Portland City Council, with lots of talk but few major tweaks, nears final passage of mayor’s budget

The Portland City Council moved closer to adopting Mayor Keith Wilson’s budget after another drawn-out session tested members’ tempers and patience but once again left

the $8.5 billion proposal

largely unscathed.

For the second time in recent weeks, councilors tinkered at length with portions of Wilson’s 2026 fiscal year spending plan during meetings held Tuesday and Wednesday without touching the millions of dollars earmarked for the mayor’s

priorities around shelter expansion

or and livability programs.

And while they tussled over a pair of politically charged proposals to bring police overtime spending under council oversight and redirect some money for homeless camp sweeps to protect renters, neither mustered the votes to pass.

Ultimately, councilors struggled to set a pace that would allow them to tackle all of the

more than 120 amendments

they had wanted to bring forward. Despite a combined 30-plus hours of deliberations over the course of two days this week and a separate

marathon session last month

, dozens of councilor proposals withered and died without debate.

“I know there’s a lot being left on the table. I think everybody up here is disappointed and frustrated,” Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney said Wednesday night. “I have asked us many times today to move quickly and speak less, and I think for some of our colleagues that did not sink in. I am gravely sorry for all of us that that is the case.”

Still, the city’s new 12-member legislative body continued to leave its fingerprints on Wilson’s proposed budget, which seeks a series of layoffs, fee increases and service reductions to help bridge a

combined shortfall

of more than $150 million between Portland’s general fund and other service areas.

Members, for example, voted 8-4 on Tuesday to approve a measure by Councilor Eric Zimmerman to move $2 million from the city’s tree code enforcement program to parks maintenance, further closing what had been a nearly $7 million funding gap for upkeep.

They also passed, 11-1, a proposal introduced by Councilor Mitch Green on Wednesday that would take

$2.2 million in unspent police funds

from this fiscal year and move it into a council-controlled kitty that all public safety bureaus, not just police, could access to help fill vacant positions.

Other efforts were not successful.

Councilors defeated, 8-4, a controversial proposal Wednesday by Councilor Candace Avalos to move 75% of money projected for police overtime — about $15 million — into a council-controlled fund. And an attempt by Councilor Angelita Morillo to steer about $428,000 from the city’s homeless camp removal program — about 2.7% of the program’s $16 million outlay — to rent assistance failed to garner enough support with only six votes.

Morillo, who spent a period of time homeless when she was younger, lamented her amendment’s defeat.

“Maybe this is too personal to say,” she said, “but it’s weird bantering with people in the hallways that I love and care for and knowing that when I was houseless in college, if you found me on a park bench, you probably would have called the cops on me and made sure I was swept.”

Councilor Loretta Smith, one of the five members who voted against the measure, interjected: “Ma’am, I wouldn’t have.”

Tuesday and Wednesday’s actions followed

a series of tweaks

made by council three weeks prior on May 21. Those included a divisive proposal to divert nearly $2 million sought by Wilson for police to parks, which passed 7-5. Councilors also approved a plan to increase a fee on rideshare companies from 65 cents per ride to $2 per ride and

slash their own office budgets

by $120,000 annually.

Council members voted late Wednesday to further reduce their office budgets — currently $1.5 million per office — by an additional $41,000. The move was part of an effort to offset the

more than $700,000 deficit

inadvertently created in the city’s overall budget when they narrowly passed an omnibus amendment by Green on Tuesday that bankrolled several pet projects sought by some councilors.

It took the council more than 45 minutes alone to figure out how to pull what Councilor Steve Novick derisively called “the Green nihilism amendment” out of the red.

“I’ve twice now been likened to a Republican, Trump himself and now a nihilist by Councilor Novick. I find these comparisons objectional,” Green said in defense of his amendment, which had money for renter protections, arts and parks programs and other perks. “Say what you will about the optimism in my colleagues to solve complicated and competing challenges in a very dynamic and compressed timeline at this dais, it is at least a belief system.”

Earlier in the day, Morillo had observed that the persistent time-crunch councilors faced had contributed to imperfect policymaking and heightened tensions among colleagues.

“We had two weeks to put this entire thing together,” Morillo said. “So yeah, there’s going to be a lot of hasty amendment making and we should all probably stop chastising each other for that.”

Under Wilson’s amended budget, residents would still see the cost of parking meters, neighborhood leaf removal, recreation fees and other city service surcharges all climb and positions within parks, water, permitting and city administration shrink.

At the same time, the budget for next fiscal year — which begins July 1 — would seek to increase funding for

Portland Street Response

, which responds to mental health crises. It would more than double the number of city homeless outreach workers. And it would pour more money into filling potholes, removing graffiti and impounding derelict RVs.

It would also pour $23 million into Wilson’s plan to open 1,500 new shelter beds, a centerpiece of the mayor’s pledge to end unsheltered homelessness by December. And it would earmark $40 million next year to continue running eight “temporary” shelters serving more than 800 people at a time and fund 50 beds for homeless people in need of addiction recovery services.

A final council vote on Wilson’s budget is scheduled for June 18.

Stories by

Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

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