Top Portland official jumps into fray in debate on diverting nearly $2M in police funds to parks

When is a budget cut an actual cut?

That is the

$1.9 million question

facing Portland City Council as it continues to debate taking money

Mayor Keith Wilson proposed

allocating to the Portland Police Bureau and instead giving it to Parks & Recreation.

On May 21, the City Council voted 7-5 to divert the funds, to help stave off cuts to parks maintenance, but the

debate over the proposal

continues as city leaders prepare to finalize the 2025-26 budget.

Proponents of the move say the Police Bureau will have more money next year than this year no matter what, so shifting the funding doesn’t amount to a cut. Opponents say the $318 million the mayor wanted to set aside for the bureau — up from $308 million this year — isn’t enough to keep up with public safety demands, and the move will force the bureau to curtail crucial services.

Into this fiery dispute comes

Bob Cozzie

, soon to be the top public safety administrator in Portland. On Wednesday, Cozzie issued a

seven-page memo

that spelled out what the Police Bureau may lose if City Council succeeds in shifting the $1.9 million.

That list includes police missions that rely on overtime to crack down on street racing, car theft and shoplifting — politically popular line items that critics have called “Washington Monuments” designed to draw public outcry and thwart any cuts.

Portland Police

Chief Bob Day

rejected that characterization Thursday, saying no such “monuments” remain in the bureau’s budget, with “many areas where we continue to fall woefully short.”

“This is not the time to make these adjustments,” Day said. “This is a time to build up what we’re doing and try to enhance and improve our response times, improve our hiring, conduct better property crime investigations, be sensitive to burglary, theft and vandalism, which are struggling.”

City Councilors Candace Avalos and Angelita Morillo are pushing the move to help the Parks Bureau avoid some of the $6 million in cuts the mayor proposed to its maintenance budget — and because they believe the bureau has room to give.

Voting with them

were Councilors Jamie Dunphy, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane and Steve Novick.

“We are not cutting police — they were given additional funding that no other bureau was given,” said Morillo in a May 15 council meeting. “We’re holding them to the same standard that every other bureau is being held to as they are having to make very brutal and devastating cuts.”

In the end, police funding is going up, not down, Avalos added.

But the memo spells out that costs are going up, too. With cost of living increases and inflation factored in, the Police Bureau will be about $1 million short of what it needs, Cozzie wrote.

Portland Police Association President Sgt. Aaron Schmautz agrees.

“Elected officials, bureaus, and community must be presented with comprehensive and, more importantly, accurate information about impacts of budget decisions,” Schmautz said in a statement. “As expressed repeatedly and now demonstrated clearly in this document, any increases to the police budget outside of the mayor’s slight investment were due to inflation and cost of living increases. The removal of the $1.9 million in funding is demonstratively a cut beyond the cost of living and inflation and results in a decrease to the police budget.”

Whatever happens, Day said the Police Bureau will seek to protect funding for recruiting, hiring, training and retaining officers. That means the bureau will have to find savings in other places and services will be reduced.

“It’s just math,” Day said.

—

Zaeem Shaikh covers the Portland Police Bureau and criminal justice issues for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-221-4323,


zshaikh@oregonian.com


or on X


@zaeemshake

.

Stories by

Zaeem Shaikh

• Woman’s body found in Milwaukie wetlands; police investigating

• Family of man killed by Portland preschool security guard seeks answers, insists he avoided fights

• 15-year-old boy wounded in NE Portland shooting, police say

• Police target street-level drug use in weeklong Portland operation, lean on deflection program

• Tigard police officer pleads guilty to making false statements in criminal investigation

About The Author