As the Chief of Staff and budget manager for Councilor Avalos’s office, I thought it best you hear straight from me why our office decided to invest part of our budget in a study trip to Vienna.
First, all costs were covered from a budget that was fully allocated to our office, just like every other council office. How each councilor chooses to spend their budget is their discretion.
In the 9 months Councilor Avalos has been in office, she has prioritized spending in 3 main ways:
- Constituent relations. We spend a lot of time and resources on connecting with constituents in District 1. We even hired a community organizer specifically focused on building those relationships and creating more events and opportunities for Councilor Avalos to spend time face to face with as many East Portlanders as possible. From door knocking every week, to throwing the first-ever D1 People’s Picnic with free family-friendly activities, much of our budget is focused on the people who live, work, and play in D1.
- District Office. We need a dedicated office space outside of City Hall to be accessible to our constituents. District 1 councilors don’t have the privilege of affordable options to rent an office in their community. We dedicated a fair amount of last year’s budget and are also reserving some in this year’s budget to the staffing, supplying, and programming of a shared office space where constituents can receive information and connect with their representatives. This is a cost burden not shared by most other offices.
- Learning and Skill Building. Councilor Avalos spent many years as an educator at PSU and considers herself to be a lifelong student. Being a first-time councilor for a historically disenfranchised community comes with the responsibility of learning from the experience of other peers to be an effective and well-informed representative. Since entering office, Councilor Avalos has prioritized opportunities to learn about policies directly impacting her community, learning about her roles and responsibilities in government, and connecting and learning from other elected officials across the country to bring back emerging and innovative ideas.
Second, how travel costs are estimated and paid understandably is not common knowledge for many people outside the City. There are rules to spending that all council offices are accountable to. We are required to submit travel forms that estimate the maximum amount we may spend on the trip in order to alert the budget staff and other admins to help reconcile costs after they are complete. Not all anticipated costs are realized in the end, meaning the maximum amount we submit in the travel forms is not always the actual final amount we spend. The federal government sets the rates for food per diems and mileage reimbursements, we do not. The City’s travel agents book flights and hotels at our request, we do not control those costs.
However, we only recently learned that we have discretion on how we arrange our flights. Our office was told we had to use the City’s contracted travel agents to book flights but only learned later that flights can be booked directly without going through a third party that charges large fees. This is why you will likely see differences between offices. Some people knew this, and some did not! This is a lesson learned for our office. We’ve also heard criticisms about the fact that we ask for food per diems to be paid out ahead of time. This is not standard city policy, but we believe that bearing a personal cost for work-related educational trips is classist and undermines access to people who don’t have large nest eggs or credit cards. Our office will never require our staff to pay for food or transportation out-of-pocket when traveling for their job. As their employers, it’s not our business to pry into the personal financial situations of our staff and personal finances should not prevent them from participating in opportunities to advance their careers.
Finally, on the costs of Vienna specifically, this was a big decision our office took months to consider. This trip was not our idea, nor was it arranged by our office. A community partner arranged an educational curriculum that we were invited to participate in. This invitation came shortly after Councilor Avalos co-sponsored a resolution for a study on the opportunities for alternative housing models here in Portland that was passed unanimously by City Council. The trip was an opportunity to learn from a city that serves as the gold standard for housing models that create stable long-term housing and build community wealth and livability. As the Chair of the Homelessness and Housing Committee, Councilor Avalos felt a responsibility to the cause and also knew this would be a rare chance to learn directly from experts, residents, and government officials.
But we also knew it would come with a high cost. We reviewed our budget, we explored ways to lower the expected fees, and we also discussed what it would mean to not join a Portland cohort of planners, architects, policy makers, and electeds that would all come back with a dramatically new understanding of the work ahead. In the end, the lived experience, and the nine-hour time difference (!) convinced us that it was worth the time and expense to do this the right way. Zoom calls (did I mention the nine-hour time difference?) were just not possible.
After we decided to accept the cost, we learned that Portland Housing Bureau staff were also considering attending but were told they would have to pay out of pocket since the bureau did not have money budgeted to travel. We felt strongly that the staff member responsible for drafting the report required in Councilor Avalos’ resolution should not be prevented from learning directly from the foremost practitioners on alternative housing models due to personal costs. We decided to sponsor her trip as well because we felt it was the right thing to do.
In the end, we are very glad we went. We learned so much, came back inspired about the future, and are connected to an entire cohort of other Portlanders and experts in Vienna who we will work together with to secure quality housing and affordability for all Portlanders. So, the cost was worth the learning, and we don’t apologize for spending our own budget in a way that prioritized our values and our goals.
But for those still interested in the numbers, here is our best estimate of the final costs for Councilor Avalos and two staff (travel pre-authorization forms will be much higher based on estimates before travel):
- Flights: $6,714
- Hotel: $3,900
- Food per diem: $1,963.14 (full per diem not spent as 8 meals were provided by program)
- Transportation: $100 (best guess based on travel to and from airport as transit was used for the majority of the trip)
- Program fees: $7,000 ($3,500 per person, with PHB staff member fees waived. It is important to note here that it is possible we may receive a slight refund after program hosts reconcile their total costs.)
- Total approximate costs for three people: $19,677.14
- Approximate cost per person: $6,559.04
Kindly,
Jamey Evenstar