Loretta Smith

“Thank you. I just want to be clear to the negotiators that I appreciate the work that you've done. I know that this is really tough. This is not a giveaway that you put forward to us. It's not a handout. It's very deliberate. It's a structured partnership with equal access between a land and a tenant anchor, an anchor tenant. And I want to give you kudos for doing what you're doing. This is, this is a lot of high-pressure stuff. And you brought back a $3 million annual direct payment back to the city, Multnomah County, and Portland Public Schools, which I, which I think should be commended. And it captured event user fees, parking revenues, and a direct share of profits from the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. That being secured, if we can get a binding commitment for union labor protections, community benefit agreements, and an alignment with historic restoration of the Albina neighborho…”

“Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, just wanted to say we read this last week and it's a very important ordinance that will save lives in the city of Portland. And I want to make note that this is a pilot that's going to be piloted in specific areas in the, um, high crash corridor and It is going to cost about $800,000. So I think today we take a, a long overdue step to fulfill our promise to the people of Portland. I believe far too long our street design has prioritized moving cars through intersections as fast as possible rather than ensuring our neighbors reach their destinations safely. So for far too long, we have placed haphazard motorist convenience over the elderly and pedestrian safety. The numbers do not lie, and neither do the stories of the families in District 1. In District 1, we've lost to date 11 lives. District 2—. No! They have lost 5 lives. In District 4, they hav…”

“So it's going to be hard for me because I don't do numbers like that real quick, and that's a lot of zeros. And it's going to be hard for me to vote for something like this because I haven't verified it. I don't know where these numbers came from. And, uh, no disrespect, Councilor Green, I know you're really good at this, but I would need some more time to study this a little bit longer than we have right now. So that's, that's what I wanted to know, if you all had looked at this and, and verified if these numbers are correct, because the way I'm looking at it, it's, it's averaging about $13 million a year for—.”

“Thank you, Council President. Thank you for coming up, um, Director Williams. And this was an attempt for me and Councilor Koyama Lane to meet some of the Vision Zero promises that we made, which was making sure that Portland's commitment to eliminating traffic deaths cannot just be a policy goal. It requires proactive, uh, engineering changes that physically separate people from the vehicles. And I want to go back to what, uh, Kathy said earlier. Um, the national statistics say that, that this no turn on red, it has a 9%, um, decrease in, in traffic accidents. So I know you said that there was no number to it, but it is, you know, out of every 100, we could possibly save about 10 people's lives. Now, those may not be the lives that that you want to save, but there are 10 lives that, um, we're, we're attempting to make sure that we save in the city of Portland. Because it makes, it ma…”

“If it was going to be a time certain and we knew we were going to go an hour, I'm, I'm okay with the move. But if it's not going to be a time certain at, um, I don't want to do it because I want to make sure that we get this heard today.”

“And the psychological safety, I don't think you can legislate that, because if we could have, I would have gotten some legislation to give me some psychological safety when my Black son goes out at night to go party, to make sure that he comes home safe and that he's not shot by someone or the police. So I don't know that this is the same thing. I still think that if we are already not giving this a high priority and no one has lost their life, or there are no physical things that have happened to people who are using these psychedelics, I'm still not understanding why we have to put this into code, because they can change their mind at any time to make something a priority, and we can't do anything about that. I don't have the ability to prioritize what the police, what they put into, you know, what, where they spend their time or their energy or their priorities. So I'm still not un…”

“Thank you. I do agree with you, Councilor Novick. I think we need to vote on this. This money comes from the feds that is passed through, through ODOT, that we need to do this before the next council meeting. Thank you. This is a bigger conversation. It's not a CAPS conversation. This is a policy conversation, a budget overall. This is something that needs to come through the Committee of the Whole, Councilor Kanal. We don't have the time or the resources to nitpick this process. It's already in process, and it is actually going to do something to help streamline the data that we have, and I'd be supporting pushing this through right now. Councilor Novick.”

“I just want to say that I appreciate the work that you do, and I know that you're understaffed and you don't have enough resources to do those things that you need to do to be successful. But I would like to— I'm going to get on the agenda at LPSIC because I want to talk about some of those things that we can do collectively together. Thank you. Even through like ceasefire, they're doing a lot of good work in this area. And so I want to make sure if that's, if that's what we need to do, and I'm trying to alert the city administrator so that we, in our next budget cycle, we can do some things that might change the game. Because just like my counselors talked about, we're talking about mental health services that they don't get. Thank you. Those are all things that happen in Multnomah County. But I think we need to talk about the entire system. And since I haven't been privy to those co…”

“Thank you. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Kristen, for the work that you've done. Um, I have a question, and As we're— is the money going to be in like a, um, like a title company or something just waiting to be used, or does— is all the money transferred at once to Rip City? How does that work, or is it on a reimbursable basis?”

“Thank you, Council President. And I think the mayor just took what I was going to say, because I was going to say I have never been in an executive session, and it would have to go through executive session before we sued anybody, the Blazers or anyone else. And I've never seen that. So thank you, Mayor, for, um, letting us know what, what, what is going on. But I want to I want to ask this one question because we keep coming back to it, and it's similar to my original question. Will you be willing to give those 20 points that you said that we're off on the term sheet? Would you be able to give that to the mayor's negotiating team to let them know where we're off on? Because we're just— it's just up in the air right now. Would you be willing to agree to do that?”

“Thank you, Council President. I just want to note for the record, um, Councilor, uh, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, we do have the DPAL program, which is the Down Payment Assistance Program at the Portland Housing Bureau. So it's not like we're not without any down payment assistance. And I think we even give up to $120,000 per, um, per person. And remember, we also, in the, the TAL, We put $2 million in, so we have to identify how much more money are you talking about putting in. And I don't think all of our money even got spent last year for the down payment assistance program. So I don't think there's a lack— I don't think there is a lack of policies within the City of Portland or lack of dollars. I think it's hard for people to get approved. Councilor Loretta Smith. Credit-approved, job-approved. Those are things that prevent people from getting preapprovals to actually get in a house that …”

“Council President, I'd like to take a point of, you know, personal, um, yeah, privilege. Yes. So this whole thing has kind of shook me up a bit. I was going to speak this morning, but you all know me. Um, when people mislead you, I try to set the record straight. I disagree with Councilor Murillo. I asked the question, who are you calling daddy? And she said, he's your daddy, not my daddy. That was what was said. So she did say that the mayor of this city was my daddy. I did not say that. Um, and to come here this morning and try to re-explain what she said— it's been all on the news all over the United States. My mother called me about it yesterday. And so whatever you do when you make a mistake, you have to say what the mistake is. You can't change it. Councilwoman Smith, I'm sorry. The words are out there. And you did say your daddy and looked at me. You didn't say moderates. You d…”