Skip to main content
The morning after the Portland City Council narrowly voted to divert $1.9 million in new police funding to parks maintenance, Councilor Steve Novick said he was prepared to broker a compromise to bankroll both items.
The Wednesday vote followed a contentious, late-night debate among city councilors, who are deeply divided on the role of police in the city’s revival after five tough years.
Councilors in support of the amendment to Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed budget said it was a minuscule change to a massive bureau that has 91 unfilled vacancies. Councilors in opposition said it would reverse recent progress made by the city in reducing crime rates and send the wrong signal to Portlanders about the council’s commitment to speeding up emergency response times. The debate grew sour as councilors took aim at each other’s motives.
Following the vote, which closed out a 12-hour City Council session on the city’s $8.5 billion budget, those with a vested interest in the matter got vocal about what steps they might take in response.
Vice president of public affairs for the Portland Metro Chamber Jon Isaacs said in a statement to WW on Thursday morning that the chamber would consider supporting an increased Parks Levy—which the parks bureau has repeatedly said must be doubled just to maintain current service levels—but only if the $1.9 million cut to the Police Bureau’s new funding is reversed.
“The chamber is open to a potential Parks Levy increase if it is explicitly to fund parks maintenance, safety, cleanliness, and modernization of parks operations,” Isaacs said in the statement to WW. “Unfortunately, the council adopted a $2 million cut to police staffing at literally the 11th hour last night. Any serious conversation about a Parks Levy will require that funding to be restored.”
Councilor Steve Novick, who ultimately voted in favor of the proposal, has positioned himself as a potential mediator of such a deal.
Novick told his colleagues Wednesday night that he’d had an “interesting” conversation with the chamber in which it had expressed support for an increased Parks Levy, so long as the $1.9 million diversion from police to parks wasn’t approved.
“They said they’re not inalterably opposed to an increased Parks Levy, but they suggested that their support for a levy might be conditional on discussions about the police budget,” Novick explained to his colleagues. (That rankled Councilor Angelita Morillo, who said to Novick: “I would hope that one measly call with the Portland Metro Chamber wouldn’t shiver your timbers so much that you couldn’t vote with us.”)
Novick tells WW he’s prepared to strike a deal with the metro chamber, if it prevents major cuts to parks maintenance.
“At the end of the day, if I think that parks is going to be in better shape if we make a deal with the chamber than if we don’t, then I’m prepared to make it,” Novick said.
Mayor Keith Wilson said Thursday morning that the $1.9 million amendment “may impede our efforts to recruit a next generation of law enforcement first responders who will represent and serve our community, as well as the critical missions that get pounds of fentanyl and human trafficking victims off our streets.” He says he’s directed the Police Bureau to assess the impacts of the vote “on their essential missions.”
In an unusual move, Wilson sent out a press release on the eve of the council’s budget session, pleading with Portlanders to reject any cuts to the Police Bureau.
“Your City Council will vote on the budget tomorrow that will impact you and your family. The Timbers and Blazers have told us what they need from the budget. Minority-owned businesses have said the same,” Wilson wrote. “They’re not alone in asking our City Council to prioritize public safety. In fact, 69% of Portlanders agree that our law enforcement first responder staffing should keep up with peer cities, instead of falling further behind.”
Wilson asked Portlanders to reach out to the city councilors imploring them not to cut any funding for public safety. (Earlier in the week, in another unusual move, the Portland Trail Blazers and the Timbers wrote a letter to councilors urging them to make no cuts to public safety.)
Other parties cheered the council’s decision, including the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
“It was not a vote to cut $1.9 million in police funding. It was a vote to reallocate a proposed INCREASE in the police budget to instead go to parks maintenance,” said DSA steering committee co-chair, Olivia Katbi. “Framing it as a cut to the police budget is willfully misleading the public. We support fully funding our parks and parks maintenance, and we are very proud of how our DSA councilors Green, Koyama Lane, Morillo, and Kanal fought hard at yesterday’s budget hearing for parks, community centers, housing, jobs, and pedestrian and bike-friendly streets.”
Meanwhile, adding fuel to the fire, a poll funded by downtown real estate mogul Greg Goodman recently showed that a majority of Portlanders would support a ballot measure that mandates the city maintain a certain number of police officers. That minimum would represent a near-doubling of the bureau’s current force.
Goodman said in a phone call Thursday morning that it was too soon to say whether the Wednesday vote would increase the likelihood he’d fund such a ballot measure.
“It’s a few hours old,” Goodman says. “But it shows me something has to be done to adhere largely to the will of the people, and to keep people safe....What you’ve had is a group of city councilors take it upon themselves to do something that the populace disagrees with them on.”