Council rejects cut to homeless camp sweep funding
Angelita Morillo's proposal to divert funds toward other programs fails
City Councilor Angelita Morillo’s amendment to stop sweeps of homeless camps failed Wednesday after a seven-hour public hearing and council discussion. By the time that amendment went down with only five yes votes—two short of a majority—four councilors had left the meeting, some saying there had been insufficient time to consider broad policy matters in the five days after the amendment was filed.
The amendment was filed late Friday before a three-day weekend, sending the mayor’s office, city contractors and neighborhood groups scrambling and fearing the worst.
District 4 Councilor Eric Zimmerman announced that he would leave the meeting at 6 p.m. rather than participate in a process he considered illegitimate on the wrong track. The discussion did not end until after 7.
“I’m not interested in incremental betterism for something that stinks from the start,” Zimmerman said.
District 4 Councilor Olivia Clark also left early, though without coining a phrase. Councilor Dan Ryan and finally Councilor Candace Avalos also left before the final vote.
Realizing her amendment was doomed, Morillo took personal shots at Mayor Keith Wilson, who was in attenance.
“We have to do this because the behavior of the mayor gives troubling indications of how this city is being run,” she said. “The mayor effectively held those programs hostage. The mayor is more interested in his own agenda than working with the council.”
The meeting was dominated by support for Wilson’s Impact Reduction Program, which includes sweeps as well as neighborhood cleanup and nuisance abatement. The Glitter and Groundscore programs involving bottle recycling and cleanups are popular projects that Morillo and her supporters did not want to lose funding.
A majority of those testifying said the mayor’s homeless program is making progress or that conditions in the city are improving at last.
Epic battle develops between the extreme left progressives on the council and the moderate, pragmatic progressives. Kinda exciting in a way. Let's see if the cloud-cuckoo-land extreme leftists fight back. Maybe they'll just fade into the background. Not likely, but a desired result if the fentynal-addicted, mentally ill, violent street people are not to take over the city and ruin the quality of life for ordinary, middle-class citizens of Portland.
Thank goodness for small mercies.