Mayor @tedwheeler is currently introducing three amendments during the city budget hearing here:

I've not heard any mention of the Police budget reallocation

Mayor Wheeler is putting forward another amendment related to support a program manager to convene partners and breakdown silos preventing collaboration (i believe on a program related to sobriety? i lost the thread, apologies)

amendment 5 - adjust exhibit 2 and decrease the cal target for PPB by 2,307,654 dollars for the housing and service contract and increase the target by the same amount plus inflation for the joint office of homeless services to take over ownership of this contract

moving funding for supporting houseless out of the PPB and to the office of homeless services (defunding the ppb)

So yes @tedwheeler just advocating a small amount of defunding to the PPB, which is seconded by Ryan+Fritz

amendment 6 increase cal targets in bureaus with new funds, amending it by the estimated impact of these changes, which may be adjusted later (by several different options)...hard to follow this talk-this amendment is technical in nature and increases the appropriation targets

in a number of areas, seconded by Commissioner Fritz, concluding his amendments.

Fritz now has amendments.

increase parks and rec by 22,000 to cover protest related damages, Wheeler seconds the motion.

Fritz 2 - increase bureau program expenses in portland parks by 87,946 in wone time resources to fund costs associated with restrooms from july 1 2020-june 30 2021

due to increase costs associated with running these caused by covid, protests, and something else? (didn't catch it) (specifically pioneer courthouse sq restrooms)

increase the office of human rights and equity fund by 170,000, 110,000 to establish a train the trainers program, 50,000 for office of human rights and equity, remaining 10,000 for edeveloping e-learning curriculum. ongoing funding will come from unallocated ongoing general fund

unrestricted contingency resources - seconded by Ryan

@tedwheeler what we are doing right now is putting amendments on the table for discussion, not voting on them yet.

view here:

Fritz has another amendment i missed the specifics, increase bureau programmatic expenditures by 82,500 and add 1.0 FTE to provide dedicated focus equity support to small offices

seconded by Wheeler

a bit hard to keep up with these amendments, I do wish @AmandaFritzRN and others spoke mroe slowly

increase human rights general fund by 108,000 and authorize policing focused equity data analyst who is assigned to work with the PPB equity inclusion office to increase use of...

equitable data practices (analysis?)

OK fine, city attorney "18 lawsuits, 3 injunction hearings, 1 contempt of court hearing, and a trial related to a 2016 demonstration event which indicates how long these cases can last in our office, we measure these in hours on risk managemetn in tort cases, from july 1-mid sept

risk hours were up 40% from the same period last yaer, when you extend that period from july 1-mid october risk hours are up 53% compared to last years. Last year 3600 hours, this year 5500+ risk hours, another way we track the workload is through overtime hours that our lawyers

keep track of, 7/1-mid september hovertime was 2.5times higher, from july 1 to mid october they were three times higher than last year. Last year 331 hours, this year it was 1004 overtime hours by litigators. there are a coupl different impacts we are experiencing:

attorneys are salaried employees, overtime doesn't have a budget impact, and i want to be careful about how i talk about this but i think our lawyers are under a great deal of mental and physical stress because of that, i believe folks are seeking the appropriate attention

but it does cause a great deal of stress on those folks at worka nd at home. we are fortuate to have a great group of litigators and attorneys and that type of environment can make it diffiuclt to retain good lawyers, i dont want to see our team leave for somewhere w less stress

opportunity costs: we have not been able to do some things, before the pandemic/protests we promised to do some work around pre-emption but bc lawyers have had to do other things we've not been able to get to that and i owe it to elizabeth edwards, thats agood example

of things we haven't been able to get to, we've also seen potential litigation and asked lawyers to hold time to defend that, but those great lawyers are now handling these demonstration related cases and in the future our ability to handle that may be compromised

lastly we did just sue the federal govt in two improtant cases, one in Oakland challenging deployment of federal troops and deputization, and in seattle and new york we sued over the "anarchist jurisdiction" label that is threatening federal funding, these are important lawsuits

where we are defending local control and we could not have done that on our own, given everything we are facing right now, only b c we had partnerships with other cities

listen in here:

city attorney: "finally we hold ourselves to a high standeard but aunder this level of workload and stress it is hard to meet those standards, and i'm happy to take any questions you have"

@JoAnnPDX asks whether any suit under 1 million is paid out of the general fund, city zttorney says it goes to the insurance carrier above a certain amount, but otherwise is paid directly, hardesty thought htere is a different level depending on the type of lawsuit

there are no other questions for city attorney robert taylor

Mike Myers, director of portland bureau of emergency management: "hardesty and i have spoken and i spoke with this group during the work session, i am remiss in my duty if i dont bring forward the food security needs during covid, and by no means am i suggesting we can end

hunger but the conditions that people live in have changed, and i do not expect that to get any better. i'm not an expert in food security, we have a great team including katy robb and shiela craig (sps?) i do want to say publicly and thank the ECC under katie wolf as incident

commander bureaus have worked admirably under a dynamic situation and i want to thank the commissioners, the mayor, and the bureau directors for doing their very best

you can follow along here:

I'll try to return for the votes

Now @JoAnnPDX is pushing hard for her amendments to be voted on today, even if others are not voted on

@tedwheeler asks clarification if they should vote after he leaves

Hardesty wants to hold the vote starting 30 minutes before Wheeler has to leave

but she wants to try and hear from everyone having public comment, she wants to hear either way.

There's a back and forth btw wheeler and hardesty about whether other commissioners are ready to vote

Eudaly supports holding a vote before ending the testimony and notes they are all aware most people who want to give testimony are in support of the amendments. @PortlandDan opposes voting without all the testimony -there are currently 120 people on the call

if you weren't able to sign on previously you should be able to sign on now and have received an email about that.

They are now taking testimony from the public, check here to follow along

Obviously if you have a space to testify you have a right to do that, and as a journalist i'm not going to comment on that one way or the other, but as a pure technicality, if you want to see a vote today, some of these 120 people are going to have to give up their spots--

there are 3 hours between now and when @tedwheeler says he must leave, but if each individual takes 2 minutes, the testimony will go for 240 minutes, or at minimum 4 hours, so take that as you will.

An update on the testimony, we are 10% of the way through (12 speakers) which has taken approximately 26 minutes, just over 2 minutes each.

There have been 10 voices in support of the amendment, 2 voices who did not comment on the vote, and 0 voices who oppose the amendment.

follow along here: