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During the cold snap that sent the region into disarray last week, Multnomah County officials oversaw a dozen emergency warming shelters across the city. Unlike in years past, the city of Portland had little to do with running those shelters. That was the result of a Jan. 8 agreement inked by city and county leaders that sharply curbed the involvement of the city in running severe weather shelters.
Now, the county is saying the city’s lack of assistance last week impacted the county’s ability to adequately run and staff the warming shelters.
“The city wanted to change its role in emergencies, and on Jan. 9, the city got the agreement it sought,” said county spokeswoman Julie Sullivan-Springhetti. “The resulting consequences...matched what they asked for.”
The reduction in involvement was at the behest of the city, not the county—and the city made it clear in the intergovernmental agreement that it was unhappy with how the county had run shelters in prior years. The city stipulated in its Jan. 8 agreement with the county that it would only staff warming shelters if the county hired security guards; the city also said it would no longer provide rides to warming shelters as it had done in previous years.
Since the weekend, city and county officials have pointed fingers at one another over who was at fault for the breakdown in the partnership last week as ice inches thick coated the city. Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office maintains the county wasn’t properly running its shelters and that mounting security concerns went largely unaddressed, leading city officials no choice but to put in restrictions to protect city employees.
The county, on the other hand, is now painting a picture of a city leadership that abdicated its duty to aid in weather shelters, which primarily serve those living on the streets, during increasingly frequent weather emergencies.
It’s the latest example of the two governments failing to work together, and vulnerable people suffering as a result of the dysfunction.
On Tuesday morning, the city’s Emergency Management Bureau, at the behest of Wheeler, sent a list of recommendations to county officials for how to improve weather shelter operations. Among the recommendations were sharing more information with city leaders, improving security at the shelters, and creating a clearer chain of command. Those recommendations grew out of an independent report that blistered county management of shelters as fractured and chaotic.
In response, the county laid out in bullet-point form to WW how the city’s withdrawal of assistance affected the county’s ability to run shelters during last week’s deep freeze. Among the “consequences” of the city’s withdrawal, county spokesman Julie Sullivan-Springhetti wrote: fewer community centers available for shelter, difficulty finding volunteers to staff the shelters around the clock, fewer county staff available to work shifts because they had to provide ground transportation to Portlanders seeking shelter (the city previously contributed ground transportation), and fewer people trained and available to handle behavioral health outbursts.
“The city’s involvement, and the resulting consequences, matched what they asked for,” Sullivan-Springhetti said, but added: “We can’t be throwing stones at each other. We need to be working together instead.”
County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson met with Mayor Wheeler on Monday to discuss last week’s shelter operations, the county said. The two are scheduled to meet again Thursday—a meeting that could be loaded with tension after the two days of joint finger-pointing and public outcry over the county’s decision to close warming shelters the night after serving the highest number of Portlanders ever recorded.
At least 10 people died from the winter storm last week, including four from suspected hypothermia. Those deaths from exposure occurred in the early days of the storm, before the controversy over shelter closure.