The Portland City Council on Wednesday green-lit spending $5.5 million to help clean up the contaminated Portland Harbor, fund immigration legal services for domestic violence survivors, pay for concrete barriers used during Aug. 17 downtown demonstrations and other projects.
The biggest single item was about $2 million towards a $24 million Portland Harbor Trust agreement with the state. The $5.5 million tally also included $1.2 million related to the Columbia River Levee and $500,000 toward the De Paul Treatment Center, which provides residential and outpatient services for drug and alcohol addiction.
The city council in May approved a $5.5 billion overall budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. When city officials trued up how much of the general fund they’ve spent to date versus how much has come in, they found some newly available millions they could allocate.
Wednesday marked the end of the first of three budget monitoring periods where the city council can adjust spending plans to meet bureau needs.
The fall budget monitoring process occurs typically in October, a spring period around April and the final one occurs around June.
City financial analysts said they conservatively estimated how much money the city would bring in, and they now believe the city, fueled by the economic expansion, will bring an extra $11.3 million to the general fund. City policy calls for at least half of the extra balance to be used to maintain or replacing existing assets.
The council also voted to authorize 36.5 new positions, with 27 of them going to help the Portland Bureau of Transportation keep up with its workload.
Some of the new funds approved by the city council included $30,000 in immigration legal services at the Gateway Center for Domestic Violence, $250,000 for outside legal counsel for labor negotiations, $225,000 for new bathrooms at Pioneer Courthouse Square and five new vehicles for the Parks and Recreation Bureau, $50,000 for the barriers used by police during the downtown Portland demonstrations in August, and $120,000 to bolster the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s anti-displacement action plan, which seeks to aid Portland low-income renters and vulnerable property owners living in gentrifying areas at risk of being displaced.
The council also granted the city attorney’s office request for $133,534 to settle two claims related to the burst water main that caused millions of gallons of water to flood streets, homes and businesses in Northeast Portland in March. That money is coming from $250,000 already set aside in the general fund specifically to settle claims.
The housing bureau requested $900,000, but the city council approved $250,000. The money is intended to help create a stand-alone rental registry system to collect and track data related to rental units.
During the public comment period, Adam McBride-Smith was one of several speakers who urged the council to give the housing bureau the full amount of requested funds. He said it would include basic accessibility features and price ranges that would aid renters in better finding housing that works for them as soon as possible.
“This is a pressing need for renters with disabilities, older renters, low-income renters, people of color and many others,” he said. “Right now in this city, it’s nearly impossible to find accessible, affordable housing, but an inclusive rental registry could change that for the better.”
Mayor Ted Wheeler said the system has his “100 percent commitment,” but said the $250,000 was what he believed the city could actually deploy between now and the end of the year based on what the housing bureau said was possible. He said next year’s city budget would include more funding for resources and staffing for data collection.
“We’re not being stingy here,” Wheeler said. “If I felt realistically that by the end of the fiscal year we could do it, I’d put the whole amount in today.”
The city budget office said in its supplemental budget review report that the additional time would allow the city to develop specifications about what data is collected, how it will be used and what impacts they will have.
Several bureaus were also approved to carry over unspent dedicated revenue. The Portland Police Bureau, for example, was allowed to transfer $2 million to the general reserve fund. The biggest chunk of that was $1.3 million for the development of a body camera program, which the agency doesn’t have. The bureau has had annual funding for the program since the 2016-2017 fiscal year.
-- Everton Bailey Jr.
ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 | @EvertonBailey
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