Skip to main content
Portland voters will see only one city measure on their ballots this fall. Measure 26-267, if approved, would create a participatory budgeting program that gives Portlanders discretion over how to spend an amount equivalent to 2% of the city’s general fund (roughly $16 million) every year.
But voters won’t know the answers to key questions about how the program would work until after it passes—including how the $16 million would be funded, how project ideas would be vetted and honed, how residents would vote on projects, and even who could vote on projects.
Such ambiguity, the measure’s backers say, is intentional.
“We believe it would be inappropriate and ineffective to put more detail into a charter amendment, and have seen overly prescriptive charter measures have significant implementation challenges by creating cumbersome parallel administrative structures to existing city functions,” said Eddie Kurtz, manager of the Your 2 Cents PDX campaign backing the measure, in a recent endorsement interview at WW’s offices. (He cited the Portland Clean Energy Fund and Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program as examples of measures that prescribed too many details in advance of passage.)
Opponents of the measure—including Mayor Keith Wilson and most of the labor unions that represent city of Portland employees—argue the vague language and scant details mean it’s a poorly written measure that could go awry if passed and, perhaps worse, add an additional $16 million to an already $100 million-plus general fund shortfall.
Either way, voters will decide on the measure with few details ironed out. Whether such flexibility is a positive attribute, or a critical flaw, is something they’ll have to determine as well.
The broad contours of Measure 26-267, and just how much must be refined if voters pass it, are apparent from the recent WW endorsement interview with both the measure’s supporters and some of its most prominent opponents, including Wilson and labor union leaders. Also obvious: the acrimony between the two sides of the argument. Detractors portray the proponents as reckless, while proponents decry the detractors as clinging to power.
What’s less clear is how the actual program would work if the measure passes. Unresolved questions include how projects would be proposed, how those ideas would be vetted for viability, how projects would be selected for a vote by a citizen-led committee, and who would get to vote—and how—on the final proposals.
Devin Ruiz of the Next Up Action Fund, one of the political action committees backing the measure, outlined the broad strokes of the selection process during WW’s endorsement interview.
“City Council and the mayor get to decide if there’s a theme to that year’s participatory budgeting, where the money comes from, if they want to align it with a bucket of money or a project that already exists,” Ruiz says. “Then there’s an appointed oversight committee that kind of leads the process [and] how we get idea submissions. Then it goes to the budget delegates.”
The actual language in Measure 26-267 says submitted ideas would be “assessed and refined into a limited number of feasible projects by city staff and budget delegates from all districts in a transparent process.” Then Portlanders—it’s unclear who would get to vote and what the age cutoff would be—would vote on projects through a yet-to-be-determined voting process.
Pressed for specifics, measure supporter Christine Lewis, who represents District 2 on the Metro Council, explained how the regional government has used participatory budgeting in recent cycles. For context: In 2023, Metro funded $2 million in “community choice grants” through its Nature in Neighborhoods program. Metro allocated an additional $3 million in a subsequent budgeting round this fall, and touted that 3,164 people aged 11 and up had voted on which projects they wanted to see funded. At this time, a Metro spokesman says the agency does not plan to fund another round of participatory budgeting grants.
“We want to hear what the projects will be from people,” Lewis says. “So they submit ideas. And they don’t just submit through, like, a regular comment card—there’s all sorts of inputs. You can draw a picture. You can write it down. You can record your voice. You can create a 3D rendering using duct tape and sticks and newspaper. So you basically say, here’s my idea of what I want to see.” She also noted that for Metro’s program, anyone 11 or older can vote on the projects.
But Metro’s program is not Portland’s program, opponents have pointed out, and few details are prescribed in Measure 26-267. One thing is certain: Multnomah County’s Elections Division would not oversee the vote. Instead, an “election” would be conducted in a less formal way—a concern for detractors, who say a lack of safeguards would mean voting could be easier to exploit. (Measure supporters call this a straw man argument.)
But the detractors’ greater concern appears to be protecting the general fund from losing up to $16 million, given that it had a $160 million deficit last year and is expected to have another budget hole in 2027.
Mayor Wilson told WW in the endorsement interview last week that with his office facing tough decisions involving layoffs and service reductions, now would be the wrong time to experiment with new forms of civic engagement.
“We’re just trying to pick up garbage and care for souls on the streets, and I’m struggling just to provide basic services,” he says. “So to put another $16 million toward our budget gap…it’s just not the right measure. It’s not the right time—in the midst of a financial crisis in a city that’s trying to create a resurgence.”
Backers of the measure argue that the City Council could, in fact, tap nongeneral fund money for the $16 million. One such possible source: Portland Clean Energy Fund revenues or interest generated by the climate tax. (That would certainly be controversial, however, and many of the groups backing the measure have historically opposed any diversion of PCEF funds, making it hard to imagine winning their support on this occasion.)
Another question raised by the measure: If projects funded by the program require recurring maintenance, it’s unclear whether the participatory budgeting program would continue to pay for operational expenses or offload continuing expenses onto the city, in essence creating unfunded mandates every year.
Take, for instance, a scenario in which the program funds the buildout of a new fire station (something proponents say the money could be used for). Would ongoing maintenance and staffing costs then get passed on to the city, which can barely pay for current fire stations?
City Councilor Candace Avalos, who attended the endorsement interview to argue in favor of the measure, said it “just depends.”
“If that passes, this is clearly a priority of the community to do this. They’re saying, you better make sure that this fire station stays online,” Avalos says. She refutes the idea that such an undertaking would shoehorn the council into funding infrastructure it doesn’t have the money to maintain. “I don’t see that as shoehorning.”
The ballot measure has fallen along a now-predictable fault line on the City Council: All six members of the council’s self-described progressive caucus, or Peacock, favor the measure. They argue it gives Portlanders direct power over budgets, protected from the influence of lobbyists and what they call the “power brokers” at City Hall.
All six non-Peacocks oppose it. Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney, in her Voters’ Pamphlet statement opposing the measure, calls it “irresponsible.”
“It locks a spending requirement of at least $16 million annually into the city charter while we are still behind on funding basic maintenance and core services,” Pirtle-Guiney wrote. “Pulling money out of the budget for new projects before we’ve caught up on the basics isn’t opportunity—it’s irresponsible.”
The last ballot measure approved by Portlanders that left so much undetermined until after it passed was 2024’s Measure 26-228, which overhauled the former style of city government and replaced it with what we have now: four voting districts, 12 city councilors who set the city’s budget, and a mayor and city administrator who manage city bureaus. Some of the intent of that measure is still in dispute, including when Mayor Wilson has the authority to break tie votes between the council’s two factions.
