Should Portland approve funding recommendations of Children’s Levy Allocation Committee for July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2028?

The purpose is to allow the Children’s Levy to award a total of $70,976,000 million to early childhood, after school, mentoring, child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care and hunger relief programs as outlined in the memo entitled “Request for City Council Approval” and “Exhibit A: “Portland Children’s Levy Funding Allocations July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2028.”

The reviewed sources do not clearly identify every existing policy, service, contract, or obligation that would remain unchanged.

This proposal concerns arts, parks & community life and requires action through Portland’s public legislative process.

Community ImpactsChildren and families disproportionately impacted by historical inequities gain access to culturally specific and responsive program services funded by the Children’s Levy. All services contribute to achieving established Children’s Levy goals outlined in the table below and support children, youth and parents to achieve positive outcomes. In FY24, 77% of the children served in programs supported by the Children’s Levy identified as Black, Indigenous or of color. PCL’s annual community report and data appendix provide more data on the community impact of currently funded programs.Children’s Levy GoalsLevy-widePrepare children for school.Support children’s success inside and outside of school.Eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in children’s well-being and school success. Early ChildhoodSupport children’s early development and readiness for kindergarten.Child Abuse Prevention and InterventionPrevent child abuse and neglect and support vulnerable families.Foster CareSupport the well-being and development of children and youth in foster care.After SchoolProvide safe and constructive after-school and summer programing that supports children’s well-being and school success.MentoringConnect children and youth with caring adult role models that support their well-being.Hunger ReliefExpand access to healthy, nutritious food for hungry children.Community InvolvementPlease see memo submitted for more detail. Briefly, in 2023-24, PCL worked Camille E. Trummer Consulting, and City contracted Community Engagement Liaisons to conduct a community engagement process as required by the ballot measure and Act (Resolution 37610) referring the Levy to voters. Community engagement activities were designed to identify community funding priorities in early childhood, child abuse prevention/intervention, foster youth, afterschool, mentoring and hunger relief program areas. More than 500 community members and 150 service providers participated in the community engagement process through surveys, focus groups and interviews. Participants engaged in the process in more than 25 languages, and included youth and parents with disabilities, foster youth and foster parents, immigrants and refugees, and people who identify as Black, Indigenous and of color.PCL’s 13-member Community Council helped design the community engagement process and distill the funding priorities based on the results. They also worked with staff to develop the funding application and scoring criteria. The community engagement results, and draft application and scoring criteria were also shared with agencies providing services to children and families to provide feedback. PCL conducted significant outreach to organizations providing services for children and families, and received 168 applications in the funding round (45% increase compared to 2019 funding round). The number of applicants that were not currently funded by PCL increased by more than 200% compared to the 2019 funding round. Submitted applications were scored by 91 trained community volunteers (4 per application). The Community Council reviewed characteristics of the applicant pool (program area, focus populations, size of applicant organization and current PCL funding status) and further prioritized application characteristics for funding. Staff developed funding recommendations based on these priorities, application score, program feasibility, past performance for currently funded programs, assuring a diversity of organizations to serve the community and balancing services for priority populations. After receiving application scores and staff recommendations, applicants had the option to submit testimony (written, or audio/video recording) in support of their applications to the Allocation Committee. Testimony was provided to Allocation Committee members in advance of funding decisions.The Children’s Levy assumes that applicants may testify before City Council regarding this item, but does not have specific knowledge of who or how many.