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Prosper Portland executive director Cornell Wesley announced Wednesday night that the agency had withdrawn its choice of facilitator for a community advisory committee after backlash over the pick.
The city’s economic development agency had chosen Dr. Steven Holt to facilitate the East 205 TIF District Community Leadership Committee, an advisory body recently formed to help guide the city’s new tax increment financing district in East Portland.
But the pick quickly proved to be controversial. Members of the committee took issue with the selection of Holt this month, culminating in Prosper’s revocation of its decision Wednesday night.
Wesley, at a meeting of the committee on April 8 at a community center in East Portland, said Prosper would revoke its offer to Holt and let the body select its own facilitator. (Wesley told WW later that night that he didn’t hear concerns specific to Holt, only concerns about the selection process.)
“It was brought to my attention [that there are] concerns around the process at arriving at the facilitator. And the issue you raised is a fair critique,” Wesley said to the committee. “The process is not one that was as transparent as we would’ve liked it to have been, so we’re going to take ownership of that.”
Wesley said he would be “in touch with the current facilitator and make notice that there is no commitment to you, said individual, because the process needs to be led by the leaders that you just elected.”
Holt, a pastor and owner of a consulting firm routinely employed by state and local governments, was the subject of a sexual harassment complaint made by a female Urban League of Portland employee in 2020. In the complaint, filed with Prosper because Holt worked as a contractor for the agency, the woman alleged Holt had made inappropriate comments about her body.
Urban League of Portland president and CEO Nkenge Harmon soon thereafter wrote in an April 2020 email to Prosper: “On multiple occasions [the Urban League employee] has been the target of unwanted and improper comments about her physical attractiveness and sexuality from the facilitator [Holt].” She added, “Some of the comments were made in an open forum in the presence of Prosper staff who said and did nothing. Of course, the facilitator is also paid by Prosper.” Prosper at the time said it had disciplined Holt, yet it continued to pay him for contracting work in the following years.
Two years later, in March 2022, when the National Urban League told Harmon that Holt would be moderating a Zoom meeting to celebrate Black contractors, Harmon chose not to attend and put her reason in writing to the national office.
Harmon also noted that the Oregon Department of Transportation was paying Holt handsomely to help the agency pitch a widening of Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter in the Albina neighborhood to Portland’s Black community, which had been ravaged by construction of the freeway in the 1960s. “In short, ODOT is pitting Black contractors against Black community leaders,” Harmon wrote, “hoping to win support for a smaller, cheaper highway expansion.”
Holt then sued the Urban League of Portland and Harmon for $7 million, alleging defamation. In 2023, a judge dismissed Holt’s lawsuit on anti-SLAPP grounds. ”As explained more fully below," Magistrate Judge Youlee Kim You wrote, “because the statements at the heart of the dispute—that a ULPDX employee had lodged a harassment complaint about plaintiff [Holt] and that plaintiff had been excluded from the ULPDX officers—were true, plaintiff’s claims necessarily fail and defendants’ anti-SLAPP motion to strike and for joinder should be granted.” Kim You ordered that Holt pay Harmon and the Urban League’s legal and attorney fees.
In an email he sent after this story was published, Holt says critics are being unfair to him.
“My work over the years has involved facilitating complex, high-stakes public processes across this region. That record is established, documented, and known by the agencies and communities I have worked with,” Holt says. “I remain committed to work that strengthens communities and produces meaningful outcomes in the environments I serve.”
In a statement to WW on Wednesday night, Wesley said the agency revoked Holt’s position not because of concerns about Holt himself, but because of concerns raised around the selection process.
“From a process standpoint, the facilitator selection should have occurred after the [committee] co-chairs were chosen. Given that the process was not as transparent as it could have been, we will restart it,” Wesley said. “Our work in these brand-new TIF districts will align with our focus on inclusion. That means our co-chairs need to be involved in critical decisions like this, and they will be.”
Committee members who spoke to WW say they expressed concerns not only with the process, but with the selection of Holt specifically.
The co-chairs of the committee, Tamra Booth and ShaToyia Bentley, said in a statement to WW that the selection of Holt “raised significant concerns particularly around the city’s selection process and decisions made without the level of committee involvement we were told to expect.”
“Additionally, information regarding Holt’s past and current lawsuits raised concerns among members of the committee,” the co-chairs wrote. “We want to ensure that our participation is not connected to, or perceived as supporting, matters that do not align with our values or the interests of the community we represent.”
In an April 1 email to committee members, a Prosper staff member wrote that Holt had been selected to facilitate. “Dr. Holt brings extensive experience working at the intersection of public agencies, community stakeholders, and complex development initiatives,” the staffer wrote.
Committee member Karen Wolfgang wrote back in an email to the staffer: “Oh, no,” linking it to WW’s story about Holt’s lawsuit against the Urban League. “We are going to waste another meeting discussing this instead of moving forward on the community’s priorities. I am stunned.”
To a fellow committee member, Wolfgang wrote April 3 that she’d shared her concerns with Prosper staff in a note that stated, in part: “We just found out who this person is, and unfortunately there are several extremely worrisome aspects of his practice: untrustworthy behavior in the community (how could we trust him as a facilitator when he’s out there behaving this way?).”
Prosper spokesman Shawn Uhlman says the facilitator contract lasts for a year and may not exceed $54,000.
