Within the city of Portland, a sole certified arborist trains neighbors to care for trees. A ride share employee brings in nearly $17 million each year. A specialized team helps the transportation bureau plan for sidewalk and road repairs. These are among more than 100 positions that could disappear on July 1.
Three Portland city councilors have a plan to change that. A proposal from Councilors Mitch Green, Candace Avalos, and Angelita Morillo called “Services First” would fund 103 city employee positions that are slated to be cut under Mayor Keith Wilson’s budget. That includes public safety jobs, parks maintenance and programs for seniors, life support medical teams, as well as immigration and crime victims’ services. Most are union-represented positions.
The councilors want to amend Wilson’s proposed budget using interest accrued in the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) to save jobs that support the city’s core services. Wilson and councilors are trying to close a $160 million budget gap by June 30, with a finalized budget that goes into effect July 1.
City Council is scheduled to take up the amendment, among other proposals, during budget discussions on Wednesday. The services first amendment proposed by councilors could address the majority of these layoffs by a wide margin, but multiple proposed budget tweaks could attempt to guide PCEF interest toward other aims.
Portland Clean Energy Fund – Council’s hot potato
How to responsibly use PCEF dollars has been hotly debated by councilors and the public.
But Green, Avalos, and Morillo are urging the city to use funding to pause layoffs for over 100 people slated to lose jobs in July. They want to use contingency funds and transfer $16.5 million in interest gained from PCEF this past fiscal year to keep those positions intact for one year—a $22 million total change.
There are two things at play. First, the $1.6 billion collected by the voter-approved PCEF initiative is already allocated for specific projects. That money funds both the city’s bureaus for carbon reduction projects, as well as grants for community projects that invest in climate resiliency. Second, with a large balance, the fund garners significant interest every year. For the past three years, the PCEF committee and councilors have approved moving the interest to help fill other city budget gaps.
Avalos said she voted to transfer the PCEF interest last year on the condition that it would help fund core city services during a tough budget year.
“That was the agreement, and as far as I’m concerned, that agreement was broken when that money is sitting there in a pot waiting while we’re cutting critical services,” Avalos said.
Despite recent claims, PCEF does not have a surplus. The 1 percent surcharge on large retailers with $1 billion in national revenue and $500,000 in local revenue has raised more than what was forecasted when voters approved it, but the funding is allocated through the Climate Investment Plan. As approved by voters, there is no limit on the amount of money PCEF can or should collect.
Avalos said whether to restore the jobs through PCEF’s accrued interest is a matter of priorities.
“That’s also a broader conversation about what we care about,” Avalos said. “What services do we think Portlanders deserve to have? In my opinion, it’s the services that (Wilson) cut.”
Using PCEF interest to plug holes in the city’s budget is not new. But while Wilson’s proposed budget already uses the interest gained in 2024-25 to fill gaps in the general fund, it also uses climate investment grant dollars to pay for other services. Wilson’s proposed budget pulls allocated money from the climate plan for non-climate programs like the Public Environment Management Office (PEMO), which helps manage public spaces. Avalos said she has long been opposed to using dollars allocated through the climate investment plan, but the interest is a different story, as it doesn’t impact those grants and programs.
The proposal to leapfrog and use interest gained in the 2025-26 fiscal year is new, however. Budgeting those funds on the beginning side of the budget year lets councilors have a say in how to prioritize those funds, according to Green.
“What we’re trying to do is look at a pot of money that we expect to be allocated back to the general fund of the next year by the mayor, but give Council guidance on how to spend that money now, rather than wait for it to be peeled off into some other project,” Green said.
Wilson’s office declined to comment on the proposal to use recently accrued interest to protect the jobs.
Sponsors of the amendment also want to allocate $3.7 million to the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) to save two victims services jobs and 26 unsworn, unarmed assistant positions. The victims services unit supports victims of felony-level crimes through the court system and connects them with supportive community services. The amendment would also keep 26 public safety specialist positions, commonly called “PS3s,” which respond to low-priority 911 calls. They are not police officers; they are unarmed assistants who help with everything from searching for missing persons to responding to minor car crashes.
Parks, gardens as public safety
Proponents argue that holistic public safety goes well beyond police. Even after Portlanders approved a parks levy that is expected to raise $91 million each year, Wilson’s proposed budget cuts 18 parks positions, including support for community gardens, a tennis center, and parks maintenance services. It also includes cutting the Senior Center Project, the only city-funded program for developmentally disabled seniors. That’s something Portlander Kary Aloveah said is a buoy for her 74-year-old, developmentally disabled brother in law.
“This is the place where (he) sees his friends three times a week, and has a safe community,” Aloveah told the Mercury. “We don’t know how to tell Dave that he will no longer have an affordable place to go during the week, where he can see his friends and participate in activities that provide enrichment.”
She said he’s been building relationships through the day program for six years, and the purpose of these discounts is to help people like Dave access them.
“The whole reason I voted for the parks levy was to save discount programs like this,” Aloveah said. “He won’t get to spend any time hanging out and celebrating birthdays with his friends.”
Avalos said parks and program cuts are unacceptable, and the public deserves basic services they can use.
“If we get rid of things like parks, and we don’t maintain them, then that degrades people’s already low ability to participate in society because of the economic conditions that we’re living through,” Avalos said. “And then we’re cutting all the services that they’re paying their taxes for, then they’re like, ‘what the hell am I paying my taxes for?’”
Councilors Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Steve Novick lambasted the proposed amendment in a press release Monday, calling it an “obvious election year play that pretends no difficult decisions will ever have to be made.” Green, Morillo, and Novick are all up for reelection this November.
“It’s critical that Council starts acting as real leaders now, instead of spending money we don’t have to avoid making difficult choices,” Novick said. “We consulted with labor. We restore dangerous cuts. But when a family loses a source of income, they know they have to reduce expenses. They do not—as the Green-Morillo-Avalos amendment does—spend their entire savings account before making any move to reduce spending. Our proposal combines respect for labor and concern for the City’s financial needs.”
Pirtle-Guiney and Novick introduced their own amendment, “Protecting Portland’s Progress,” which the Council will debate Wednesday. That amendment would pull $7.8 million from PCEF’s 2025-26 interest to restore 12 PS3 positions, two fire rescue companies, a police support specialist, a community garden EMS program, and more training for PPB. It would also backfill some reserve funding.
“After weeks of competing proposals, this amendment is the result of the diligent effort of compromise,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “Every single member of Council has voted to restore cuts to public safety. Almost all Councilors seem to share concerns about the structural problems with core realignment that labor has raised. Now is the time to choose a path that allows us to address the most pressing concerns while acting as responsible stewards of Portlanders’ tax dollars. We invite our colleagues to join us in supporting this proposal.”
Government efficiency
The city is currently undergoing a “core realignment” effort to organize staff positions within the voter-approved government structure that began in 2025. It affects roughly 1,000 city employees. Former City Administrator Michael Jordan announced with little explanation that the restructure should also include 20 percent cuts in ongoing costs to stabilize the city’s finances.
Kari Koch, president of the City of Portland Professional Workers union (CPPW), said it is reasonable for the city to realign jobs for better efficiency, particularly as a young government structure is being built. However, she said offices with skeleton crews may not be able to absorb further cuts, and could be looking to rehire for the same positions sooner than later.
“When we see cuts coming from the administration, we are raising the red flag to the city that this is going to cause problems, and this is going to cost you more in the long run, and you need to be careful with how you do this project,” Koch said.
She added that the tough budget cycle is an opportune time to maintain stability for the city.
“We use our savings in difficult times to preserve jobs, so that when we are out of difficult times, we haven’t lost everything we’ve built,” Koch said.
In a May 8 work session on the core realignment process, Deputy City Administrator Tracy Warren said her office engaged with small groups of bureau staff and management, as well as those who receive services.
“These decisions were not made lightly and we recognize that there are very real impacts that will be had on employees, teams, and the services our bureaus rely on every day,” Warren said.
Money for Moda Center
The tense budget discussions and potential cuts come as the city is considering sending millions in taxpayer dollars to help pay for Moda Center upgrades. It’s part of a state, county, and city effort to appease the Portland Trail Blazers’ new owner who has threatened to move the team if leaders don’t meet his $600 million request for a state-of-the-art arena. The city has stated that it could contribute $120 million to the project.
The city is expected to receive upwards of $50 million in business license taxes by the end of this year, thanks to the sale of the team. Green argued that funding could help to reimburse multiple contingency funds to address financial hawks’ concerns that the city’s credit rating could be impacted by dipping into reserves.
“(Portlanders) are wondering why it is that we’re not filling potholes, or we’re laying off all these public employees, we’re [cutting] fire engines, and then we’re also promising $120 million for the Blazers,” Green said. “Make it make sense.”
Office of immigration affairs
The “Services First” amendment also seeks to allocate nearly $430,000 for an immigration affairs office within the city administrator’s office—something that already exists in the mayor’s office. Avalos said she wants the position to be more permanent rather than being susceptible to changes when voters elect a different mayor.
For Avalos, it’s the next step to materially offering services for immigrant and refugee communities, after the Council unanimously passed the Protect Portland Initiative when President Donald Trump’s administration deployed federal agents to the city. That resolution reaffirmed the city’s sanctuary status, urged the mayor to push back on Trump’s policies, challenge illegal actions in court, and bar city bureaus from suppressing protest activity. The immigration affairs office would coordinate the city’s response to these challenges.
“Right now, we are at a time where immigrant and refugee communities are under attack,” Avalos said. “They’re facing fear, uncertainty, they’re facing increased federal enforcement actions. And I think that Portland needs to be expanding our capacity to support communities, not shrinking it.”
