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Transcript

The Reluctant President · The Schmidt Show PDX

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Schmidt Show PDX.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Mike Schmidt,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: former Multnomah County District Attorney,
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: amateur dart enthusiast,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: and someone who just can't stop thinking about how the city of Portland runs.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, it has been a year for Portland City Council.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: We are just a year and a half into this nascent form of government,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: and in that time,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: this council has already survived through two budget sessions,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: has elected two different council presidents,
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: and half the council is already up for re-election.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: A year and a half in and they are dealing with
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: a structural revenue shortfall that's not going away no matter how many couch
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: cushions get checked.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: And on top of all of that,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: they're staring down a billionaire who is,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: depending on how charitably you want to frame it, either negotiating hard.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or holding a beloved franchise hostage in exchange for arena renovations.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And today's guest is a guy in the middle of most of it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: If history was to label this guest, it may label him the reluctant president.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: The man who,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: after 13 deadlocked votes between Portland's progressive and moderate factions,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: was the compromise everybody could live with.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't seek the job he said as much publicly more than once, but he did take it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's also a fierce advocate for Portland's music scene,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: a musician himself,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: a guy who wants Portland to own its identity as a music city instead of just talking
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: about it.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: And before any of this,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: he was also a small business owner running Love Cup in Selwood for four years.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Today, we're going to get into all of it.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: The presidency,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: the budget,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: the music platform,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: his small business experience, and we're going to spend a good chance
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Council President Jamie Dunphy, welcome to the show.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I have to.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I need more fanfare in my life.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, I want to play the whole thing, but that would be annoying.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Have you considered a walk-in song?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, absolutely.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's why I wanted to have you on the program is so that we could discuss
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: the presidential walk.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like you should have one.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what are you thinking about?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: My walk-in song is Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm walking onto a baseball field or onto the council dais, that's how I'm walking out.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: It actually works well for both.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, good.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: I expect to see your presidency institute these immediate changes.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Really important things.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very important.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks so much for being on the show.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: As we get started, I'd just like you to tell people a little bit about who you are.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I have been in Portland since I went to high school.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated from Grant back in 2002.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I went to PCC and PSU.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a dad.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I live in the Park Rose neighborhood.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've got two goats.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've got two dogs.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a 20-year-old cat.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been in... A 20-year-old cat.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: She is really unpleasant and...
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just bones.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: As she deserves to be.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, she's had a long life and she deserves every minute of it, but God, she is skin and bones.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, I've been, I spent my 20s as a touring musician.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I got to go tour around the country with my best friends playing music and
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And seeing other places and experiencing the rest of this country.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I never left Portland.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in Portland ever since then.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a little bit weird to me to be in the town I went to high school in.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: But God, I love Portland and I have not found a place I like better.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm really happy to still be here.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I love this town.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I started my life in upstate New York.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot about Oregon,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: a lot about Portland actually topographically reminds me of upstate New York.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's lush, it's green.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I always make the joke to people that in Oregon,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: we say we have lakes, but we actually have ponds.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in New York, they say they have mountains, but they actually have hills.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of shared commonalities there that makes me love this place.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: But like you, I've been in other cities.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've moved around a little bit,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: spent the bulk of my other time in New Orleans, but I've lived in Houston.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've spent enough time in New York City.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I spent a summer in Boston.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I've gotten a feel for some other places.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree with you, man.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I set up roots or took down roots here.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is the place I want to be.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I got to leave at some point.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I got to go...
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Figure something out after whatever this chapter of my life is.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I plan on being here the long term.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: What's your what was your favorite city to tour in outside of Portland?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because, of course, that would be your favorite side of Portland.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, L.A. was always really fun.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was a weird city to play in,
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: but we would always end up playing a few dates down in L.A.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: and it just had a different vibe.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was always happy to be there and always happy to go home.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that seems right.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: you and I have known each other for a good amount of time at this point because you
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: and my wife actually both worked at the same summer camp when we were growing up.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: When we were little babies.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, out at Oxbow Park.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Claire is one of my favorite people.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Mike, I've had the privilege of knowing you forgot going on two decades at this point.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is funny how just a couple of tall, random dudes ended up in this level of public service.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that funny when you think back on it, right?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like sitting in the backyard almost 20 years ago at this point.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like playing badminton and be like, hey.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just goofing off.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just a bunch of dorks and now we've got authority.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: People respect our opinions on things.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's wild.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I personally think that who better than to be in these positions
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: than people who've lived it and who've been a part of this community and
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: who do silly things like play badminton.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to start us off at your presidency, your highness.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: You, I would term,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: and maybe it's not even my term,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: others have in yourself, I would sum up your presidency as the reluctant presidency.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of Portlanders were watching probably too long
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: as it took this council to select our second ever president.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us just a little bit about that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: There were like 13 votes to get to this point.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was multiple days, 13 rounds of voting.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a truly divided council about the philosophical direction to go forward.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody could get to seven votes.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: there were two people who really wanted it and had very clear visions
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: of what their presidency would look like,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: but they could not convince a seventh colleague to support them.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And after multiple days of very clear expectations.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And an increasingly unpleasant bickering and back and forth.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow I became the compromise.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow I knew that that might be an option and I worked real hard to avoid it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I was able to.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like...
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: to somebody who's not an insider or politico who's been around these things,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: you think to yourself,
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: well, president, I mean, that's the most powerful of the positions.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: you must be able to get the things done that you want to get done because you're
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: the agenda setter.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've been around enough and seen enough things that it actually,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: and you can embellish my perspective,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: it seems more like you're the chief administrator.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're the person who has to be more concerned with things.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Process and task and making sure that conversations are had, that there's procedural fairness.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, instead of being like,
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Jamie Dunphy, I ran because I want to accomplish one, two, three, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that accurate?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not power, it's responsibility.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, it's an enormous amount of responsibility with very little actual power.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is like the opposite Peter Parker, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: With great responsibility comes less power.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get any additional staff or any additional capacity,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: but 80% of my job now is not focusing on the needs of my district,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: but what is the needs of the city council and responding to How do we get
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: the information to the counselors?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get the information to the public?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get through these important votes and these important milestones that have to happen?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it is all about procedure and program and policy and it's none of the fun stuff
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: that I get to do.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's extra hard because we're a new body.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any sort of bookends.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any sort of history of how to work together.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm literally building process for every step of this way.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like little tiny things like how much in advance can we see the agenda?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be only a week as of a couple weeks ago.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now we can see two weeks in advance.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's little things like that that I'm trying to drive forward.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I ran on.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't run on.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, as somebody, I was counsel for the Senate and House Judiciary down in Salem.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, truly.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: The old city council was a rubber stamp for the vast majority of things.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there was only five of them.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the things that the old city council voted on were small contracts
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: for like $50,000 here, $100,000 there.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: When you're talking about an $8 billion budget.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was most of their time.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, things moved more easily.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The things that actually land on our desk now in this new form
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: of government are supposed to be controversial.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: If it was easy, it would have been decided before it landed on my desk.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So how we find a way through that is a new fun challenge.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, the history of a building of a legislative body really plays a big role.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any of that.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so these 12 counselors are sort of...
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: just this past month,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: you described the serial communications law as crippling to this council.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: we talked about,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: well, the old council, they didn't have to deal with this serial communications law.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually a newer thing.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: 2023, I believe, is when this at least went into effect or was interpreted this way.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what does that mean?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about public meetings laws.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean when you say it's crippling?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So public meetings law,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: the basic idea,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: and I agree with this basic idea,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: major public decisions should be made with the public's involvement and
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: with some transparency and accountability to that.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely agree with that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: That shady backroom, smoke-filled deals, those should not happen.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And those absolutely have happened historically.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: In response to that,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: the Government Ethics Commission has put these rules and say,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: not only do we have public meetings,
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have a sit down meeting with seven of my colleagues and sit down.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to make this decision and then we walk out there.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Totally understand that.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it also means that I can't go and have a series of meetings.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can't go to my colleague next door and say, hey, I'm thinking about this policy.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then hear from them and get a little bit of feedback and adjust it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then go to my next colleague and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we do that in a public setting now.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that is...
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is weird and it is performative because we're on TV and trying to negotiate
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: the minutia of policy in a public setting like that where we could have had
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: a very quick conversation behind closed doors and said,
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: hey, I cannot support you if you do X, but if you do Y, I will support you.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't change.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I could have done that.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I could have gone through.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And instead,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: we end up in these awkward, ugly positions where we're fighting about minor details.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the public thinks that there's an idea And there's an idea of transparency.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an idea of accountability to the public.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then they see what that looks like and they don't like it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, why is there gridlock?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why is there all this?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't people compromise?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because compromise comes through conversation and we're not allowed to have conversation.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: We had a solution to try and get through this, too, and the governor vetoed it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't understand what they think success looks like with these rules.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is what these rules are leading to.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's embarrassing.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's embarrassing in a way that we need our city's reputation to be able
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: to move forward and not have these amateur stumbling blocks where
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: that could have been taken care of with a 30%.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: that's when I because I do know about public meetings law,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I've been,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: most of my career, part of what I've had to deal with is is about all of that.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I understand it, I think, at a level that most people.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think most people would assume you could knock on your colleague's office door
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: and be like, hey, we got a vote coming up on this thing.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Here's where I'm at.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: What are you thinking?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what's prevented by this law.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my hypothesis.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my thing I want to pitch at you.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you touched on this.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're in agreement here.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: People look at the gridlock on this council,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: 6-6, and they're like, oh, wow, it's this block versus that block.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that one of the reasons for that is exactly because
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: of this serial communications interpretation.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can't have a conversation ahead of time.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll even ask you this.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't Applicable to our state legislature.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because they caucus, because they have communications.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: They negotiate across the aisle sometimes and say, hey, our position is this.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: What is your position?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want in response to that?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: They do that.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: So how is it that this applies to you but not them?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's explicit.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: The state legislature exempted themselves from these same rules.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So every city council,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: every county commission,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: metro chamber,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: all these public bodies,
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: all the way down to the The local volunteer neighborhood associations,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: they have higher levels of ethical requirements than the state legislators
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: who passed these laws.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is truly absurd.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are no requirements for the state to limit even committee quorum limits.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: In the city council, we have these committees that are five-member committees.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not on any of them because I'm the council president,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: but a counselor cannot have a conversation with two of their colleagues about
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: a topic At any given point, how do we actually move the ball forward on that?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I understand we're not trying to make final decisions on things,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: but even our staff can't talk to each other.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in the legislature,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: they can get all 30 senators or whatever it is into one room and talk at once.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is without any violation.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is mind boggling.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I understand the intent.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that, you know, where we're trying to go.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But this ain't it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: This just ain't it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Have you been able to,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: or has council been able to,
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: maybe sit down with the governor,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: governor's staff and say, hey, what was the thought process here?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: How can we make this a bill that you would support?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we talked a lot before
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: the legislative session.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't had a chance to talk to her about that since then.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know where those conversations are,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: but this is not just a city of Portland problem either.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are...
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's like the Oregon League of Cities is actively concerned about this and working on this.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Association of Oregon Counties is working on this.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is a much bigger thing than just a Portland.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Portland is visible because we're probably,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're the only professional city council in the state.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Professional, I mean, you know, full-time that we are, these are full-time jobs.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a daily annoyance.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: the other part of this is that when we cripple the elected officials from being able
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: to do their work, we over-empower staff.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that means that while in the city of Portland,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: we're stuck bickering,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: in cities like,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Eugene or Bend or Burns,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: suddenly that empowers all the bureaucracy and takes up a lot of the power away from
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: the elected officials because they're now over-stamped.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: They've got to fix this in the next legislative session.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm certain there is a solution to it.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hope the governor will figure out whatever it was that was a hangup for her
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: on this, and we can figure out how to actually move things forward.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's probably more time spent on public meetings laws in a podcast than...
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Than ever before.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's so important.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that I hate just personally is when people see one thing and
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: then they think that that's causally related to another thing.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Budget.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it both is one of the most challenging things.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: People say it.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: A budget document is a values document.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's always a challenge.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then as soon as you put one budget to bed, you're working on the next budget.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: As I've been talking to people and just have conversations around,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: one of the things that I've heard that I think is hard for Portlanders
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: to wrap their minds around is that,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: and I pulled some numbers for this,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: that in 2020, the overall budget of the city of Portland was around $5.8 billion.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: The budget that you all just passed, I think is closer to $8.6 billion.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So in just the span of six years, our overall budget has almost gone up by $3 billion.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I need a pinky in my mouth to say that.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we just had...
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: A massive gap that had to be filled with cuts.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the same things, not having enough money.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: We had to pass a parks levy.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: We had to figure out ways to fund potholes.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of Portlanders are scratching their heads being like,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: how do we have more money by a significant margin than we had six years ago?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like we have less money.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you hear that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: No one quote me on exact dollars.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use some round dollars on these things.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we have roughly an eight billion something dollar budget.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But some of that is the majority of that is stuff we cannot touch.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Debt service, the fire police.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's also some budget bizarreness that I don't really fully understand,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: but we have what's called an overhead model where basically we don't budget for...
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't budget for HR services.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do these things.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: What we do is we inflate the budgets of the Parks Bureau.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they use IT services or things like that, they get billed for that.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it means that, yes, it's an $8 billion budget, but it's a little bit of accounting math.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Within that, though,
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: the general fund,
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: which is business license taxes and Other sort of general taxes
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: that we can actually use to pay for parks, to pay for police and things like that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's about one billion dollars.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It has increased overall.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the water filtration plant.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: We've got all these other things within that one billion of the general fund
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: that we are able to.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: We had a $170 million budget gap.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where we pay for most of our city employees is through the general fund.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it was the biggest structural budget gap that we've had since the 60s.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of the hardest budget gaps to try and fill and it came with some real deep cuts.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: The overall budget is...
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and I think...
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: As you say,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: you had to fill a gap that is historic in its size this session,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: but the structural deficit of this budget is not going away.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: What I've seen in projections from your own budget office is, Yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of conversation around the tax burden in the city being too high.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you see this structural deficit going forward?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: What can you do?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: How can you navigate this?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to need to have some very big conversations.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: This was my second budget.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is the second cuts budget.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are no more couch cushions for us to check.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: We are no longer trimming fat and we have cut down into the bone.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are genuinely sacrificing things at this point.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that next year we're probably looking at making real sacrifices.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: the general fund covers public safety,
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: it covers parks, and it covers homeless services.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the majority of what it is.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: How are the dollars going?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that this is a real honest question.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I also recognize that as everything else gets expensive,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: as gas crosses $5 a gallon,
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: as milk crosses $5 a gallon,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: as we are seeing grocery stores close People having to travel further for that
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: and every little bit of the federal government's penny pinching
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: that is happening is tightening everywhere.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is easy to say that government taxes are the problem
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: because people feel like it's the first thing that they would like to cut.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's something they don't choose to pay for.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Our tax revenue is down.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Our tax revenue is down in every category.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Business licenses are down.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Property taxes are down.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Real estate prices are tanking.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it is genuinely cutting into our issue.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also hear a lot of people who are able to grumble about things like
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: the arts tax,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: like the preschool for all tax,
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: when the overwhelming majority of people in the city do not even pay those.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I get the real feeling that something's got to give and every inch is getting pushed
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: in different directions.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling that certainly.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: This has got to be a regional conversation about what do we actually want to pay for?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: What are some things that are actually important?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we pay for them?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who is paying for them?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody in this economy is getting rich right now.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not most of the people I know.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, congratulations.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: You passed the presidential test of knowing how much a gallon of milk costs.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Turns out you're a real human being.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: But also I do want to get into another aspect of We did.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Actually have firsthand experience with the challenges of being a small business owner.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that you mentioned as a pressure
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: on our tax revenue going down is less business licenses, right?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you've been a small business owner.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: You no longer are.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so how does that factor into,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, back to my, you can either make more money or spend less money.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do we help small businesses?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: How do we preserve and support the ones we have?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of, I think most Portlanders favorite things about the city is our small business.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: that is the thing that we get excited about
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: when we're telling other people how great Portland is.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: So how does your small business acumen history inform you
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: and how we can support our small businesses and even increase them?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, First, I wouldn't have anybody take any business advice from me.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I opened a coffee shop in February of 2008 as
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: the economy was collapsing around us through the housing crash.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we couldn't understand why no one would give us a business loan.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Through personal loans and our savings and some scrapping it together,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: we ran a little coffee shop in a sandwich restaurant for five years and sold it for
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: a profit.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And my God, that was one of the most challenging periods of my life.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Little things.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I paying $200 a month to TriMet?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I literally called TriMet thinking, is this because I have a bus stop in front of my house?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, it turns out that's just a business tax that they pass on
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: and no one explains these things to you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I have to pay $100 to put a sticker on my sandwich board out in front
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: of my shop when none of my neighbors also have that?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: All these little things that we never explain to small business owners, there's no check sheet.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no like, oh, so you want to open a coffee shop in the city of Portland.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are 15 things you have to do.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Other cities do.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: 90% of the employers in the city employ 10 or fewer employees.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are, by definition, a small business town.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be really intentional about that because those 90%
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: of small businesses close in their first year and 90% of those fail in
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: the second year.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we aren't constantly trying to look at how do we make it easier,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: cheaper,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: and more accountable for these businesses to open,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just continue to fail and we'll see greater consolidation and more corporate.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's use the example of the Clean Energy Fund.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Clean Energy Fund is a tax on the largest corporations that are doing more than
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: a billion dollars globally.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it is raking in so much more money than it ever thought it would
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: because those corporate profits are high.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: But we're also seeing bars and coffee shops and restaurants and boutiques close all
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: across the country.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: We did just cut business taxes for the smallest businesses.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are working
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have an office of small business now.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they're fantastic and they're doing really great stuff, but it's not enough for me.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: They can't help with permitting.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're more like little grants and some street activations and things like that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get into the permitting bureau and literally I want to have how to manuals.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's no reason that we couldn't You can have a how-to manual
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: and you assign one permit person to that business owner and say,
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to go talk to John.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And John is going to make sure that you get your health license,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: that you get your business, your occupation or building occupancy license.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to get all these things done.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the checklist.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: That you can take home and say, here's what you're going to do to open a coffee shop.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what you're going to do to open an at-home business.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what you're going to do for your Etsy shop or whatever these little things are.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: We just don't do it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And our system isn't set up to do that.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that certainly would have helped me as we were opening it.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I really want to.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things a critique,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: especially of liberal and progressive places,
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: is that for many good reasons,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: we have all kinds of regulations and we have all kinds of taxes and other things
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: that are.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: There are go-to good things, right?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes those are the very things that get in the way of business growth,
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: development, businesses choosing to locate here.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so this has been called the abundance cycle.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Theory, something that you and I have discussed before.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can a progressive liberal place that is doing the right things,
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: can we decrease some of that burden, make things better and incentivize the growth?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, we can do that.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: The city's book of city code grew from,
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was like under 300 pages back in the 80s, and now it's over 1,200 pages.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: We can absolutely simplify these things.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying we sacrifice on our values, but there are a ton.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And with every single page of that code, there are so many good intentions.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the road to hell is paved with those good intentions as well.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are some things that are truly in conflict.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: the Bureau of Transportation and the Bureau of Environmental Services and
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: the Water Bureau, they don't coordinate when writing their rules.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so that's why we see things like when the transportation system.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Transportation Bureau will pave a road and then six months later,
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: the sewer bureau will tear up that road.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are relics of the old form of government.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Actually,
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: this week,
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am introducing a bill that is specifically about answering the question of who is
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: on first when When it comes to decision making,
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: like right now, if you go get a permit, you talk to 12 different engineers.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It goes to all these different departments and the Bureau of Permitting can't tell
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: the Bureau of Transportation,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: hey, I need this back in 30 days because they have their own authority.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: We got to get basically just back to basics, understand like, Who is on first tier?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who is in charge of getting this permit out the door,
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: getting these regulations, things of understanding how we do business in the city?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not trying to make the city's permitting system the best in the world.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just want it to be as good as Gresham or Hillsborough or Beaverton.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: They have figured out how to make it so that it is simple,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: fast and cheap without sacrificing on safety or cost.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so frustrating that our system isn't working in any sort
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: of customer service focused way.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you heard it here first.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're breaking news.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: You got a bill coming this week.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to see that move through because I couldn't agree more.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: I know you yourself, you're a musician.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Among many other things that you are.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Also, one of my favorite aspects of things that you do is fixing children's Star Wars helmets.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: That was a fun project.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: You do many things.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're, I would say, a renaissance man in the traditional sense.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Music is important to you.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: You ran on music as a development strategy for the city.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to us about that.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: That music has been treated as a nice to have.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's been treated as part of the arts.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: At best, it's been treated as part of the arts.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: At worst, it's been treated worse than that.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: But music at its core is a tool for getting people together.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's music in the background at a picnic or people actually at a concert,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's an opportunity for community to convene.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a huge part of what we've been missing.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I fundamentally believe that we will never be able to hire enough police
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: to patrol up and down Hawthorne Boulevard at two in the morning to have
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: the same level of effect as a concert getting out at two in the morning
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: and people being on the streets and walking to bars and restaurants and
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: and being around each other and having that sort of activation.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: We need reasons for people to get out of their houses.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Music venues and performances are saying that we're only at about 80% of
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: the audience level of pre-COVID levels.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: It means people are staying home.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're choosing to.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a thousand good reasons why people are staying home.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Things are expensive.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Downtown has had a terrible reputation.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not only reputation, but actually genuinely scary for many years.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like that anymore.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to get out of the house.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: We need to get people out from in front of their Netflix and out amongst each other,
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: spending money, Enjoying time, building culture.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is jobs.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is economic development.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that is public safety.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: If we treat the arts,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: if we treat music as a nice to have,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: as this twee little thing that is precious and that if you hold it in your hand
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: and otherwise you're going to drop it and it's going to That is the first thing
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: that gets cut out of every budget.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you talk about it as jobs, economic activity, and public safety, nobody argues with you that.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the basic premise is that if you put a concert in the park,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: you're less likely to have someone shooting up or shitting in that park.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's that easy.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then we can use our precious public resources for public safety or
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: in very intentional ways rather than assuming that we can over police
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: the entire city and that will somehow make things move forward.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: The only solution we have is e-mail.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as the former district attorney who was the DA during COVID, right?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely agree that.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: one of the things that we saw crime spike nationally and internationally was
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: because there were just less people out and about and on the streets
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: and less eyeballs and just less community and social compact, right?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: When nobody's around to finger wag
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: at people.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's an old history of using artists to gentrify neighborhoods.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's an old adage.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have a shitty part of town.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're allowed to curse on your podcast.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's fully an adult program.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have a shitty part of town with some spaces that...
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can use for any real meaningful purpose.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: You put artists in there, right?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then they build something cool and suddenly the new coffee shop and then
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: the new restaurant and then suddenly the artists can't afford to be there anymore.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in the old form of government,
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: I actually wrote a report on how the city can I'm going to actively use the tools
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: of our own gentrification to try and bring Portland back.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have this amazing arts culture.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And right now,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: downtown,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: if you are walking by a building that is boarded up and has plywood on the walls,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: that's not encouraging people to go out.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if instead we could get,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: a dance troupe to rehearse in that vacant store or an artist to just stand up
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: and do their studio painting for even a short amount of time,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: that is inherently so much better and gives a better sense of community to people.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: This seems really easy to me.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why we're not doing more.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I think can help a city and make I mean,
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of this as I live through a lot is based on vibes and whether that's good.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there is right now an international design competition for the Tom McCall Waterfront.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: We know that the Waterfront Park is our gathering place for our city.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: We know that that is where the Waterfront Blues Festival is going to happen,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: where Pride Festival is going to happen,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: where all these different concerts and festivals happen.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is our city's real living room.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't have any infrastructure there at all.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: We know there's going to be concerts in the bowl.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's always going to be concerts.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to set it up for the 4th
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: of July weekend for Waterfront Blues.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: What if we had a permanent stage that was there and we could have equipment
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: that was built in because we know We're going to use this space.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: What if we built a little bit of infrastructure into what is right now
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: a beautiful lawn,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: but we know there's going to be spaces where there's going to be vendor tents
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: and people are going to have to walk along here.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've gone to some of these festivals like Pride where it rains and
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: then everything's muddy and smelly and we could have avoided those things.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to be intentional about a city that wants people to gather,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: then we need a little bit of infrastructure and we can't assume it's going
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: to casually happen.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that these festivals are also struggling.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And every little dollar that we squeeze out of them and force them to create
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: when it should be a city responsibility is a reason why they can't succeed.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a big fan of this idea of renovating the bull,
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: recognizing that it is going to be an asset that we use for generations to come
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: and making a little bit of investment.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know that this is also being discussed and I fully agree with this too.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we can maximize our use of the waterfront.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: When I go to other cities around the country, it feels like there's so many more.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I, I know that others are thinking about that, working on that.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, and I, I hope that is another thing that we
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: think, cause
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you,
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: it's not even that it's negligence or that the city just didn't happen to get around
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: to it.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: There genuinely was a philosophical belief by previous city commissioners
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: that parks are places of solace.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they should have nothing to do with commerce.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we don't have restaurants in some of our bigger parks.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you can't get a snow cone at Laurelhurst Park.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's that basic idea of commerce and recreation should be completely separate.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I want a hot dog.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to go sit down in a restaurant and look out at the river.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to go touch the river in a meaningful way and go swimming if I want to.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot be so precious about these things.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be very intentional.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we're just at a point as a city where we're finally coming to reckon with some of that.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: You touched on public safety, which I appreciated.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I love your vision because it aligns with my vision that public safety is
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: so much more than the number of police or prosecutors in the jail
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: and all this other things.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's a component, no doubt about it.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should be thinking about it more expansively and holistically.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I appreciate that you do as well.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: And there is currently going to be,
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: it looks like,
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: a ballot initiative that voters are going to have to make a decision on that.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they're getting a lot of flack for this being touted as a way
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: to decrease call times for police.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we can talk about call times for police in this city.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: But what it is going to do is it would increase or peg a staffing ratio
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: that must be maintained and they would pay for it out of our PCEF dollars.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to us a little bit about what is it and then how do you see it?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a it's a deeply cynical and very
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Clean Energy Fund,
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: as we know,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: is a tax on the profits of the wealthiest corporations to have
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: a dedicated funding source to a generational challenge.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: So climate change is happening,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: is going to affect the communities that have the least,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: and we need to instead move the other direction.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: What the police union and this group have done,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: they've lied to the public over and over and over again in a way There is also
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: a really...
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: They consider their crossing guards as cops.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: In Portland,
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: our Portland police officers are the most expensive,
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: most highly trained tools in our entire system.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of training and the amount of pay that we give to each
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: of our police officers is wildly more than, say, New York City.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where in New York City,
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: you're having a cop who's making probably 60 grand a year,
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: standing on a corner sort of flagging traffic.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is not what our police do.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you actually included all of the things,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: all the 911 call takers,
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: all the PS3s,
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: all the Portland Street response,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: all the alternative responders, we're a lot closer to that.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if the police union wanted to reduce the salaries of their officers
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: to what they receive in those cities, maybe we could have a conversation about that.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps we could even do it with the existing resources that we have.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a deeply cynical approach to try and say that there's some magic number
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: and not understand that our system is Fundamentally different.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't just assume public safety by a dollar amount.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and to your point, this has been a debate for a long time in Portland.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's not new that we need higher staffing ratios.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they use that number that we're one of the lowest staff by the way that things are measured.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like from your experience and research of this,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: All of our cities don't even measure it the same way.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's misleading.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I've done some of the looks too,
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: as I've traveled around and talked to my colleagues,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: progressive prosecutors across the country.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: In Milwaukee, I find to be a good comp for Portland.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: They also spend almost exactly how much you all spend on their police.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Every year when the Oregonian publishes the salary of every city
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: of Portland employee, the top 100 are always cops.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are making up.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: I saw one make almost half a million dollars because of the amount of overtime
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: that this officer was doing.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, that's a problem.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: We should not be having officers doing 80 hour shifts.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's no.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not safe for them.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's bad policy.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's bad for every part of that.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think if you look at New York City, the top paid people are going to be cops.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're just not.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's deeply cynical.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's deeply inappropriate.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: And also it assumes this fundamental question that.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is a cop the right answer in every situation?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we have answered that as a community.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, it is not appropriate for us to take the most expensive tool that we have
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: in our toolbox and waste their time filling out paperwork at car crashes or going to
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: a business that...
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: We should send a person with a clipboard to do that.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we do.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're called PS3s.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, the mayor just cut a lot of those out of our budget.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're going to be even seeing worse of that time.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just deeply disingenuous to the public.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really frustrating that we've been having good conversations about this.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: But even, you know, you were saying call times even.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is something fundamentally wrong here.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things about this ballot measure is that it would...
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think some of the misleading talking points that have been being used is,
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: oh, this is excess funds.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to take it from the excess funds.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to us a little bit about what should people do?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there are no excess funds.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: There was a narrative.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: There continues to be a public narrative that there's this this.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Fund received so much more money that these idiots couldn't possibly know what to do
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: with all of this.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point when the fund first opened,
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: yes, there was an excess of funds that they didn't know were going to come in.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took them a little while to spend them.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: Those dollars have been spent.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we have created very intentional processes that are called,
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: there's the CIP, the Climate Investment Bank.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what the P stands for,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: but basically it is a five year plan of how to spend every dollar
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: in all these different categories.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's public,
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: it's transparent,
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's accountable,
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's decided by community members and it's approved by city council.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's little tiny updates that happen every year.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the CIP has been really robust and demonstrating where these dollars are going
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: to go,
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: what kinds of organizations should be able to get them,
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: and who is supposed to benefit from them.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: This program has been one of the most accountable and robust public dollar programs
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: that I've ever seen.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they did it out of necessity because...
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: From the jump, there's this false narrative that there's just money lying around.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: There is no money lying around.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Everything has been accounted for by public bodies and promised to future uses.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: So anything that changes from that means resources.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have to go back on some of those promises.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that,
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: my my amateur advice to the folks who want this piece of fun,
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: the climate energy fund to be protected and to be able to be spent the way that is
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: the plan already for it to be spent is.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: We need to tell the good stories.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're helping people get trained into green jobs, which is huge, right?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And other organizations are using PSF dollars for other things.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I also remember it wasn't that long ago when Multnomah County experienced a heat Yep.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: First of all,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the way that this fund,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: as you laid out,
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: not only is it dollars going out to get good outcomes,
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: but also who gets to benefit from those dollars in the process.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're training people to do the green energy jobs of the future.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about just putting solar panels.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: The investment in trees,
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: the investment in water systems,
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: the investment in community resilience, those sort of things are massive.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: East Portland has the lowest level of tree canopy.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are a combination of what used to be apple orchards and now large parking lots
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: and freeways, essentially.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be investing millions and millions of dollars into new trees
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: and making sure that they get watered and that they grow to their full potential.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Training the people of East Portland who maybe have some of
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: the least economic opportunity right now into the green energy jobs of the future.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have these young people who are able to go out and install wind turbines or work
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: on some of these big projects or understand some of the ways
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: that community can deliver energy in different ways.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Really rethinking how We're looking at how our grid works
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: and how we're delivering services to looking at our transportation system,
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: all these big things that are leading to bad outcomes,
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: not only in the climate world,
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: but in public safety world and in all these other costs.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to move us towards a really robust future of how we do the work.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: We know we're always going to be doing the work.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: How are we doing it?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what kind of city are we like in 30 years?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's exactly right.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I love the most about these investments is you plant a tree.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you need to plant the same tree again the next year and then the next year.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: You planted a tree.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: That is going to benefit people in our community for decades.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it is a...
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's an expression, we're planting trees under the shade of whom we'll never sit.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is hard for people to think 30 years in the future when they're worried
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: about what's happening today.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is what PSEF was about.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: PSEF was always about taking the burden away from having
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: to figure out what are we going to do in 30 years?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've answered the question.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to set up now the success that we have in 30 years.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not satisfying to most people.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: People want results now.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I know that well.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: So PSF is a great lead into the next segment that I want to talk about,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: which is the Moda Center.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because as the state and the city and the county all Think about what should
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: the public investment be into this arena that is owned by the city.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: PSAP dollars are one of the things that it was like, how do we pay for it?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, hey, look, there's a...
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know what it reminds me of?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Psef reminds me of?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Remember those old Looney Tunes cartoons?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're on a desert island and you and your buddy,
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: you've been there for a few weeks and he starts to look like a hot dog?
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Psef is the hot dog.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Psef is the hot dog.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's staring at each other and being like, whoa.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want that.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to eat.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: My friend, right?
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it is.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: So here's yet another thing that is going to be potentially targeting
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: and discussed is the Moda Center.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: But to zoom out from that,
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: just this past week,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: you put out a newsletter that said, here's where I stand on the Moda Center.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you just articulate that for folks who are listening,
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: who probably should sign up for your newsletter, maybe don't already receive it.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: But where do you stand on the Moda Center?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of conversation that's happening in our community and a lot
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: of numbers getting thrown around,
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of big flashy headlines and some in good faith, some not.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: The Moda Center is bigger than the Blazers.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's more than just talking about giving money to a billionaire.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: The city of Portland owns the Moda Center.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: Should the city of Portland...
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Purchase the Moda Center?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think not.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should not.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we hadn't.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the previous city council acquired it for a dollar,
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: understanding that at that point,
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: three years ago or whatever it was,
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: four years ago,
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: that it was going to take four to five hundred million dollars worth of renovation.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they did that full eyed and understood that that was what they were signing up for.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a bad call, but that's where we're at.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: The Moda Center is the most outdated arena in the NBA, undeniably.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is not meeting the standards of sports,
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: but it's also not meeting the standards of all the other uses.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can't even get some of the fancier Cirque du Soleil acts to come to Portland.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: No offense, Cirque du Soleil taking strays in this city.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, I want them to.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want them to.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: We just can't accommodate.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're stage setups because we have 30-year-old equipment
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: that we can't plug LED lights into in the right way.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's some of that basic stuff that if we have a public asset and we have
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: a responsibility to use it, we have to use it properly.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think we aren't using the Moda Center properly anyway.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's only activated about 150 nights a year.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: It means 200 plus nights a year.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's sitting dark.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's no good reason for that.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're going to make an investment of that,
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: it has to be towards making sure,
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: as I said earlier,
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: activation,
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: giving people a reason to get out of their houses as often as possible to come
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: and do that.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a Blazers super fan by any stretch.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad the Blazers exist, but I've only been to one Blazers game in my life.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to keep the Blazers here.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: They are a part of our cultural identity.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: They are our biggest tenant of this space.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they are a huge economic driver in this community.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it's again, not just about the Blazers.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's also about the fire.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's also about monster truck rallies and everything else.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really frustrated with the way that the Blazers
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: and specifically their new owner has been carrying themselves.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the performance that he put on at the Moda Center for
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: the Portland Metro Chamber event,
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: if he was actively trying to piss off Portland, he couldn't have done a better job.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not about him either.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: He gets to be an asshole if he wants to be.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: We need his team here.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: We want the team here.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to figure out how to do this.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: The finance side of it is complicated, but pretty relatively straightforward, right?
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: The state of Oregon, we said a number of years ago, $400 to $500 million.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Blazers are using a $600 million figure.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: We will figure out what the actual number is.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting architectural designs and figuring all that out.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: The state of Oregon is giving us $365 million.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: Multimac County is going to put $88 million up front and $13 million in ongoing.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: That means that basically the pie of dollars that we would have to do,
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: it's almost a three to one match that the city would not have to put in.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't meet this timeline,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: those dollars all go away and the city is still on the hook for hundreds of millions
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: of dollars.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't take advantage of these timelines right now,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's some conversation about, well, it's a false timeline.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the state legislature can do these things again.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're not.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: They can't.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have to issue bonds by this certain time.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: We know that the NCAA.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: A women's finals are coming in 2030.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: We need to have the facility ready for them too when they get here.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to the three to one match there, we're talking about what is the city's investment?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: When the sale of the team goes through,
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to get a big chunk of cash from the business license tax,
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: something like 40 to $50 million.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense for me to put that back into the building.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: We own about half the parking garages.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we get a fee on every ticket.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a 6% fee on every ticket sold.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: It makes sense to me to put some of that into the ongoing maintenance in the facility.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the question there is, now we have about a $75 million gap.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a real $75 million gap?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is that buying the executive suites and the fancy locker rooms?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that buying air conditioners and getting rid of the diesel generators?
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the mayor has proposed to use PCF dollars for that $75 million.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's absolutely an argument for that.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: True, they use diesel generators to operate the building right now.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is energy efficient in any capacity.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also always better to build something in place rather than knock it all
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: the way down and use the new concrete and all of that.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: If the Clean Energy Fund Committee says this is a good use and we are willing
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: to sacrifice on the things that we have already put in the CIP and are willing
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: to no longer do that, I'm fully in support of using those dollars in that way.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: If they aren't, Then I'm not.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we will find another way to fund it.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are other options before us.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a real dollar amount?
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we pay for it are real important questions.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to bring the public along for every step of that.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to be as transparent and accountable.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Been doing a lot of community sessions,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: trying to get information out there, trying to do as much media.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have some really good information on our website.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to the city council website, there's a whole bunch of really good documents.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: You could dig into the Excel spreadsheets.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can see the condition assessment report from 2022 that shows
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: where all these things need to happen.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it is just really hard to try and bring everybody along in this conversation.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just going to say one last thing.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that we're having a conversation about the Moda right now.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the most urgent issue in our city by any stretch.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have other crumbling infrastructure.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have billions of dollars of crumbling infrastructure,
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: not even in the Keller Auditorium,
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: the schnitz,
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: all these other city owned venues,
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: but also roads and bridges and park lights and all these things
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: where we should be spending other time.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, this is where we're at.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have to make a decision about the future of the Blazers.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: We have to make a decision about the future of the Moda Center.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we will be able to land this.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that despite all the noise and despite all the distractions,
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: we will find a path forward to support the Moda Center,
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: keep it active so that it doesn't become a big burden and keep the Blazers here for
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: the long time.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I so appreciate you talking to me about this,
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: but also that you put out in writing for anybody to read,
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: hey, here's my position on this.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: One of my biggest criticisms of this entire process has been the lack
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: of communication and very unclear communication.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: And even I myself have been like...
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: I feel, hey, giving $600 to a billionaire, I'm against that.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's against that, right?
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, it's not actually giving $600 billion to a billionaire.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's an asset that the city owns.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me recalibrate my thinking on that, my position.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: And meanwhile,
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: you have this billionaire who is doing all kinds of antics to make
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: the community hate him,
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: which it feels like is intentional because he doesn't care about Portland,
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: to state it mildly,
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: all the way from not giving our t-shirts to the fans during the playoffs.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: To his conversation at the Moda Center with the chamber basically saying,
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: I pay taxes, that's enough.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so he's doing everything he can to make people feel a way.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: And everything is in the context of...
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: We can't help it, right?
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: turns out he's kind of an asshole.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that makes it even more enticing.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, there's emotion, there's feelings.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're cutting a city budget.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're backing out services.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're laying off public employees.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're going to find money for a Moda Center.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's so...
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because there's emotion.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's also, you know, a good conversation we had about reality of what needs to happen.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: And another complication is you laid out, there's an opportunity right now.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I've said this to other people and they say, well, don't look at it that way.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: You look at it as it's $600 billion.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, if I am voting on the city council, I am very much looking at my pocketbook.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: I, Mike Schmidt,
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: am critical that the state jumped out ahead and made decisions without you all.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think that mitigates your leverage and also incentivizes you now
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: to make this happen because otherwise you're on the home.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this is massively complicated.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess my biggest criticism for all the folks,
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: starting at the governor,
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: the legislature, our mayor, all the way around, and the Blazers, whatever.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: I guess they don't feel the need to explain this to the community.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think they should, but they haven't felt the need.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the communication around this has just been awful.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's left us...
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Feeling like we are all on the Scooby-Doo team trying to research this ourselves,
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is insane.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, systems are built by people and we're building a new form of government.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I will go ahead and take some of the responsibility for this because-
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned earlier,
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: as council president,
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's my job to be responsible for getting information out to the public and to all
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: the counselors in a way that they can actually hear it.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: And most of this noise around the Moda Center happened in the middle of the budget.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I was already operating.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't get additional staff.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any additional resources.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was trying to navigate through the budget process while the media story about
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: the Moda started getting away from us.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as the We've done a lot in the last couple of weeks.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm desperately trying to...
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not necessarily trying to pull it back towards a specific outcome.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a cheerleader for this project.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get a process together that says,
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: is this actually the right decision for our community?
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced it is the right decision for our community,
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: but we have to bring the community along for it.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't have even seen that happen.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think this would have simply moved along and people would have not had an opportunity.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to get benefits out of this thing.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to get something that the community feels proud of.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to bankrupt this city and condemn future generations to a bad deal.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to understand what a good deal is, too.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the community is just as evenly divided on this as well.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: We got polling that said 49% were in support and 46% were opposed.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is not a clear path forward for me in one direction or the other.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to just thread this needle and try to bring the community along with it
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: at every step.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: And government does a really bad job of...
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Telling our story.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think,
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: from my,
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: and I've been thinking about this issue,
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: talking to people about this issue for a while.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for putting something out there.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like just the basic facts around this have not been laid out.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I also feel like,
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: the mayor sent out an email that I thought was needlessly petulant and seemed angry
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: that people hadn't already figured out what he figured out.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's fine that he's arrived at a position.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: He has more information than most people have.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm okay with that.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: But to be angry at the public for not being to where he is when they don't have
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: the information he has, you know, that struck me as crazy.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: Off-putting, quite frankly.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was deeply unhelpful in every regard.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I super appreciate that you are having this conversation.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about it today.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things, so obviously there's this group, Rip City, not Rip Off.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that they,
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: as just people,
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: this is not their job,
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: they don't get paid to do this,
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: are putting a lot of information into the public that wasn't there.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they should be commended for that.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I've seen them say is about the manager,
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: the operator of the Moda Center.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: And in my mind, and again, here's more nuance, right?
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, oh, we're going to give Tom Dundon $600 million.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, not actually.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: He also is right now, as the contract is set up, the operator.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a different entity than the Blazer's owner.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's an operator at Motor Center and the Blazer's owner.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so the $600 million is really going to renovate an asset that the city owns,
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: but the operator operates and derives revenue from.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's another layer of complexity.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: One of the suggestions that I've seen put out there is why not open up the operator
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: to a competitive bid process?
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of...
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think it makes a lot of sense.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to make sure we have the right operator and that the city is getting
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: a return and that it's not just assumed that we're going to hand it
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: to Rip City Management,
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: which is a separate but deeply connected business to the Blazers.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: Rip City Management handles not only Blazers games,
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: but fire games, but also circuses and concerts and all the other things.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, if they're only right now booking out 150 nights a year,
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: maybe they're not that great of a manager.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, yeah.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that some of that is our requirements.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have not been in a position to demand.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality also is that Tom Dundon and this new ownership group are very business focused.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that the Paul Allen...
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was, yeah.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to see, gosh,
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: like at the airport,
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: the cost of a burger or a beer is the same outside as it is inside.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to see that at the arena.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that we're going to get to have that,
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: but I want to make sure we're talking about that.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to be able to make sure the city We have to have some idea
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: of what our bottom line is.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a giveaway.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is an investment.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: An investment comes with a return.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to know what that return is at every angle.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if it is ensuring good paying jobs for the workers inside of those,
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: working at every one of those concession stands,
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And every construction worker who's going to be building the new renovations,
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_00: that's absolutely up to us to figure those things out.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot here that we can demand and now is the This is a process
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_00: where we are actually figuring out what are the things that we even want
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: to negotiate.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: the next big step for city council is in August 12th,
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: we're supposed to vote on what's called a term sheet,
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: which is just the basic outlines of these are the buckets we're going to talk about.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to have dollar amounts.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to have specifics,
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_00: but it's like, what is even the universe of things we're talking about?
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's put it on a piece of paper.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that is coming in the next couple of weeks here.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned negotiating.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you have in your office Metro's Chief of Staff, Kristen Dennis.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Could you say a little bit about her role in this?
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a phone call from my friend Juan Carlos Gonzalez,
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: who is our new Metro Council President.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually gotten to know him.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've known him for over 20 years.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, he was my intern when I worked at Senator Merkley's office.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Again, talking about how small this city really is.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But when he came into office as council president, there was already a staff from Lynn Peterson.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Kristen Dennis is a longtime political operative, I think is how Willamette we called her.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I had the opportunity to work with Kristen when she was chief of staff to Ted Wheeler.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And she is brilliant and thoughtful and very process driven and very And Mary has
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_00: a great job of understanding both the small details and the big picture.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so Juan Carlos said, basically, he doesn't have a revenue stream that they can dedicate.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have a big pot of money that they can put in,
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_00: but they wanted to be able to help land the deal.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jason has been helping us just sort of be a go between all the 12 city councilors
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: and the administration and the county and the state and sort of having one person
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: who is a little bit more neutral, not part of a single political office.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's reporting to me.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: But she does not work.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pay her salary.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_00: She does not work for me.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: But just having that neutral third party who has a pretty clear sense of process and
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: a hand on the wheel has been really great.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: She's been wonderful to try to help get just better information out there,
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: get the counselors to feel like they are part of this process and bring
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: the public along.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So she's been it's been wonderful.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just a little bit of capacity,
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: because, again,
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: as council president,
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have all the responsibility, none of the power and no additional resources.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that takes me to my final question for you.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about some of the big issues in front of the council.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about the budget.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about some big swings that we could take.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of Portlanders are looking 3,000 miles across the country right now.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And are seeing a lot of things that they really like.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I hear people on a regular basis being like,
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: God, I wish we had Zoran Mandami here in Portland, right?
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's doing big things.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we see, you know, he obviously is a democratic socialist candidate.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing democratic socialist candidates win across the country,
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: but also here on our own council.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're the council president.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're not the mayor.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have the same form of government.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have the same issues.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have the same scale of things that New York has.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: But are there things, I mean,
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_01: you must be yourself seeing some of the things and be like, wow, that's impressive.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are there things that you're looking at?
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe New York or maybe anywhere that that are getting you excited you want
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: to see happen here in Portland.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm not a DSA member,
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_00: but I am a strong progressive and I'm historically one of the progressive members
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_00: of council.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't caucus with the progressive caucus anymore.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm a progressive in my values.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been really excited about what's happening nationwide.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been really excited about what's happening here in Portland.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about a couple of basic things.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I represent East Portland, right?
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everything east of I-205, an area of town that people forget is part of Portland.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: most people at one point sort of thought that 82nd Avenue was our eastern edge
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_00: when it's actually our geographic center.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I represent 150,000 people of East Portland who have never had a voice on council.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Only two commissioners in the history of the city of Portland have been elected
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: from east of 82nd.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And now there are three councillors on this council.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Little tiny things are making a difference.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, we had the grand opening of the first public plaza east of I-205.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a big deal in general,
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_00: but for people in East Portland, it's a huge deal to have something for them.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we're getting sidewalks and we're getting potholes filled
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_00: and we're getting trees planted and we're getting assistance to renters on
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: the east side and we're getting assistance to...
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: The maintenance of our parks, which were always the first to get cut.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_00: They always cut the maintenance in East Portland before they cut it downtown.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: All those things are really moving in a different direction.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And my neighbors are feeling it,
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: that their quality of life is actually moving in a different direction.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look at things like housing.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_00: The city has, for decades and decades, invested in affordable housing.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_00: But how we invested in affordable housing is we cut a check and we patted ourselves on the back.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then we said, job well done.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_00: What we're moving towards now is a model of social housing where the city continues
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_00: to have an ongoing ownership stake in what the housing is built.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so that we can have an ongoing interest in making sure
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: that it's not falling apart and it is serving the people well
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_00: and it's keeping common.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that we actually have something on the other side of this to show
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: that we're investing in this and we're getting results.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: We can't demonstrate that we have results right now.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that one of
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: the most progressive things we can do is demonstrate how we're spending our public
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_00: dollars and who is getting served by them.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of those things that are happening in a real meaningful way.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the conflict that we see on city council.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is because we are making decisions that previous city councils never could before.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's supposed to be controversial.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to end in tie votes.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be hard to try and move these things.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we're actually having those conversations for the first time in 100 years.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_00: People are actually represented and the city council isn't just a blank,
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: a rubber stamp to all whatever the administration wants.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I feel genuinely hopeful about where things are going.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have the kind of capital to be able to tap into like Zoran Mondani does.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_00: But some of the basic things of understanding who are we serving is
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_00: a fundamental question that has never been asked.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we are finally asking that question here in the city of Portland.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's so good to hear.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of the enthusiasm for what we're seeing in New York is
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: that he is laser focused on issues that impact everyday New York City residents
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_01: and things I hear your focus is on the same types of issues.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes,
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_01: and this was my experience,
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: as district attorney,
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'd go around the country and they'd be like,
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_00: oh, I love what you're doing.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe you're doing that.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's so great.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this and that.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd come home and people are like, oh, whatever.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So some of it is that, right?
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: A prophet is somebody from another town, right?
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there is that.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I hope that as you all continue to do these things that we get the word out.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it's so important that we celebrate our victories
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: and celebrate our wins and that people can see their lives improving.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely agree.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to do the work.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: We also got to talk about the work.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_00: We got to talk about it.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we got to make sure everybody knows that good things are happening
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: because good things are happening in the city right now.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to leave it there,
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Council President Jamie Dunphy, but you're not off the hook just yet.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_01: All right, here we go.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Number one,
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_01: name the Seattle Rock Band formed in 1993,
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_01: whose biggest hits were Lump and Peaches,
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_01: whose debut album cover originally featured a photo of the band with
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_01: the actual sitting president.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_01: That is the presidents of the United States of America.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I got to start you off easy.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bonus points for if you can name the sitting president.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Was it 94?
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it would have been Clinton?
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Clinton.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Just a little math.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Easy.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: True or false.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_01: The FBI spent over two years investigating a Portland band's song
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_01: for secretly obscene lyrics and still couldn't figure out what was being sung.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's true.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Bonus points for the song or the band.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God, I think I know this.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Can't pull it out.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was true.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: You get the point.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_01: You'll get to leave.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully Louie Louie by the Kingsman Kingsman recorded in one take at
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_01: a Portland studio in 1963.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_01: The FBI's conclusion to their two year investigation was that it was unintelligible
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_01: at any speed, whether or not they were cursing those commies.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it amazing to think the things that in the 60s,
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_01: like, was there, were there obscene lyrics in this song?
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: A two-year investigation.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Play it backwards and it's Satan speaking.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And now look at our president of the United States.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: What 1968 hit memorializes Lincoln, JFK, MLK, and RFK and all in one set of lyrics?
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know this one.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're wrong.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wrong.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I got this one.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, the song's name is Abraham, Martin, and John, originally recorded by Dion.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Never heard that one before.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Me neither.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to listen to it.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yay.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which president used Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop as his 1992 campaign anthem,
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_01: later reuniting the band for his inauguration?
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's Clinton again.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's Clinton.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the dates
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_01: give it away.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that anyway.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Which rock icon objected when Reagan's 1984 campaign tried to use born in the USA?
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_01: That was Springsteen.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Springsteen.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which rocker sent cease and desist to both Michelle Bachmann's 2011 campaign
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: and Trump's 2020 campaign for using his songs?
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Is it an American?
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he's no longer with us.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's passed.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm blanking.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Last dance for Mary Jane.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was Tom Petty.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Petty.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Petty.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_01: What song became FDR's unofficial 1932 campaign theme?
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Was it something like You Are My Sunshine or something?
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would have to be, right?
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_01: But no, good guess.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Happy days are here again.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Delightful.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Happy.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Was Seattle rapper known for the Sonics anthem,
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not In Our House,
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_01: teamed up with two members of the presidents of the USA to form
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_01: a side project called Subset?
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard of this.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sir Mix-a-Lot.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: No kidding.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I didn't know either.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to look that up.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have to go look this up.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Number nine.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: You've only got two more to go.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing well.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_01: True or false.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_01: The swirling mural on the cover of Elliott Smith's figure eight is a Portland landmark.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, wait.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Seattle, isn't it?
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's in LA.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's in LA.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's on Sunset Boulevard.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that one.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Even though,
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Smith is deeply tied to Portland and moved there as a teen and formed Heatmiser,
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_01: helped build Jackpot Studios.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Figure eight was his LA record.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Damn it.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm embarrassed now.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a final question.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is for everything.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_01: You get this right.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_01: You win.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're not.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're not.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a loser.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Should you,
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Council President Jamie Dunphy,
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_01: introduce a resolution declaring Louie Louie as Portland's official city anthem,
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_01: beating Oregon's failed statehouse attempt to the punch?
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because apparently at some point Oregon debated making it Oregon song.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: They did do that.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think I probably should introduce that.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's probably a good idea.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's the right answer.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Louie Louie.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Louie Louie.
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Classic.
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Council President Jamie Dunphy, you win, you get to leave this incredibly hot studio.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Mike, thanks so much for having me.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Jamie, thank you so much for doing this and for being real about the budget,
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_01: real about the Moda Center and for indulging me on music trivia there at the end.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_01: A quick recap for everybody.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about what it actually takes to run a fractured 12 member council,
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_01: the structural budget hold.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_01: we went deep,
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_01: deep into the Moda Center because Portlanders deserve
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_01: to understand exactly what's being negotiated with their money before a single vote.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, thanks for hanging out with us.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Mike Schmidt and we'll see you next week.