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The Portland City Council on Wednesday appointed Raymond Lee to the most powerful bureaucratic position in Portland: Lee will be the first long-term city administrator.
The 12-person council unanimously appointed Lee. (Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane was absent and did not cast a vote.) Lee will take over in January, replacing current city administrator Mike Jordan, who served in the role in the first year of the new form of government at the request of Mayor Keith Wilson.
Lee is the former city manager of Greeley, Colorado, a 115,000-person agricultural town. He resigned in November, a move the city said in a public release was due to Lee pursuing other employment opportunities. Prior to Greeley, he worked in administrative government roles in Dallas and Amarillo, Texas.
Prior to questioning from members of the council, Mayor Wilson and Lee provided opening statements.
“This is a pivotal time for this city... Portland has that spotlight. Everybody is watching how this city is going to maneuver through this,” Lee, wearing a crisp blue suit, said in his remarks. “Is this a new way of providing services? Is this a new way of governing an organization in the city?”
Lee continued that he had “seen local government at its best and I’ve seen local government at its worst. This opportunity is pivotal for us, to be able to shape what that story is for Portland as we move forward.”
For the next two hours, councilors questioned Lee on a number of topics. Notable among them were questions on how he will work to heal the relationship between Portland’s executive and legislative branch (particularly over budget decisions and information-sharing), and how he would implement policies the council passes. Lee provided measured, moderate and sometimes vague answers to nearly all of the questions that probed him on how he sees his role as a broker between the executive and legislative branches.
The tug-of-war between those branches of city government has intensified in recent weeks, as councilors have more bluntly aired their grievances with Wilson’s leadership and his flagship shelter project to open 1,500 shelter beds by Dec. 1. (Adding to the tension: a $21 million fund found in the Portland Housing Bureau this summer that city officials did not share with council until last month.)
While the city administrator position is technically under the mayor, the new council has made it clear that they expect full access to the person in that role. (The mayor hires and fires the city administrator with council confirmation.) That’s often left Jordan in the middle of that executive-legislative contention, attempting to broker a middle ground that’s been nearly impossible to find. Lee will similarly have to find his place in that matrix.
“I hope you will help be a bridge between our two branches of government,” said Councilor Candace Avalos. “As you can hear, we don’t feel like that bridge is strong right now.”
While some councilors made it clear they expected Lee to implement policy passed by the council without question, Councilor Eric Zimmerman offered a different directive.
“The city administration has to have a spine. We’ll come up with some good ideas, and we’ll also come up with some bad ideas. It doesn’t work if this city administration doesn’t have an opinion on our legislation,” Zimmerman said “It requires you to get into the mix with us about what is good and bad policy.” (In a brief press conference after council confirmed Lee, Lee in response to a question about Zimmerman’s remarks said he did not think it was the city administrator’s place to offer an opinion on whether any given council policy was good bad.)
Councilors asked few questions about Lee’s tenure and subsequent departure from Greeley.
Wilson at Wednesday’s meeting and leading up to Lee’s confirmation touted Lee’s leadership of a $1.1 billion entertainment and housing district project in Greeley as one of the primary reasons for the selection. That project broke initial ground in September, so it’s in its nascent stage. And how the city plans to finance the project has generated substantial controversy in Greeley.
As a result of that controversy, Greeley voters in a February special election will vote on whether or not to reverse a council ordinance that greenlighted zoning for the project. If Greeley voters vote to kill the zoning at the ballot box, it doesn’t mean the project is dead—but it does make the project more politically and logistically difficult to launch.
Councilors asked no questions about that project.
Lee will make a base annual salary of $370,000, and he told council he plans to move to Portland and live here with his family.
