East Portlanders speak out against proposed public safety cuts

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Friday morning in East Portland, that our services that we have right now >> a packed community meeting as long-time residents spoke out against proposed cuts to public safety.

[00:00:10]>> I think that the proposed cuts are cuts are terrible. The police, you need them on your street. As a mother with a child with a severe immunodeficiency, it's very important for me that responders are able to reach my home quickly.

[00:00:26]Councilor Loretta Smith was behind the event, giving people a chance to voice their concerns directly to public safety officials. I'm not making this stuff up.

[00:00:35]These are people from the district who are really concerned. The city is trying to close a record $163 million budget shortfall. Mayor Keith Wilson is proposing cuts of about $21 million to the police bureau and $7 million to the fire bureau. Smith says she wants to restore $11 million to both bureaus combined. I am so armed with so much ammunition right now that I'm going to take back to the council meeting on Monday. She's also pushing to keep the East police precinct open to the public.

[00:01:08]When you walk in there, you expect to see somebody behind the desk. Earlier this week, we talked with other councilors laying out their own budget priorities. Councilor Eric Zimmerman wants to add 20 new full-time patrol officers and restore money for police training. We always have to have new recruits in the pipeline. I'm going to try to restore some of the money on the training side because we really want our our police bureau to be progressive and to strive to be the gold standard across the country. Council Vice President Olivia Clark is also among those trying to save the fire engine in St. Johns. Um and then on fire, I really want to restore the fire truck to uh station 22.

[00:01:49]Councilor Alana Pearl Guinea is pushing to restore funding for violence prevention programs, Portland Street Response, and the fire bureau's overdose response team. And counselor Steve Novick says cuts should come from inside city hall, not public safety. One of them is our own council office budgets.

[00:02:08]We are spending $1.45 million a year per counselor on our office budgets.