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 “systemic problems” with the process and urged the council to pause allocations so the grievances could be addressed. “We have major questions about why some applicants were denied funds even though their applications were significantly higher than organizations who were successfully awarded funds,” Smith said during the discussion.

Opponents of an immediate remand argued that delaying funding would hurt children and families served by current grantees. Councilor Ryan, who supported keeping a competitive process, said the levy’s competitive, data‑driven approach is what taxpayers expect. “This was especially true coming out of COVID,” Ryan said, adding that the evaluation process had been thorough and relied on community reviewers and volunteers.

Lisa Pellegrino, director of the Portland Children’s Levy, told the council every application was scored and that the levy team had shared detailed score sheets and summaries with council members. “Every application in this process was scored, and we provided the counselors access to a folder that shows the scores for every organization and a summary of each scoring,” Pellegrino said. She also said the allocation committee had reduced recommended funding levels across the board because projected levy revenues were down.

Councilors pressed levy staff on several technical points: whether reviewers read submitted written testimony, how data from the COVID years were treated in scoring, and whether the application format disadvantaged newer organizations or those with less grant‑writing capacity. Panelists acknowledged the tension between preserving funding for established providers and opening space for newer groups that the community council and allocation committee had urged the levy to support.

The remand instructs the levy to revisit the allocation decisions; council did not detail a specific set of rules for redoing scoring, leaving some procedural guidance to follow‑up meetings between council and levy staff. To prevent a gap in services while the remand is carried out, the council passed an emergency ordinance giving the levy director authority to extend current grants for up to 12 months and to pro‑rate awards to reflect projected revenue declines. Levy director Pellegrino said staff could implement the extension administratively if council acted quickly.

Self Enhancement, Inc., a long‑standing levy recipient, told the council it supported the one‑year extension to avoid service interruptions while the allocation questions are resolved. Sahan McKelvey, director of advocacy and engagement at Self Enhancement, Inc., said the organization preferred the remand to a sudden funding cut: “This is something that we would support as a path forward from where we are right now.”

Council members who voted for the remand said they expected the levy to return with clarified documentation of scoring, reviewer composition, and how COVID‑era data were treated. Those who opposed remand said they feared a lengthy redo would produce similar results and would deny immediate funding to children and families.

The emergency ordinance requires a supermajority vote to take immediate effect; council recorded the necessary affirmative votes and approved the one‑year extension. Council directed staff and Levy leadership to report back with an expedited plan for the remand, options for holding contracts harmless during reconsideration, and a timetable for when a reissued allocation list could be expected.