Neighborhood program has new rule-maker
What is he thinking? City Administrator Raymond Lee isn't talking
Ostensibly to improve transparency and clarity, the director of the Office of Community and Civic Life announced in March that transformative changes affecting Portland neighborhood associations would be enacted by the city administrator by July 1. No longer would neighborhood associations and coalitions partner with the city in writing guidelines for citizen participation.
The announcement came as a shock to neighborhood leaders, who have relied on city code giving them a seat at the table in crafting policy governing coalition funding and goals.
Despite claims of openness, the changes seemed to come from nowhere. The best legal and organizational minds in the neighborhood network stewed and studied for two months before learning that the rug had been pulled out from under them. City Code 3.96 had been rewritten without public involvement or awareness in the last days of 2023 to finalize documents related to the city charter reform mandated by voters in 2022.
Although Civic Life director Amanda Garcia-Snell posed the changes as minor housekeeping, they assigned broad powers to the city administrator. City Council approval—the guardrail protecting the neighborhood program from hostile forces in City Hall for the past 10 years—is no longer necessary.
Current City Administrator Raymond Lee had nothing to do with the 2023 revisions, which were made more than two years before he came to Portland. But he is aware of Garcia-Snell’s plans, which—though vaguely stated so far—include staffing coalitions in a package deal through nonprofits bidding on a contract, a process so foreign to the system that it has only once been suggested in 52 years since the Portland neighborhood program was established. That exception came from a city commissioner in the 1990s, and it was abruptly withdrawn.
If Lee found anything alarming or hasty about Garcia-Snell’s handling of the issue, he has kept quiet about it, turning down several requests to comment for this story.
His only response came indirectly from his senior adviser, Katie Meyer, who in April told the NW Examiner, “City Administrator Lee has been briefed and is tracking the issue.”
Finally, city spokesperson Cody Bowman spoke for him: “City Administrator Lee is open to a conversation once next steps have been determined, and we will follow up as soon as that timing is clear.”
The Northwest District Association attempted to open a dialogue with Lee but received only confirmation that its letter had been received.
Meanwhile, reactions from neighborhood leaders are bubbling up.
“The city’s current position appears to be that this language grants the bureau the overarching administrative authority to update the standards internally, without the specific multi-stakeholder committee process or the final City Council vote mandated by the original 2005 standards,” wrote Todd Zarnitz, president of District 4 Coalition and the Northwest District Association.
“It’s a completely different ballgame now. I really don’t know how the neighborhood system can survive if the governing standards are subject to the whims of an unelected bureaucrat who simply needs the nod of a city administrator,” Zarnitz wrote.
Presidents in the District 4 Coalition neighborhoods signed a letter asking for “an immediate hold on the planned release of the revised ONI (Office of Neighborhood Involvement) standards draft.”
A similar letter was sent by the three other coalitions in the city seeking a City Council resolution to “reassume their authority by restoring the original definition of the standards as “‘regulations adopted by City Council.’”
District 4 Councilor Eric Zimmerman got the message and is prepared to challenge the Civic Life proposal, even to pull the neighborhood program from the bureau if necessary.
“When I got a whiff that this was going on, it was alarming,” Zimmerman said at a special NWDA meeting on May 7.
“I’m just deeply skeptical. … You’ve got to remember that the Office of Civic Life is the place that for 10-plus years, there were commissioners in charge—like Chloe Eudaly—who were just at war with the neighborhood associations. Over and over, they have been trying to dismantle that system.
“I’m not sure what problem they’re seeking to solve,” Zimmerman said.
District 4 Councilor Olivia Clark agrees, promising neighborhoods her “support and advocacy”:
“Portland’s neighborhood system has survived despite continued challenges brought on by past city commissioners,” Clark said. “As a strong advocate for our neighborhood associations, I rely on these organizations for two-way communication.”
District 4 candidate Eli Arnold, who narrowly missed election for a seat two years ago, said, “I’m concerned that we are once again undervaluing neighborhood associations. They are the city’s eyes and ears on the ground and provide valuable local knowledge that leaders should benefit from.
“City Hall is too often detached from the experiences of residents, and neighborhood associations are a check against untethered ideology.”
The ideology referred to is embodied by the socialist-dominated Peacock caucus, which held half of the council’s 12 seats last year. That caucus has included Democratic Socialists of America member and District 4 Councilor Mitch Green, who did not respond to invitations to comment for this story.
In a cover profile in the April Examiner, Green did not mention neighborhood associations, but said he was “proud to be part of an organization … having pretty unabashed pro-working class politics.”
Garcia-Snell’s proposal, having faced the rigor of other viewpoints, has lost momentum. She told the Examiner she had “quickly realized” that a July 1 deadline was not realistic and is now aiming for the end of the year.
Did Lee have a hand in slowing things down and perhaps finding a better result? We may never know.