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The Portland City Council has thrown the Portland Children’s Levy into disarray by rejecting the entirety of its $70.9 million grants package and instead extending existing grants by a year, citing concerns about how nonprofits were scored by the program’s layers of review.
The council’s June 4 vote is the first time that the Children’s Levy, established in 2002, had its selections rejected en masse. The consequence is that 36 nonprofits expecting $17.4 million in funding to begin flowing July 1 won’t receive that money for at least a year.
That’s an extraordinary move by the newly-elected 12-member body, who cited concerns about equity and racial justice as a reason for rejecting two years of work from program staff, a group of volunteer scorers and a community council set up to help guide funding priorities. It’s the latest signal of the council’s appetite to reassess longstanding city funding practices, and has left members of the Children Levy’s Allocation Committee seething.
“I’m disappointed and discouraged,” said Allocation Committee member Charity Kreider on June 18. “I care about integrity. and I don’t believe the council members acted in integrity, and that’s hard to sit with because of their role as elected officials in public service.”
The Children’s Levy is a five year property-tax levy (last renewed in 2023 at 40 cents on every $1,000 of assessed property value) that funds programs for vulnerable kids: hunger and abuse prevention, after-school mentoring and foster care, among other services. The levy distributes money through grants to nonprofit organizations, many of them culturally-specific, which then administer the programs.
This spring, the Children Levy’s Allocation Committee recommended 94 programs across 64 organizations to be funded in the next round of large grants, which last from July 1, 2025 to July 1, 2028.
On June 4, the Portland City Council rejected the proposal in its entirety. On that same day, the council passed an emergency ordinance to extend all current large PCL grantees—76 programs in total—by one year. That includes renewals to organizations that PCL did not approve for renewed funding due to performance issues and low application scores.
The seven councilors who rejected the grant proposal were Candace Avalos, Jamie Dunphy, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane, Angelita Morillo and Loretta Smith.
The five who voted against the idea were Councilors Olivia Clark, Steve Novick, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Dan Ryan and Eric Zimmerman.
The councilors who pressed the pause button raised doubts about the fairness of the PCL’s scoring process, citing anecdotal examples of organizations, some of which are Black-led, that were not recommended for funding.
Kanal said he was “deeply uncomfortable with the idea that city staff is trying to tell communities of color who served them better, who would serve them better, than organizations they built a trusting relationship with over years or decades. That’s a concerning possibility to me.”
Smith said there were “systemic problems that we need to fix...I’m very concerned and troubled by what I’ve seen.”
On June 18, the PCL Allocation Committee ripped into the City Council’s decision. Members of the committee characterized it as sloppy and creating consequences that councilors didn’t grasp.
“I’m profoundly disappointed by the City Council for not asking more questions and instead deciding what our flaws in the process were, without discussion,” said Multnomah County Commissioner Meghan Moyer, who sits on the levy’s 5-person Allocation Committee. “I’m incredibly curious what they’d want us to do differently.”
Moyer added that she took “offense to some of the accusations that were brought forward” by council members.
At the June 18 meeting PCL leadership, slide by slide, went through concerns voiced by councilors on June 4 and rebutted them.
Councilors had raised three specific examples of Black-led organizations that weren’t recommended for funding. One of those, PCL staff noted, had scored last—23rd out of 23 applicants—in the hunger-relief grant area. Another organization named by a city councilor, which is a current PCL grantee, had “significant performance concerns,” staff noted.
76% of culturally-specific organizations that applied had an application approved, staff explained. 49% of non culturally-specific groups that applied for funding had an application approved. 17 of the 22 organizations serving Black and African communities that applied for funding were approved by the Allocation Committee.
Felicia Tripp Folsom, the longest-serving member of the Allocation Committee, said she was “befuddled by the council’s response.”
“All the questions that they asked of staff have indicated that they didn’t even take the time to review our process, which I find unacceptable as an elected,” Tripp Folsom said. “I want them to tell us why one, they didn’t review our process and two, why do you not respect what community had asked for?”
Some of the 36 organizations that expected funding but won’t receive that funding due to council’s vote testified about just how devastating the decision was, and in some cases imperiled their existence.
Eric Knox, founder of Holla, a culturally-specific mentoring organization that was recommended for funding, said the decision was traumatizing.
“City Council’s decision to remand isn’t just a delay, it’s a dismantling. It’s a dangerous precedent,” Knox said. “We are asking you to speak clearly and publicly: this process was fair and centered in equity. Please do not allow the City Council to take a full year to undermine the process, re-writing the rules, and delaying justice for organizations already selected to receive funding.”
PCL’s communications and outreach director, Yuxing Zheng, says that staff is “waiting for further instructions from City Council about the remand of the large grant funding decisions.”
In the meeting, Kreider asked PCL staff that the organizations that scored poorly but the council voted to extend grants for by a one-year extension, would be funded “despite poor performance.”
PCL staff said yes, those organizations would be funded. There was no recourse, staff said. The Council had made its decision.