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Four months ago, the Portland City Council passed a resolution promising that the future 12-member City Council, which takes office Jan. 1, 2025, would have dedicated offices in each of the city’s four geographic voting districts.
But after receiving a high cost estimate for such offices earlier this month, the City Council is rethinking how it approaches setting up infrastructure for future city councilors.
What the City Council is now considering: significantly paring down the sophistication of the future offices and not connecting them to the city’s fiber network, which links all current City Hall technology and ensures consistent security systems and badge access.
Cost estimates sent to the City Council by the Division of Asset Management in a Feb. 29 memo show that establishing district offices would cost between $600,000 and $1.8 million and ongoing costs would amount to $1.7 million annually, based on promises the City Council made in a November resolution about what those district offices would feature. The Feb. 29 memo also includes a working recommendation by the Government Transition Advisory Committee, a volunteer body put together to advise the City Council on the government transition, to pare down the sophistication of those future district offices. (GTAC has not officially voted yet on the recommendation.)
By reducing the size of the space, scrapping security infrastructure and the purchase of new furniture, and removing requirements for connectivity to the city’s fiber network system, the City Council could reduce startup costs to $150,000 and the ongoing costs to $150,000 a year, the memo states.
The Feb. 29 memo to the City Council recommends that it amend its November resolution to read: “It is explicitly noted that there should be no expectation of security or technological systems for staff working at these sites. In short, the properties will be taken as-is, with only de minimis upgrades, such as signing and used commercial office furniture.”
If such changes are supported by the City Council, it would have to amend the resolution it passed Nov. 29, which mandated that the future district offices have the same level of security as current City Hall facilities and enough space for eight staff per district and a communal meeting room, and that the offices be connected to the city’s fiber network.
The charter reform ballot measure voters approved in November 2022 was ambiguous about what the district offices would look like and when they would be established. That left the decision-making to the City Council, which didn’t address the issue publicly until last fall.
City Commissioner Dan Ryan, along with Commissioners Carmen Rubio, Mingus Mapps and Rene Gonzalez, was adamant in October that the future City Council be equipped with district-based offices when they take office Jan 1. Mayor Ted Wheeler was the lone voice on the council that wanted to wait until the new City Council took office to set up district offices, which he said would allow the new elected officials to choose offices themselves. (Soon thereafter, the council passed the resolution that mandated certain provisions at the district offices that the City Council is now hoping to spike.)
Ryan now says he’s willing to rethink how elaborate the new offices should be.
“Commissioner Ryan continues to support having district offices,” says his deputy chief of staff, T.J. McHugh. “He is glad to see an option presented at a considerably lower cost, and still enable a place for the community to meet with their councilors in the district.”