Reflections on the Past Year
Realizing that it’s a bit late to be saying this, I hope you enjoyed the holiday season with your friends and family. And if you live in the Portland area, I hope you came through the atmospheric rivers last month unscathed and enjoyed the recent sunshine.
I wanted to share some thoughts about what I was working on in 2025 and what I will work on in 2026:
Gun Safety
One of the reasons I ran in 2024 was to do something about gun violence. This year, I was able to shine a spotlight on (1) the value of using the state “red flag law” to take guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others and (2) the fact that the law has been very under-utilized in Portland, largely because the Portland Police Bureau didn’t prioritize educating officers on the law. Now, the police have made a commitment to step up that training.
Another gun safety idea I have is to try to prod major gun manufacturers into making “smart guns” – which can only physically be fired by their lawful owner – by having Portland and a bunch of other cities announce that they want to buy them for their police forces, thus giving the manufacturers a guaranteed market. The goal is to have smart guns become a major part of the gun market, which could save a lot of young lives – hundreds of teenagers every year shoot themselves with their parents’ guns.
Everytown for Gun Safety is working with me to draft a resolution and find allies in other cities around the country. (I want to wait to do it in Portland until I have lined up other cities to do it at about the same time.) Secretary of State Tobias Read is interested in the issue and is reaching out to Mayors he knows around the country and the state.
Playing the Role of the Elder Statesman
Another reason I ran was that I thought a Council of mostly brand-new elected officials might need someone on the dais who’s been around the block. Overall, I think that’s proven true. One prime example was when seven councilors decided to overrule the recommendations of the Children’s Levy, which involved a lengthy public process, involving dozens of volunteers, about which youth-serving organizations would receive funding. A few well-connected organizations who didn’t get as much money as they wanted convinced seven of my colleagues that the process was racist, which was absurd. The grants that came out of the lengthy public process largely were going to organizations led by people of color, which were going to lose out because of my colleagues’ action.
I subsequently forced a vote to go back to the original recommendations, and ultimately my colleagues reversed themselves. I think some of them learned from that experience, but I still think there will be times when a self-identified “elder statesman” will be of use to this council.
Parks
One thing I wound up spending a bunch of time on this year was designing and working to pass the Parks levy. One thing I plan to spend a lot of time on in the next few years is working to ensure that when the levy comes up for renewal in five years, it won’t be another tax increase. That will require some tough choices about what Parks does and how it’s funded. Previous Councils haven’t been willing to face those tough choices; we can’t keep kicking the can down the road and/or asking voters for more money.
Solving Crimes
This is something I will prioritize in 2026. Solve rates (or “clearance rates”) for homicide and other major crimes have gone down across the nation in recent decades. I want to see what we can do to buck the trend.
Spending some time on Google, I found an article saying that yes, there are some police departments around the country have better records than others. I called a Maryland professor who was quoted in the article, and he gave me a brief history of research in the area and the names of other people and organizations to talk to.
I will be talking to Police Chief Day about how to take advantage of the research and the examples of organizations that have relied on that research. Solving crimes is important. Especially when it comes to homicides. An unsolved homicide is an ongoing nightmare for the survivors.
Using PCEF More Efficiently
Another goal of mine for 2026 is to use the Portland Clean Energy Fund as effectively as possible to fight climate change and help Portlanders.
As you may recall, one of my concerns about PCEF is that I think too little of it has been used for transportation, which is our biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions and a huge expense for low-income families. But since PCEF funds have already been allocated through 2028, and it’s always hard to pull back money that has been promised to somebody, it’s been hard to see how I can make a difference in this term.
Now, though, there’s $15 million that is kind of available for discussion – and I want to have the discussion. A pot of $45 million had been allocated to a program to help finance purchases of electric vehicles, for rideshare and commercial purposes, and it hasn’t been used very much. So the PCEF committee and staff have recommended moving that $15 million into an already very big pot used to help build energy-efficient housing.
I obviously have nothing against energy efficient housing. But before taking money from an already too-small transportation pot, I want to look at some transportation options. So I have asked bicycle advocates and experts, and Portland Bureau of Transportation folks, and TriMet, to come up with some ideas to evaluate. We had a preliminary discussion of some ideas in the January 15 Climate Committee meeting and will have a longer discussion at the January 29 meeting.
I hope that this discussion can be kind of a dry run for how to organize Council involvement in drawing up the 2029-33 Climate Investment Plan. In the past, my impression is, the Council has often either rubber-stamped the recommendations of the PCEF advisory committee and staff, or big-footed them, demanding money for city bureaus. I want to set a precedent for having a thoughtful, respectful back and forth between Council and the advisory committee and staff.
|
(he/him)
