City Council to save Parks funding in last minute vote with Police Budget “Uncrease”

     On Wednesday the Portland City Council convened for a grueling 16-hour work day to finalize a preliminary budget. The meeting saw passionate and intense debate over a number of topics, notably the Parks Budget. More specifically an amendment that would save park maintenance jobs Mayor Wilson had intended to cut, by reallocating funds for his proposed PPB budget increase in what Councilor Kanal called an “Uncrease”

Proposed by Councilor Avalos and spear-headed by Morillo the amendment barely squeaked by before the meetings hard-stop at midnight.

We have a right to be here at midnight” Councilor Morillo said, bringing the amendment before council 37 minutes before the meeting ended.
“We have a balanced amendment. It's 2 million from police, 2 million to parks maintenance.” Morillo added, contesting Council President Pirtle-Guiney who moved to close the session early.

     Councilor Kanal would then support the buzzer-beating decision by putting forward a motion, taking the floor and then immediately yielding his time to Councilor Avalos. “This is not about reducing police effectiveness.” Avalos stated with her time. “It's about a balanced approach to public safety, that includes well maintained parks where families feel safe gathering”

    Avalos would then cite the decrease in crime-rates, despite 90 vacant police positions, as reasoning that an increase to PPB's budget would not make Portland safer.

     Novick then added his thoughts, stating that he would like to see an increase to the police budget; however he found it unacceptable that Parks Maintenance took a majority of the cuts while the PPB saw an increase. He would go onto state that he spoke with the Portland Metro Chamber about gaining their support for an increased parks levy contingent on more funds for the Portland Police Bureau.

     Morillo responded with scathing criticism. “What I'm here from hearing from Novick is apparently Portland Metro Chamber gets to run this town.” She further denounced the PMC's overreach, claiming the business organization was using “vague threats” in order to manipulate the city budget.

     Police Chief Bob Day made a brief testimony where he claim there would be a reduction of services if the PPB didn't see a funding increase. Chief Day was unable to elaborate when asked what specific services would see reductions. Councilor Dunphy would mention this as one of the reasons he supported the "uncrease."

It should be noted that the amendment does not cut police funding, but instead repurposes a proposed increase towards parks maintenance.

     Afterwards Councilor Zimmerman used his time to state that he's “never seen anyone a city council so giddy to cut public safety. This is not a laughing matter.” Councilor Clark added that she felt the similarly, saying that she thinks the vote sent “The wrong signal to the public, and the rest of the country that watches us.”

     “I did not once think about taking money from police to pay for my sidewalks” Loretta Smith proclaimed, joining Zimmerman and Clark in their opposition to the proposal. “We can't start to defund the police… If we start to pick off the budget we will have a real problem”

     Adena Long, the director of Parks Maintenance, made a short testimony where she spelled out what a budget cut her Bureau would mean. She would state that parks, natural areas and community centers would suffer if the PPR cuts were approved. Director Long also claimed that this reduction would cause long term financial issues in terms of “deterioration of public assets”

"“Portland Parks is the gap between surviving in this city and thriving in this city” "
- Councilor Sameer Kanal

The Council then took a brief vote on the matter where it passed 7-5.

Avalos, Morillo, Kanal, Green, Novick, Dumphy voted Yes


Ryan, Clark, Zimmerman, Smith, and Guiney voted No

The controversial move just barely passed, and likely has taken an enormous amount of political capital by Avalos, Morillo and Kanal to approve. Whether it's the right move for public safety is still unclear, however it will undoubtedly save jobs at Portland Parks and Recreation. The council will meet again to further debate the city budget on June 11th, ahead of the July 1st deadline.