PORTLAND, Ore. — When Portland voters approved an expansive charter reform package last year, they directed the city to abandon its current form of government in favor of a city administrator model in which city council members will no longer directly control bureaus, with executive authority instead consolidated under one administrator appointed by the mayor.
The charter reform ballot measure outlined the broad strokes of the transition, but it falls to the current city council to pass the policies that will actually make it happen, including mapping out of the minutiae of how the new government will be structured and how the city's bureaus and administrative staff will be reorganized.
Much of that work was consolidated into a single big overhaul plan that council approved Wednesday, exactly 14 months before the government transition is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
But although the council approved the plan, the meeting showed there are concerns about the cost of implementation and significant disagreement about how much of the new structure the city should try to implement in advance in 2024 — and how much authority the existing commissioners should give up to make that happen.
New administrative structure
The plan, presented Wednesday by the city's current Chief Administrative Officer Michael Jordan, organizes most of the city's staff and functions into six new bureaus or departments — officially referred to as service areas — each overseen by a separate deputy city administrator, all of whom report to the main city administrator. After some amendments from commissioners on Wednesday, the final adopted version looks like this:
- Budget & Finance, responsible for the budget, revenue and financial services, business operations, disability and retirement for fire and police, special appropriations and the small donor elections program.
- City Operations, responsible for asset management, the vehicle fleet and facilities, human resources, integrated security, the 311 program, procurement, technology services and "special projects & opportunities."
- Community & Economic Development, responsible for permitting and development services, planning and sustainability, the Portland Housing Bureau, Prosper Portland and spectator venues
- Public Safety, responsible for the community safety division, emergency communications, emergency management, Portland Fire & Rescue, Portland Police and the community police oversight system
- Public Works, responsible for environmental services, transportation and water services
- Vibrant Communities, responsible for arts, parks and recreation, natural area and tree management and the Portland Children's Levy
An earlier draft of the plan released in September only included five service areas, with the various functions of the Vibrant Communities cluster assigned to other service areas. Jordan told the council on Wednesday that he had broken them out into a new sixth grouping in response to earlier feedback from the commissioners.
The mayor oversees the city administrator and also directly appoints and oversees the city attorney, the chief of police and the chief of staff. The new 12-member Portland City Council and the city auditor's office both exist outside of the administrative structure.
The plan also establishes three officials who report directly to the city administrator but are outside of the six departments: a sustainability officer, an equity officer in charge of the Office of Equity and Human Rights and an assistant city administrator in charge of communications, community and civic life, council operations, government relations and "Portland Solutions."
"Portland Solutions" appears to be an umbrella term for most of the city's homelessness initiatives, including Safe Rest Villages, large-scale sanctioned campsites, the Street Services Coordination Center and functions related to the city's Joint Office of Homeless Services with Multnomah County.
The reorganization would play out gradually over the course of 2024, Jordan wrote in a memo to the council, with the transition from the existing bureaus to the new service areas not completed until July 1 at the earliest.
Cost of doing business
A major sticking point for the current city council has been cost. With more councilors on the payroll and more administrative staff coming aboard, the estimated price tag for the new government has skyrocketed beyond what voters were told to anticipate last fall.
New estimates show it will cost about $23.9 million per year to run the new government. The current commission-style government costs just over $10 million per year. For context, Portland's total budget this year is about $7 billion.
"I do have serious concerns about the cost of this new form of government," Commissioner Dan Ryan said on Wednesday. "The voters approved a ceiling of $8.7 million to implement this new form of government. Today's proposal moves that ceiling to $13 million, resulting in a total investment of $23.9 million."
Ryan proposed an amendment suggesting that edits "will need to be made" entering budgeting season, but it was mostly a symbolic gesture. He signaled that he wanted to get on the record with his concerns and wants to keep "fiscal discipline" at the forefront in the months ahead.
Several Portlanders who came to deliver public testimony agreed. A man name Walter told commissioners that the new system is simply too complex.
"An additional $13 million," Walter exclaimed, "plus renovation of city hall, plus voting system implementation, will be a complete surprise to city voters who approved the ballot measure."
Commissioner Rene Gonzalez also jumped on the price topic, and the council brought the city's budget office into the discussion to try and explain the rising costs. City Budget Director Timothy Grewe was defensive as Gonzalez prodded him about the hike.
"The voters were given a document, you go back and review, it had numerous points where it said, 'These are estimates,' and it talked about all of the risk of the estimates because it was done very quickly," Grewe said. "And now we're in a situation where we have things like inflation and things that are happening and that are just frankly going to increase the cost that we told to the voters."
"Tim, I understand that to a point, but the low end of the estimate was $900,000, and we're talking $23 million, $13 million of which is new," Gonzalez countered. "This isn't a small (increase)."
Grewe wasn't director of the budget office at the time of the estimate, but he explained that the information given to voters provided a range. That range topped out at $8.7 million in additional costs, compared to the current $13 million. Regardless, he said, the city would need to provide a breakdown of where the costs have gone up.
The city council will have an opportunity in the next budget cycle to look at a few different scenarios and decide which ones to ultimately fund.
Dispute over authority
The commissioners debated a series of amendments before passing the final structure Wednesday, some of which involved shuffling specific administrative functions around between service areas or adding new ones. For example, Jordan's original plan placed arts under Community & Economic Development, but Ryan proposed moving it to Vibrant Communities. Commissioner Carmen Rubio also proposed adding the sustainability officer outside of the six departments.
The name Vibrant Communities also came from an amendment from Ryan and Gonzalez; Jordan's original plan listed Parks and Recreation as both the name of the sixth service area and one of the functions within it.
Much of the debate focused around the role of the current city commissioners during the second half of 2024, and how much of their authority should be ceded as the new organizational structure takes shape — particularly if the council opts to appoint an interim city administrator during 2024 to try to smooth out the transition.
Gonzalez proposed an amendment that would give the commissioners direct control of the new service areas from July 1, 2024 until the end of the year, roughly matching the way the city's existing bureaus are currently controlled. He proposed assigning Public Safety to himself, Vibrant Communities to Ryan, Community and Economic Development to Rubio, Public Works to Commissioner Mingus Mapps and Budget & Finance and City Operations to Mayor Ted Wheeler.
He also proposed an amendment allowing the commissioners in charge of the service areas to hire interim deputy city administrators for the back half of 2024 or designate them from existing staff — but those interim deputies would ultimately still report to the current commissioners rather than the interim city administrator, which drew objection from Wheeler.
"That's the current form of government we already have ... there's no point in continuing the transition if you just have commissioners in charge of vertical sleeves and the interim city manager has no authority," he said, later adding, "If this amendment passes, we are scrapping the transition process."
"That is utterly false. That is a false characterization," Gonzalez shot back. "We are clearly stating we are committed to serving the new form of government on January 1, 2025. So because we don't agree necessarily with the path that you have charted on to get there, that does not mean we are not committed to delivering the new form of government."
The four commissioners each voted to pass the amendment, and Wheeler said he was "deeply disappointed" but he still voted in favor of it, stating that he wanted to respect the views of the commissioners and "figure out how to make it work." However, at the end of the meeting he was the sole vote against the overall reorganization package, arguing that the various amendments would undermine the transition.