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Name: Terrence Hayes
Age (and when/whether that will change before the election): 41 (just turned 41 in July)
Pronouns: He/Him
Neighborhood: Powellhurst-Gilbert
Are you a renter or homeowner? Homeowner
Education: High school diploma, some college
Occupation: Small business owner at Restore Nuisance Abatement, we remove trash & graffiti from public spaces.
How long you’ve lived in the city of Portland: Since I was 16 years old.
Portland is facing a historic election involving a new voting system and an unusually high number of candidates. Journalists at The Oregonian/OregonLive and Oregon Public Broadcasting share a goal of ensuring that Portland voters have the information they need to make informed choices, and we also know candidates’ time is valuable and limited.
That’s why the two news organizations teamed up this cycle to solicit Portland City Council candidates’ perspectives on the big issues in this election. Here’s what they had to say:
For each of the following questions, we asked candidates to limit their answers to 150 words.
Name two existing city policies or budget items you’d make it a priority to change. Why did you select those and how do you plan to line up at least 7 votes on the council to make them happen? Please avoid broad, sweeping statements and instead provide details.
Increase funding to the Office of Violence Prevention. I will come with the data and the encouragement knowing all the folks who signed the “No Police Money” and “Friends of Portland Street Response” pledges that this is the type of funding they claimed to support via those pledges, so I expect them to back up their claims with action and vote with me. I know the folks who got the Portland Police Association endorsement like I did will be on board already.
Creating a matrix and oversight committee to review success factors of grants funding would be another policy I’d like to prioritize making changes to. There doesn’t seem to be much transparency to the public as to where the dollars are going from various bond measures they voted on, and people like to see the return on the investment they are making.
Related: What you need to know about voting in Oregon and Southwest Washington
What previous accomplishments show that you are the best pick in your district? Please be specific.
My work with Portland Ceasefire, serving on the Portland Police Focused Intervention Team Community Oversight Group, and multiple community-based organizations doing gun and gang violence reduction work, prove that I have the most public safety experience on one of the biggest issues facing all of Portland, but especially East Portland, as we have the highest rate of gun violence deaths. I have seen the data in my work with these groups and I have seen the outcomes we can achieve when these prevention programs are fully funded and officers are well-trained and held accountable.
Portland is on track to permit the fewest number of multifamily units in 15 years and remains thousands of units below what’s needed to meet demand. What steps would you take to dramatically and quickly increase the availability of housing?
We need to look at overhauling our entire city code around development. Recent changes to the permitting process are an improvement, but I am still hearing from the development community that it’s still not fast enough. We need to find incentives for builders and ways to speed up the process to build all levels of housing, but especially multi-family.
The next City Council is going to have to make some very difficult decisions regarding what to fund and how. What essential services must the city provide and how should the city sustainably fund them?
The Bureau of Transportation and the Bureau of Development Services really are the top two affecting every single Portlander. Our roads are a mess, and our development is too slow. PBOT needs to stop funding pet projects that have temporary safety solutions — the plastic bollards all over the city are expensive, damage the roads, and are hit so often I can’t imagine what we are spending constantly replacing them.
We also cut funding to the Office of Violence Prevention in this current budget, which is unacceptable when you can see direct results of funding these programs. We are spending a lot on cleaning up illegal unsanctioned campsites, and it seems like we could see a huge savings to our entire budget if we were able to stand up enough shelter beds to truly end unsanctioned street camping.
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Portlanders have approved many tax measures in the past decade — supporting affordable housing, free preschool programs and green energy initiatives. Are there specific taxes or levies you want eliminated or would choose not to renew? Are there specific taxes or levies you would support creating? Why?
I think we as a City Council need to sit down and look at the intent of these ballot measures and determine how we can incorporate them into city code in a more reasonable manner than the way the ballot measures implemented them into the system. A lot of them have caveats on how funds can be spent, creating huge buckets of money we can’t touch while other areas of the city suffer from lack of funding. I am not opposed to the intent of these measures, but we have to find better ways to do it with our budget that make sense while upholding the initial intent of the law.
Do you have any concerns with the changes coming to city elections and city governance? If so, what would you like to see change?
Most voters seem upset that they are not going to have a single district representative and have expressed that they are concerned they will still be ignored, particularly given the news that we will not be given any staff besides one shared person. It looks like the city is pushing people away from their electeds and directly to the bureaus, and that is not going to fly with constituents when they aren’t getting responses from the bureaus. I definitely see the lack of staffing as one of the first issues we are going to have to tackle when we take office in January.
Related: Listen to 'OPB Politics Now'
For the five remaining questions, we asked candidates to answer in 50 words or fewer:
Do you favor arresting and jailing people who camp on public property in Portland who refuse repeated offers of shelter, such as the option to sleep in a city-designated tiny home cluster?
Nobody favors arresting people who refuse help, but we must draw a line somewhere and create accountability versus allowing one class of residents to break the law repeatedly and be a nuisance in our shared public spaces.
Would you vote yes on a proposal to fund hundreds more police officers than the City Council has already authorized? Why or why not? How would the city pay for it?
I have spoken to PPA President Aaron Schmautz about this issue directly — the police funding is there. We don’t have the bodies to fill the positions. We need elected officials who support our officers to increase morale if we want to see more officers on our streets.
Do you support putting the Clean Energy Fund measure back on the ballot? What, if any changes, would you support?
The main problem with PCEF is that the funding has taken too long to get out the door, and black and brown communities have suffered because of this. I support fixing the program so that money is not sitting unused when there are so many things it is needed for.
Which would you prioritize: Creation of more protected bike lanes and priority bus lanes or improved surfacing of existing degraded driving lanes?
Improved surfacing of existing degraded driving lanes. This would obviously extend to any existing bike lanes, and we all benefit from better roads. Most of the cyclists I speak to want to see increased traffic enforcement, less potholes, and clean, well-marked bike lanes.
Have the problems impacting downtown Portland received too much or too little attention from current city leaders? Why?
I served on the Governor’s Central City Task Force last fall, and I believe downtown’s receiving the right amount of attention because it’s what brings tourists and large businesses to Portland. Of course we need to prioritize issues city-wide, and no area is more overlooked than District 1.