Updated Draft Organization Chart
To prepare for the next city organization council work session, Chief Administrative Officer Michael Jordan has released the latest updated draft chart.
Review the updated draft organization chart or read additional details in the draft City Organization Report.
View the previous draft organization chart released on Sept. 12, 2023.
What’s Next?
City Council members have set Nov. 1, 2023 as their target date to vote on the organizational chart. The draft below may continue to evolve, and a final version will be shared with Council ahead of the hearing.
To better understand the key elements of the reporting structure and how it relates to other parts of the transition, City Council scheduled additional work sessions before November 1. View council sessions related to the transition through the Transition events page.
To stay updated on the council agenda and share your thoughts, go to the council clerk’s page.
Key Updates on the Draft Organizational Structure
Equity Officer
The equity officer, in the office of the city administrator, will have executive responsibility for the City's work to advance our city core values of equity and anti- racism – both internally and externally.
The Office of Equity and Human Rights will report directly to the equity officer, recognizing the need for citywide alignment and consistency. Positioning the function and responsibilities of equity in this way increases our opportunities to operate as a more unified city in advancing anti-racist and equitable policies and practices. It also demonstrates accountability for this work at the highest level of the organization.
Assistant City Administrator
This person will work closely with the city administrator and lead the Portland Solutions, Community Relations and Council Operations teams. Because the scope of the service areas, led by DCAs, is much larger, this group will be led by an assistant city administrator rather than being placed in its own, smaller, service area.
Teams in the assistant city administrator’s office include:
A new Communications Officer will coordinate the City’s communications approach and partner with communications teams across bureaus and service areas to provide unified content and messaging, sufficient and consistent communications, and clear points of contact for community.
A Community Relations team led by a new Engagement Officer, will align under common management many of the community-facing programs from across the city, including teams that directly serve Portland’s diverse communities.
A Council Operations team to support the expanded 12-member council, including committee meetings and legislative research and analysis on policy priorities.
The Office of Government Relations (OGR) includes state, federal, local, tribal and international government relations, as well as Tribal and Indigenous community engagement, and grant writing support.
A Portland Solutions team, to respond to district-based livability concerns, is still under development and will report to the assistant city administrator.
Bureaus are Organized into Six Service Areas led by Deputy City Administrators
Budget and Finance
This service area provides for coordinated and unified budgeting as well as other significant financial operations, such as forecasting, with teams accountable to one deputy city administrator. The structure also allows for closer coordination between the city administrator, who has financial reporting requirements established in the charter, and the DCA of budget and finance, and their teams.
Functions in this service area have citywide implications and coordination needs, including tracking progress on goals and outcomes. This unified positioning will help with transparency and accountability and help to break down silos as the new budgeting process, necessitated by the new form of government, gets developed and implemented. Like the City Operations service area, it pulls many functions from the Office of Management and Finance.
City Operations
This service area includes predominately internal services that support the operations of city government, largely pulled from OMF, many with citywide reach. City Operations focuses on many of the centralized services that are separate and apart from budget and finance. Creating a City Operations and a Budget and Finance service area reorganizes central services around their core functions, separating operational teams from those focused more on budget and finance to ensure focused leadership in each area.
Positioning services such as Procurement, Human Resources, the Bureau of Technology Services, and Asset Management to report to a Deputy of City Operations recognizes the importance of centralized services and increases the opportunity for forming standard guidelines and policies and supporting integration within city operations.
Community and Economic Development
This service area includes several bureaus, programs and functions that will advance the economic vitality of Portland and impact the built environment and livability of the city. Additionally, it includes a to-be-determined structure to consolidate permitting functions, based on a city council resolution passed in late August 2023.
The group represents a priority for Portlanders and is connected to our ongoing economic recovery. Co-locating these bureaus and functions will reduce barriers to creating a vibrant economy. Including spectator venues, film and events and arts leverages their location and proximity to programs that are economic drivers.
As noted on the organizational chart, Prosper Portland is accountable to the Prosper Commission because, by charter, the Prosper Portland board hires and fires the executive director, and they have their own general counsel.
Community Safety
This service area includes the public safety bureaus and the Community Safety Division with their existing programs. This recommendation formalizes the work that has been underway collaborate on budget and administration, pivoting the bureaus to a community safety model.
This co-location will allow public and community safety bureaus to think about safety in an integrated way, and not in silos, and will allow for more coordination and clearer lines of accountability. The recommended organizational chart also recognizes the imminent sunsetting of the Independent Police Review and instead recognizes the to be created Community Board for Police Accountability, within the Community Safety Division.
There is a dotted line from the police bureau to the police chief, as the Charter states that the police chief is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. The DCA of Community Safety will lead on day-to-day strategy and priorities of the community safety service area, while, ultimately, the mayor will be held responsible for the success of the police chief in their role.
Parks and Recreation
This service area, consisting of Parks and Recreation and the Childrens’ Levy, is one that is outwardly facing and that impacts the daily lives of many Portlanders. This service area recognizes the unique place that Parks and Recreation programing, stewardship, infrastructure and planning functions have in the city. In fact, in a review of other city structures nationwide, Parks is generally not grouped with utility and/or infrastructure bureaus.
This also balances the scope, scale and span of control across the service areas, and recognizes the complexity of the Parks bureau as well as the public works bureaus. Arts, which does have strong nexus with Parks, is co-located with other economic and cultural drivers in Community and Economic Development, including the film and events and spectator venues teams.
Public Works
This service area includes the infrastructure bureaus and provides independent buraus the opportunity for closer collaboration and shared accountability, recognizing existing synergies and creating opportunities for new ones across functions such as planning, asset management and project delivery.
Bureaus in this service area manage critical infrastructure, steward natural areas and provide many other diverse operations that touch every neighborhood in the city and are essential to Portland’s livability. The alignment recognizes the synergies between the three infrastructure bureaus (Environmental Services, Water and Transportation, currently) and the amount of collaboration between the bureaus and the need to continue to work closely together on policy, planning, and implementation efforts as well as infrastructure and land management.
Ongoing Assessment on Natural Resources Unit
BES, BPS, PBOT, PP&R, and PWB are currently assessing natural resource service delivery and potential process improvements. This team is evaluating opportunities for alignment of service delivery, which could include the potential creation of a new natural resources organizational unit. This unit is not referenced on the organizational chart as the assessment is still in progress, but the transition team continues to be very supportive of its development. The future DCAs of both Parks and Recreation and Public Works, along with Community and Economic Development and the rest of the leadership team, will be well positioned to support future decisions about the location and composition of any future natural resources-focused organizational unit.