Next Up at City Council, 5/23/07

Submitted by Amanda Fritz on May 19, 2007 - 10:24am.

Slow week - no Citizen Communications, and no Wednesday afternoon or Thursday meeting on next week's Portland City Council Agenda.

There are three Time Certain items - two to raise fees for development permits and set water rates, the other 10:45 AM – Declare intent to initiate local improvement district formation proceedings to construct street improvements east of Mallory Avenue in the NE Winchell Street Local Improvement District. Local Improvement Districts (LIDs) are usually where the residents got tired of living on an unimproved or underimproved street, and will pay to fix it themselves.

On the Consent Agenda:


* More work/money on the VisionPDX project. The name of the second subcontractor made me laugh out loud when I read through the Agenda the first time.
561 Amend an Intergovernmental Agreement with Portland State University Survey Research Lab to extend contract and provide additional data collection and data analysis services to visionPDX (Ordinance; amend Contract No. 36764)
562 Amend contract with Decisions, Decisions to extend contract and authorize additional meeting facilitation and general consultation services for visionPDX (Ordinance; amend Contract No. 36982). Decisions, decisions, indeed.


* Three items from the Office of Management and Finance: *563 Authorize improvement bonds (Ordinance); *564 Authorize short term subordinate urban renewal and redevelopment bonds (Ordinance); *565 Authorize a borrowing of not more than $20,000,000 in anticipation of the Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund levy for FY 2007-2008 (Ordinance)

Why are these "emergency ordinances", indicated by the asterisk? We are seeing things brought to Council as emergency ordinances repeatedly, that seem like they should be planned and known well in advance, rather than presented as emergencies. I may just be fired up enough to call someone at the City this coming week, to ask why.


* 577 Authorize $20, 000 payment to Friends of Trees to support the planting of 200 trees in low-canopy, low-income neighborhoods (Ordinance). This may sound a lot, at $100 per tree, if you're picturing the little bare root trees on sale at Fred Meyer. If you've volunteered with Friends of Trees, you know from your improved cardiovascular health and muscle strength (aka exhaustion and aching body) that the trees they plant are huge. Even wholesale, they probably cost more than $100 each. So this item represents a subsidy on the nursery stock rather than administrative support for the non-profit program. It's a good example of City support leveraging multiple times the dollar value paid, in benefits to the community both physically and socially.


* There are multiple items on the Agenda authorizing Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) with Multnomah County - for senior services, anti-gang projects, and Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) programs. I will be very interested to see the process and results of the proposed revisiting of City-County financial relationships.

The most interesting item I see on the Regular Agenda is 585 Authorize contract with Peck Smiley Ettlin Architects and provide for payment for architectural and engineering services to remodel Fire Station No. 1 (Ordinance). This is the station downtown on SW Naito, the one the Council decided not to move to Ankeny Square. So when I write, "most interesting", by that I mean "not especially" (except to the people involved, of course). Please let note in the comments if I passed over something more important.

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Typically ordinances are
Submitted by brianpdx on May 19, 2007 - 3:03pm.
Typically ordinances are adopted as "emergencies" because that allows them to go into effect immediately, rather than the usual 30 or 60 waiting period. In the City that I work for, we have a 30 day wait for ordinances that are not declared emergencies. I'm not sure what the requirement is in Portland. This may be a function of state law as well, but I'm not sure. In this particular instance, what's the value of waiting period? If you're implementing some new regulation, the waiting period can be important for giving people time to get used to the new rule. The timing of the bond issues may be important so they may not want to wait. Also, there isn't any additional public process typically after the ordinance is adopted. So there isn't any benefit to the public in waiting. The public process should be happening well before the ordinance is adopted.
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I understand all that,
Submitted by Amanda Fritz on May 19, 2007 - 3:54pm.
I understand all that, thanks. But these types of expenditures, contracts, and bonds, seem to me to be items on which if the ordinance is sent through on the regular schedule, there's no harm in waiting, either. The City of Portland's code says of emergency ordinances in 3.02.040 G: 2. Emergency Ordinance. a. An emergency ordinance shall have one public reading of its title or the effect of the ordinance. b. An emergency ordinance may be enacted upon the date of its introduction provided that: (1) It contains a statement that an emergency exists; and, (2) It specifies with distinctness the facts or reasons constituting the emergency. The types of expected expenditures and contracts that keep showing up as emergency ordinances on the Council's agenda don't seem to me to be "emergencies" under this rule. The emergency ordinance seems to have come to be a normal way of doing the City's business, rather than an exception. It seems wrong to me that the Council is declaring emergencies every single week. And if the ordinances on this week's agenda are really emergencies, we have more problems than we know about in city financial matters. It's inconceivable to me that the people in charge of the Police and Fire Disability and Pension Fund didn't know this borrowing would be needed, a month ago so the item wouldn't need to be an emergency ordinance. If the Council wants to create another category of ordinance, with no waiting period, for things that nobody objects to and nobody needs time to get used to, then they should create code that allows that process. Calling things emergencies that aren't, routinely, seems abuse of the current code.
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P.S. Search for "emergency"
Submitted by Amanda Fritz on May 19, 2007 - 4:00pm.
P.S. Search for "emergency" in the search function of this blog in the left sidebar. You'll see many other examples of so-called emergency ordinances over the past several months, many of which should not have been emergencies if planned properly. I also remember Commissioner Leonard questioning Mayor Potter on why something was an emergency ordinance - was it something in the Charter ballot debates? I don't remember exactly, but the Mayor's answer was something along the lines of, "It's an emergency because we've been asked to consider it and it's important".
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I did a little research, and
Submitted by brianpdx on May 20, 2007 - 11:26am.
I did a little research, and I believe the reason for all of this is ORS 221.310. It dictates that all ordinances other than "emergency" ordinances go into effect 30 days after their passage. So I think the question is whether these ordinances need to go into effect immediately or in 30 days. I would question what the benefit of waiting 30 days is, in most cases. I think the term "emergency" is a misnomer and was probably put into statute 100 years ago.
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Thank you, Brian, that is
Submitted by Amanda Fritz on May 20, 2007 - 12:53pm.
Thank you, Brian, that is very interesting. It seems to me the state law needs to be changed, since now we and probably most other cities with population "over 2,000" are out of compliance with it. Part of that section you cited says: These emergency measures shall become immediately effective if they state in a separate section the reasons why it is necessary that they should become immediately effective and if they are approved by the affirmative vote of three-fourths of all the members elected to the city council, taken by ayes and noes, and also by the mayor. (2) Except for ordinances necessary for the immediate health, peace or safety, an ordinance enacted by the council of a city created under ORS 221.010 to 221.100 shall take effect 30 days after its enactment It doesn't say that anything other than true, immediate health, peace, or safety measures are allowed to be enacted without the 30 day waiting period. "Shall" is mandatory, no exceptions. Unless there's something elsewhere in state law modifying this, it seems to me Portland is out of compliance by putting borrowing for the pension fund and other such contracts and bonds on emergency status. I don't disagree with your contention there's no benefit in waiting, however it seems like we need a change in state law and a new non-emergency-immediate-effect process for city ordinances, rather than simply ignoring state law.
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