Portland Bureau of Transportation Faces $129 Million Budget Decrease in Its Next Fiscal Year

Among the proposed cuts: the bureau’s residential street sweeping program, which clears streets of debris.

Along Northeast Halsey Street. (Blake Benard)

Facing a revenue crunch, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has requested $129 million less in this year’s upcoming budget than it did in last fiscal year’s budget.

The requested budgets from city bureaus have not been made public yet, but PBOT confirms that among the proposed service cuts for this upcoming year is the city’s residential street sweeping program. Every year, the bureau drives its sweeper vehicles down 2,300 miles of residential city streets to clear the streets of debris. It takes the bureau 11 months to complete the entire city.

Only 25% of the Transportation Bureau’s revenue is discretionary, meaning that 75% is prescriptive in its use. The residential street sweeping program has historically been funded by discretionary dollars. (It costs $500,000 annually.)

Those discretionary dollars are scarce. The two largest contributors to the bureau’s discretionary funding bucket are parking revenues and the Oregon State Highway Fund, which is composed of state gas taxes and allocated to cities and counties based on their populations and the number of new vehicle registrations.

Bureau spokeswoman Hannah Schafer says it’s unclear why fewer vehicles are being registered in the county, though she says there was a significant decrease when the pandemic first hit in 2020 and fewer drivers were on the road.

PBOT declined to divulge other proposed program cuts.

PBOT’s requested budget for the upcoming fiscal year is $511 million. That’s down from $641 million for fiscal year 2022-2023.

All bureaus have submitted their proposed budgets to the City Budget Office, which will make budget recommendations to each bureau. The Portland City Council will vote on the final proposed budget this spring.

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