Sharing my 2026-27 budget vision

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Hi everyone,

This Monday, May 18, through Wednesday, May 20, City Council enters the next phase of our Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget work, where we get to offer amendments to the Mayor’s budget and move toward approval.

Amendments should start to become public this weekend. On Monday, we’ll hear from you all as you testify on these amendments and on the budget as a whole, and on Tuesday/Wednesday, we’ll work through the amendments Councilors put forward, exploring the changes we can make while keeping the budget balanced.

In my own work these past few weeks, I’ve made sure that the amendments I’m bringing to the table are in line with my priorities for Portland: to make this the best city on the West Coast to raise a family and ensure everyone who works here can afford to live here.

That said, this is a cuts budget. Due to federal mismanagement of our economy, sluggish job and wage growth, and high inflation, we’re forced to make cuts instead of investments. And at this point, each cut is an awful one.  

Overall, my goal is to make sure we don’t move backwards – meaning, when we make cuts, I want us to do it in a way that keeps an eye on the Portland we want to be building a few years from now, when we do have a growing budget again. That’s when we will be set up to craft a more responsible budget, with responsible asset management and the capacity to keep up with the needs of our city.

My budget amendments – many of which I’m partnering on with my colleagues – take a realistic look at the tough landscape we’re in and make small, targeted shifts to support working families, invest in our workforce, and set us up for a stronger future, avoiding the short-sighted decisions that would unintentionally set us back.

Here are a few of the key changes to the Mayor’s proposed budget that I will be prioritizing at the dais next week:

Restore Cuts at Fire Station 22 in St. Johns

The Mayor’s proposed budget reassigns half of the staff at Fire Station 22 in St. Johns and takes the only fire engine west of the railroad cut on the peninsula.

In a cuts budget, reductions to services are inevitable. But reducing response time to a geographically large area, that isn’t easy to reach from the west, that supports communities on both sides of the river, and that is one of the teams  fighting fires along the Columbia Slough, at the CEI Hub, and in Forest Park, as well as serving the St. Johns neighborhood? Honestly, this seems like the worst place to cut.

We have to ensure the St. Johns and Linnton neighborhoods are receiving the same level of access to emergency services as everywhere else in Portland, especially in the event of a natural disaster.

Your D2 councilors are united in restoring this totally unacceptable loss for the St. Johns community. My office has joined with Councilor Olivia Clark – who represents Linnton residents in District 4 – and others to sponsor a public safety amendment that moves one-time underused funds to restore a few cuts, including enough funds to Portland Fire and Rescue to keep the engine at Station 22 online and keep the firehouse fully staffed. Yes, these are one-time funds, so there’s more work to do next year – but our amendment preserves this critical response infrastructure for this fiscal year and sends a powerful signal to the Mayor that safety in St. Johns cannot be on the chopping block.

Community Health and Safety Package

In the Mayor’s proposed budget, we are seeing cuts to the programs that make our community safer and more family-friendly. I appreciate the increase to Council security budgets; it’s true that we live in unprecedented times of political violence. But we have robust security at City Hall, and we shouldn’t be increasing our security budgets at the same time as we cut the critical food security, crisis response, and violence prevention programs that Portlanders rely on. I am co-sponsoring my colleague Councilor Angelita Morillo’s amendment to address this.

The amendment package fully restores cuts to Summer Free For All, importantly ensuring no summer Lunch + Play sites are closed; Ceasefire, a proven program to reduce shootings and homicides in our community; and the Office of Violence Prevention, the name of which speaks for itself. I was heartened to see that my advocacy, and that of a few of my colleagues, for Ceasefire and the Office of Violence Prevention led the mayor to find permanent funds for these programs, which have always been funded with short-term dollars in the past. But the cuts are just too deep and will cost us more in the long-term.

The amendment also restores two Aftercare teams to Portland Street Response, which provide follow-up support to connect folks to services after a crisis, and restores personnel to the Community Health and Assess Team (CHAT), which deploys EMTs, paramedics, and nurses to respond to less severe medical calls and overdose calls.

 This package will keep kids fed when they’re out of school, families supported when they’re most vulnerable, and our streets safer for everyone.

I am excited to see this package through, but in case it fails, I have a stand-alone amendment to ensure we don’t cut any park-based summer lunch locations.

Restore Workforce Programming

The Mayor’s proposed budget cuts workforce programs that provide direct funding for training programs in partnership with workforce training provider Worksystems, Inc. These programs help Portlanders who are unemployed or seeking job training find new opportunities through career coaching, skills training, and support services to pursue  jobs – often jobs that lead to a career path and a living wage. These programs are good for Portlanders looking to get a leg up in our economy, and they’re good for all of us who benefit when Portlanders are ready to fill competitive jobs and help our economy stay strong.

My amendment restores workforce programming using savings from my own office budget to fill a part of the funding gap. We can’t reach a future where everyone who works in Portland can afford to live here without a workforce system that connects folks to opportunities for advancement.

Save Columbia Pool

The entire time I’ve been in office, I’ve heard over and over from Portsmouth and the surrounding neighborhoods the importance of reopening Columbia Pool, restoring a critical community center for families in North Portland. My budget amendment directs the City to make the necessary investments to restore and revitalize Columbia Pool.

Maintaining our existing assets is a cornerstone of fiscal responsibility, and if we want Portland to be a place where people grow a family and kids build a future, then we must invest in the spaces that make them want to stay. Columbia Pool has to be part of that.

I know this amendment is a long shot – it's a tough budget year and this is an expensive project. But later today, we’ll finally receive a report on the total cost of repair, and I am not going to stand by and wave away one last chance to save this critical community asset.

Protect After School Programming on Community Center Closure Days

To find savings in the Portland Parks Bureau, the Mayor is proposing to close community centers for 8 in-service days per year – once per month, except during the summer. I was initially opposed to this plan, but City Administration showed me strong data on the savings potential and made a commitment to closing on a low-use day each month, minimizing the impact. In a cuts budget, these are the tough decisions we have to make.

Before acquiescing to these cuts, though, I asked about a few key impacts: the programs working parents depend on most, like preschool, after school programs, and community center-based SUN programs. When I learned that the community center closures would impact the City’s after-school programs provided at these centers, I asked my team to find an alternative cut. As a working mom, I know that eight more days a year without somewhere for your kids to go after school isn’t acceptable. When working families don’t have a place to send their kids after school, they have to scramble to find accommodations or risk taking time off work. Many families just don’t have this flexibility.

My amendment restores after-school programming to the three impacted community centers, ensuring this service is protected for the working families that rely on them.

Ensure City Employees Provide the Services You Rely On

Most of the core services we rely on in Portland are provided by hard-working, well-paid, union-represented City employees. You may have heard, however, that the City is undergoing a “core services realignment” as a way of transitioning out of the siloed bureaucracies of the old form of government and into a more centralized, connected, and efficient organization. As part of the realignment, and to fill the budget hole we’re dealing with this fiscal year, positions are being eliminated. While I support the work to make our City operate more efficiently, I’ve heard some real concerns about a few of the positions being cut.

Sometimes when positions are eliminated in restructuring, our administration underestimates the efficiency they can achieve and goes too far. That risks dropping critical work. In this case, the City has two options: hire back employees to ensure you can still access core services provided by reliable City staff, or contract out the work to companies with their own rules, protections, and standards.

I’m bringing a budget note that tells the City Administration to hire back City employees before ever contracting out the core service work that we rely on. I believe in a Portland with a strong city workforce, with union jobs and high wages, and services delivered by our neighbors. I’m not against contracting, but our core services are the city’s bread and butter – we should be providing them ourselves.