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PRIORITIES
We have a lot of work to do to save lives, prevent violence, and help Portlanders feel more safe. It starts with improving trust between Portlanders and First Responders. Marnie will remain independent from the police union and their associations by choosing not to seek or accept their donations or independent expenditure campaigns.
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Portland Street Response should be funded to operate 24-7, 365 days a year, and become a co-equal part of Portland’s first responder network.
Currently, it operates inside Portland Fire and Rescue. Portland Street Response should use life-saving supplies (like naloxone, water bottles, and clothing), respond to more 911 call types, and be excluded from law enforcement activities.
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COMMUNITY SAFETY
To save lives, we must reduce 911 wait times. The average wait time to talk to a 911 dispatcher was 50 seconds in November 2023. In 2018, the average time was 10 seconds. The national standard is 20 seconds. There are 25 vacant positions in Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications. These need to be filled to keep our community safe and provide much needed support to our call-takers and dispatchers. Marnie will pressure Multnomah County to reduce ambulance wait times. The situation was so dire on December 31, 2023, Portland Firefighters had to transport a patient to the hospital on a TriMet bus.
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Let’s use our existing officers and public safety support specialists better until we can fill vacant officer positions. We should strengthen our recruitment, training, hiring, and management practices to build trust between officers and Portlanders. We need a culture shift to community policing and need to start talking honestly about unconscious bias. In 2023, Rosenbaum & Associates, the firm monitoring Portland Police Bureau's compliance with the federal settlement agreement, wrote in a draft report that "The anonymous survey feedback from some officers was indicative of racism, ableism and white supremacy." By addressing unconscious bias, we can end the actions, abuse, and violence that sometimes follow.
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Implementing policies that lead to more walking and cycling and decrease driving trips make Portland a better place to live, work, and have fun. That’s why Marnie will work closely to keep the Portland Bureau of Transportation accountable for the policies we already have. Marnie supports Portland’s official goal of achieving 25% of trips by bike by 2030 and Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate traffic deaths. We need more diverters on Neighborhood Greenways and more physically protected bike lanes. She will also make sure we prioritize pedestrian and cycling safety when the City rebuilds important streets like Sandy Boulevard.
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More shelters & housing
Marnie understands the problems we face are terrible. There are more than 5,000 people experiencing homelessness in Portland. Thousands more experience housing instability. Many are students and people with disabilities. 315 people died on the streets of Portland in 2022.
Every Portlander deserves a roof over their head. We need to improve every step of the path people must take from getting off the streets, to shelters to transitional housing, and into affordable permanent housing.
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We must create more day and night shelters. The most recent data available from the Joint Office on Homeless Services shows 93.7% of all shelters were utilized in November 2023. We need shelters for homeless people with mental health and drug treatment services, alternative shelters, and shelters for people during weather emergencies. And we need more family services for the 800 unhoused families with children in Portland.
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We must work effectively with our partners to strengthen Portland’s safety net. That means more culturally-specific treatment programs, a Sobering Center, more beds at Hooper Detoxification Center in District 2, and a new behavioral health residential recovery center where people can get short-term assistance until they are housed. We have to expand in-patient care facilities for the significantly mentally ill and accelerate our work to prevent suicides.
As we all know, it's going to take a lot of time and money for the private sector to build enough housing for everyone in Portland. Let's make it easier for all types of housing to be built in all of Portland's neighborhoods. We must find ways to streamline Portland's permitting system. We also need to reexamine our zoning laws so we can build more multi-family buildings in more places across Portland. And we should provide wrap-around services at transitional and permanent housing sites wherever feasible.
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government accountability
We need to raise the bar for accountability and transparency in City Hall to begin the long process of restoring trust between Portlanders and city leaders.
The late US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
Marnie will work to bring sunlight to our local government. To start, we have to make sure that fees, taxes, and program costs deliver good value for taxpayers. We’ve got to keep close watch on rising costs and deferred maintenance.
Portland Water Bureau’s Bull Run water treatment plant’s budget is $1.8 billion. It’s Portland’s largest ever capital construction project. When the project was approved by the city council in 2017, the budget was $500 million. Let's make a plan to deal with Portland Park and Recreation’s $615 million backlog of deferred maintenance and repairs.
The new community police oversight board should have immediate, automatic access to unedited Body Worn Camera footage, and direct access to all bureau information and records in accordance with state and federal law.
Marnie will lead with the truth when fossil fuel corporations, like Zenith Energy, try to convince us that the dangers of oil trains and storing fuel on seismically unstable land on the Willamette River are not a big deal. We need to require corporations to reduce the risks, and plan for emergencies. No back room deals. Marnie will work with people living near the river and within the blast zone of Zenith's oil trains to protect their safety and health.