Proposed budget would make Portland less safe
People who answered my call may have been cut
By Bob Weinstein
My initial review of the mayor’s proposed FY 2026-27 budget raises serious and immediate concerns: It asks Portlanders to accept significant reductions in the frontline core services that keep them safe, while leaving an inflated bureaucracy in place at City Hall. That shifts the burden onto the very people Portland relies on in emergencies, while shielding functions that are far less essential. That is the wrong set of priorities, and we should not support this budget as proposed.
Across multiple core functions, this proposal reduces capacity where seconds matter. It cuts Portland Street Response, reduces 911 operations, scales back overtime and trims staffing for two-person medical teams, the Community Health Assessment Team, Public Safety Support Specialists, administrative support and victim services. These are not marginal adjustments. They represent a real contraction in the system Portland relies on in moments of crisis.
The consequence is straightforward: fewer responders available, less flexibility in the system and longer response times.
Let me start with what’s at stake: As I recently witnessed recently, it’s about whether someone in crisis gets help in time or is left to suffer on a sidewalk.
Monday night, I was walking on Northwest 21st at Hoyt when a man ahead of me stopped to check on two people lying at the corner. One said his friend had been stabbed but claimed they didn’t need help. When I reached them, there was a visible rivulet of blood running across the sidewalk. I immediately called 911.
Because our emergency infrastructure was functioning, I was connected instantly. Within minutes, Portland Police, an ambulance and Fire & Rescue were all on the scene, providing the critical, lifesaving care the victim needed. That response was fast, coordinated and professional, and is exactly what a city owes its residents. That response reflected a basic promise we make to one another as a community: When something goes wrong, you are not alone. Help will come.
This is the gold standard of municipal service. This is the level of responsiveness that the mayor’s proposed budget puts at risk.
I do not want to see that kind of response time, or that level of coordinated care, diminished. But that is exactly what the cuts would do.
Each of the proposed reductions would warrant serious scrutiny on its own. Together, they represent a fundamental weakening of the city’s ability to protect its residents. Response times will increase, a predictable consequence of cutting capacity across every link in the public safety chain. The man on Northwest 21st got the help he needed. Under a diminished system, the outcome could well have been different.
What makes these choices even harder to justify is what the budget does not cut.
The proposal retreats from frontline services while shielding bureaucratic bloat at City Hall, including its massive public relations apparatus.
Despite the city now having only four service areas, and despite advances in technology and centralization of functions, the budget retains 57 communications staff, roughly double the number from 2011. Equity and engagement positions—37 of each—appear to see no meaningful reductions.
At the same time, the budget document warns that reduced training and operational support in the police bureau may limit its ability to carry out equity-related initiatives. That contradiction is hard to ignore: The administration cannot simultaneously claim equity as a priority while proposing a budget that, by its own admission, undermines the bureau’s capacity to deliver on it.
I am not opposed to communications or equity work. But a fair budget does not ask first responders and victims to absorb cuts while administrative layers are left largely intact. It is impossible to justify a budget that asks police officers, 911 dispatchers, Portland Street Response, firefighters and victim advocates to do more with less, while leaving these functions protected.
This is a test of responsible leadership. The first duty of city government is to ensure public safety. Everything else comes after that.
Portlanders expect and deserve a budget that protects 911 response, medical response, crisis response and victim services before preserving layers of administrative expansion. If reductions are necessary, they should begin with nonessential overhead, not the people who show up when someone’s life is at risk on a sidewalk.
The system worked Monday night on Northwest 21st. It needs to keep working.
Start with what matters most: Fully fund the services that save lives and protect victims. Then make the hard choices elsewhere.
Yes, to cutting any bureaucracy that is bloated. Can we do better with less? Probably. I am glad that he is not cutting police officers. People want the basics. The police to show up and arrest people who commit crimes. The prosecutors to try them. And judges to punish those who are found guilt. As your article shows, we all need rapid response from police and Fire and EMT's. Some people who are severely mentally ill need up to six weeks of care in local community hospital psychiatric units with a judge overseeing and authorizing treatment decisions. Housing severely mentally ill people is going to balloon the deficit and is ridiculous since the severely mentally ill people need treatment first, and some housing later by philanthropic efforts unfunded by the city. Wilson is denying like many people the tremendous power that illness has over human behavior when it comes to mental health. The foundation of mental health treatment for the severely mentally ill requires an immediate capability for hospital care. Superficial plans to house those with mental illness first will lead to disaster both financially and in human terms with an expansion of unregulated drug abuse and behavioral disturbance in housing provided. People around the country are giving up on this simplistic idea of housing without treatment but not Portland unfortunately. The single best thing Oregon State can do to help would be to stop needle and drug paraphernalia distribution which was made legal in 1989. We have facilitated and incentivized the very problem we are trying now to treat.
I think you made a good point with the 21st & Hoyt emergency that this is how it should be. No argument there. As you’ve stated, even now with vastly improved response times there is still a lack of staff to provide this consistently. That constant short-staffing leads to increased burnout as well as increased overtime costs.
That doesn’t even count non-emergency situations where a public safety response is necessary. I made a call to the appropriate party the other day for someone that I deemed to have a non-emergent issue. I was on hold for over 20 minutes and eventually gave up.
Certainly this is an n of 1 but I know in hearing from others it is not something I experienced that was unique.
I look at all of public safety as not only handling emergencies but also providing preventative services so it doesn’t get to that point. When you cut funding you move right back to a purely reactive model with not enough resources to cover it. Then you return to 2022 when you had an ambulance service meeting their required response times only 62% of the time.
To me this is outside of the parks vs police budget arguments that came up not long ago. This is purely about public safety, which isn’t isolated to PPB. I’m not saying there likely isn’t room to trim in those budgets, but big cuts will lead to a decline that we’re only just starting to get out of.
At this point we’re not good, we’re better. With the upcoming budget crisis I’ll settle for better but bringing it back to worse is not healthy for either the city or its current residents.