Olivia Clark, incumbent member of Portland City Council for District 4, spent 21 years as TriMet’s public affairs or goverment affairs director, and before that handled legislative affairs for Governor John Kitzhaber. She was also chair of the board of Providence Health Systems. On City Council her focus has been on improving infrastructure maintenance, and she led passage of a utility fee that will pay to fill potholes, add sidewalks, and make streets safer. She also led a push to reverse budget cuts in police and fire.
The Labor Press spoke with her via Zoom Oct. 9.
Labor organization endorsers: NOLC, CPBCTC, AFSCME, AFSCME 189 (1 of 4), IAFF 43, IBEW 48, UBC, UFCW 555
More at oliviaforportland.com
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS: Thanks for taking a few minutes to talk with me, and by extension, our union member readers. As a city council member, what are you hearing from labor? When unions have approached you in the last two years, what kinds of things are they asking for?
OLIVIA CLARK: Well, that’s a sensitive issue because we have so many contracts.
I’m not asking for any secrets. The question is about trying to see what you perceive as labor’s agenda.
Well, I’ve worked closely with the building trades, particularly on the water filtration plant, on contracting. They’ve been really active at City Hall, at least with me.
We’re close because I chair the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, so it’s a direct link. And there have been some councilors who wanted to stop work on (the Bull Run Filtration Plant project), just stop the whole project. So that’s been important.
I’ve heard some of the city hall unions, just trying to sensitize me to the cost of living, their struggles, and how important the contract negotiations are. I also went out with LIUNA (Local 483, one of the city employee unions) and toured recreation facilities where they work. And then with the Northwest Oregon Labor Council, we’ve done some strategizing together on key issues, and that’s been really important and valuable.
What are the issues that you’re feeling like they’re most concerned about?
Well, most recently it’s the participatory budgeting. I signed on to a voters’ pamphlet statement opposing the measure. But we’ve worked on other things in the past as well.
For city council members, is there a sense that it’s not appropriate to weigh in on collective bargaining? How do you see your role in that?
We’re the final arbiter. We get regular reports in an executive session. We’re kept up to speed on those negotiations, and then we weigh in. The HR team kind of takes the temperature of the council to figure out: Are they on the right track? Then we just give them some advice. And they bring back status reports to us.
Our readers are probably on both sides of the question of the Moda Center — whether and how much it’s appropriate for the city to commit to infrastructure improvements there. Can you explain why you think your yes vote on that was the right vote?
Well, first of all, we own it. It’s one of our city assets. And like a lot of our assets … you know, we own over $80 billion worth of things in the city, including event venues like the Moda, the Schnitz, and so forth … we’re woefully disinvesting in them. We have a lot of city assets that need to be renovated, need to be brought up to speed. Some of them are at the risk of failure. You know, we have 100-year-old water pipes. So anyway, the point is that we own the Moda Center, and whether the Blazers are here or not, we’re going to have to renovate it. We’re going to have to renovate in order to attract the kinds of music acts that we want to come here. It needs new rigging, new loading dock, all that kind of stuff. I went to get a cortisone shot the other day from my orthopedic guy, and he is the doc to the Blazers. And he was telling me that he had to administer a shot to a visiting player, but there was no room. He had to do it in a closet. He was just telling me this place really needs some work. I think it’s a really good deal that we’re getting a three-to-one match with the state funds, the county funds, and if the renovation actually reduces emissions, then it could be appropriate to use the Portland Clean Energy Fund, So I think we’re getting a really good deal. I think no matter what happens, we’re going to have to renovate it eventually, and we’re getting help to do it this time around. I thought that our term sheet was a really fair opening salvo. I’m a little jaundiced about how the negotiations are going.
Maybe not as well as expected?
I think Dundon is — I don’t know if he’s rope-a-doping us or what’s going on. I don’t think he really wants to be here, or he just wants to be able to make a hell of a lot more money, so he has to stay here. There’s a bridge agreement that he signed with the Paul Allen estate, but he has to stay until 2030. Otherwise, he has to buy us out if he’s going to move the team. But I think it’s a good deal because we have to renovate it. We own it anyway.
You mentioned PCEF. Is there something specific that you have in mind that you’re thinking of when you say that? What do you imagine could be done with the arena that would that would reduce carbon emissions?
Change out the lighting, put in solar cells, more energy efficiency measures. That would all come under PCEF.
Probably the most unpleasant part of your job in the last two years is the budget. Two years in a row, you’ve had to grapple over a significant budget shortfall and deal with cuts including positions. There’s a lot of complexity. How would you describe the budget discussions and your contribution to it last year and this year.
Well, I was the person that led the charge to restore the cuts in police and fire. That took months. We finally got a budget ordinance passed to restore those dollars, and it was pretty controversial, but it had to be done. And I don’t want to see any more cuts to police and fire in the future. That’ll be an issue for me.
I think the promise of charter change really has not been completely fulfilled when it comes to finding efficiencies at the city. You know, we had 27 bureaus that were all independent fiefdoms. We’re now consolidating those. Every bureau had its own communications people, their own DEI staff. There’s a lot of duplication that we’re trying to work our way through, and that’s not easy. Yeah, but a lot of culture change. There’s now the issue of: What is the span of control for management? We need more information on that from the city administrator. So there’s a long way to go to find savings within the charter change. That has to be done. That’s what people were expecting through charter change is to make this more efficient. Compared to other cities our size, we have a pretty big city budget.
The span of control is an issue — how many managers we have.
What is the biggest thing that city council can do for working people in Portland?
Well, contain costs, not raise any more taxes or fees. And from my perspective, do the kinds of things that we need to do neighborhood by neighborhood to improve the quality of life in Portland, to make us feel safer, to take care of the potholes.
I think that if we can work to make more improvements and show people that government is working for them, people are going to be a lot happier about their government, about what they’re paying taxes for.
You and I talked in January about some ideas you had in transportation and infrastructure. What did you achieve so far, and if you’re reelected, what do you expect to achieve in the next year or two?
Well, first of all, we did the sidewalk improvement plan for District 1 and District 4, which have the worst sidewalks, or the fewest sidewalks —the far east and the far west. Even more importantly, I led the charge to try to find additional revenue because PBOT has been cut the last seven years, getting to the point where they really cannot preserve our streets. And if our streets continue to deteriorate the way they are, it’s going to be a lot more expensive in the future. So we researched what other cities are doing in Oregon to raise revenue, and we went through a public engagement process and came up with a transportation utility fee, and that’s going to be on people’s water bill in January.
And I know it’s not going to be pleasant, but it would just be a lot more expensive if we let all the streets deteriorate — you bust the tire, your alignment has to be dealt with because the streets are so crappy. We also went after the utilities and said, “Hey, when you cut into the street to fix something … we weren’t even charging them anything to fix the street. We were charging them a permit. So now we have a street damage restoration fee. So if PGE or Pacificorp, Consumer Cellular, whoever cuts into our streets, they have to bring it back to at least 75% of the way it was. Because when they cut into the street, it damages the integrity of the entire street. We’re going to go after them to help us pay for that damage.
At the same time, we’re working with PBOT to transfer the low income assistance program that we have in our water and sewer bill over to use the same thing for the transportation utility fee. So if you can’t afford to pay it, and there’s an appeals process, but what’s what’s difficult here is there’s no way to get at multifamily housing, and because usually it’s one big bill that just goes into your rent, you don’t really know what the landlord is paying. We’ve been studying cities across the country to find out if they have a solution, and nobody does. We’re trying to work up something. We’d be the first in the nation if we could do that. And we’re also trying to make it fair, especially for small businesses like restaurants that use a lot of water.
Now it’s up to the city council to provide the oversight and monitor the implementation of this thing. We determined that this money should only be spent on maintenance of the streets, not new things. Just let’s just attack the potholes and attack the surface problems, and so that we don’t have to completely grind up the whole street in the future and replace it. So that’s what the money is dedicated to, and then a smaller amount is dedicated to Vision Zero, to the high crash corridors, to put in more safety measures where there are pedestrian, bicyclist deaths, and those are mostly on the east side. There’s a couple on the west side, like Barbur Boulevard.
So the water bill in January, you said it’s not going to be pleasant, but it’s necessary, cheaper than if we let the streets deteriorate. What should people expect to see on their water bill?
I think if you’re a single family home owner, it might be up to $12 a month. Multiply that, it’s going to be $140 a year.
Why not go for a gas tax? Isn’t there already a city gas tax?
That was the deal we cut with the council, just trying to find the middle path here. Our 10 cent gas tax will sunset in 2028. So that will be do that will be a decision point. Does the council let that go away, or do we keep it? Gven what’s going on with gas prices right now, I can imagine what kind of a debate we’ll have over that.
Well, with any luck, we won’t be in any voluntary wars with oil producers.
The other thing about transportation is that, well, first of all, the federal government has completely abandoned us, and secondly, the state government, they passed a package that then went to the voters and went down. We weren’t getting any help. So we had to do something for ourselves. Other cities in the metropolitan area have a transportation utility fee. So what we decided to do was to look at the average of the other cities in our region, and not go above that. We looked at quite a few other options for raising revenue, and those are the two that we landed on.
Is there anything else you’d like to make sure our readers know about you?
You know, my mother was a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers, and I have her little dues book where she would write down her dues. And my uncles were all union plumbers.
We have to have more jobs. We have to change the reputation of Portland so that we can get more investment in this region, so that we can get more housing built, we can get more manufacturing jobs. Right now, people don’t want to come here, because of the post-pandemic homelessness, the lack of police, that sense that we’re not a safe place to be. All of that adds up to hurting our reputation, so that we’re not going to get the investment dollars that we need to create the jobs. So that’s what I’m really concerned about too: How do we turn that reputation around?
And that means that we’ve got to get people off the street. We’ve got to get more law enforcement. We just have to change the vibe here, literally. So that’s kind of what I’ve been focused on, restoring the cuts to the police and fire budget that the mayor took in the budget — I can’t believe he did that. I was able to restore those, and that’s important not just for our sense of safety, but for our reputation.
