Citing poor policy moves and "defunding" from previous leaders, the new Council will pull from contingency funds to hire additional staff. by Courtney Vaughn "Kneecapped." "Defunded." "Not set up for success." Portland's city councilors had blunt words to describe the budget bestowed on them by the prior Council. The city’s new 12-person City Council voted Wednesday evening to increase their budget by nearly $4.6 million. The budget increase includes extra funding for the mayor’s office. Currently, each councilor has one dedicated staffer, and the council has nine shared staff. Portland’s Government Transition Advisory Committee recommended each councilor have two staffers. Councilors said the funds should cover the hiring of one additional staffer for each of them, allowing them to better serve constituents. The funds are unlikely to cover in-district offices, leaving councilors to continue working out of offices in City Hall for now.  The issue of establishing district offices was broached by the prior City Council, which ultimately voted not to initiate funding or planning for the effort. District 4 Councilor Eric Zimmerman said the prior administration left the current Council “kneecapped.” “I feel very strongly about that and it has been a history over this transition of small moves that have added to a major cut,” Zimmerman added. While the process to establish a vote was messy and drawn out over roughly two and a half hours, councilors overwhelmingly agreed that they don’t have adequate staff to do their jobs or fully serve the public. They voiced concerns about employee burnout, noting each council office has just one person juggling tasks that were previously spread out among several staff in the prior city government. While the responsibilities and roles of the new Council have changed to no longer include bureau oversight, District 1 Councilor Jamie Dunphy said the workload hasn’t gotten any smaller. “The number of phone calls, emails, and actions that I must make in the day is not less because there are 12 of us,” Dunphy said, emphatically. “I do not have one third of the work to my neighbors, because there are three of us representing my district. …This is hard work and our city is in a moment of crisis.” Wednesday’s vote to expand the Council’s staffing budget comes as the city of Portland is facing a projected $27 million deficit in the 2025-26 fiscal year.  The money for Council will come from the city’s general contingency fund, after Councilor Loretta Smith won unanimous agreement to draw from contingency funds, rather than pulling money from the city administrator’s office.  “Good governance, it costs,” Smith said, clarifying that the increased funds wouldn’t impact the city’s services. “We know one of the top issues in this community is public safety, and housing and homeless (sic). We’re not suggesting to take money from either one of those places, but what we are suggesting is we have a $13.8 million contingency that we can actually take those funds out of …to be able to fund us at the level that we need to be.” All but two councilors–Dan Ryan and Steve Novick—voted to increase the  City Council office’s budget. As Ryan listened to criticism of the prior Council’s budgeting decisions, he reminded his new colleagues that during his recent term as a city commissioner, he advocated for the new Council to have a bigger budget, but was outvoted. “I tried really hard to get the carryover money, the money that was not spent by commissioners’ offices in 2023-2024, and the money that was not spent in the first six months to carry over,” Ryan said. “I felt really good about that, but that also got blocked by three of my colleagues.” Still, he was hesitant to approve the full $4.6 million, noting it’s too early in his new term to know what his office needs. Novick also said he doesn’t yet “know enough to make an informed vote.” The Council added an emergency clause to its budget vote, meaning Wednesday’s decision was the first and final vote on the issue.