Planning scenario · independent research
An operations and funding model, as a planning scenario
A workbook that asks one question from the bottom up: what would it take to run and renew every property to a stated service standard? It counts the tasks, prices the hours, adds a renewal provision and a backlog catch-up, and tests three funding cases. Revised October 13, 2026. Built from Atlas data.
This is independent local research. Its planning requirements and proposed receipts are not City appropriations, budgets or tax proposals. Its staffing figures are workload results, not recommendations.
Read the review status below before using any figure. Several inputs are still placeholders waiting for crew calendars, work orders and partner agreements.
How the workbook is built
It starts with a service standard written as editable assumptions: how often each task happens at each class of property, and how many person-hours each visit takes. Workload is quantity times frequency times person-hours. Dividing by productive hours a year gives field FTE; supervisors are added on the staffing sheet. Functions without enough workload data keep their adopted budget unchanged.
Renewal is priced from the 2024 Citywide Assets Report replacement values and an assumed renewal rate per asset class. Backlog catch-up spreads the City’s reported $759 million stock over 15 years. The funding sheets then compare the result with adopted resources under three cases: existing authorizations, a service proposal, and a downside.
Every input carries a basis or qualification in the file. Unit times are planning assumptions, not measured productivity. All dollar figures use a 2026 planning basis unless a cell says otherwise.
Headline figures
From the Summary sheet, service-target case. “Adopted” is the FY 2026–27 adopted budget; “modeled” is the workbook’s result. Dollars are 2026 planning dollars.
Continuing operations, a year
$240.2m adopted
$257.1m modeled
Provisional workload cost at the stated service standard. The adopted figure is the FY 2026–27 operating baseline, not a verified long-term revenue base.
Career FTE
723.22 adopted
796.17 modeled
Unvalidated workload result, not a staffing recommendation. The trades result is not a cut proposal.
Steady-state renewal provision
about $6.7m existing annual funding, approximate
$67.4m a year
Annual cost provision to renew assets on a stated cycle. The existing figure is approximate annual funding, not current spending.
Backlog catch-up
$50.6m a year
The $759m stock reported in August 2026, spread over 15 years with no overlap credit. Current project schedules must remove duplicate renewal scope.
Additional annual cash requirement
$128.1m a year, 2026 dollars
Planning requirement, not a City appropriation or a tax proposal. Excludes growth, transition, reserve build-up and financing.
Park-level results are not shown per park
The workbook allocates hours and dollars to individual properties. Those allocations are model outputs. They are not shown on any park page of the Atlas, and they must not be read as the cost of a park or the staff it should have. They must be validated at 12 to 16 sites before any use.
A 90-day validation, as proposed. Choose 12 to 16 properties across the four districts and the main property types: neighbourhood park, community centre site, natural area, sports complex, and a partner-operated site. For 90 days, log the crew hours actually spent at each one by task, from work orders and crew calendars. Compare those hours with the model’s. Where they differ, change the unit times and frequencies on the Service inputs sheet, not the answer. Only after that comparison should a per-park or staffing figure leave the workbook.
Review status
The workbook’s own issue list, read from review-status.csv. Corrected financing logic is kept separate from operating assumptions that still need staff and asset evidence. 22 issues.
| Issue | Verdict / status | Required interpretation or next validation | Evidence / owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital appropriation comparison | Agree; corrected | Removed $15.1m and $32m from funding-gap interpretation. $99.6m is a project-year program appropriation. | Fund register + Funding forecast |
| Recurring renewal $5m–$27m | Qualify | 1.1% and 0.35% are historical spending ratios, not identified annual revenue. $4.6m CIP average may overlap the approximate $5m GF benchmark. Do not sum the table. | Atlas research / Council 37710 |
| $114.7m labeled renewal | Correct scope | Original total included $10m growth/access. Original existing-asset provision was $104.7m, including backlog catch-up. | Capital v1 preserved in forecast bridge |
| Backlog stock | Updated | Use current $759m August 2026 reported stock, not $747m FY25 metric. Changing totals does not prove new deterioration. | City Sustainable Future |
| $850m / 952 packages / 2,585 IDs | Unverified reference | Could be a better engineering basis, but underlying backlog-action-plan.md was not available in public downloads or resolved files. Verify IDs, statuses, costs and duplication before adopting. | User-supplied critique |
| 25% overlap vs 25% reserve | Different concepts | Removed unverified overlap credit. No new contingency added until embedded allowances are known. Both can coexist when independently supported. | Model judgment |
| Routine park rounds | Agree; unresolved | Replace flat class hours with fixed opening/safety tasks plus acreage, fixtures, travel and observed use. Do not fit a fabricated acreage coefficient. | Park model L + work orders required |
| Specialty horticulture | Agree; unresolved | Separate cultivated beds, Rose Garden, Arboretum and other specialty responsibilities. Role counts alone do not establish all horticulture productive hours. | Budget job classes; crew calendars needed |
| Partner-operated properties | Agree; unresolved | City scope remains a provisional 100% placeholder. Add task-by-task City/partner responsibility and residual costs before deducting labor. | Atlas partnerships + agreements required |
| Natural-area allocation | Agree; unresolved | Acreage alone misallocates ecology work. Use trail miles, treatment polygons, risk, visits and verified partner activity. Forest Park $6.2m is not a measured City cost. | Park model allocation |
| Seasonal career split | Plausible challenge, not proven | 785/2,147 are people across functions, not annual maintenance FTE. Use maintenance-specific paid hours, task seasonality and agreement limits. | PP&R System by Numbers |
| Maintenance-hour calibration | Agree; scope reconciliation | 446,128 modeled hours vs 409,598 reported FY25 is about 9% higher, but trades/ecology/leave/contractor scope must match first. No service improvement validated. | FY2024–25 levy annual report |
| Invasive acres | Correct data; qualify units | 2,319 FY26 chemical-treatment acres include repeats and a field-log methodology change. 1,500 is not a defensible improvement target; do not blindly multiply 2,319 by 30 hours. | Atlas progress and City measure |
| Volunteers | Agree on explicit planning | 7,500 coordination hours were included, with no volunteer labor deduction. 396,690/2,080 is a headcount-equivalent calculation, not 191 substitutable payroll FTE. Activity, competence, safety and supervision matter. | PP&R annual reporting |
| Trades reductions | Agree; no cut authorized | 69 is an unvalidated workload result. Preserve existing capacity; document vacant positions, contracted work, inspections and reactive tasks before any workforce recommendation. | Staffing sheet warning |
| Staff safety | Agree; unresolved | Identify protected safety, training, travel, incident response and heat/weather time. Some allowance is already in 1,450 productive hours; avoid double counting. | OSHA logs, workers compensation and staff calendars |
| ADA access allowance | Agree; unresolved | Link barriers to assets, path-of-travel scopes, delivery cost and repair/growth eligibility. $10m is an allowance, not a costed 17,008-barrier program. | ADA Transition Plan |
| Staffing comparison | Agree on framing | 723.22 is a changed organizational scope and post-cut baseline. Need position-level transfers, eliminations, vacancies and new roles before asserting the exact restore-cuts-plus-40 bridge. | Adopted budget; HR position bridge needed |
| Source restrictions | Added | Protect existing GF support; levy succession; recurring renewal; separate staged debt; restricted growth funds. New sources default to proposals or zero unless evidenced. | Funding inputs / source ledger |
| Reserve and downside | Added | Reserve target, cost/revenue mismatch, 3% GF loss, levy replacement delay, construction inflation and unreconciled other funding loss are visible. | Single active forecast with three cases |
| Operational optimization claim | Not established | Funding revision does not validate 796 career FTE, highest quality, lowest cost or maximum satisfaction. Retain 90-day validation and service-outcome approach. | Review before Board/PCL adoption |
| Selected case | Service target proposal |
Downloads
The workbook and one CSV per sheet, exported 2026-10-13. Row counts come from the manifest.
- Full workbook (Excel) portland-parks-operations-model-2026-10-13.xlsx
Every sheet with its formulas and the three funding cases. The Summary sheet says which cell switches the case.
- Summary summary.csv · 49 rows
Headline measures: existing reference, planning requirement, the gap, and how to read each one.
- Service inputs service-inputs.csv · 70 rows
The stated service standard as editable assumptions: productive hours, task frequencies, unit times.
- Workload workload.csv · 32 rows
Quantity × frequency × person-hours by team and task, and the FTE that implies.
- Staffing staffing.csv · 12 rows
Current and proposed career FTE and expense by function. The proposed column is unvalidated.
- Budget baseline budget-baseline.csv · 30 rows
The FY 2026–27 adopted budget by program, with the page reference and how the model treats each line.
- Capital capital.csv · 23 rows
Replacement value by asset class, the assumed renewal rate, and the annual provision in 2026 dollars.
- Funding inputs funding-inputs.csv · 76 rows
The source ledger and the switches for the three funding cases: existing, proposal, downside.
- Review status review-status.csv · 25 rows
The issue table on this page: what was corrected, what is still unresolved, and who holds the evidence.
- Evidence notes evidence-notes.csv · 24 rows
Where each input came from and how far it was checked.
- Manifest manifest.json
Export time, sheet-to-file map, row counts and the workbook checksum.