When Portland voters agreed to change the city’s form of government in November 2022, they were promised more efficiency, responsiveness, and representation. Eight months after they took office, the 12 members of the new City Council are still struggling to figure out how best to serve their constituents.
“The new government was supposed to be more transparent, but I’m finding it more confusing,” District 4 Councilor Eric Zimmerman said during a recent council meeting.
The issue could come to a head in September – or it could fester for months, with District 2 Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney playing a major role in deciding the outcome as council president. She also represents most of North and Northeast Portland.
“As we continue to build this new council system, I want to make sure that Portlanders have opportunities to weigh in on our work, and that we can take care of the business of running the city efficiently,” Pirtle-Guiney told the North Peninsula Review.
Portland Ballot Measure 26-228 passed with 58% of the vote, reforming the City Charter to replace the five-member citywide elected council with three members elected in each of four new geographic districts. The current citywide elected mayor can vote only to break a tie. A professional city manager was created to oversee all city bureaus previously supervised by individual council members.
The new council is more representative of all Portlanders, as promised by the measure’s supporters, thanks to the creation of the four geographic districts. But the current councilors all agree that council meetings are running too long, which is limiting public testimony and dragging out decisions. The public is also confused about who is responsible for proposing new programs and policy changes because of a new committee system that was created in January. The future of that new structure is now up in the air, however.
The system consists of eight policy committees with five members each that meet every other week. Each committee has a chair and vice chair. Council members serve on between two and four committees, including President Pirtle-Guiney and Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane (District 3). The titles explain their policy areas: Transportation and Infrastructure; Homelessness and Housing; Climate Resilience and Land Use; Community and Public Safety; Arts and Economy; Labor and Workforce Development; Finance; and Governance.
Pirtle-Guiney said the committees are essential to hearing from the public and vetting legislation before referring it to the full council.
Some councilors are bewildered
But some members are confused about the role of the committees. Their meetings frequently run overtime, limiting public testimony, and their recommendations to the full council are repeatedly second-guessed by some of the members who don’t serve on the recommending committee. That requires staff presentations and public testimony to be repeated, frustrating the committee members who made the recommendations.
“I think we all believe that we have too many committees, but I don’t think we’ve answered some key questions,” District 4 Councilor Olivia Clark said during a recent meeting. “We really haven’t defined what the committees are supposed to do.”
District 2 Councilor Dan Ryan is so frustrated that he said the committees should be suspended, and the full council should handle everything.
Tony Harris does not fault the council for being confused. He served on the appointed 15-member Government Transition Advisory Committee designed to help implement the new council design. Harris said that the committee had a comparatively long time to work with the restructured executive branch of government before it took effect in January. But the new council was not elected until the November 2024 general election, giving the 12 members just two months to understand and prepare for their new jobs.
“They really didn’t have enough time to meet and figure out how they wanted the council to work before taking office,” said Harris, an attorney and environmental activist. “They approved the committee system, but I don’t think all of them are committed to it, which they need to do for it to work,” Harris told the North Peninsula Review.
In addition, the previous council amended the City Code to change meeting frequency from weekly to every other week. All councilors soon realized that was not often enough.
In May, District 2 Councilor Sameer Kanal was the first member to file an ordinance changing the schedule back to weekly meetings. Deliberations were postponed until the council approved its first annual budget in June.
The council held four meetings over three weeks in late July and August to address all the problems. Eight members, including Pirtle-Guiney, eventually submitted proposals to change the council meeting schedule and to reduce the number of committees to four or five.
But after more than 12 hours of debate, the council only tentatively approved one change before taking a two-week break . That change – to meet every week instead of every two weeks – cannot be officially approved until the council returns for its next meeting on Sept. 3, at the soonest.
“While we will likely establish a predictable weekly Council meeting schedule, we still need to decide if we want to change our committee structure now, or wait until January,” said Pirtle-Guiney, referring to when the Council President position is up for election again.
Why are policy committees such a problem?
It’s unclear why the policy committees are so troublesome. It’s true that they are new to Portland. But other cities have long had such committees, some more than the eight in Portland. According to research conducted by District 3 Councilor Steve Novick’s office, those cities include Baltimore (13 members, 8 committees), Denver (13/7), Milwaukee (13/8), Minneapolis (13/6), San Francisco (11/6), Seattle (9/14), and Washington DC (13/12).
“While there has been a lot of discussion about the number of committees in the Portland council and their structure, one thing is clear — the current number is very similar to the structure of other cities,” Novick said.
District 1 Councilor Candace Avalos argued that such comparisons are unfair. She served on the appointed Charter Commission that wrote the November 2022 measure that voters approved.
“We designed the form of government specifically to not be like any other city. We are trailblazing,” Avalos said during the Aug. 4 work session.
President Pirtle-Guiney has promised to schedule the next meeting on the policy committees as soon as practical.
More information about Portland’s new form of government can be found at portland.gov/council.