City Council Entrance Interview: Jennifer Park

Try to represent: District 2 (North and Northeast Portland)

Age: 42

Pronoun: She/them

Post: Program Director, The Shadow Project

Fun fact: She was voted “most likely to stand out in a crowd” in high school.

Jennifer Park runs the Shadow Project, a nonprofit that provides classroom support for children with learning disabilities, including autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. In her campaign for City Council, she is similarly focused on helping people who are struggling. She won the support of progressive groups like Next Up Portland and Bernie PDX and qualified for Small Donor Matching Funds. Here’s what she would do if elected.

Why are you running for office?

I have dedicated my professional life to improving the way our institutions support their most vulnerable neighbors. Six years working in supportive housing serving chronically homeless adults with acute mental and behavioral health challenges, five years providing programs and training to public schools to support students with learning challenges and behavioral support needs. After over a decade of feeling like I was addressing what were the symptoms of systemic problems, I’m running to address issues that affect our most vulnerable neighbors on the institutional side as a community representative and advocate on the city council.

What are your top three priorities if elected?

I approach my platform from two different perspectives: the values I believe our council should embody in the way we govern – equitable community engagement, effective service networks, people-centred policies – as well as the priorities I intend to support for our community:

The Inclusive Housing Continuum: Ensuring that individual needs are met and supported from housing retention, to affordable re-entry to affordable home ownership.
Climate-focused policymaking: considering the climate implications of every policy and incorporating sustainability and resilience.
Restructured Public Safety: Fully funding Portland Street Response and CHAT, comprehensively reviewing our Public Safety Service Area.

How would you stimulate economic growth in Portland?

Ensuring that people can afford to work, live and play here is essential to economic revitalization. We need to reevaluate how we implement affordable housing to ensure that it is actually affordable for neighbors who need it, affordable for those who seek it, and sufficient to fully meet our needs. I’d like to see us implement a Tenant’s Bill of Rights, like the one I signed from the Democratic Socialists of America in Portland, and I’ll evoke one particular value, the goal of tying the cost of housing to the minimum wage in some way. which provides a balance between maintaining housing costs from exacerbated inflation while increasing wages.

The city of Portland faces budget cuts next year. Where would you cut money from the current city budget? Please indicate a specific program, office or location.

Before I propose cuts, I want to understand how an $8.2 billion budget does not meet the needs of a city our size. Then I want to find pockets of money not spent or spent inefficiently, for example the $5 million brought in from taxes on inclusive housing that was not redistributed. Only after taking the time to understand the history of budget inefficiencies can we then propose where the cuts will come from. This is going to be a big project for our new board, and frankly one that the political overlord in me is very excited about.

Where is the city currently wasting money or using money in a way that you feel is ineffective or unnecessary? Where is the bloat?

One of the biggest budget mistakes we make is looking into the silos of our offices as they are broken up for the commissioner’s oversight. This prevents us from seeing where we can support and work more effectively. I’ll use our public safety service area as an example. This spring’s budget invested a huge amount of money in policing over time, while underfunding Portland Street Response, preventing 24/7 operations. If we look at the budget more holistically, we can find areas where we can bring individual components together to improve the whole.

What is the Joint Office of Homeless Services doing wrong and what do you see as things that can right the ship?

Poor coordination between the city and county to ensure the division has the support and resources it needs. They should not be forced to close a warming shelter while it is still freezing outside; it shouldn’t be nearly four months since the grand opening of a veterans shelter and the doors are still closed. Ultimately, they either lack support and/or leadership.

I want to add that it is critical that the board does not withdraw from the relationship. We need to invest in fixing our broken systems, not starting from scratch every time we’re hit with a challenge.

Is the tax rate in Multnomah County (with PCEF, Preschool for All and Supportive Housing Services) too high or at an appropriate level? If it is too big, what do you suggest to do about it?

All taxes referred to are applicable to companies and high net worth individuals. I would not be an advocate for tax changes until we understand why our current $8.2 billion budget is not meeting our needs. In addition, we have yet to fully and effectively implement the programs supported and funded by these taxes. There aren’t enough preschool places for everyone for all preschool-age children in Portland yet, and the Supportive Housing Services Levy is still very new, and we have a long way to go to make sure people are supported to stay housed.

What is the first policy you would bring to the City Council?

I would probably bring or support a motion to stop the sweeps very quickly. Especially considering that we will take office in the middle of winter. Until we can make sure we know where the services our homeless neighbors need are, for example a shelter that supports the needs of an individual’s situation, we cannot continue to dislocate people from their only safety. We can support cleaning through rotating services, but we cannot continue to perpetuate the damage caused by sweeps.

Beyond the police, what steps would you take to improve public safety in Portland neighborhoods and where would you get the money for it?

Portland Street Response’s 24/7 operation is critical to improving public safety, emergency dispatch and response, and rebuilding public confidence in emergency services, ultimately leading to increased uptake of treatment and other services of support. I would also like to see us ensure that the budget for CHAT continues and grows. I want to see how much we can accomplish by restructuring our Public Safety Service Area as a whole, improving our efficiency in managing our spending and our budget.

What experience can you point to that you think would make you a prudent City Council decision maker?

The combination of over a decade of non-profit program and operations experience combined with my Executive Masters in Public Administration prepares me to be an analytical, evidence-based and pragmatic policy maker. Being able to assess challenges from a community-centered lens, assess relevant precedent and how it might serve or support our unique needs, and develop policies that include evaluation, accountability, and restructuring until our goals become our outcomes.