Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler calls for bureaus to cut budgets

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler asked bureaus funded by the general pool of taxpayer money to propose 5 percent cuts in their budgets next year in anticipation of a deficit.

The mayor also released a list of his spending priorities, which he asked commissioners to consider when making their budget requests for next year. The priorities include increasing housing supply and reducing homelessness, maintaining the city’s roads and other infrastructure, increasing public safety and police accountability, increasing the city’s preparedness for an earthquake and keeping pace with new technologies like autonomous vehicles.

“Addressing our housing and homelessness crises, along with providing adequate resources to public safety and critical infrastructure, will require hard choices,” Wheeler wrote in a report to commissioners.

The directive to propose cuts applies to almost all of the city’s 27 bureaus, including public safety bureaus such as the Police Bureau, the Bureau of Emergency Communications and the Fire Bureau. It does not apply to bureaus that generate most of their revenue from fees such as the Water Bureau, the Bureau of Environmental Services and the office responsible for issuing building permits.

The mayor, however, called on the utility bureaus to identify efficiencies and areas they can reduce to limit rates. He similarly directed the Office of Management and Finance to lower fees that hike up their rates.

The mayor made the request in anticipation of the city’s general-purpose tax revenues falling short of the cost of providing city services. He called for agencies to respond by proposing cuts in a memo sent to his fellow elected officials Friday.

Wheeler also asked commissioners last year to propose 5 percent cuts to many bureaus’ spending to help him create his first proposed budget, for 2017-18. Public safety bureaus and the housing bureau were only asked to make 2 percent cuts to their spending.

The city could face $5 million to $25 million in new costs next year, the memo said. PERS costs, higher inflation and new labor agreements contributed to these increased costs.

The goal is to get bureaus to focus on centralized goals and to prevent the “mission-creep” that Portland’s commission form of government can encourage, said mayoral spokesman Michael Cox.