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The backers of a ballot initiative that would tap the Portland Clean Energy Fund to hire more police officers announced Monday that it had collected more than 62,000 signatures, well over the required 40,437 to get on the November ballot.
City Elections has yet to verify the initiative’s submitted signatures. The city must verify all signatures by Aug. 5.
“Portland’s comeback begins with restoring public safety,” Juanita Swartwood, the initiative’s chief petitioner, said in a statement. “Thousands of Portlanders from every part of the city signed because they believe we can have both more police and better policing.”
The ballot initiative seeks to hire some 400 additional police officers by rerouting 25% of the Portland Clean Energy Fund, a 1% sales tax on large retailers in Portland to build climate-resilient infrastructure.
Voters passed PCEF in 2018. It has raised far more money than its architects forecast, and others have eyed it as a solution to budget crunches. The Portland City Council used PCEF revenues in 2024 to shore up budget shortfalls in bureaus with climate-adjacent projects. And Mayor Keith Wilson has floated PCEF as a source of funding for the proposed Moda Center renovation.
This ballot initiative, however, would use PCEF funds for a completely nonclimate-related purpose. That’s garnered criticism from opponents of the initiative, who say it defies the will of the voters who passed PCEF in 2018.
“Our city cannot afford this poorly written and permanent amendment to our city’s charter,” wrote Jenny Lee, who is leading the opposition campaign, Hands Off PCEF. “The special interests who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars placing this measure on the ballot don’t care that it would undermine government accountability.”
The campaign behind the initiative, Safer Portland, has made the Portland Police Bureau’s high response times its main talking point for why the city needs more police officers. The initiative would require that the city maintain a police-to-civilian ratio of 2 per 1,000, up from Portland’s current ratio of 1.2 per 1,000. PPB has hired 38 officers so far this year, bringing the bureau’s total sworn members to just under 800.
PPB’s average response time for a high priority call is around 20 minutes, a number that has continued to rise even as high-priority calls have fallen 31% since 2018, according to a recent city report. Another recent city report found that 911 dispatch wait times have dramatically decreased over the past few years, but response times have remained high.
Staking its campaign on improved response times has gotten Safer Portland in hot water before. The Portland Mercury has reported that nearly 30 people for the initiative have filed complaints with the state alleging that canvassers are misleading the public by saying that the ballot initiative would directly address response times. Some of the complainants have been canvassers themselves. (State elections law prohibits canvassers from making “false statements to anyone who signs the petition or requests information about it.”)
The text of the initiative only requires the 2 per 1,000 ratio. Even so, Safer Portland listed “improving emergency response times” as one of the initiative’s intended outcomes in its press release Monday announcing its signature total.
Opponents of the initiative have argued the city should instead focus on bolstering unarmed community response teams. An April report by the city’s 911 working group supported that idea, recommending that “where there is no evidence to suggest a concern about the safety of the public, responders, or a criminal nexus, alternative responders can and should be the primary response.” The working group called for the majority of welfare check calls to be transferred to Portland Street Response over the next five years.
The city’s 2026–27 budget, which the council passed last month, cut some funding from PPB’s unarmed response team, although councilors have proposed multiple ordinances to restore some of those cuts.
The Community Safety Coalition, the political action committee funding Safer Portland, has raised $1.4 million. Over 50% of that funding has come from the Portland Police Association, the sworn police officers union, which has contributed nearly $800,000.
