During this past Monday night City Council meeting, item E2, “Organization Priorities Update,” set forth recommendations to streamline workloads and budget, with a number of Council-driven “wants” overwhelming City Hall Staff and confusing priorities.
One of the subcommittee recommendations would amend the current budget of $130,000 for Council-directed budget “pet projects,” and give each individual Council member $50,000 for their initiatives. The total allocation of City Council member-directed “items” and budget would increase to $250,000. These changes would begin with the 2027 fiscal budget.
In its current state, a City Council member places an item on the agenda for approval among their co-Council members, and Council-directed items and money are approved and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. The new plan will give each Council member the authority to approve their item with their own budget dollars, skip placing the item on the agenda, and remove the need for three votes to get their initiative funded. It also gives the City Manager the right to waive fees for use of a building without Council approval. The new plan increases the total dollar spend by City Council members to $250,000 from $130,000, separate from other City-sponsored special events such as Pride or Halloween.
The straightforward change would appear to give equity to all Council members and an equal budget for each Council office. But the deliberations were quite interesting.
Councilmember Erickson drew the ire of Vice Mayor Heilman when he stated: “I’m always concerned when we put pots of money for each Council member, specifically because I don’t think it works, this happened in Santa Monica with their travel budget, where the Mayor of Santa Monica had to go try to barter with his colleagues to get their funds, so I’m just really hesitant of saying, xyz, all 5 of us get whatever it is, because for example, no shame to my colleagues but there are a few of us that do a little bit more externally with different things that I’m worried that if there are other funds that should be used for the social good it would cause confusion and for example what position does it put the City in what way. And so I just think that anytime we are all relegated discretionary dollars it always creates more of a headache than a solution. What’s the problem? We are spending too much?”
Vice Mayor Heilman replied: “The problem is that of the $130,000 it is oftentimes being utilized by one or two Council members and then when we want to bring forward something we are told it comes out of unallocated reserves.”
Mayor Byers joined Vice Mayor Heilman: “And in this way the budget actually increases by a substantial amount and there’s still the opportunity for community-based organizations who need a number of funds to appeal to multiple Council members without having to go through the Council agenda process. There is a different level of authorization given to Council members in support to the community that can bypass the Council itself, which will help expedite some of those things.”
Councilmember Erickson clapped back: “$50,000 is like nothing.” And continued: “I think we are going to be gravely disappointed in the fact in how we actually see these funds being spent by each of us, and that is unfortunate because the community is actually being hurt as a result. And I’m not trying to disparage anyone up here…”
Vice Mayor Heilman interrupted: “Yes you are. You’ve said some of us are not engaged in the community.”
Councilmember Erickson concluded: “The system we have right now is fine.”
Mayor Byers summed it up to close: “I will just say again, the system we have now isn’t fine. Because we have already far surpassed the budget. There’s no way for us as a Council to make a set of assumptions together as what we can anticipate over the course of the year. But if we are managing a smaller pool of resources, I certainly know and am already imagining what it would look like to anticipate relationship building, support for events, bringing in new entities, and not having to do it through a Council-directed agenda each time, that I go out to the community and say hopefully four other Council members will support this, but that we can just start getting the work done together. So, I think there is that aspect and right now there is still an equity concern because of the way it is currently structured, it is sort of a first-come, first-served assumption that there is money and resources there from the Council and from the City if they get here first. We have of course not really respected that because we keep going past the existing budget. But I think this is something worth a try.”
The item passed 5-0.
Everything they do is a “pet project”, It’s a Perverted Portlandia on steroids.
“$50,000 is like nothing.”
Great to hear such callousness about our tax dollars.
Highlight of the night when Heilman slapped down Erickson. He just needs a few more slaps, please.
Thank you, Heilman for shutting down Erickson. Erickson is just upset because the new plan gives him $120,000 less to line his pockets with.