Elana Pirtle-Guiney

“Thanks, Council President, and thank you especially to our negotiating team and attorneys who spent some time over the last week looking these pieces over. Colleagues, this has been a difficult process the last couple of weeks, and in part that's because we are in a really tough position. We have a massive decision about what to do with a city-owned space, and we don't have a good faith negotiating partner. So we're having to figure this out a bit in a vacuum. And despite the fact that this topic has gotten enormously heated at times, though I think we are in a better place there today, I want to remind us all that nobody up here is the other side. We'll be negotiating against another side soon. In fact, I think all 12 of us have a shared goal, which is getting the best possible deal for Portland. I think that's a goal shared by Portlanders as well. Some councilors have focused on get…”

“Thank you, Council President, Mr. City Administrator. In one of the staff shoutouts, you all had a shoutout to our, Immigration Officer Brenda and the work that she did with one of my team members, Faisal Usman, to put on a forum to help people in our community understand what their rights were. I want to thank you for including him in that shout out and also thank the administration for putting those forums on. I know that was, I believe, the second of 4 or 5 that you all are doing with different communities to make sure that people within our city know what resources they have available. And I think that's a huge part of the work to make sure that everybody not only is welcome in our community but is safe in our community. And it's a piece of the work that happens behind the scenes, not at this dais, so people outside of those communities don't always hear about it. I think it's imp…”

“But the question is whether adopting amendments today strengthens or weakens our ability to get to a final deal that is the best possible deal for Portland. And I believe that making piecemeal changes on the dais today could risk or undermine the work that we've done up to this point. So I trust that what we have in front of us is a reasonable, not the best, but a reasonable draft that demonstrates that the city wants to keep the Blazers in Portland while also demonstrating that we want to find a way to maximize benefits for Portlanders and make sure that this is a fair deal, not just for folks negotiating on behalf of the team, but for our negotiating team negotiating on behalf of the city and on behalf of Portlanders as a whole. I want to be clear that that doesn't mean I think this term sheet is perfect or that it has everything in it that I would want to see, and it certainly does…”

“Thank you all. I was glad to see something come forward for us that wasn't just focused on speed limits, but that was really looking at what are some of the targeted places where we need to have different interventions. And this is an interesting one to me because it sounds like the interplay is so different in different districts. Councilor Smith, you've talked about the, um, the thoroughfare streets, and when I think about the need for this in District 2, I first go to thinking about our industrial corridors where if you're turning on a red, you're trying to jut out, um, amidst a steady flow of traffic, including, um, a lot of trucks and, and other larger vehicles, and there aren't as many pedestrians, but but when there are pedestrians there, I think that risk factor goes up pretty significantly because of the type of traffic you're interacting with. So I hope that as this is imple…”

“And when we talk about life safety, if we mean strictly people dying, newer buildings mean fewer people die. So yes, if there is a single stairwell in a newer building compared to an older building, absolutely people are safer. But we still have impact. We still have firefighters who can't move smoke to one stairwell while evacuating people down another. We still have firefighters trying to evacuate people with mobility challenges down the same stairwell that hose lines are coming up, right? There are still— it still takes longer to evacuate a building, especially if it's a larger building, which means there's more smoke inhalation and long-term health impacts. So when we narrow our concern to life safety, meaning people who die, we're missing the extra work, the extra firefighters who are needed who can't respond to other calls, the longer-term health impacts. And it may be that we u…”

“Um, so the, uh, the floating rate is the 3-month Treasury auction bill rate plus 35 basis points. So right now that's about 4.17%, so significantly lower than a for-profit lender would be lending at. Okay, so the benefit here for the community really is in receiving a lower interest rate. They're not forgivable loans. We are not able to extend the loan period over a longer period of time. It is really just access to that federal interest rate that we're able to provide through this process. Is that—. That's correct. We, we could choose to do a longer term than what the city has with HUD, but our recommendations are that we stay consistent with what the term is between the— in, in the agreement between city and HUD. And that's a 20-year term. And can you speak a little bit to the CBDG repayment? It makes me a little bit nervous to hear that. So I'd like to hear both what within the CBD…”

“Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being back. There were 2 properties I had asked questions about the previous time you were here. It sounds like one of them, 10104 Southeast Herald, we're not moving forward today. The other was 855 Northeast Church Street. You told us a few weeks ago that the property owner there had plans for the property but hadn't been able to provide any proof of engagement with a contractor or anything else to show you that they were moving forward with those plans. Have there been any updates over the last few weeks? Have they been able to produce anything, or are we still in a situation where they are reporting plans but not able to give you any concrete information? To show those moving forward?”

“Okay, thank you. I had noted in SB 1501 that there was a clause that said that that bill specifically didn't require the inclusion or exclusion of any other particular terms, and so I was surprised when I heard that, that other parties might have not expected to see other terms put on the table. I had read that to a I assume that there would be other terms from us, from the county, from the other parties. I just will note as we move forward that I mentioned that those transparency measures and the oversight that the city retains for how public dollars are spent is going to be really important for me as we have our conversations next week and the week after around a term sheet. The labor piece These portions are very important as we think about the city's investment here. My colleagues mentioned the emotional value. The return on investment is not just a dollar return on investment, bu…”

“Thank you, Council President, and thank you all for being here today. It's nice to have the opportunity to thank you. Thank you, Mayor Wilson, for the opportunity to have a conversation. And while this is not the negotiating table, and as the council president stated, we don't sit at the negotiating table, it is important to be able to have this dialogue about priorities and expectations of each other. The city and Rip City Management will, of course, be having negotiations moving forward, but there are a lot of other parties who are affected by this work in the now. And one of those parties is the the groups through the Albina Rose Alliance who the Blazers and Rip City Management have had a very good partnership with in the past. I'm wondering what the current status— again, not looking at negotiations and piecemealing— but what is the current status of your partnership with Albina V…”

“So I just want to understand this because the new exhibits don't have track changes and obvious things to follow. I want to make sure we understand and that others listening in know what this does. So the new Exhibits A and B incorporate the amendments from Avalos-Dunphy-Koyama Lane 1, from Dunphy 1, and presumably from Dunphy 2. I'm hoping these were written assuming we were going to adopt those. Okay, I'm getting nods from staff in the room. So the changes from Avalos-Dunphy-Koyama Lane 1, Dunphy 1, and Dunphy 2 have been added to or amended in the exhibits. Nothing else has been changed in those exhibits except what was needed to change based on the language that was adopted at the last meeting and earlier today. Is that accurate? Okay, I'm seeing nods from the room. Thank you.”

“Thank you. Um, what is the plan to I'm sorry, moving back to ODOT and PBOT. What is the plan to keep cars off of neighborhood streets? I know that Plan A is stay on the freeway, do the detour around. I hope that Plan B is stay on major streets, stick to MLK, stick to interstate. But what are we physically doing to ensure that that happens? I think that's a great question. What are the physical infrastructure resources that we are putting in place, especially around our schools? Second week of school, folks, we're going to have tiny little kindergartners who just started school who are trying to get to their classrooms safely. What are the— not just, oh, we have some resources. Give us a real picture of what the physical infrastructure is to ensure that we're keeping community members So I'll speak first about the question regarding where people—.”

“Thank you, Council President. I try to not jump in on second readings, but there were a few things I wanted to reiterate here. Because I strongly support the goal of expanding affordable homeownership opportunities, and I strongly support the goal of making sure that homes that are on the market in our city are able to sell and that we can continue to provide enough homes for people in our community. But if the programs that we create are going to mean anything, we have to be clear about how committed we are to targeting Portlanders who are truly priced out of homeownership. And when we remove income limits, we risk turning a public investment into a broad market subsidy that could benefit anybody in our city who's looking to purchase a home. That's why I brought forward an amendment last week to provide a different approach. And while we heard that there were some operational complic…”