Answering Council’s partnership questions

Atlas recommendations. The questions appear on presentation slide 13. The next slide proposes six principles: public purpose, welcoming public access, recognition of different forms of investment, clear accountability, equitable opportunity, and easier navigation of City processes. These answers turn those principles into decisions that can be reviewed.

Partner when a defined public need and a capable partner meet, and a comparison with direct City delivery shows an achievable improvement in service, stewardship, access, or whole-life cost. Start with a service baseline and the actual condition of the asset. Compare City delivery, a supported community model, and any credible alternative using the same service standard and period.

Require five gates: a public-purpose statement; community input and an access plan; a funded operating and renewal plan; a named owner for each risk; and measurable outcomes with an exit plan. If a gate cannot be met, redesign or defer the agreement. Do not transfer an unfunded maintenance liability merely because a community group is willing to try. Limited fundraising capacity should trigger City support and targeted outreach, not exclusion of a high-need neighborhood.

Evidence: PP&R says partnerships expand public capacity while public responsibility remains; slide 12 also warns that the City must understand the cost of obligations it transfers. Slides 6 and 12. Use the Atlas’s condition data, allocation model, and opportunity signals as screening inputs, not approval decisions.

Choose the least complex arrangement that delivers the required public benefit. A volunteer agreement fits a bounded stewardship task; a programming or space-use agreement fits classes in an available room; a gift or capital agreement fits a defined improvement; shared operations fit a facility with separable responsibilities; a long-term operating agreement fits a specialized asset only when operating capacity, renewal funding, and enforceable access are demonstrated.

Use the model matrix below. Sellwood and Laurelhurst illustrate community operation and reactivation; Pioneer Courthouse Square and Leach illustrate established nonprofit operations. These are examples, not evidence that their unpublished contract terms fit another asset. Slides 8 and 11.

Provide a named decision-maker, a reliable inventory and condition baseline, public-purpose and access requirements, a clear agreement, and funded City responsibilities. Disclose the value and cost of land or facility use, fee reductions, staff support, utilities, inspections, maintenance, and retained capital liabilities. State who approves changes and which decisions remain public.

Match support to the model: tools and supervision for stewardship; scheduling and affordable space for programming; design review and construction acceptance for capital work; inspections and renewal planning for operating agreements. Provide translation, accessible application routes, and assistance for smaller organizations. A no-rent arrangement still consumes public resources.

Evidence: The report identifies the Community Partnerships Team as the first contact and ongoing support function, describes in-kind space use, and lists support roles. Report pages 3, 12, and 16.

Provide the specific service, labor, expertise, funding, or operation promised in the agreement, with evidence of capacity. Identify a responsible lead, staffing and volunteer supervision, a realistic budget and fundraising plan, relevant safety qualifications, and proportionate insurance or other risk arrangements established with City reviewers. Report delivered services, spending, maintenance, access, and incidents on a common schedule.

Do not impose the same administrative load on a small Friends group and a major operator. For an operating partner, require continuity and asset-care plans; for volunteers, require training and a bounded scope; for capital donors, document restrictions, payment milestones, acceptance, and future maintenance obligations. Recognize expertise and community trust alongside cash.

Evidence: The deck names funding, volunteers, programming, expertise, relationships, and innovation as partner contributions. The report distinguishes four partnership categories. Slide 6, report page 3.

Assign each risk to the party able to control or absorb it, fund that responsibility, and state the fallback. The City should retain oversight of public purpose and access and explicitly identify retained ownership and capital obligations. Partners should manage the operational tasks they control. Unknown pre-existing defects should be assessed before allocation. Neither an agreement nor insurance alone makes a risk disappear.

Use a risk register with an owner, mitigation, funding source, escalation trigger, and response. Include construction overruns, revenue shortfalls, major repairs, injuries, volunteer safety, loss of insurance, partner insolvency, interruption of service, and asset handback. Require a workable City step-in or replacement-provider plan for essential service. City legal, risk, procurement, and labor specialists should review the actual terms; this is a policy proposal, not a statement of current legal requirements.

Evidence: Slide 12 asks who pays, operates, maintains, and carries risk, and links sustainable expectations to knowing actual costs. Slide 12.

Publish separate ledgers for cash received; one-time capital accepted; volunteer hours and their stated valuation rate; donated goods or professional services; programming and public outcomes; and City cash, space, staff, utilities, and retained liabilities. Show the year, source, restrictions, valuation method, and possible overlap for every amount. Distinguish pledges from receipts and capital expenditure from annual operating support.

A defensible fiscal comparison is City cost for the same service without the agreement minus City cost with the agreement, including transition, oversight, support, and retained liabilities over the same period. Positive fiscal savings require evidence for both scenarios. Separately report community value, service continuity, cultural value, participation, and access; do not force every benefit into dollars.

Never count a cash gift again as the improvement it purchases, volunteer labor again inside a service valuation, or donated facility use again as an unrestricted grant. The deck's $16.9M is reported noncash community value. In the hearing Pearce identifies Independent Sector as the valuation source, but does not specify the exact rate, year, or geography. The PDFs do not justify new asset ROI totals or budget savings. Slides 9–10 and 14. See impact and asset value.

Write an enforceable access schedule into each agreement: public hours, free or affordable opportunities, fee and discount rules, accessible facilities and programming, language access, limits on exclusive events, an accessible complaint route, and remedies for nonperformance. Publish interruptions and restrictions so residents can understand actual access before visiting.

Evaluate benefits and City support by district and community need, not just dollars raised. Offer capacity funding or appropriate match flexibility where fundraising is harder. Consult people who are underserved by the proposed facility and report participation and unmet need with privacy-conscious measures. Cultural or destination assets may need different schedules and fee models, but each must make its public benefit explicit and reviewable.

Evidence: The deck calls for access and equity, while the report describes subsidized community space and programming for underserved residents. Slides 12–14, report page 12. The coverage and district views help identify gaps; an absent Atlas record is not proof of absent service.

Give applicants one intake route, one accountable coordinator, a published model-selection guide, reusable agreements, a checklist of required information, a visible status, and a route for resolving delays. Triage small volunteer and space-use requests separately from construction and long-term operations. Let the coordinator obtain internal reviews rather than requiring the applicant to discover every bureau contact.

Proposed service targets: acknowledge a complete request within 10 working days and provide an initial route and missing-information list within 30 working days. These are Atlas proposals, not City commitments or guaranteed approval deadlines. Set a realistic schedule after triage and explain pauses. Publish aggregate completion times, reasons for delay, and outcomes. Connect volunteer opportunities to Get Connected; connect agreements and contributions to the planned partnership database, with sensitive personal information excluded from public views.

Evidence: The deck identifies months or years of agreement delays and unclear decision paths; the report describes a support team, a small-project process, and planned reporting infrastructure. Slide 12, report pages 15–16.

September 8 hearing additions: require an approval-authority and public-engagement plan before long-term operating agreements, consult users and labor early, track City compliance with its own commitments, and distinguish newly delivered volunteer activity from newly captured reporting. These additions respond to the hearing’s concerns; the hearing review separates speakers’ positions from our recommendations.

Atlas recommendation. Each row is a starting allocation to negotiate and fund, not a description of existing contracts. The six-model spectrum comes from slide 8.

For any model, publish a one-page agreement summary naming the asset, public purpose, parties, term, City and partner inputs, access rules, risk owners, outcome measures, review date, and exit procedure. Financial and operational unknowns prevent a final recommendation for an individual asset.

Presentation slide 9 reports 485,391 hours, 22.5% above last year, 7.3% above FY2019, and $16.9M in community value, and says the mayor's pre-COVID goal was exceeded. The slide does not identify exact reporting dates, the prior-year denominator, a valuation rate, or the underlying hour series.

The Atlas's earlier FY2024–25 levy source records 397,283 hours. Comparing that number with 485,391 produces about 22.18%, which rounds to 22.2%, not 22.5%. A 22.5% increase would imply a baseline of approximately 396,238 hours. These are Atlas calculations to explain the discrepancy, not corrected City figures. Obtain the exact period, any revisions, and comparable program scope before publishing a continuous series.

Hearing clarification: Pearce says the increase reflects both additional activity and better capture of work already happening, so it cannot be presented as approximately 89,000 new service hours. He verbally rounds the prior year to 396,000; the exact comparable baseline remains unresolved. He names Independent Sector as the valuation source without identifying the rate’s year, geography, or amount. 00:16:25–00:17:36.

The deck's rounded $16.9M divided by its hours implies approximately $34.82/hour; this does not establish its method. Preserve the older Atlas estimate using Oregon's 2024 rate of $34.74/hour as a separately dated calculation. Do not multiply the new hours by that old rate and present the result as PP&R's reported value. Do not combine the new noncash estimate with the older $2,656,981 in City grants to partners as if they were one current outside-investment total.

The report, pages 13–14, describes increased hours in all districts, natural-area stewardship growth, corporate volunteer days, and event-support volunteers. It reports launching Get Connected, plus Friends Group listening sessions, clearer staff connections, and earlier participation in improvement and levy planning. It supplies no district hour breakdown. Its conclusion refers loosely to “hundreds” of hours; use the deck's precise number with its scope caveat rather than deriving another total from that wording.

The report's executive summary, page 2, reports 100+ partner organizations engaged through licenses, leases, permits, and intergovernmental agreements, and 40 active site-based partnerships across four districts. Page 4 alternates between 40 sites and 40 organizations. Treat 40 as PP&R's reported site-partnership scale; the PDFs do not provide a complete reconciled inventory proving a one-to-one organization/site relationship.

Presentation slide 5 gives approximate unique partners within each division:

Do not add these into a citywide unique-partner count: cross-division overlap is unspecified. These division labels describe this presentation's partnership work and do not independently establish the current City organizational chart.

The report's four strategic categories are property/lease operations, nonprofit or philanthropic upgrades, volunteer stewardship, and in-kind space use (page 3). The deck's six-model spectrum is a different lens, not a contradictory inventory. Both differ from the Atlas's discovery taxonomy and workbook-derived activity counts. See count methodology.

Slides 1–4 frame parks and streets as major public spaces, call for shared vision and co-creation, and show parks as 15% of Portland. Slide 2 places innovation at the intersection of the commons, the market, and government. The deck does not define that percentage's boundary, area denominator, or land inventory, so it is retained as a source claim rather than used to change Atlas acreage. Slides 6–7 describe partner contributions and a year of rebuilding relationships, new entry paths, volunteer capacity, philanthropic/corporate engagement, operating models for underused assets, and alignment of community ideas with Parks priorities.

Hearing clarification: Pearce explains the deck’s 15% claim as a share of Portland’s land area under Parks oversight; its underlying calculation is still unavailable. 00:12:23.

The following preserves the grouping and names in report pages 4–7. It is an illustrative roster, not all 40 agreements. The map continues to use park geography. A source mention confirms the reported relationship, not its contract term, financial value, or continuing status after FY2025–26.

Reconciliation notes: IFCC is listed in the Atlas as Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center; preserve the report's wording without renaming the canonical facility. The September 12 official Council-boundary overlay confirms Berkeley Park in District 4, resolving the earlier Atlas discrepancy. Laurelhurst Dance Studio and Colwood are not silently assigned to nearby Atlas parks. St. John’s Racquet Center is matched to St Johns Racquet Center by punctuation normalization; Director Park is matched to Simon and Helen Director Park. St Johns Racquet Center is in District 2 under the official boundary overlay; the report’s grouping remains a source-reported category, not a district assignment. Ankeny Square versus the inventory's Ankeny Plaza also needs an explicit alias check. Unmatched mentions remain visible in the data rather than being dropped.

PP&R's narrative, not an audited capital ledger. Report pages 8–11 say philanthropic upgrades were de-emphasized during the 2020 levy cycle and describe renewed fundraising emphasis for the next five-year levy. The documents do not establish a new appropriation or a project approval.

Presentation slide 10 also names Bank of America / Free Lunch + Play, Adventist Health, USTA tennis work, Nike / Trail Blazers, Alex Rovello courts, Leach, PPF, and Summer Free For All sponsorships. It depicts City and partner investment contributing to public benefit, but supplies no amounts for those examples. Slide 8 names Rosewood as a programming example. Mentions do not establish an event schedule or a new donation opportunity.

Slide 11 highlights Sellwood's community operations and substantial private investment, Laurelhurst Studio's reactivation, Pioneer Courthouse Square's mature nonprofit operations and activation, and Leach's long-term nonprofit operation of a City-owned destination. No financial totals accompany those descriptions.

The report identifies four Everybody Plays parks, while the Atlas previously recorded a three-playground scope. The new record preserves that expanded source scope; it does not assert four completed playgrounds or four new gifts. Current status requires project-level evidence. See Foundation, project queue, and maintenance.

Report page 12 describes no-cost or reduced-cost space exchanged for community programming and services, plus letters supporting external grant applications. Space is an in-kind City contribution even when the report does not price it. This describes a model, not proof of public booking availability at a specific facility.

Pages 15–16 provide the accountability and staffing picture:

These are qualitative status labels, not quantified performance results. Page 15 describes a streamlined small-capital-project process with clear roles, timelines and recognition, but provides no actual workflow or service targets.

The team roster names an External Affairs and Partnerships Manager, Community Partnerships Supervisor and Coordinators, Partnership Analyst, Volunteer Services Coordinator, Office Response Coordinator, and Operations & Impact Coordinator. It gives no FTE counts, vacancies, salaries, or assurance that every listed role is funded. Do not add them numerically to the adopted-budget workforce.

Atlas implementation proposal: during the first 90 days after any Council authorization, inventory agreements and costs, publish the intake route and model guide, and select pilots spanning different assets and community capacity. During months 3–6, pilot the responsibility schedule and proportionate reporting. By month 12, publish results, access performance, City costs, partner inputs, delays and lessons before expanding. These are proposed milestones; the source documents do not adopt this schedule.

Presentation slide 12 identifies six enabling conditions: sustainable obligations, trust, an understandable path through City government, clear responsibilities, shared public goals, and reasonable agreement timelines. Slides 14 and 16 propose a partnership culture built on public benefit and express an ambition for Portland to become better at working with people who want to help. They do not announce a completed policy.

Hearing update: Pearce says the team is developing criteria for which partnerships merit City co-investment, facilities, and staff time during the current fiscal year. He stresses that partnership coordination needs funded staff capacity. He also announces planned fall PSU work across District 1’s 15 neighborhoods with approximately 42 graduate students; it is an announced study, not delivered findings. See the hearing analysis for timestamps, partner-reported barriers, and unresolved Tennis Center questions.

Presentation slide 15 lists the proposed panel below. A name on the slide is not confirmation of attendance, testimony, or a current title beyond the source context.

Actual hearing: the recording contains invited remarks from Hoyt Arboretum Friends, Community Music Center (a different representative), Portland Parks Foundation, Sellwood Community House, and Friends of IFCC. See the listening guide; the planned roster above is preserved as documentary evidence.

Coverage of all source pages: the presentation has 16 PDF pages and the report has 17. Page numbers in citations are PDF page numbers. Photographs and decorative graphics are context, not evidence of unnamed contracts or additional quantitative results.

Request the complete agreement inventory with stable partner/site identifiers and terms; a reconciled volunteer series and valuation methodology; City and partner operating and capital contributions with accounting periods; maintenance and renewal obligations; access rules and outcomes; the small-project pipeline and actual workflow; staffing allocations; survey evidence; and milestones for the announced database and reporting work. The records-request page carries this addition.

These documents provide substantial new evidence of partnerships and priorities. They do not fill itemized repair-cost gaps, validate existing estimated asset values, establish current availability for reservations, or prove delivery of each named capital project. Keep those unknowns visible and use the proposed framework to collect the evidence required for a decision.

The Board meetings add practical tests to the partnership framework. Pittock's operator described preservation and approval challenges alongside helpful City support. The Tennis Center discussion sought comparable prices, scholarships, participation and public access, with annual reporting. These are attributed reports and questions; the executed agreements and comparable outcome data remain necessary. June transcript, J0235–J0245 · August transcript, A0163–A0196.

Use a responsibility schedule that includes staff time, cleaning, utilities, permissions, major repairs, reporting and continuity. Compare the same services before and after a transition. Announced improvements, forecast savings and delivered benefits are separate accounts. The public meeting record does not establish that partnership is always preferable to City operation. Tennis Center comparison · Pittock delivery case · Full Board record.