Portland council remands Children’s Levy allocations, approves one‑year extension at reduced level

Portland City Council remanded the Portland Children’s Levy allocation recommendations for further review and approved an emergency ordinance extending current grants for one year at lower funding levels to avoid a disruption on July 1.

The council voted to send the levy recommendations back to the Portland Children’s Levy for reexamination after multiple councilors and community members raised concerns about how applications were scored and whether the process accounted for COVID‑era impacts on long‑standing providers. The remand motion passed on a 7‑vote tally. Council then approved an emergency ordinance authorizing the director of the levy to extend existing FY2024‑25 grant awards for 12 months with a percentage reduction to reflect lower projected levy revenues, an action supporters said was necessary to prevent immediate service interruptions.

Councilors and several community representatives spent more than an hour debating whether problems reflected errors in application of the existing scoring process or broader flaws in the process design. Councilor Kendra Smith said organizations in historically underserved communities had reported…