicely, asking for it less nicely, you know, filing a complaint and, you know, and a collections action, taking steps like that. It's a lot of work and you may end up getting nothing in return. Thank you. I just wanted to bring that up, Madam Mayor, because we use words that make us feel really good that we've done something when I'm just trying to highlight the fact that these affidavits make great language, but as a practical matter, mean little or nothing. So we at least accept the fact that if we give money to a candidate who fails to become an actual candidate, kind of like a conditional certificate of occupancy before you actually qualify to have one and they disappear, then our money is disappeared. That's, I'd rather be frank about that than hide behind the idea that there's this legal affidavit that will return money to the treasury that belong to the people to begin with. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that little segue. I'm gonna take the floor back because I've got a few more questions and I think we have an answer. Yeah, thank you for the time. So this may not be as eloquent as it should be, but the idea here in section nine dash six, six threes in order for a certified candidate to be able to receive and retain the payments. So that word in that opening paragraph in able to retain the payments of not a is that you do have to qualify for the ballot. So our intent there was to clarify, receive and retain as a certified candidate. And then further down where it talks about having to return if you do not qualify for the ballot. So as I think we discussed one of the workshops, there are a lot of levers here. And when you pull one, it sort of pulled another. So that was our attempt to show that in order to retain the payments that are distributed from the fund, you have to qualify for the ballot. Got it. Okay. Thank you. That helps and satisfies the question. Another quick question for you. I think quick is page 295. This has to do with funding that a candidate may have let's say you've run for city council before you have money that's in a bank account. So my question here is in section five, if a candidate has accepted contributions that are not seed money contributions as defined here in or do not comply with these seed money contributions restrictions, the candidate is ineligible to be a certified candidate in the same election cycle. So how does that, I guess I wanna be thoughtful and careful about how that applies to somebody who might have a bank account with previous money raised. So that is actually a different section that I'm probably not gonna put my finger on. Those are two independent issues. Okay. So funding from a previous campaign in a bank account needs to be disposed of prior to and there's a limitation in that you can take, you can contribute your own amount of seed money to your own campaign. So the $100 you can take out of your account, put it over to your seed money account. The rest has to be disposed of similarly to what the state allows on page 293 page 293 B5 if that is that if the candidate has any campaign. Nope, that's not the right vote for. That the candidate has disposed of campaign surplus funds that according to the requirements of 21A including donating such surplus to the fund and it carries on. One of the allowances under the state statue is to do a restricted or unrestricted donation to the municipality. So we sort of just made it explicit that you can donate to the Clean Elections Fund if you wish. The section that you were referencing, Mayor is basically if you happen to go out, you're not familiar with the system you collect. It's limited to $500. But if you collect $500 instead of $100 a bunch of times and you turn in your seed money report, sorry, but you violated the restrictions on seed money you'd have to go traditional. Okay. The intent of that section that you pointed out. Okay. Thank you. I had seen the declaration of intent language but then when I read further I was like, I was a little confused by it. Okay. The last question I have for the moment is actually in article six, the campaign finance section, which is at the very end of the packet for everybody. I'm looking at my own printed version here. So I'm gonna tell you which page I'm on. At least I'm gonna try to. Oh, great. Okay. Thank you. So right. So campaign finance section six. I do, I don't want to forget about this. We at the very end, section 995, we talk about campaign contributions reporting. And so, you know, part of my thinking going into tonight is what are we spending? What are we putting in the budget as we move from tonight's receipt of the city manager's budget? What do we need to do in the finance committee over the next few weeks? And so I'm focusing on the reporting. And right now we have $30,000 that we've been told is enough. And I have a concern there that I wanted to ask the clerk to speak to because I'm not sure 30,000 is gonna get us there. And I think it will be something that we we're obligated to do within the ordinance, right? So looking at the ordinance language can actually can you just weigh in a little bit on where we are with regard to knowing how much it's gonna cost and what our next steps look like? So one of the things that my office did was we had to put on RFP for a clean elections database because even at the 30,000, which has been talked about over the last couple of years of what the estimate was for this one time cost of providing in a searchable online database for campaign finance, it's over the $25,000. So we did an RFP for it. It was out there for a month. We received two responses. We that just closed two days ago. We haven't scored them, but the upfront cost for one of them is $454,000 with an annual fee of $65,000. And the second one is $504,000 with an annual fee of $78,000. So just keep that in mind as we're putting funds into this budget that an online searchable database is not gonna be a one time fee. It is extremely expensive. And again, it was out there for a month, only two responses, we have not scored them. So there's not much other detail I can give you other than the two preliminary numbers of what that award base is for upfront costs to put something like this together. Right now we upload our campaign finance reports, the PDFs go on our website. It's arguably not searchable. So that's why this was put in there. And we did the RFP process and that's where we are right now. Do you see a way to work around that so that we can be more in line with the projected? Even if we were to work with these two individuals, there's no way I don't think we would even be able to get the cost halfway down to do this. I did talk with the state and their stuff that they've been working on is thousands of dollars as well for some updates that they're doing so they're different stuff. So it's costly. Thanks. And I just wanted to weigh in just for a minute on that piece of it, because as I mentioned during the budget discussion earlier, I just, I know you all probably heard me. I just want to remind you, I only budgeted 290,000 for this. So I'm getting, as I'm writing my list here, I'm getting a little concerned about collections, actions, because I know how costly they are. I'm actually wondering, I know Ashley didn't include any specific additional staff to address this, but this program, as the more we get into it and the more complicated it gets, I worry about whether or not she's going to need a staff person, at least a part-time person to help her with this. We have that four to 500,000 plus 60 to 70 each year thereafter for the database. And then the proposal in front of you potentially doubles that 260,000 that I included in there. So we're looking at like more than a million dollars that's almost tripled the cost. And so I just want, I just, that that's why this cost has been jumping off the page to me and really making me very nervous when I'm looking at the budget in a bigger context. I know we're not specifically talking about the budget piece of this right now, but it's just something to really think about, especially as we move forward because it's a significant expense. And yet work we have to do. So I actually have Councillor Travarro's hand up and then I'll go to you, Councillor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. I'm trying to remember the things that were in my mind. I wanted to also point out that the number of clean election checks compared to the number of signatures, the, I mean, the effort to get clean election checks and qualify for clean elections is so much more difficult than getting signatures to qualify for the ballot. And I think that while we are taking some risk in this proposal, when you look at it globally, it's a very small risk to be able to offer something that makes this program much more competitive. And you know, Councillor Dianne, I think said that it doesn't have to be perfect. Well, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be workable. It should be something that's attractive to candidates and it should be something that we can build on with knowledge of how to go forward next year. If we create a program that's not viable, it's not gonna give us any information on how we need to improve upon it for future years. So, you know, it's not, this is living up to the obligation that the voters mandated. And so I think we have a responsibility to put forward our best effort and make every effort to make it attractive and usable to candidates. So with that, oh, the other thing is for this year, we're not using an online program. So that's not part of the kind of upfront first cost in the first year of this anyway. But I think, again, we have an obligation to fund this properly, whatever we decide is allocated to candidates, we have to be willing to make good on that. So, you know, I think we need to take a look at this in the finance committee and see, you know, how much does this increase actually impact the overall guidance that the council has given on the budget? Because I think it might still fit within that. I think that that was everything. Oh, yeah, and as far as the online program, I know that the clerk actually was working with the state and I know that there is an expense to that as well. So I know it's no expense, but perhaps working with them may be a better option than outsourcing it. I'm not 100% sure on what those costs are exactly. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Councillor Tavaro. Councillor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. I came in here tonight hoping that we might be able to just vote on this and make sure that it happens. But as things are unfolding, it sounds like it's going to be complicated or it is not going to be complicated. It is more complicated than I thought when I was living home around 345. My question is, and I want us to be honest to ourselves, are we sure that we will be ready to vote on this by Monday? That is one. The second question is a cooperation council or city clerk. If for whatever reason, I make a suggestion that in order to get it to whether it is perfect or close to perfect, we postpone this to the 15th. Will that be a problem on your timeline of putting it on the ballot? Or no, on making sure that it works for June or whenever we come up with. So it doesn't need to go on the ballot, but the further we push this down the road, the less time my office has to get this program put together. So the forms are ready. There's education out there on how this is going to work with potential future candidates and spreading that out there because the further we go, the less time that is and then there's not going to be as much time to educate everyone on how the program is going to work. That's a little flip. What did I say the other time? Is it catch 22 or catch 55? And then you told me that that was not the way and I said that is the Ghanaian in me flipping it upside down. Yes, I said that before to her because I rather vote on something that prospective candidates would look at it and say, hey, this is clearly understandable than based on what I'm seeing now, I don't know if we're ready to vote on this or money, but that is me. If my colleagues believe that by Monday they will be ready for us to move it forward, I will go along. Thank you, counselor. First of all, this seems like a perfect time to, we know that we've got Paul Riley with us from elections. Thanks for being here, Paul. This is all gonna fall to you. Thanks for being here, that's really great. I actually on the point of simplicity that counselor Ali was just talking about, one of the things that I was thinking about over the weekend was, and I think counselor Travarro touched on this too, the in my view, we want this to help candidates. We don't want it to be something that is an extra burden. And so as I was trying to think about it, I was thinking about, can we coincide the collection of signatures with the collection of qualifying contributions? So instead of having a bunch of different deadlines, in some ways, it's nice to think about, you've got an August 14th deadline for your signatures, could that be your deadline for your qualifying contributions? And that unlocks the fund. I think the way that we see it in the current ordinance, there are multiple deadlines associated with signatures, or sorry, with qualifying contributions, and then you've got that other deadline associated with signatures. So as we think about moving forward and how we explain things to potential candidates and simplify it for them, I was thinking about that, how do we maybe align the deadline so that the work can all be seen as integrated. If you have a declaration of intent and you wanna be a clean elections candidate, collecting signatures, collect your qualifying contributions, and then be qualified. But that might take a little bit of work to think about that language. Councillor Dianne, did you have a hand up? I want just a question to the lawyers and then a comment that probably circles back to them and Corporation Council. It would be really nice if we clarify the foreign thing. I hate to harp on this, but if my brother was a significant equity partner in an LLC in Boston, it appears he can't contribute to my seed money, right? It doesn't seem right. It precludes the fact that I may have colleagues and friends outside the state of Maine who might wanna assist in a candidacy. And I'll use myself an example because I don't wanna put it on the spot with anyone else. In terms of my colleague, Councillor Travarro's commentary, regarding my need for good rather than perfect. I think there's a term that she employs. We all employ and I have difficulty with this. What constitutes a viable campaign? There's an underlying text to clean election that it's gotta be funded in a certain way that you're viable or the people who wanna participate. I don't know what a viable campaign looks like because every campaign is unique to the candidate and they're assumed constituency. So again, having all the money doesn't guarantee success. So my question for Council is what does the charter expect? Does it define what substantial funding looks like? Does it give us parameters? And that would be very important to consider on the finance committee because if it's a term without meeting, then every number satisfies. And that could prove to be a real debate here because we get back to the subjectivist. I think a mayor all race should have $200,000. I could run a pretty good campaign for 200,000. On the other hand, if I hear my colleague, Councillor Rodriguez, I think we could get it done in 50,000 too. Either they like what you have to say or they don't. So throwing more money at them doesn't guarantee anything else. But this legal question of what constitutes substantial funding and satisfaction of the charter language is something I would like to know. Thank you. If you find anything. Thank you, councillor. Is that a question? I think that was directed toward legal counsel. And if that's the case, then I'll try answering it. Well, only because I was there with regards to the charter perhaps I'm maybe in a better position to try to answer at least the first question. And no, someone down in Delaware is not foreign. I did raise with the Charter Commission that that's something that we could say under main law. But there's a definition, what they meant was foreign as far as in another nation. And so we have proposed the definition in here that the foreign investor means someone who owns or controls part of the business entity, but is a government of a foreign country or is a foreign national from another country. And so that's the definition that we've adopted for this ordinance. I did see that under foreign investor, that's fine. I was concerned about the other previous language as well. Right, with regard to the full funding that was what was proposed by members of the Charter Commission. And there wasn't much explanation as to what was intended by full funding. They simply said they wanted to see full funding. A fiscal note is not required as part of the charter process, but one was voluntarily suggested by a Charter Commission member. And that was the $260,000 amount that you'll see cited in the report. Jim, what was the actual word that was used in the charter? Was it full? It was. Let me take a look. This is with regard to question three. The city council shall establish and fully fund a city of Portland clean election fund, provide campaign funds to qualify candidates for elected municipal offices. That was the language. And that's what'll be added to the charter, that exact language you just tried. Okay. Jim, can you repeat that language one more time? The city council shall establish and fully fund a city of Portland clean election fund. Now, one quick thing, discussion was had for just a moment with regard to the database. There is a timeline with regard to the clean election ordinance that had to be in place for fiscal year 2023, 2024. That's with regard to the clean elections fund. That same language doesn't appear with campaign finance. Does not. It does not. Okay. So we wouldn't have to do that campaign finance piece with the database until a future year. It just says that you must do it. It does not have a time. Oh, so it's up to us. I guess if we budget for it in FY24 or some future year. Councilor Travaro, I see you have a hand up. Yeah, so I've learned a little bit about this in terms of interpretations of that language. And, you know, it is new. So there's some ambiguity, but my understanding of kind of likely interpretation of fully fund is that we as a council have kind of more discussion over what we determined to be maximum distributions to candidates, then we do over fully funding that. So once we decide, you know, each candidate is going to get X amount, then we are potentially obligated to fund the fund to provide for that. And that's kind of part of why I added that piece to my amendment where the council can replenish the fund because it kind of in my mind gives us an opportunity to live up to that fully funding obligation in the charter. The other thing I would say, I know that there was language, I think in the Charter Commission report about how much this program would cost annually. But I believe that that was kind of an annual average estimate not necessarily considering the differences in mayoral years. And, you know, my sense is that the first year of the program, because it's new and because it's a mayoral year, it's going to cost more upfront than it will in the off years. And I think actually the Clean Elections Group may have some projection data on how after, you know, you make that kind of upfront funding, then year over year, there's some carryover funding. And I think Anna Keller testified to this earlier that would allow us to have funding available even in the mayoral years, you know, going out. So, I mean, we're far off from this at this point, but my intention when and if I ever offer this amendment would actually be to amend the amendment so that the only year that we budget 500,000 would be in the first year and then thereafter it would be 250. I think that that is everything I had to say right now. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. I actually have a quick question. Jim, do you want to address? This is just a little bit more gloss on the fully fund piece because that first paragraph is what I read to you. Below it, beginning in fiscal year 2023-2024 to allow for implementation of the November 2023 election, the city council shall provide an independent allocation from the city's budget each year to ensure the clean election fund is sustained at a level that facilitates competitive campaigns for participating candidates who meet qualifying criteria. The clean election fund shall be administered by the city clerk and the city council shall appropriate sufficient funds to ensure their adequate resources including paid staff to effectively administer the fund. But that first sentence perhaps of that second paragraph may provide some guidance for you. The city council shall provide an independent allocation from the city's budget each year to ensure the clean election fund is sustained at a level that facilitates competitive campaigns for participating candidates who meet qualifying criteria. Thank you. I'm going to just jump in here. I think my understanding of that as I read through counselor Travarro's proposed amendment tonight is this is an annual budget decision. And I think that's what you're saying is that every year the council is going to need to approve a budget that contains funding for clean elections. So even if you write it into an ordinance that's, I guess that the work is going to have to be done and the context is going to have. So I would think it would be worth thinking about whether we write that into the ordinance or we just know that it's all you're always going to have to make a budget allocation. Can go ahead. Related to that issue. Do you mind if I ask Jim a question? No, go ahead. A clarifying question, Jim. And if you can earlier at the beginning of the presentation, you discussed briefly the binding future boards concept. Can you talk about that concept with respect to the numbers that we're talking about right now that may be included in the ordinance? Well, if you were to say that the council shall, you know, in mayoral years, mayoral election years it's $500,000. It's $250,000 in other years. You can say that. You can put that in your ordinance, but it doesn't bind a future city council from saying more or less. And maybe what you might do is just fall back on the language that's actually here in the charter and use that as your guidepost and each year appropriate that sum that you believe is necessary. And maybe just we had borrowed from Santa Fe and put an $800,000 cap. And basically if you got to 800,000 there should be sufficient money that maybe you don't need to appropriate that year when you've got this turning over from year to year. But maybe the way to go is not to put a specific number in but just to rely on the charter language to make sure that it's sufficient to facilitate competitive campaigns. And then each year it's the council's decision. Jim, can I ask a follow-up? Are you saying then you would want just that to be part of the budget allocation is what you're suggesting in terms of numbers for candidates and all of those specifics? What would say is the money that would allow you to make those distributions, the source would be this funding as well as any donations and any money that's thrown in from carried over by this far as a source it would be up to the council to appropriate that amount of money and use this as a guidepost. Jim, I think I have just a quick follow-up there and then I know of Councillor Dian and Councillor Fornir. So I'm looking at the, it's in our first read packet. It's this three-page document that has the various elements of seed money and other distributions spelled out but the last page is kind of what I tried to mimic here. It's this page. So again, this is in our first read and it contemplates 500,000 from the current budget or the upcoming budget, 20,000 in change of qualifying contributions and but the need for the total distribution under the clean elections program it would be $578,000. And so what we see is that this funding model has been prorated at 0.9%. And so what this is telling me is that we wanted to give the mayor candidate 120,000 but we were only able to fund at 108,000. And so in the ordinance language that we're looking at tonight, I think what happens here and that my question is I just wanna be clear that I'm correct here is that for the 12,000 or so that each mayor candidate didn't get from the clean elections fund because it needed to be prorated that's the funding that they could then go out and do private fundraising for so that they meet that funded amount. Am I right on that? Okay. Well, I see nodding heads yes and shaking heads no. So I'm- So not quite. So under the first week proposal we got rid of the proration, if you remember. It is a first come first serve. What this chart shows is if you had kept prorations. So and it is confusing and I apologize but we tried to keep the charts consistent so you could compare different proposals. So the proration column was still there to show even if you did the 500,000 you were gonna be short in some way. Now under the first week proposal it's first come first serve. So those that got in their qualifying contributions both initial and supplemental would be the first ones to get funding. Somebody that came in later and if the fund is depleted that first come first serve situation would be it's still have to submit their qualifying contributions but then could go out and hit the pavement to collect under sort of traditional rules. So some clean elections candidates might get fully funded and some clean elections candidates would do private fundraising. Under the original proposal without councilor Travara's amendment that's part of the packet tonight. Okay, so the amendment gets- Just like trust that- Oh, by having a city council allocation. But in the event, so it says the city council may by resolution appropriate additional amounts. If the council chose not to because it's the word may that would trigger the private fundraising. And because- Okay, so you said the pro-ration that's shown in this chart is not right. So we're no longer pro-rating. There is no pro-ration under the first. So it's there to show it as an example had you kept the pro-ration what it would have been. It basically would have reduced funding back. The reason I was nodding my head was just if you didn't do the pro-ration as in tonight's draft then yes, you could raise the extra money to the private funding up to the limits of how much you can. Okay, so I guess my comment there is that I feel like clean elections should put people on equal footing. And if people, if it's first come, first serve and some people, if you're still qualifying within appropriate deadlines but some people get their money first and other people have to fundraise to get that level that could be tricky. And then the other piece that would be concerning would be the amount of time it could take for that additional allocation to be made. And if I may, one of the issues we ran into trying to piece this all together is we could not come up with a simple solution to allowing multiple rounds of distributions with pro-ration because you don't know how much to pro-rate without sort of having those everybody comes in on the same day you certify and you figure out what's there and then put out the checks with this rolling continuing submitting supplemental unless you put all the supplementals on specific dates so you knew how much was in the fund at certain dates at time and release it all at once the pro-ration just didn't work with the multiple rounds as opposed to in an original one of our alternate proposals where we did two rounds we made it sure that it was two specific dates that had the papers turned in and released and the earlier date was a very limited amount that was released to make sure we didn't sort of get into a pro-ration although hypothetically you could have if everybody submitted on that first date. Right, and that's what I saw when I went back in our materials from the first workshop was there was that we have those different models that you built responding to the first workshop. Got it. Okay, I have three hands up. Councilor Dian, Councilor Fornir and Councilor Travarro. I'm gonna yield to Councilor Fornir. I'm just trying to clear there's a lot of information so I'm just trying to bring this back. So going back to kind of that last tail that we were on so if we are depleted and now the people that came forward for clean elections now have to do private fundraising is it to the clean elections limits or are they now a traditional candidate? So they're no longer clean elections, they're traditional. They would still have to qualify so you would still have to get your supplemental qualifying contribution. So you're under the, I think it's 150 for mayor, to then that money would go back to those funds you'd pretty much get it back and then that difference you would then be still considered a clean elections candidate but you would be able to fundraise to the max as a traditional candidate so that $500 contribution max is how we tried to draft it. So it somewhat defeats that purpose if to get the big money out but trying to make it as simple as possible if you did have to go and become that traditional candidate to do it as efficiently as possible. Okay. And then going back to the not binding from year over year. So in my mind it's like at the beginning of the year it comes in front of the council to say just like you're setting parking rates or whatever. So this year's clean elections allocations are proposed to be this council votes on it and that's what it is for that year. Is that kind of what we're thinking? I think that sort of has to be the crapshoot here is the charts in front of you are the averages over the last 10 years if you have one less mayoral or one more mayoral or any others it could swing things very differently. So every year you'll have to take a sort of guess at how many candidates you think will be running and running clean to set the adequate amount. And the contested and uncontested amounts I guess could be set somewhat more in stone to say okay if you're a mayoral candidate you're gonna get the 75,000 but your guess on how much put in a budget would be based on the number of candidates you have. Sure. Okay. And then my last question just about the chart so I'm understanding it. So if we had three mayoral candidates three at large, two for each of the districts two for the school board at large and then two for each of the school board districts and they all max out what they were able to get. The program would need to be funded at $367,000 and everybody would get their money. So you're looking at the mayor's chart. I know so many pieces of paper, thank you. So based on that proposal between and the difference here, she also does not have the seed money offset. So the total amount that would need it would be the 367 total but then you back out the qualifying fund. The 16,000, okay. Which is why when I first started talking about that those qualifying contributions needed do not necessarily match the first read numbers I just touched those. So that $16,000 number would swing one way or the other depending on what you determined was the required or right number of qualifying contributions. And in the first read packet I worked with the councilor to try to match the I don't want to use probation but the number of qualifying contributions for the amount of money you were getting. So it's sort of tracked amongst the different ballots. So if you may decide if it's less money there should be fewer qualifying contributions needed to get those figures but those haven't been touched in this in the past amendment. Great, that's helpful, thank you. I think my last comments and I know and I appreciate all my colleagues. This is a ton to go through and try and wrap your brain around. I am excited to run as a clean elections candidate. I think it's a great program and I'm glad that we're spending time to get this right. So I think I'm kind of in the middle of both of these structurally. I like what's what you put forward. I think that makes a lot of sense to me and I think I'm good with that. I think with the mayor's amendment I'm more in the middle with amounts. And so I don't think we're there yet on numbers but I'm getting closer. But I really appreciate the questions because there's some that I just haven't considered as we've had this conversation because it is a ton to go through and I have supported clean elections for a while. So I thought I had a pretty good understanding. I had no idea. So this is really beneficial. But I think that's all my questions for now. Thank you. Great. And next we'll go to Councillor Travarro on Zoom. Thank you mayor. Just to speak a little bit to the rationale behind the first come first serve versus pro-ration. The first come first serve is modeled after the state program. That's the language that they use. And my concern with the pro-ration was that basically I think it's tied to the previous iteration of the timeline. So you wait until everybody gets qualified at the last minute. So you know what your pool of candidates is and then you kind of divvy out the fund on a pro-rated basis. And to me that my concern with that is that it kind of allows us to preemptively underfund the program and not deliver on our promise to candidates. So, but again, the amendment that I have to give the council the option to replenish the fund, the idea that they would go out to raise private funds first they would only be allowed to raise up to what they would have qualified for clean elections. And second, it would be like a very, very, very last resort. You know, the fund would have to be depleted. The council would have to consciously decide not to to replenish the fund and only then would they be allowed to fundraise up to what they would have qualified for clean elections. I don't know, I can't see the full room to know how many hands are up. But I think at this point I would be willing to just make a motion to postpone this to our next meeting. We do have an additional hand up from councilor Ali. So I'm not sure if this is the exact right time, but I leave it to the council to, if somebody seconds, we'll take it up. Otherwise we'll continue discussion and councilor Ali, I'll look to you. Yeah, I will, I will ask my question and then I will second it. What? So it's kind of like a sandwich. Councilor Travaro made a motion and hold tight, okay? Yeah, what I was going to say that as we are looking at how to decide how much it is going to cost for every year, I don't know if the timeline on when people will take out papers will align with our budget timeline. So is it going to be supplemental or the council will have to meet again because our budget timeline ends by June. The school will bring theirs and then we will vote on it and it will go to the public somewhere in June. I think by the time we vote on the school, the Board of Education's budget, we're somewhere knowing what percentage of the tax increase is going to go in and we're wrapping up because nobody votes on the city side, right? Are we going to just buy alone X amount because we don't know how many people. Right now, we're having this conversation. We don't know if there's going to be one mayor or a candidate or 10 and we are in almost in May, right? So as we are moving this conversation forward, let's also look at that. I'm just sitting here thinking and then I said, let me just throw this out there and then figure out how we can factor that into the conversation. Councilor Ali, thank you for that. I'm going to have the city manager ask or answer your question, but quick before you make your second, can I just ask one more quick question? Okay. Are you going to try to make me remember both? Go ahead. No, no, you go ahead and answer the question with the funding. Okay, I was going to say for you, Councilor Ali, that that's one of my concerns is obviously this wouldn't be in place. I think we have to get it in place, but the fund itself wouldn't be in place till the next fiscal year. So having anything in place for June is going to be problematic. Brendan, our finance director, I would need to discuss with him, what funds we could appropriate specifically if there was anything prior to that fiscal year, if that was the council's choosing, but right now the way that this would be set up would be funding for starting July one. And I do think that having this in place, as long as we're done by the end of May is okay. We won't be taking up the city budget for final action till June 5th. And so that still I think works within that timeline, but I am concerned about any funds being expended before July one, because we don't have any specific funds set aside for this purpose at all. Thank you for letting me ask actually two quick questions. Just in the ordinance amendment, we understand the contested races and how the money would be distributed. I'm just blanking on whether or not there are specific dates in the ordinance that would trigger those distributions specific to this question. Yes, so I should know that because I'm, but I'm... Where you're gonna wanna look, mayor, is the seed money period, the qualifying period. And as part of the packet, there's a sort of chart, and I think you've referenced it in the past. This guy. Yeah, Councilor Navarro's proposal is sort of what I did to distinguish it from our other proposals. There's a key dates. That's right. So in the ordinance itself, it'll talk about, and I can point you to initial distribution, supplemental distributions and those dates, but the key dates just for simplicity's sakes are laid out here. And to clarify what the city manager just spoke about, it's not contemplated to have any funds distributed until July 17th to account for the budget. You would be able to start collecting your qualifying contributions and they arguably that the Treasury Department would have to create the fund for those checks to be deposited to, but there wouldn't be anything extended presumably until July 17th. So since the only action before the council is the ordinance, how do we approve dates for distribution? But that's what I was asking. Can you point me to the place in the ordinance where the dates live? It's in various places. Oh, okay. All right, as long as I trust you, as long as it's there, I just didn't see it. So if you, so there's in the definitions itself, it talks about the qualifying period and the seed money period, both subpart N and Q, and then in the actual body of the ordinance itself on starting on page 300, where it talks about distribution of funds to certified candidates. It talks about the amounts for contested and uncontested and then the timing subpart C on page, bottom of page 301, the timing. And we've, I think in councilor Travar's original graph, she had put specific dates. We had tied that back to sort of manage charter language for so many days before the election to hopefully address sort of future years. So you're not tied to, I think it all worked out for not following on weekends. Okay. I'll go ahead. So the 113 days, the initial. And that was one section that we've tried to correct with the amendment to not be so rigid for the city clerk's office. So that's in council Travar's amendment is a little bit more possible, but those are where the dates, the specific dates live. Okay. I'll let that be. And so I guess my very, I'll let that be just because it's here and I'll read it more closely, but the, my quick question that I wanted to ask before councilor Ali's second had to do with the clerk's office and the capacity for the distribution structure that's contemplated in this ordinance. So one thing to point out is that right now as it was written before the amendment is that it's, you know, it shall be distributed, what does it say? No later than 113 days. So that saying on July 17th is the has to be distributed. That means that we would need to put something in place where a individual needs to give us all of those qualifying contributions so we can certify them and verify them, then submit it to the accounting office to cut a check. So just because it says that, well it says it has to be distributed within 113 days right now, but we would need time before that to make that happen. So the deadline would be different. The deadline would need to be sooner than that to submit your stuff for that initial disbursement. That's why we really tried to work through this at the beginning and I know it seems really late, but to have everything taken out at the same time, you're a candidate, you're coming in, you're getting your paperwork to say that you're declaring as a candidate and you're getting your clean elections packet. Everything is done at the same time. It's submitted to us so we can verify everything together. The way this works right now is that a candidate can come in with their qualifying contributions. We then have to verify them, cut them a check and then they turn back around, they come back into our office again and we verify the signatures to become a candidate. So it's like two different times they're coming in and then we're looking at multiple rounds of supplemental. I hear everybody when they're saying it seems late, but just the flow of everything. A candidate is potentially going around and getting qualified contributions and then they're turning around when they can take out paperwork to become a candidate to get signatures. They're going around essentially twice. So I guess it would be helpful for me if we postpone to be able to have not only dates for distribution, but deadlines for submissions to the clerk's office so that you have the opportunity to, like you said, verify and turn everything around. So if the date of initial distribution is July 17th, what's the deadline for submission to the clerk's office? And then with each subsequent distribution date, I think that would be helpful because candidates are gonna be juggling so many deadlines for filing and other things that they don't wanna be disappointed on July 17th. If you say it'll take 10 days to turn around your distribution. That's where I'm going with that. Brandon. Just a point of clarification which also came up in this conversation is the, I don't, and Councilor Travara can correct me. I don't think the intent was to be so rigid that initial, you could be qualifying during the qualifying period. So you could be turning in your initial qualifying contributions up until a date certain. We can try to back out how early that has to be, but to do date certain to put everybody in at the same time, you may not pull your papers until August if you don't want to. So to back into those dates is gonna be a little tricky unless we start getting into everybody has to pull papers on the same day. Everybody has to turn them in on the same day, which we can certainly do. But the idea in the way the state works is it's sort of rolling. There is no set date for your initial qualification or your supplemental. It's sort of, it comes in and goes. Okay, so that means like, we wouldn't want to mislead anybody and say your initial distribution is gonna be this date because it all depends on when you get your other paperwork in. Okay, that helps, thank you. Okay, you've all indulged me in lots of questions. Councilor Phillips, I want, go ahead. So because of the way the charter language is written, nomination papers are released or to qualify for the ballot 127 days prior. The first day that you can turn those into the city clerk's office is 85 days prior, which is August 14th. So you can't turn in your nomination petition before then. And that's written in the charter. Brandy, can I ask just one quick question too? Maybe this is for Councilor Travarro. I'm not sure, but I'm slightly concerned about this in her amendment. The sources of funding number one indicates that if once the ordinance is passed, a special appropriation, the sum of 500,000 for 2324 will be deposited immediately upon adoption of that ordinance. That's gonna be prior to the fiscal year starting most likely. And I'm definitely concerned about that because I don't have a money tree out front. So I'm not sure exactly where I will get that money from. Okay. I'll defer to Councilor Travarro. I think I just, I used her language that they provided, but I think it is something that we would have to wait for the fiscal year. I think, I mean, as long as we understand or we can find it, I have to talk with finance director. I just have not, I don't have a specific source right now that I could draw on to fund that. And I just wanna note that. Yeah, I think the fiscal year starts July one, sorry. Yes, correct. Yeah. So I think wait until the fiscal year. I don't know that I had any specific intentions around that and maybe just that's a point of clarification. I'm fine with not immediately, but yeah. Thank you, Councilor. Okay. So lots of discussion. I know that we had the contemplation of a postponement, Councilor Travarro, do you still wanna make that motion? To postpone, yes. You wanna specify the date? Our next meeting, is that a week from today? It's a week from today, May 1st. Okay, postpone to May 1st. And we have a second from Councilor Ali. Okay. Sorry, it's still good. Okay, so we have a motion and a second to postpone this ordinance approval till next week. Any discussion on that motion? Okay, I'm not seeing any. So I think all I'll say is that we have this before us tonight. We had this before us in the first read. If you wanna see something different, we gotta work with our outside Council between now and I guess Wednesday or Friday is our option. So I put that out there. We don't have a lot of time to prepare something specific. Otherwise, we'll be looking at any changes that wanna be made would be made to this first read. Have any amendments prepared by Friday morning? For the packet wise, I think it would be nice to have everything put together. It's ideal, I mean, the tricky thing is you can always make amendments from the floor if you're in discussion like you just had with Councilor Travarro and that date doesn't have to be, I feel like things come from the floor, but we would do our best to do the work in advance. Okay, okay, motion to postpone to May 1st and we'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dion? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Travarro? Yes. Councilor Pelletier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Yes. Okay, order 171 is postponed to May 1st. Thank you everybody, I appreciate it. And will the clerk please read order 172. 2223, amendment to zoning map regarding R6 residential to B3 downtown business at 211 Cumberland Ab sponsored by the planning board, Maggie Stanley Chair. Great, and I'm gonna look to, I'm not sure exactly who's speaking to this, so I'll look to the interim city manager. I believe Kevin's here. Kevin Kraft, are you, and maybe Maggie as well. I'm here, thank you. Mayor, Kevin Kraft, Deputy Director of Planning and Urban Development, and we have Brandon Mazer, the newly appointed chair of the planning board here to be able to speak to the board's recommendation on this item. Oh, how funny. I thought about bringing a different tie in. So good evening, everyone. Again, it's been a long night and I will be brief on this matter. At the February 28th, 2023 public hearing, the planning board unanimously voted to recommend to the city council adoption of the proposed zoning map amendment from R6 to B3 for the area of land that includes 211 Cumberland Avenue and to add the site to the downtown height overlay map which governs height in the B3 zone. In reviewing the proposal, the board found that proposed amendments to be consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and noted that the changes would one, bring the existing Franklin Towers building into conformance with zoning for both density and height which would allow the applicant to rehabilitate existing affordable housing and to facilitate future housing development in the downtown would foster sustainable growth by providing contextually appropriate housing density in an approximate to neighborhood centers, public transit and along identified priority corridors and would provide opportunities for people who work in Portland to have the option to live in Portland. The vote was four in favor, none opposed with two board members absent and one recused. I'd be to answer any questions that may arise on this matter. Thank you very much for that introduction and Kevin, did you have more that you wanted to add? And Mayor, I do have some slides as is customary. If you'd like me to share those, if not all of the information is in the packet that was provided to the council, but happy to share my screen if you'd like. Are the slides the same as what's in the packet? Yes, just overall aerial of the site as well as the proposed zoning map amendment and the existing zoning. Well, if you can put it up, I think that would be great and that would give everybody a visual and then we'll go to public comment. Happy to do that. Okay, so has everybody seen that? Yes. Okay, so here's just an aerial of the site to 11 Cumberland Avenue. You all may be familiar with this. This is the location Franklin Towers. It's bordered by Franklin Street Arturial as well as Cumberland Avenue. The site is currently zoned R6. This portion of R6 is actually governed by the Bayside Height overlay map currently and heights range from 85 feet to 125 feet on the site currently. The existing Franklin Towers is roughly 175 feet tall. So the proposed zoning map amendment would extend the adjacent B3 zone over that 211 Cumberland Avenue parcel. And as Chair Mazer mentioned, sites that are in the B3 zone are governed by the downtown height overlay map. So along with that rezoning would come adding that parcel to the overlay map which we've highlighted here in the red box. The maximum permitted height would be 150 with street wall heights of 50 feet and 90 feet on the side streets, as you can see in this graphic. And then this is just the final component of the map amendment which would actually remove the parcel from the Bayside Height overlay map because it would be being added to the downtown height overlay map. And that concludes my presentation. So I'm happy to answer any questions you may have on the proposal that's before you. Thank you, Kevin, appreciate that. Okay, so before we go to questions to you, we'll see if there's any public comment on order 172. I don't, the council chambers has cleared out but we do have a couple of hands up on Zoom. So we'll just focus on Zoom and go right to Bill Higgins. Hello, we have a large short of three really low income which is under 30% of AMI, every median income and low income housing which is under 60% and these are leading to an increasing amount of homelessness in the city. Why can't we just look at increasing all building heights in the city in the back, especially the Bayside neighborhood to either what they're where the internet building is or the back bay towers is or those height limits that were approved years ago for the Bayside development that was going to go around where the Bayside trail is. Increasing the potential number of, these were all increased the potential number of affordable housing units for the city. And I speak of affordable housing units as those that qualify under the fair market rent limits and the early median income limits and have these limits also be updated to when the properties will be completed. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Bill. And next we go to Jay York. Jay, you'll have to unmute from your end. Okay, thank you very much and excuse my ignorance on unmuting. That's okay. I think that this zoning change is completely unnecessary for Portland Housing Authority to develop this parcel to increase their housing stock on the Portland Peninsula. And I think it sets a really dangerous precedent for pushing the boundaries of what's considered now the downtown zoning into a very residential neighborhood that has been at risk for so many years because of what the city has done to it in clustering services. I would advise all of you to not let this happen. I realized that it was not the planning board's ability to do this because it met all the criteria, but it is yours. And I again, thank you for your consideration. And I also thank you for the long conversation about clean elections because as council Ornier said, I thought I knew about it and I realized no, no, no, I knew very little. So thank you very much for your time and efforts. Thank you for your comment, Jay. Any other public comment on order 172? Seeing none, I'm gonna close public comment and come back to the council for a motion. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from councilor Rodriguez, is there council discussion on this issue before you? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote to approve order 172. Councilor Fornier? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dion? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Chabarro? Yes. Councilor Pellettier? Yes. Councilor Phillips? Yes. Mayor Snider? Yes. Order 172 passes unanimously. Will the clerk please read order 173? 2223, amendment to downtown height overlay and Bayside height overlay maps regarding 211 Cumberland abs sponsor by the planning board, Maggie Stanley chair. Two different orders kind of related. So I think we're looking to you, Mr. Mazer. Yeah, and I think as Kevin mentioned, the second order is really amending the overlay map. So you've already seen that slide and there's really no new information to add. Okay, thank you. That's what I thought, pretty straightforward. Any public comment on this order? Seeing none, we'll close public comment and come back to the council for a motion. Move passage. And Councilor Zahro with second from Councillor Fornir. Any questions or comments from the council? Nope, we will vote. Councilor Fornir? Yes. Councilor Rodriguez? Yes. Councilor Dion? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. Councilor Zahro? Yes. Councilor Chabarro? Yes. Yes. Will the clerk please read order 174. Order 174, 22, 23 amendment to the zoning map regarding repealing the C5 conditional zone agreement at 22 Park Ab sponsored by the planning board. Thank you, Anshale. Okay, here we go, thank you. I think I like being chair again. I'm pleased to present the planning board's recommendation for removing an existing C5 contract zone and the zoning 22 Park Avenue to a B2B business zone. The recommendation is in response to an application from Community Housing of Maine, which has proposed the zoning amendment to utilize an existing seventh dwelling unit to provide affordable housing. In 1991, C5 contract zone exclusively allows the use of the seventh dwelling unit to the YWCA, a former owner. At the February 20, 2023 public hearing, the planning board voted unanimously to support the proposed amendment, which consisted of one, removing the existing C5 contract zone at 22 Park Avenue that only permitted the YWCA to utilize the seventh dwelling unit for their team parent services program, and two, to rezone the parcel at 22 Park Ab to the B2B business zone, which permits multifamily dwellings and is consistent with the surrounding context. And we always like to get rid of contract zones where we can, so it was an added benefit. The vote was five in favor, zero opposed with two members absent that evening. Thank you very much for that. Is there any public comment on order 174? Seeing none, I'll close public comment and come back to the council for a motion. Second. Councilor Ali with a second from councilor Zaro is their council discussion. Seeing none, we can vote to approve. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Councilor Zaro. Yes. Councilor Travaro. Yes. Councilor Pellettier. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. That order passes unanimously and we'll move next will the clerk please read 187. Order 187, 22, 23, approving the renewal of Portland's participation in the Cumberland County home consortium sponsored by the Housing and Economic Development Committee Councilor Pius Ali chair. Thank you, councilor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. I think Mayor Davis might be on Zoom to speak to it. She is there. She is there, okay. She is here. Yes, Mary. Hi, Mary. Yes, I am. Good evening, councilors. The order in front of you is an order that will allow the city to meet a requirement of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. As you know, the city of Portland is a HUD entitlement jurisdiction and we receive federal home program funds as part of the Cumberland County home consortium. The city is the lead entity in the consortium. The other members of the consortium are the town of Brunswick and the remainder of Cumberland County. Every three years the city has to or every three years all of the members of the consortium have to recertify to HUD that they wish to continue to be part of the consortium and that's what's in front of you tonight is the city needs to affirm that they wanna continue to participate in the Cumberland County home consortium. Happy to answer any additional questions you may have. That's really helpful. Thank you very much for being here. Is there any public comment on order 187? I see none. I will close public comment. I'm gonna come back to the council for a motion, please. Second. Councillor Ali with a second from Councillor Fornir. Council discussion. I'm happy to vote in support of our renewal and to be part of the consortium. So I think we can go ahead and vote. Councillor Fornir. Yes. Councillor Rodriguez. Yes. Councillor Dion. Yes. Councillor Ali. Yes. Councillor Zauro. Yes. Councillor Treborrow. Councillor Treborrow. Yes. Councillor Palatier. Yes. Councillor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Snider. Yes. Order 187 passes unanimously. We'll move on to 188. Order 188, 22, 23. Moving the polling place for district true precinct to from the Portland Expo to the true ice arena for the June 13th, 2023 municipal election sponsored by Ashley Rand City Clerk. And for the record, will you tell us why we're making this change? So the Expo is being used as the temporary shelter. So we do have to move this for this election only. And this was done in 2019. So it has been moved over to the ice arena before and it will be upstairs when you enter into the building that corridor hallway. I've laid it out and sent it to the state. So they're aware of the polling location change as well. After this evening, once this gets voted on we'll send out postcards to the district to as well letting them know that this is a temporary change just for this June election. And then November, it'll go back to the Expo. That's helpful. Thank you. Any public comment on order 188? Seeing none, I'll close public comment. I look for a council motion from the council to approve. So moved. Second. Councilor Rodriguez. Second from councilor Fornir. Council discussion on this matter. I see none. We'll go ahead and vote. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Aye. Councilor Zaro. Yes. Councilor Trevaro. Yes. Councilor Pilatier. Yes. That order passes unanimously on the last item on our agenda tonight. Will the clerk please read order 189. Order 189, 22, 23, approving the agreement between the main department of transportation, Portland area comprehensive transportation system and Portland regarding improvements to Preble Street extension sponsored by Daniel West interim city manager. And this is just an agreement which has already been funded approved through the CIP. It's with PACs. They will pay 49% of this project. We'll be paying 51% or $409,000. And as I said, the funding has already been approved by the council. Great. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on order 189? Okay. I don't see any. So we'll close public comment. Come back to the council for a motion. So moved. Second. Councilor Rodriguez with a second from councilor Fornir. Discussion. No. We'll vote. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Papigas. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Councilor Treborrow. Yes. Councilor Pelleteer. Yes. Councilor Phillips. Yes. Mayor Seder. Yes. And that passes unanimously as well. And so the last item on our agenda is a motion to adjourn. Second. Councilor Ali. Second from councilor Fornir. And we'll vote to adjourn. Councilor Fornir. Yes. Councilor Rodriguez. Yes. Councilor Dion. Yes. Councilor Ali. Yes. Councilor Hazaro. Yes. Councilor Treborrow. Yes. Councilor Pelleteer. Yes. Councilor Phillips. This meeting is adjourned. Good night. Thank you everybody.