Portland council begins planning for November parks levy as options, trade-offs surface

Portland City Council met June 2 for a work session to begin drafting options for a renewal of the Portland parks levy and to hear bureau staff explain how different rate scenarios would affect operations, preventive maintenance and limited capital work.

Council members were asked to consider whether to refer a measure to the November 2025 ballot and, if so, how large it should be and what it should fund. ‘‘The current parks levy is set to expire, and we need to have a conversation about what comes next for parks,’’ the Council President said at the start of the session.

Deputy City Administrator Sonia Szymanski, who leads the city’s Vibrant Communities service area that includes Portland Parks and Recreation, walked council through the bureau’s funding picture and high‑level policy tradeoffs. She summarized the effect of different rates on service levels and noted that ‘‘essentially every 10¢ of a local option levy rate raises about $6,000,000 in revenue each year.’’ That rule of thumb was used repeatedly during the discussion as a starting point for comparing options.

Why it matters

Councilors and staff emphasized that the current levy, passed in 2020, now provides roughly half of Portland Parks and Recreation’s operating budget and that the bureau faces a large deferred‑maintenance backlog. Council members said they wanted the referral to be specific enough to give voters a clear sense of what levy revenue would buy while also weighing political feasibility.

What staff presented

Szymanski and bureau leaders presented three illustrative rate scenarios that have been discussed internally: an $0.80 per $1,000 assessed value renewal, a roughly $1.30 rate that assumes restoring some proposed cuts, and a $1.60 rate that would more fully preserve…