Portland voted for a new form of government. It's a huge deal and bike advocates need to understand why — and more importantly — how to take advantage of it.

In this episode, host Jonathan Maus talks to two people with important insights into what lies ahead: former policy advisor for City Commissioner Mingus Mapps Matt Glazewski (who was interviewed in ep. 18), and researcher/writer at Sightline Institute and former BikeLoud PDX leader Catie Gould.

***

LINKS:

• Charter reform coverage on BikePortland

Our Podcast music was provided by The Podcast Host and Alitu: The Podcast Maker app.

Jonathan Maus 0:00

Catie Gould 1:24

Thanks. Great to be here.

Matt Glazewski 1:25

It's an awesome shed.

Jonathan Maus 1:27

Matt Glazewski 3:22

That's right. And the current councillors will actually have to run for re election in a new seat.

Jonathan Maus 3:29

Along with that. So the top three sort of changes just to get folks sort of up to speed. And I hope all of you can, like, go Google and figure all this out on your own, because it's there's a lot more important detail here. But the three top line things are like, like I said, at the top commissioners will no longer oversee specific bureaus like they do now, that will be that job will go to a new city administrator, who will be sort of like the CEO of Portland for, for lack of a better term at this point. The second thing is we'll use rank choice voting to elect commissioners. So a form of proportional representation. And then the third thing being we will create four geographic districts, each with three council members for a total of 12. Council members. So and again, we will have an election for 12 counts, even as I say it, I can't even imagine what it's going to be like, Okay, I wanted to know, kind of just off the top, like, what is the thing that you're most hopeful about with the change in government? And then the thing you're most concerned with?

Catie Gould 4:24

Yeah. You know, throughout this charter reform process, a lot of people talk about like the election system, the way that we elect people is going to be really different. But what I'm really excited for is how governing is going to be different, right? Because right now, I've been in Portland for almost 11 years. And who is going to oversee Pbot? Next, right, nobody is assigned Pbot next, so you have no idea as an advocate, who do you want to be lobbying? Who do you want to be educating about the policy changes you want to see in any other city? Anyone elected to council kind of bring forward Paul All Cid has to city council, right? They don't have this kind of this is your bureau that you're assigned to. So you're kind of the point person for everything that happens in that sphere. And it's a bad system because like bureaus get reassigned, independent of like if that commissioner is interested in the bureau if they have a particular expertise, so it just it changes so much year to year of like how strong your champion is to get policies passed, right and bring someone new up to speed and you only get one person at a time. Right. So it can take a long time to see these changes that we really want to go through city council. People inside the bureaus can kind of refer to this as something like called the commissioner test, right? It's this extra barrier that before you can get something in front of the whole city council to vote on, you first have to like get it past your commissioner to bring it to the level of interest that they will lobby for it. And sometimes if a policy is not into what a commissioner is interested in, and isn't their policy priorities, and we see lots of times people get elected with saying this is what I care about. And then they might not be assigned to those bureaus. So it creates this extra barrier that now we're going to be getting rid of that. I think it's actually just a hope I don't I don't think I have a concern.

Jonathan Maus 6:22

Good. Okay. Yeah. All right. How about you, Matt?

Matt Glazewski 6:25

Jonathan Maus 9:54

So I'm hearing your one of your main concerns because you mentioned it in a Twitter message to leave for a week. got together on this. And you've mentioned it before Katie came in and you mentioned it again, you're really concerned about the city manager position. Yes. Okay. Well, let's talk about that in a sec, just to finish this little thing of like hope versus cancer. So But overall, I'm feeling like both of you are more hopeful, much more hopeful than

the other change that I think is important for people who are involved in city politics, or really anyone, this is gonna be the first time that all the bureaus actually have the same boss. Yep. Right, the ultimate boss goes through the city administrator. And then on top of that is the mayor is like the last person that chain and they oversee all the bureaus. So all these conflicts, we have a bureaus against each other and with budgets and with authorities, among different politicians that don't see eye to eye, that's going to be a thing of the past.

Yeah, good riddance to the Commission form of government.

And for me, in terms of like, hope versus concern, no one's met, you haven't we haven't mentioned, like the geographic representation thing, specifically. But like, I always, I hear so much like on a weekly, almost daily basis, from people who are like, this bike specific issue in my neighborhood, like this bike lane, or there's leaves here that are bothering me, or this thing is a problem, you know, what do I do? Who do I talk to? Well, that's, that's actually more of a concern of mine. Now, because of geographic representation, we're gonna have these massive districts, and we're gonna have three people representing each one, where at least now even though it doesn't work, ideally, you would kind of know as soon as you could figure out that you have to talk to the you know, the transportation Commissioner, the Pbot commissioner's office, you could kind of like at least put your put your annoyance somewhere, put your request somewhere, now, you're going to have this really large district and three different commissioners. So there's that I want to talk about more about that. But, but on a good thing, I one of the things I wanted to say that I'm hopeful for is like we're going to have with the proportional representation, and just the way, you won't have to run a city wide campaign, I think, obviously, we're gonna have a much different type of people being able to run and also get elected, I'm assuming, just because you know, you don't have to have as many votes, you're not campaigning over such a wide swath of land, which means you don't need as much money. And I think that's one of the huge problems that we're having as a city is you just need to have really rich friends and supporters to like, make a huge dent. And I hope we

get enough people that actually do want to run, I mean, and that's the other thing that I would say that maybe it's that's something that I'm a little concerned about, because I love the idea of having the different districts and actual representation for the places where you live. But at the same time, I know what it's like to be peripheral to elected officials into a Portland of 2022. I mean, these officials have panic buttons in their houses, these people, you know, have death threats that come at them. And you know, that's a scary thing. And you have to, you know, be able to put yourself out there when you go from being a private citizen, to a public citizen. It's a big change. And I'm hoping that we can get people that still care about Portland to put their name out there.

So Okay, those are sort of hopes and concerns. Let's get back to some of these, like more specific things. Let's just talk more broadly sort of about the bureau thing, I think that's kind of like the biggest issue that folks will be interested in too. And, and I personally am too, because so the mayor has already kind of put out some pre empting things saying like, we're gonna get ready for the new form of government, here's what's going to happen, we're going to put these five service areas into effect. So he's got it from like community safety being one, economic development, another utilities, just one called admin, which is kind of a bummer. Like, I don't want to sound so boring, like, who wants to be in the admin? And then the other ones community services? So there's the five community safety, economic development, utilities, admin, community services. Man, do you think that's like, that will be like a tangible difference? I know that you feel about sort of bureaus not being in charge of, you know, having one commissioner in charge, but like, having like a service area cluster, do you think that will allow this sort of like collaboration, synergy to happen that will be beneficial?

I mean, so what we're talking about is just in the next two years, until we have our new form of government, right, yeah.

But even even when the new government happens like that, they're going to be sort of like, you know, clustered differently, they're going to be joined together in a way that they aren't now now. They're kind of like, whoever gets them, depending on whatever political move somebody wants to make they can be assigned.

Well, yeah, yeah, you've got an important point there. You know, in many cases, that was one of the only pieces of power that the mayor had, in that he could this current mayor anyway or in previous mayor's, we've had have been assigned bureaus to sometimes their political allies or their political adversaries, in hopes that that would be a challenge for them or not a challenge for them. And under this new, new form, you know, essentially what we're going to have over the next two years before we have our new form of government take shape is essentially what we should have had all along, let's be honest, right? It's really trying to remove politics, from city administration. So by grouping services together, that share a similar mission, like public safety, for example, and actually having them all administrated by the same individual. Granted, it's still a commissioner. And it's not what we want it to be, which is why we voted yes. Is is going to help shape the future. But we're not going to see those changes, until that whole piece is gone. Because, you know, society has momentum, right? It's not going to change overnight with this at the snap of a finger just because we voted to change the charter, it's going to take us time to learn how to operate within that new structure. And while it's good that we will have services grouped together that do business together more often, ultimately, it's not going to really change, probably for another four years from now.

You don't think so even even with things that were already sort of like, because I know you were big on bureaus collaborating in terms of like, there's some good, there's some really easy examples I can think of like, well, actually, you know, back in the day when former mayor Adams got in trouble for trying to use Environmental Services money, where they did the rain catching stormwater Gardens, which are called bioswales. Tried to use that money to sort of like do them on streets, that would be like neighborhood Greenway streets. So they could also do bike improvements on the streets and make them safer for people to bike and walk. Like, I wonder if that was to happen once the new form of government was here? Would that be like a lot? I'm assuming it'd be a lot less controversial. I always thought that was a good policy. It was pretty controversial because it became sewer money for bike lanes, which was this big, you know, media tagline that everybody ran with? And Sam just tended to, let's say, attract controversy. But do you think the today but but if the new form of government, if those two things are kind of in the same office, so to speak, environmental services and transportation, which they will be under this utilities, service area cluster? You know, it seems like that that makes a lot of sense. And that kind of stuff will be

it'll be de politicized deeply. Right. That was before my time coming into Portland. But right, these policies are adopted by the whole city council. If you're angry at a policy the whole city Council adopts right? People, maybe you want to vote out a commissioner. But commissioners change constantly. Right? And you're kind of the figurehead of the of the Bureau will be not a politician anymore. That's the fundamental change you're talking about.

Yeah, well, yeah,

yeah. And in the meantime, you know, one of the things that always used to make me chuckle is that, largely, the street sweeping budget was something that came out of environmental services, which is funny, because you don't traditionally think of street sweeping coming from environmental services, you would think it'd be transportation, because the little truck that drives around has says Pbot on it, but the truck is owned by environmental services, and the staff that Pbot our drive, the Pbot staff that are driving it, are paid by environmental services through inter organizational agreements, that kind

of stuff is just so frustrating for me to hear about, because I know how bureaucratic inefficiencies work, even on a good day. And you add that level of complexity of like overlapping responsibilities. And it's not a way to run things efficiently, especially when you're talking about street cleanliness, which is such a pet peeve of mine. And I think a lot of people listening to this, it's like, it's not as important as these other issues. Our city is struggling to make progress on, let's say, like homelessness and climate change. But it's an issue that our city is struggling to make progress on. And it's so frustrating, almost more so because it should be so simple. But like, your example about the street sweeper reminded me like something I just learned this year, which is that Pbot is always out there saying transportation Bureau's always saying go out and clear your storm drain grades, which to me, Storm grades are like a quintessential Environmental Services thing, because they're dealing with rainwater, which has to do with river health and all these other things. So it's like, you know, I don't know, I just I kind of want to just ask you point blank, like, will, will that kind of dynamic get better? Once these charter reform changes are sort of like are happening are implemented

that one, I mean, as an example, I think, I think in many cases where you have bureaus that have agreements with each other, whether a fund transfers, for very specific services, which frankly, in many cases, their performance metrics are never met, there will be greater accountability, which will allow for those things to potentially operate more efficiently and actually meet those performance metrics, which is, you know, the accountability piece,

because at the end of the day, it does come back to D politicization, right? Because it's just like, you know, novick's That thing I read at the top and like, I know, you both realize, but it's like, it becomes part of your political strength to like, get as much money as you can for your bureau. Make your bureau look as good as it can come budget, whatever. So like another example being like, you know, the parks Bureau, let's say, on Southwest Terwilliger. You know, that's a constant place where there's always overgrowth in the bike lane. It's super dangerous, relatively high speeds, windy road, and the bike lanes are always full of leaves. The parks Bureau was responsible for cutting back the vegetation even though it's the vegetation that's always messing up the street. It's the people I think so. Yeah, if you don't have the politics,

Jonathan, you wrote about the growing maintenance backlog at Pbot. Right, a couple of weeks ago, and nobody talks about this. In the Op Ed hit that he wrote, you know, who cares about Pbot having adequate budget, currently only one person at a time? Right, because the other four commissioners have other priorities. They have other things to think about. They're too busy. Right? So we're going to have a tour is going to be a totally different budgeting process. Will the budgets for agencies changed dramatically under the new form of government? Probably not right away? Right. But it does kind of allow the incentive system to shift that we can think more holistically about what the city needs. If a majority of the new elected city council cares very much about road maintenance. Right, that would be already a really big shift have been about who cares about it now? And how many people really take that, you know, as their responsibility?

That makes me hopeful? Because we often see things that we know, are sort of like, or I would know, or just assume that are broadly popular among Portlanders, like I don't know, if Sunday Parkways or clean streets, but it's just baffling and frustrating how those don't really elevate on like a city hall action level, because it's considered this like, one little fiefdom or this one tiny issue. Like I'm always fascinated by, like, let's say bicycling, specifically, like every a vast majority of Portlanders love bicycling just as a pure adjective or verb like thing to do, right? We see it in Sunday Parkways and everybody wants to go ride their bikes when they go camping at Oregon State Parks or whatever. So on one hand, it's vastly it's, it's just extremely popular, it's non controversial towards thing, but in other ways, you know, it's, it's often maligned, and like local press, and people want to create fights, and you go online, and people want to bully you, because you're one of those crazy cyclists or whatever it might be. So it's kind of this weird, weird dichotomy. So I'm wondering, you know, how, like, either of you have thoughts about how that dynamic might change where we have something that's broadly popular, like bicycling, you know, and so, partly because of that, I would always look at City Hall and go, do we have any champions there? Are there any people up there that actually get it that actually love bicycling enough to like, do the political lifts it takes to kind of like, move some stuff down the field? You know? And so, once charter 14, we have these 12 commissioners and a mayor like, is it going to? Do you think that I guess what I'm trying to get to is like, if you're a bike advocate listening to this, you know, is there a reason to think that bicycling as an issue can become more potent? More, you know, can we get bicycling related initiatives, you know, down the field quicker, under a new form of government.

Now I'm going to I'm going to tie it back to that city manager, that thing I'm going to tell you once again, because the city manager when they come in, they are as Katie has said, they're the boss of all the bureau directors. So no meaning no disrespect at all to the current Pbot director or any of the other directors. But in the current state of affairs in the commission form, they have to please their politician boss, and not create conflict and work and et cetera, right, they don't want to be a scandal ridden Bureau, because that looks bad for the politician. So in many cases, a lot of current bureau directors are very averse to bold action, or any type of thing that might cause undue attention, even if it is an amazing idea. Right. So that means our new city manager is the person that we need to care about. Because if that city manager is somebody that has a bold vision, they're going to hire bureau directors that support that vision, they're going to add that extra insulation, there'll be a person that has the ability to politic with all the elected officials, the wherewithal in administration to manage a budget and the insulation to allow bureau directors that they choose with their vision to allow them to execute them.

We haven't even talked about the bureau director position and how there will be some new hires and fires.

Like in any case, Jonathan, when you have a chief executive using your words, yeah, comes into a new company. Yep. They, they, they inherit a certain amount of senior staff, right? And they say, okay, here I am. I'm the new person, this is my vision. Are you on board with it? Here's your opportunity. Prove yourself to me that you're worthy to be here. And in some cases, some people will prove themselves in the first couple of months to say this is great. We're singing from the same sheet of music. Let's go for it. Great. You're on my team. Other folks, maybe not so much, and they're offered a chance to, you know, retire or, you know, find a new position with the help of the new CEO. In some cases, you're going to see a shift in bureau directors that align with the vision of the New City. The manager,

I have a little different perspective, not that I disagree. But the difference between having a what four commissioners, no mayor to 12 is really going to be big right. And something that a lot of other organizations have talked about is there's a better chance for representation on council. Right? Because it's not just the majority, right, we think there's gonna be more diverse viewpoints, more diverse representation on council, that certainly can include active transportation representation. Right, you and I have been in, you know, meetings where people running for office are talking about transportation, and we said, gosh, maybe not this year, you know, maybe next year, we'll have a stronger candidate, right. But now there's going to be more candidates than ever before. I imagine that the new city council would probably have subcommittees of people who are interested in different topics, and transportation could be one of them. And just as an example, of kind of like what, you know, working under a different form of government would be like, because I've lived here for most of my adult life, I had the opportunity to go to Anchorage this summer, they have a ordinance coming before there is called the assembly up there, their city council in the next month to get rid of parking mandates. And it was really eye opening experience for me to see how a different city kind of operates right under this different structure. The planning department had been working for years on a proposal that they thought would be kind of politically viable. It was okay. It was not like super exciting. And then someone got elected to the City Council, one of 12 people, right, similar size of what Portland will have, who really got the idea who like really got it understood, it said, I really want to champion a stronger proposal. And that's what's right draft drafted an alternate ordinance for a much stronger proposal. And that person was not assigned a bureau. This was like, of no particular responsibility of this person. But you're just it frees you up to work on whatever you're interested in. Right. So it was, it was really exciting to see kind of how that worked, and how the advocates have like worked with City Council in that, you know, kind of an open playing field compared to what exists in Portland right now of there's people you're supposed to talk to, and technically, someone who's not the commissioner in charge of your bureau could bring something to council. But it's, you know, it'd be really hard to make headway.

Yeah. Yeah. And you have experience as, like a grassroots activist trying to get a specific thing sort of moved through the process to implementation. So,

yeah, it's also really, it can be really difficult to get, you know, your new commissioner in charge to, you have to educate them, all these policies have passed. Previously, that might have even been multiple commissioners ago. Right. One of the parking policies that I talked about in my last article, right, in 2018, city council authorized Pbot to make two new parking permit districts, zero new parking districts have been created since. But there's been what three different Pbot commissioners in that time, and like, so the institutional memory is just very short. Ideally, our city administrator is going to have a much longer memory and say, Hey, we're supposed to do this and like, check in and, you know, we also have that experience of, you know, the agency supposed to report back to council, you know, in a year and right, some certain timeframe,

and different commissioners, then it's yeah,

they, they might not be aware that that's even a thing that that needs to happen. But also, even if they kind of like remote, they're, they're busy doing so much, they have so much work to do too much work. That is really, I'm glad that these responsibilities are separating.

So sort of related to that. I'm curious how each of you think that, you know, effective advocacy for bicycling, you know, can happen or, you know, might happen under the new form of government. There's, I've seen all sorts of different types of approaches being taken, you know, like, let's say, just to pull one out, like the Hawthorne bike lane thing, which was a huge issue, said he was going to repave Hawthorne, there was one person basically who had some skill using Facebook and organizing people and making petitions that said, let's make a protected bike lane here and really worked that and organized people on the grassroots and, you know, did a pressure campaign was all focused toward one Commissioner, there was actually a changeover in commissioners at the time again, going back to the same issue that keeps happening. You know, ultimately, that happened. What happened, I mean, didn't ultimately get a bike lane on Hawthorne. I think the former government had a lot to do with that. But I'm just curious if either you have insight about, you know, activism style, advocacy style, how that might change in terms of getting a bicycle related initiative off the ground. If there's like a better way to do it, because every interest group, every lobby, all sorts of folks are going to be probably having similar conversations as we are right now. And I'm selfishly doing this because I want to, like, make sure that people that care about bike stuff are like, well informed and can get into front of the line and be most effective in hit the ground running. So I guess Yeah, it's like, how do you like, Does anything come to mind about what forms of advocacy will work or how they should change maybe going forward?

And it's interesting, right, you know, there were many days when I would just be, you know, sitting in the commissioner's office, and I would get a message from someone at the Portland Business Alliance, right, maybe someone who used to work for the mayor, that is over there, asking on behalf of one of their members to take care of something or look into it right away, you know, right, it was very, it's very easy for someone to be able to reach out because they know how to get in touch, right, they're gonna have to completely rejigger and shift how they're going to basically try and do the same thing, right? Because no longer you have that pressure point, right? To be able to say, Oh, this commissioner is in charge of whatever STC is for water or something and say, oh, you know, work on my my system development charges, you know, this is the this is the right contact right? Under the new system, the city councilors won't have that kind of pull, they can still bother, you know, the city manager and say, city manager, I have this complaint, but the city manager in theory is going to be getting those types of requests from 11, other city councilors as well, and is going to have to balance what each of those things are practically. And it will also be a bit more transparent, right? Because the city manager is not an elected official, there are a public employee. So if there are requests that are coming through, even if they're politically driven, the city manager will have a duty to daylight a lot of these things so that people know what's going on. So that's a huge piece.

Okay. Yeah, that's good. So to sort of maybe put a finer point on like my question. Let's just say that I'm a person in Portland, who heard about a street project in my neighborhood, and think that there should be a bike lane on that street. Right? If the whole new if the new form of government was in place, like what, what would be the process, right? Like, what? Where there's two, what should I do? I would email what I would you think people would email the city administrator? And then what happens to that? Like, what can we go through, like maybe what might happen to help give people a sense of like, how to do advocacy, because I can tell people right now, like what to do, but I'm curious if that will be different,

it's gonna never I think we're gonna have to figure it out ourselves. But generally speaking, I would say that there's two avenues, right? If you know, someone like Sam, Balto decides they want to run for city council, and do an entire political campaign riding bicycles around the city in order in their new district, right, that they would represent, you know, then it's very clear that, you know, this person would be a very strong bicycle advocate. And there, they would be a person that you could speak to in their office, because, you know, they have sympathies for toward a specific policy process, to be able to craft something and work internally to be able to create an outcome. Secondarily, there is just the general process that you go through what you really do right now, which is going through the professional administrators that work in the bureau, right, and under the new Bureau of Transportation, you know, there will, they will have the same some of the same folks and Public Affairs, etc. But the, the way that they would handle those requests would be different. And again, a lot of that has to do with the new city administrator, and how that person wants to have public engagement be a part of the process. So you have traditionally, you know, the same avenues. They're just going to be a little bit different, in part, because we don't know who the players are going to be on the stage yet.

Yeah, and thinking like project by project, do we want every bike lane to come through city council? I would say, from my bike advocate spirit. No, definitely not. No, yeah, true.

Yeah, we would like you want a system plan?

Well, that may not be a good example. So but like, let's say, let's say someone wanted to say, you know, we're not doing enough to keep street save vision, zeros languishing, let's, let's make more progress on that move that down the field, or even like stuff that like kind of related to your parking article about some of the pricing things that the city has is recommendations, but you know, there could they could be doing a lot more in terms of pricing, and that hasn't really moved down the field. Or you could we could talk about the bike plan, which is, you know, supposed to be done in seven years now, almost, not also not moved long, you know, for further enough down the field. So, you know, I wonder, I wonder what the new form how the new form of government impacts those, those kinds of things.

Yeah, it'll be incredibly impactful right when when Portland adopted performance pricing, which is changing the parking meters based on the demand, right, so if it's impossible to find a parking space, the break goes up slightly until spaces open up right and encourages people to not park all day. And by the same token, if the streets empty, the parking is praised too high, right, you can lower the price and make it more affordable for people and charge kind of the right price for parking. Pbot was directed to develop that policy under Commissioner Novick. And when they came back two years later after they had this citizen advisory group, and they had a whole report, now Saltzman is in charge of the Bureau, right. And the initial recommendation was that people should have the authority to set their own parking rates. And this is something that other cities do. And the cities that do are more successful at changing their, their meter rates on a more regular basis, to be more responsive to demand, which we've seen wildly fluctuate underneath COVID. But the idea of like, delegating authority to an agency, and I feel like as a bike advocate, I wanted Pbot, to be really empowered to make their own calls to make their own decisions. And I felt like the more I feel like authority that they felt they would have would be really good. Right, but having a commissioner in charge of that system inherently politicizes it right. So there's this last minute change when we adopted that policy to say, No, we do not want to give this authority to the bureau? Because essentially, aren't you giving that commissioner in charge more authority that Council currently has? And that's like, you know, it loses power for the other people on city council?

Yeah, we're so used to two commissioners, being able to pull all the strings, whereas under the new policy model, or sorry, the new council model, they will be the policy makers, period. And the city manager will be in charge of carrying out that policy in the way that they can. So you won't have these shell games of commissioners being in charge having different political control over just general things that are supposed to happen in city government. And you'll have greater accountability, because you will have a path forward with minimal impacts from politics, right?

What about what about the director position? Like right now Pbot has a director. And it's a kind of a fascinating position, because depending on the relationship with the commissioner, it can either be more or less powerful, that director if they're political, they can sort of manipulate and play the City Hall games, right? How do you think the director positions will change that you think directors will be more afraid of accountability from a city administrator than they are of a commissioner? Or how do you see that dynamic changing in the future?

Yeah, it'll take time, right? Because we're gonna have to off to reprogram our brains to think about how the city is going to operate, which is why I say four years before we actually see any real change. But the director, if it's an existing director, that is able to pivot and think differently, and maybe perhaps has experience in a city that's not Portland, that also many, many cities in America, most cities have a council manager form of government, they would be able to shift to understand that the city manager is their boss, and be able to, you know, walk walk that line and understand that I do what the city manager tells me to do. But I have broad room to implement my own vision for what I would like to see. And maybe, maybe, maybe we get a new Pbot. Director. Let's let's just hypothetical, right. Let's say we get a new Pbot director that's hired by our new city manager. And that person came from someplace like Washington, DC, we have a lot of people that have worked in Portland, for transportation that have come from DDOT. Right. But you have a new DDOT person that wants to be the new Pbot commissioner and says, I want to put in pedestrian plazas downtown. Me, Matt, I think that's a terrific idea. I would love to close streets downtown. And this is a really bold vision for a city in America where car culture is king, right? And to say that we're going to repurpose streets for people, right what we were trying to do a bit of during COVID. But we mean at this time, we're going to put a bollards that are going to be motorized, so that transponders will have to be required to let emergency vehicles and delivery trucks, etc get through, but then they go right back up, to keep the cars out and make spaces for people that kite that type of bold vision, which I support. And I would love to see someday in our Portland is not something that you could do today. If you are the current Pbot director, you can't say I am working on a plan to make pika street southwest Third Avenue completely car free forever.

So why is that easier to do with the new form of government than it is now?

Because in the new form of government, you will have a city manager who hires you because of your vision and supports that vision and defends that vision to city council. That person will do everything that they can with performance metrics, with money with all the things that we care about and running a city to be able to To prove that it is actually a viable and good thing to do. And potentially, you may also get a group of city councilors that are also huge fans of this, right, maybe they're going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you on the back end, and get some of their seatmates to vote in favor of something like this. The opportunities are endless in a new system to be able to implement bold, visionary things like pedestrian plazas in downtown Portland. And you know what, what better time to do it when we see downtown Portland struggling, right? Now's the time to make those types of changes to for us to be able to say, You know what, let's be bold. Let's be that that Portland we used to be I was when I was walking over to this, the bikeportland Studio shed here. I walked past a Parks and Recreation vehicle that was you know, parked on the sidewalk inside Peninsula Park. But it was one of the older vehicles that said the city that works, right. And the city that works was a slogan about Portland trying new things that weren't done other places. And they worked here. And we don't do that anymore. Let's do it. Again. We can this new form of government allows us to be the city that works again.

Yeah, right now that people director can't be bolder than the commissioner is, you know, willing to stomach right? So we talked about Hawthorne. And you know, Commissioner, Hardesty said, Well, this is what this what the bureau wants to do. I'm not, you know, I don't feel strongly enough to disagree with them or take a stronger position. There's, you know, why even bother lobbying, you know, anyone else on council to override, right? I, you know, it's just your avenues for change are very limited by the current system.

I absolutely love the vision of getting like one commissioner in the new government, I said, one of the 12 excited about something. And then watching that idea spread to other commissioners, where we start to see in the news the next morning, Oh, 2340. Now five of them, like it, six of them, like it's seven of them, like it or right, they're like organizing themselves to say let's make this happen. And then like, I can imagine and hope that it would work where like, if 10 of the 12 are super into something like, Gosh, darn it, that's gonna that's gonna happen, super majorities

all that's gonna be the only need, you only need seven out of seven out of 12. Right?

So you got and I love this stuff. Because I happen to think that the stuff that I wanted, or the good things, you know, like, these are the good ideas and like, we we saw, they're not able to get through because there are forces that kind of want to like, keep things the way they are. Or and you mentioned before, I'm kind of like, I keep asking you both about like how do these do gooder bike advocate, people get things done, but maybe it's better to frame it like, what's going to happen to the powerful people that currently dominate the system. Let's say it's Portland Business Alliance that has been known to thwart big changes, let's say downtown to the way we design the streets, they would have a harder time, they'd have to influence seven commissioner to stop something and saying just want the beauty

is that since everything is new, things will be a lot more shiny. And we'll notice things it'd be like, what's that sparkly thing happening over there? That's new. Because when you're ingrained in a system that's existed for a very long time you've resigned yourself to that's just how the sausage is made. But the beauty of setting up something new from the start, it'll be a lot more obvious. In certain cases, when people are trying to kick the system. And they're going to have to do it differently. Those groups are going to have to pivot and change the way that they conduct business, just like every other group that wants to lobby the city for anything. Similarly, the state, the relationships with the state, their relationships with Metro, the relationships with the county, all of those are going to change completely. And that's a good thing, because clearly they weren't working in many cases before, right? The relationship with ODOT, for example, that's going to change significantly.

How so? I hadn't thought about that yet. But I wonder Can you flesh that out a bit. So I mean, let's just say there's been a really interesting dynamic like with the I five rows quarter project where you've had one people Commissioner walked away, the next Pbot commissioner came and said, Oh, no, let's come back to the table and help them design this. Like, can you flesh that a bit more like how will the new form of government 12 commissioners, a mayor and a city administrator, how will that make how will that allow Portland to sort of have a stronger presence around how it talks to Oda or talks to the state more broadly,

so many ways. legislative goals are one thing right? Every year before the state legislature goes into session decide to make new laws on behalf of the state. The Office of Government Relations will put together basically some ideas and a list call for ideas of what what they want the city to lobby, the state you know on behalf of right When you have five commissioners, it's one thing, right? Because we previously are currently I guess, anyway, have people in charge of singular things. So getting something that they would communally agree on in a work session to say this is something we would actually want to lobby the state for those, those things aren't going to be bold and visionary, right? You wouldn't see the rose quarter as one of the things is one of the top five things, right? Despite the fact that it cuts right through the heart of our city, and has terrible air quality, and all sorts of other things associated with it, right? Under a new system. Once again, you're gonna have 12 people, they're going to form a legislative agenda, you're going to have 12 people, and especially those that are going to have the freeways in their districts in certain places are gonna be pushing extra hard, because we know that those are issues that are local, right? You know, if you live in, I don't know lense? Are you really caring about what's going on up by Hayden Island? No, I don't have I five and the Interstate bridge in my in my front yard, that's not something that I'm necessarily going to care about. But in the new district, maybe we have a district that's north and parts of Northeast Portland, pretty good chances that two or three of those people are going to say, this is a huge issue, suddenly, you have three out of 12 people, three different voices, three different individuals, three different people that have staffs, researching being allowed about an issue, it's going to completely change the dynamic about how you put those things together. Additionally, when you're just dealing with inter governmental relationships, you know, there might be one person at ODOT, that is assigned to deal with the district one, which is where we live, and talk to the local government about what they want. We don't have one person anymore.

That reminds me like what's gonna happen to like Metro committees like Jay PAC, where they have a Pbot representative who's always been the commissioner, like, that's going to be different to for like, people like me that maybe it could be the director. Yeah, I wonder how those will, those will have to change as well.

It's all going to change, the ripples in the pond of Portland are going to go far beyond city hall. And it's going to take years for them to settle out on the shores of Oregon.

And to people in other cities. This is just normal, right? This, this change structurally, I mean, it feels like oh, my gosh, there's so many things could go great rate. So many amazing things could happen under this new form of government. It's not like other cities don't have issues that they're also struggling with. Right? It's not like other cities have accomplished their vision zero goals. It's not going to fix everything immediately. But it might happen quicker than it would now and be a little more possible than now.

Yeah. I mean, we can have the conversation with TriMet. I mean, I'm reading about how they want to increase their fares, right? They need to get to make those decisions. Why are there not people from the city of Portland, and city council sitting on the board of directors of TriMet? Why aren't our elected officials helping make those decisions? We'll have the opportunity, right? Because you'll have 12 different people, you may have people that really care about transportation policy. And that's a that's a special district. And that covers a number of cities, but we buy fire in Portland, or the largest city that deserve by it, right? Why don't we actually have a voice of one of our elected officials on their governing board to say, You're going the wrong way, you need to make transit more accessible, not less accessible by raising the price. I don't want to hear about how that's, you know, not something that's profitable, or highways profitable. We stink tons of money into highways every year, being able to have those conversations and people that we elected, sitting at the table where there's other decisions are made. The The possibilities are endless.

And do you think they're not now maybe partly because of just lack of capacity? It's just another thing they'd have to sit on? And there's

absolutely, absolutely, I mean, what you get as a commissioner is a budget to actually staff your office is really small. And if you actually want to attract some of the best and brightest minds, then you're gonna have to pay them better, especially right now when everything costs a very large amount of money because of inflation, right? But you really can't afford to do that. So if you have an office that is not going to be dealing with the day to day that's dealing only with policy, and dealing with those discussions with our other partner agencies within the metro area within the state within the region, the capacity shifts, you suddenly have the ability to be able to do those things because that's all you actually have to worry about anymore. As opposed to oh my god, somebody said there's Legionnaires disease over here. Wait, can we actually have something to do with this? Wait, no. Okay, good. Wait, oh, it's already five o'clock the day is over. That's that's literally what life is like as a staffer in City Hall. And Forget it if you're short staffed. I mean, some Commissioner's offices even right now only have one or two people in them. You You can't run the commissioner's office, but to staff, you burn out like that,

that wasn't a thing I was gonna I wanted to just ask real quick, is there an implication here with the new form of government, around city staff? Is that going to be something that's like consequential in terms of? I mean, at this point, I don't think I think advocates know like, who at the Commissioner's Office is like the transportation person or whatever policy person? Is there something about city staff, you think that's worth telling people about that will be different now?

City staff or or city council? Sorry?

City Council staff? Because I think city staff will largely be the same for the most part, like, like, I know, City Hall and Portland building. So like, Yeah, I'm talking. You know, that just the staffing question, people that are going to work in City Hall, which by the way, we haven't talked about how they're gonna fit 12 people inside that 12 different. They're not they're not okay, so it's not?

It's not possible if we can have a new city

hall built there. So I mean, I'm sure I'm sure we can figure it out.

Yeah, they'll have to really, really rejigger the way that the building is, is set apart to be able to fit 12 commissioners in one

building move into the old Multnomah County Courthouse building. Now that's too old. It's nice and big, though.

It's true. But yeah, that's a good point. Right. So so the the city has a timeline for implementation, right of this whole new grand experiment that we're going to go and do. And within the timeline, there are a number of different committees and councils that are going to be set up to help on districting to help set salaries for our new council. And, again, we're going to have our fingers on the strings to control the purse of how we actually fund the effectiveness of our new city council. Right. So each of these different counselors will have a budget. We don't know what that budget is yet. But that budget will be up to them to to spend on their own staff, and who they want to hire as political appointees, that will then be able to work on those issues that that council member cares about.

And then they're there. I'm assuming there wouldn't be as much turnover in bureau directors,

there hasn't been, there hasn't been?

Well, yeah, and in some cases, maybe we do need new bureau directors, which is what I was saying before, with getting a new city manager, they have they were hired by the mayor and the city council because of their vision because of their abilities as an administrator. And as a leader, they then get to set the tone for how they will administrate city bureaus. If there's a policy direction that comes from the City Council says, you know, we have resolved that you're going to have an amazing bike network by 2025. And this is the plan, then it's the city manager's job to make sure that that happens. Right, the division of the duties is is really going to be a huge difference. But the city manager is going to be holding the directors accountable for doing their jobs. And if they hire people that are in alignment with their vision, then all of these roadblocks are essentially removed. And these barriers to success are not there anymore, because the politics have been removed. And at the City Council wants to go a different direction, they pass a resolution that says, Now we'd like to go this direction, the city manager is the person that implements these things. So like I said before, using your words, it's like sort of a chief executive, whoever this new person is that comes in. That's the person we need to care about the most, because that's the person that's going to run the bureaus at the direction of the city council.

Okay, so we've said a lot of things that we are excited about, but how could it go wrong? Judging from what you said, Man, I'm assuming you'd, if we hired the wrong kind of city manager, or if we hired a city manager that somehow didn't reflect most people's values and beliefs, that could be pretty bad. I was gonna kind of give you both if you wanted to say something about how could it go south? Or how could you see it? Not? Like, you're not gonna say anything, Katie, because I was super excited. But I just don't know. Is there any? Do you want to like double check fact check this

before you publish this, but the right the mayor has the proposal for who the city administrator is and then they're approved by the rest of Council? Right? It's kind of like an appointment process. So who the mayor is matters a lot as well, under this new system, even though they're not a regular vote on all these issues that are coming before the city council? Yeah, we haven't. So that's kind of like, so that's kind of like a new place for us. And like, this is a new thing for all of us in Portland.

But there's also the fundamental piece, right? How does the mayor of finding that city manager, do we hire a professional staffing firm? Like there are some very well known ones here in the Northwest, especially in public administration? Are we going to use a company like that, to do a national search for a city manager and actually have open transparent interviews that we can actually submit public questions to to be able to make sure that this person aligns with their values? Or is that going to person potentially be someone that's already on the inside? Right? I mean, the The current chief administrative officer is someone that is, has the ability to guide this process that is overseeing it. And it's important to engage with that individual, Mike Jordan, to make sure that what the process that gets up set up is transparent, to make sure that whoever the city manager is is not someone that made a backroom political deal, that got an appointment, because we're going to set ourselves up to fail from the start, there will be no trust in the new government.

So So watch the city manager position. People should know who Mike Jordan is the Chief Administrative Officer for the City who will be here through it all. And he has been here for a long time and leading different bureaus. So that's a very veteran city staffer who could have a lot of sway and

who's also previously been the Chief Operating Officer for the State of Oregon. Metro was formerly a county commissioner in Clackamas County, somebody that knows Oregon inside and out.

Yeah, also like what's going to be happening in the very near future that people can get engaged in? Is the districting process. Right? There's applications open now for there to be a kind of commission to help guide the districting that's open through the end of December. And that process is going to start like at the end of January, right? Yeah. And they're gonna give recommendations for these are the geographic districts in Portland, we're going to be voting this new system. And I think by next September, that's this is fast. That's exactly

right. Yeah, things are already happening, right. So now's the time to get engaged, if you want to be engaged in the way that we have our new future.

I think that's a good, that's a good place to kind of wrap up a little bit. But I want to give each of you like a chance to say something or talk about a tangible example of like how a policy may or may not work through the new form of government like your to go back to your article on parking policy that was sort of stalled. And you sort of were blaming the commission, former government for it. Like, there was something else that you wanted to say about that?

Yeah. So if you look to Seattle, right, a city, they have a performance pricing policy. And when they implemented it, they gave their Bureau the authority to set parking rates, you know, under this structure, right? If we know you're into this data collection, and these are kind of the general guidelines for how we're going to change meter rates, so it's, it doesn't have to go back to city council. Right. So since then, they've been updating meter rates once a year. And then when COVID came, now they're updating meter rates three times a year, right, where they're doing this very regular data collection, and they're being much more responsive to the conditions on the street, whereas Portland, right, we have to go through this one opportunity a year to get it into the annual budget. So it can go through the council process, which has effectively delayed the implementation, you know, until maybe next year, right. It's not implemented yet. And we would still, no matter what form of government need to give bureaus, that agency to give them the right, similar authority to do that.

I love that phrase doesn't have to go back to city council. It just sounds so nice, because I think the idea that something has to come back to city council is used right, Matt as a tool to slow things down or like pontificate or make your point in front so you can get your soundbite out, right, that's so annoying, because like very annoying, so many of these things like, well, we got to get a council date before it's like,

it gets in the way of good government. Right? This is one of those times when the politics can really just become a real drag. And also, there's the possibility of a lot of things that the council the current Council has already approved, that will have the opportunity to actually be effective for the first time. They didn't even need to ever come back to council for any reason, but their hands have been proverbially proverbially tied, proverbially tied to be able to EPA implement things, I look at the Climate Action Plan that lives in the Bureau of planning, sustainability, right? The blending of the I'm tired, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability does not have any influence over other bureaus. Yet they are responsible for the Climate Action Plan, under the new form of government we're about to have the city manager will then be able to take all of those climate action planning goals and say, Okay, this bureau, this is a goal that is in our council approved Climate Action Plan, how are you going to meet it? Because right now, they don't actually have to do any of that stuff. It's up to them if they're interested in it. So there's an opportunity for us to actually hold ourselves accountable to things that the city council has already given direction for, let alone some of the great ideas that Katie's talking about.

Yeah, I think it will help make accountability clearer. Right. If now you say I really what happened to that 23 By plan, I really care about this. Who should I complain to about this not getting done? Right right now kind of the person in charge at the top of that system is the commissioner. Are you going to complain to Commissioner Hardesty right now? She's on our way out of office. Right. So, you know, it's not great, and it's going to be more clear that the director right is going to be held accountable for implementing things that council passes.

And that really answered the And you said right before they entered to answer my question about other directors going to be more afraid of their boss being a commissioner or the or being or their boss being a city administrator. And I think it's definitely it's clear that it's the latter. Because they're going to actually be it's going to be definitely more like a different kind of boss. Yeah, boss staffer dynamic,

and hopefully more steady. Yeah. Right. The mayor will be reelected every four years. Right, who's ultimately in charge of the city administrator. And even on that timeline, that would be a much longer tenure than some of these commissioners have bureaus for. Right. Right. So that's what we're looking for. Right? The consistency that we can actually adopt policy, implement policy, see the results, because it's very hard today to hold commissioners accountable for policies that were passed many years ago. Right. That have been, you know, they've lived with the Bureau the whole time. But this Commissioner, you know, just found out about it six months ago, right,

aimlessly so people can.

Yeah, it's just, it's a difficult system to inherit all those problems.

It is. Yeah, even as like a reporter, I find myself when there's a new commissioner in charge of Pbot. I have like a six eight month breathing period, at least before I even feel like it's respectful, even ask them a detailed question, which, if they have it for two years, like right, how much time do you really have to get in there and expect them to actually be on point for things? So yeah, for sure.

My hope is the next two years, we start to see the commissioners start to back off of the Bureau's a little bit and let the directors start to come into the room.

Interesting. Yeah, cuz we are in this uncoupling this weird transition period. Now, it's like lame duck government or something.

Yeah, I don't know if grouping, the Bureau's is going to be much of an impactful change. I don't know if it's even possible to like just not assign them. But like, if there was a preference for me, as someone who's like, yeah, let's get ready for charter reform and trying to figure out how to operate in this system. The Bureau's are going to be more self directed, kind of than they are now.

Yeah, the commissioners still have to take play a role. Because when something goes to council, it still has to go through the commissioner's office, they still have to sign off and approve of things. There's still a bunch of things that exist into the current the current forum that we need to actually still have that has that role. still present, but doesn't mean that we can't step back and let some other people take the lead. Yeah,

it's gonna be awkward couple of years, but I'm really excited for the change this could bring to the city.

Me too. Like I said, Good riddance to the Commission form of government.

Well, that's a good way to wrap up, Matt and Katie, really appreciate you sharing. I learned a lot. Thanks again for coming in.

This was great. Thanks for having us. Yeah.

That was Matt Lozinski, a former policy adviser for Portland City Commissioner Mingus maps. And Katie Gould, a former leader with nonprofit bike loud PDX, and now a researcher and writer for sightline Institute. Be sure to check our show notes for links and resources mentioned in this episode. The bikeportland Podcast is a production of peddle town Media Incorporated, and is made possible by listeners just like you if you're not a subscriber yet, please become one today at bikeportland.org/support. You can listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe bikeportland.org/podcast Our music for this episode was provided by the podcast hosts.com and elite to the podcast maker. Find your own free music podcast over at the podcast host.com/free music and I'm your host Jonathan Maus. Until next time, thanks for listening and I'll see you in the streets.