The Portland City Council on Thursday asked the city budget office to pilot enhanced program-offer transparency for Portland Parks & Recreation, requiring the bureau to show program-level funding sources, staffing and alignment with the recently passed 2025 parks levy.

The resolution, carried from finance committee by Councilor Zimmerman, directs the city administrator to incorporate the instruction into budget-preparation guidelines and anticipated that the mayor's proposed budget will include the requested detail. Councilor Avalos offered a friendly amendment directing the budget office and bureaus to develop a scalable reporting framework based on the parks pilot and to return to council by October 2026 with a template, readiness assessment and implementation schedule. The amendment passed 11-1.

Supporters said the pilot will make it easier for the public and council to see which programs are paid for by the levy, general fund, fees or other sources. "This pilot establishes consistent and equitable transparency standards across the city," Councilor Avalos said when reading the amendment.

Some councilors raised concerns about how bureaus should decide which services should be funded by levy versus general fund dollars and cautioned that the pilot could raise hard budget trade-offs. Councilor [Novick] was the lone dissent on the amendment in committee and expressed caution about scaling the approach across all bureaus given complexity and capacity constraints.

Next steps: The budget office will work with Parks & Recreation on the pilot. The council expects the pilot results and a proposed standardized template to inform budgeting for other bureaus in future cycles.