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City officials last week told a group of Portlanders that advises the city on parking policy in Northwest Portland that its committee would be “paused.”
Portland Bureau of Transportation division manager Erika Namioka Nebel wrote in an Oct. 19 letter to the Northwest Parking District Stakeholder Advisory Committee that the bureau’s $32 million budget shortfall is causing uncomfortable cuts across various transportation programs—including the committee.
“We will temporarily pause work related to this and other officially established parking district advisory bodies,” Namioka Nebel wrote. “I recognize that this news will potentially be upsetting and may come as a shock to some of you. My decision to take this pause was not made lightly or independently.”
The $32 million budget deficit PBOT faces this year is a result of years of declining gas tax and parking revenues. The bureau has struggled to find ways of backfilling the budget.
Transportation Bureau spokesman Dylan Rivera says similar committees that advise on parking in the Lloyd District, Marquam Hill and Central Eastside Industrial District will no longer receive support from city staff. (Those committees are more independent from the city than the Northwest committee, so it’s unclear how much they’ll be affected by the decision.)
If PBOT cannot remedy the $32 million budget shortfall, Rivera says, the bureau will have to lay off 88 employees, cut 39 vacant positions, and eliminate a number of bureau programs like public plaza maintenance, Americans with Disabilities Act coordination, bike and transit engagement with the public, and various community events the bureau hosts.
But the reasons for pausing the Northwest District’s 12-member parking committee aren’t limited to financial strain, the letter makes clear.
Namioka Nebel wrote: “Issues around communication, respect for fellow members and staff, and expectations with regards to roles and responsibilities continue to be issues that take significant time and emotional labor to manage. We’ve attempted to implement process improvements and reestablish norms and expectations, yielding varying results.”
She cited one specific example of the Northwest parking committee’s difficulty in reaching consensus. “After four scope modifications, 13 [Stakeholder Advisory Committee] meetings, eight subcommittee meetings, and over $150,000 of NW funds spent on planning for this initial phase alone (not including the cost of three of my staff and several other PBOT staff supporting this effort), the SAC was unable to make a recommendation about how to move forward,” Namioka Nebel wrote about a project that began in 2021. “After consideration, the Director made the decision to move forward on the next design phase of this project.” (She also noted, as a sign of dysfunction, that the advisory committee had only one person volunteer to become vice chair recently—and the committee voted against appointing them.)
The committee’s inability to allocate the district’s $1 million in uncommitted parking permit and meter funds, she wrote in the letter, is “both frustrating and disappointing.”
That particular committee formed as a result of an agreement between the Northwest District Association and the city a decade ago that the city could help manage parking, and collect revenues, in the neighborhood. The committee advises the city on which projects to spend meter revenues and parking permit funds.
In an early Monday morning email to PBOT officials, Northwest District Association president Todd Zarnitz challenged the city’s authority to suspend the advisory committee.
“The feeling of the District Association is that PBOT has lately taken every opportunity to weaken its alignment with the neighborhood, and is actively working to sever them altogether,” Zarnitz wrote. “The recent decision by PBOT to suspend the [advisory committee] for an undefined time, which is completely unsupported by the bylaws and which PBOT has no legal authority to do, is creating a very disagreeable atmosphere.”