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One of the chief effects of the government overhaul Portland voters approved last November: The city will be split into four geographic voting districts, each represented by three city councilors. Those councilors will work out of offices located somewhere in their geographic districts, keeping them close to their constituents.
Last week, at a meeting of the current Portland City Council, two sitting commissioners asked a simple question: What’s going on with those district offices?
The answer: We will figure that out later.
In fact, Mayor Ted Wheeler and the city’s government transition team said that district offices would likely not be established until the 12-member City Council assumes office on Jan. 1, 2025.
“Where’s the conversation and budget to build the physical districts in each four districts?” asked Commissioner Dan Ryan, who bristled at the idea of waiting until then. “That’s what puzzles me. The fact is, that’s what I think should be the priority.”
Maty Sauter, the city’s director of asset management, explained that the city’s transition team decided to prioritize the expansion of downtown City Hall to accommodate all 12 future council members rather than focus on the district offices. (The City Council approved $7.2 million this spring toward the City Hall renovation project. That does not include costs for district offices.) After all, Sauter explained, a volunteer committee didn’t draw the boundaries of the four geographic districts until late August—meaning city staff couldn’t look for spaces to create district offices because they didn’t know what the districts would look like.
“We did not have time to know where these sites should be located,” Sauter told the City Council last week. “We figured that these new councilors would probably want to have a say in the physical relationships they had with their communities.”
Wheeler backed Sauter. “I support renovating this chamber. The council has to have a facility to meet in. City Hall seems like the logical place for the City Council to meet. We voted to approve the [construction] contract for both the chamber and council offices, and we even voted a budget to do it,” Wheeler said. “I don’t know what the district commissioners are going to want. It’s up to them to define what their relationship is going to be with their districts. They should help determine that.”
Before deferring the district offices, though, Sauter said she and her team did explore a variety of options, none of which panned out: using community centers owned by the city’s parks bureau, leasing privately owned buildings, and using other city-owned facilities like fire stations and public works facilities.
Sauter said she worried that switching the focus now to creating district offices could “derail” the progress her team has already made in securing a contractor for the City Hall renovation. “We have a win on the way,” Sauter told the council. “Let’s go ahead and knock that out.”
Ryan asked that city staff consult neighborhood district coalitions, which are funded by the city and have physical offices in all four quadrants of the city, to see if they could support district offices. (T.J. McHugh, a spokesperson for Ryan, says that Southeast Uplift, one of the neighborhood coalitions, has space in its Hawthorne building to support five district offices for as little as $2,000 a month.)
The discussion around district offices is part of ongoing tensions that erupted last week over the timing of the City Hall renovation, which city staff say is necessary in order to accommodate the future 12-member council.
Commissioners Ryan, Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio are requesting that the mayor delay the renovations until 2025 in order to avoid work disruptions. The mayor voiced support for a plan that would move the council offices out of City Hall to a nearby city office building so the contractor could begin work on the renovation early next year. The mayor is expected to make a final decision soon on which plan to pursue.
On Tuesday, all of the council offices aside from Wheeler’s agreed to two things: first, that construction could commence on the City Hall chambers on Jan. 1, 2024, but council offices would remain mostly untouched until at least 2025 (and from there, the new City Council could decide if renovations are necessary), and second, that district offices should be established prior to the new City Council taking office.
“We understand there will be dust, noise, and inconveniences during construction, and we are willing to be flexible with those conditions to maintain continuity with our teams and connectivity to the public,” Commissioners Ryan, Gonzalez, Rubio and Mingus Mapps wrote in the letter to the mayor Tuesday afternoon. “The current offices, with minor cubicle additions and equipment upgrades, will be sufficient for the start of the new term.”
Wheeler’s colleagues also urged him to establish district offices before the new City Council takes office in 2025: “Establishing District Offices aligns with what Portlanders voted for in Charter Reform,” they wrote, “and affirms the original commitment to district representation and community engagement and reflects the current council’s commitment to empowering the new council both within City Hall, and in the community.”
The mayor has final say on the timing and scope of the City Hall renovations and will decide after a Thursday work session on the matter, according to his staff.