My name is Kari Koch, President of the City of Portland Professional Workers (CPPW) Union. Our labor organization represents nearly 800 city workers who perform essential services: managing financial resources, coordinating everything from wastewater maintenance to community engagement, enforcing environmental regulations, pursuing new revenue, and balancing city budgets, among so many other roles and responsibilities.
We know you are being briefed this week on the city budget from Human Resources and city leadership.

Our members want to convey how important it is that you also get input from the workers on the ground who are directly engaged in operations about the budget and who have a critical perspective on managing the situation you’ve inherited.
We value your fresh eyes and are uplifted by your enthusiasm for leading us in the final wave of this transition.
As you make decisions about the budget and labor contracts, here are things we encourage you to consider:

Transition Costs

• Over-budget, lack of oversight: The city’s transition to a new form of government, following the charter reforms voters approved in November 2022, was initially projected to cost $8 million. However, recent estimates suggest the transition will come closer to $25 million, a staggering increase leadership has not fully explained or taken responsibility for. The transition was a critical step in implementing the will of the people, but this failure to control costs undermines public trust and raises serious questions of oversight.

• Impacts unrelated to labor: The forecasted $27 million general fund shortfall is not ongoing. It is based on a variety of revenue issues and other projections unrelated to labor. We encourage you to avoid any ongoing funding cuts that impact city workers when the issue is a temporary budget shortfall.

• Growing admin costs: Notably, the city’s transition includes a structure Portlanders didn’t vote on—the creation of six new service areas (groupings of city bureaus/offices), each overseen by a Deputy City Administrator with their own growing staff and budgets. The annual salaries for these administrators range up to $307,300. Can each bureau demonstrate the need and return on investment for such costly additions?

• Returning to core functions: What matters now is for our city workforce to continue delivering services that meet the needs of Portlanders and our city’s core functions and values. Our work is what ensures the transition’s success and ensures Council can do its job.

• Morale and turnover: The transition, while important, has been exceptionally hard on workers. It has required an incredible amount of work, investment, and sacrifice. Morale is strained. Many workers already do the work of multiple staff due to previous budget cuts. High turnover will continue until the tide is stemmed.

Management Costs

• Span of control: In lean budget years, when you are committed to fund essential services, it is reasonable to ask how many managers and supervisors are required to fulfill our core mission. The City can and should assess a reasonable span of control for each supervisor and manager, and require that bureaus implement such requirements. There should be no instances where high-level managers or supervisors have a small number of direct reports. Workers regularly report to their unions that their managers are classified at a higher rank and rate of pay than their number of direct reports merits.
  • For example: In Portland Parks & Recreation, a person was hired as a supervisor but was never assigned direct reports. Upon investigation, it became clear all managers above the misclassified supervisor were able to be in a higher job classification because of the additional layer of ‘supervision.’ Staff brought this to the attention of HR, and speaks to the need for a span of control audit of managers and supervisors Citywide.

• More bureaucracy: Additional layers of highly compensated managers are being added across the city, often with no transparent hiring process. In addition to Deputy City Administrators, support staff are being hired to assist in managing each service area.
  • A case in point: The initial budget request for Vibrant Communities, one of the smaller service areas, included six full-time staff positions to support the Deputy City Administrator. The City Budget Office estimated these positions would require an additional $450,000 annually from Portland Parks & Recreation and $144,387 from the Portland Children’s Levy and City Arts Program. After feedback, this request was revised to a more streamlined structure, though specific details on the revised staffing and associated costs were not provided.

• Rising legal costs: The City Attorney’s office budget has grown by 61% since 2019. The number of city attorneys has never been evaluated, nor has there been a public discussion about their role and the value they provide. For instance, if their labor team loses millions in unfair labor practice lawsuits regularly, should we give more serious consideration to whether the City gets its money’s worth? For example, decreasing funding to fix our failing infrastructure simultaneously increases our risk for lawsuits, artificially prompting a larger budget for city attorneys. This is not sustainable.

Community Safety

• A broader definition of public safety: Previous elected officials have said public safety budgets are immune from cuts. We ask you to use a broader definition of community safety and consider the entire public safety ecosystem. Fixing failing infrastructure, preventing traffic violence, engaging meaningfully with communities, ensuring limited housing dollars get to the communities that need it most, having bustling parks, planning long-term for emergencies, working sewers and clean water—these are all critical to safety. When the city talks about public safety only in terms of fire, police, and 9-1-1, these crucial elements that affect Portlanders’ daily life can be left out of the conversation. Our members work extremely hard to meet these needs for Portlanders. Supporting our workers helps support our communities and their safety.

• Additional resources: This website includes several links to studies and reports about how the social and physical construction of a city creates safety.

Systemic Inefficiencies

• Efficiencies do not have to be made at the expense of workers: We urge you to correct systemic, citywide inefficiencies that improve the workplace and create equitable policies for everyone. After decades of silos in bureaus, there is an opportunity now to create citywide structures and better alignment that improve our ability to meet the needs of Portlanders and our city workforce. These are a few spots for financial savings that are now within your control.

• Devil in the details: We urge you to dive into the parts of the city budget normally overlooked. Technology efficiencies, eliminating excess office space, combining work areas under fewer managers, and ensuring efficiencies applied to workers are also applied to managers – these are all worthy considerations.
  • For example: Workers at Portland Permitting & Development are being transitioned off cell phones because of the expense, but managers are retaining cell phones even when they are not out in the field. Is that a necessary expense?
  • Due to the inefficient management of the city’s internal education/training tool CityLearner by the Bureau of Human Resources, multiple bureaus have bought licenses and trained staff using different software. Why the duplication of expenses?

City as a Model Employer

• Workers need more than fair wages: It is important to remember that while you are focused on the budget, not everything your workers need is economic. As employers, consider ways to support your workforce that aren’t tied to a budget but increase workplace protections, benefits, and morale. Consider all the ways we grow and retain a diverse city workforce.

• A constrained workforce: City workers are committed public servants who have gone above and beyond through the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and through this city transition. We have done double- or triple-duty as vacant positions have piled up—currently at 18% for our represented positions. At the same time, our workers have been key players in the important, but extra, work of the transition. Our commitment, productivity, and deep collaboration has served Portlanders well, but we’ve done it under a continually constricted budget.

• Not pizza parties: Consider vacation cash outs, sabbaticals, additional leave time, and flexible work location as low impact economic impact benefits with real significance for your workforce.

You have the power to turn this around – to focus on the services we provide and being a model employer to the people who keep this city functioning and demonstrating that the transition has succeeded so we can move forward toward investing back in our core functions.  
CPPW members are committed City of Portland employees and public servants.

We welcome you again to your new positions and look forward to being your partners moving forward. We’d be happy to discuss any of this and will reach out about setting up ongoing check-ins with Council as your structures get settled in the coming weeks.

In solidarity,

Kari Koch, President, Portland Permitting & Development

Sent on behalf of the City of Portland Professional Workers Union Executive Board
Meg Wren, Vice President, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability

Jessica Irvine, Secretary, Portland Police Bureau

Christopher Gustafson, Treasurer, Housing Bureau

Annette Ramirez, Organizer, Water Bureau

Kevin Block, Chief Steward, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability

Jay Richmond, At Large Member, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability

Lee C. Dudley, At Large Member Portland Building, Bureau of Technology Services

Kimberly Campbell-Groen, At Large Member, Bureau of Environmental Services