Meet Steve Novick, candidate for Portland City Council District 3

Editor’s note: Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Stay informed with OPB on the presidential race, key congressional battles and other local contests and ballot measures in Oregon and Southwest Washington at opb.org/elections.

Name: Steve Novick

Neighborhood: Woodstock

Are you a renter or homeowner? Renter

Education: B.A., University of Oregon, 1981; J.D., Harvard Law, 1984

Occupation: Lawyer

How long you’ve lived in the city of Portland: 28 years

Age: 61

Pronouns: He/ him

Portland is facing an historic election involving a new voting system and an unusually high number of candidates. Journalist sat 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 organization steamed 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.

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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.

I describe elsewhere my budget priorities for police and the Clean Energy Fund. Here I’ll suggest two specific things that should garner seven votes. They aren’t very expensive, so they wouldn’t require raising taxes or taking lots of money from the three big, popular general fund bureaus (police, fire, parks).

The tiny house villages have been successful. But the city says it’s hard to find sites for new ones. But so far, the city has relied on City Hall political staff to do that work. The city should hire a small professional staff of full-time people whose job it is to identify sites.

Portland trails other Oregon jurisdictions in using the “red flag” law to remove guns from dangerous people. It’s hard to believe we don’t have dangerous gun owners. I suspect we need more training of police and the general public on how to use this tool.

What previous accomplishments show that you are the best pick in your district? Please be specific.

After the city had neglected the streets and let them rot for thirty years, failing to adopt a local funding source for transportation as surrounding jurisdictions had done, I, as transportation commissioner, decided it was my responsibility to do something. After a long process – during which I made my share of mistakes – I sent a 10-cent gas tax to the ballot. I engaged in an intense diplomatic process to bring two key groups together to support the measure: the business community – which was very focused on street repair – and community activists who focused on traffic safety projects. A balanced measure passed and has been renewed, largely because we were specific about how the money would be spent and avoided overpromising; we acknowledged it could not make up for 30 years of neglect.

I think that showed my sense of responsibility, persistence, ability to work with disparate groups and transparency.

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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?

Anyone who thinks they have a magic bullet to “dramatically and quickly” increase housing is deluded.

Things to work on:

Smooth out the boom-and-bust fee-based funding cycle at the Bureau of Development Services, where layoffs during busts result in huge permitting backlogs in the early stages of booms, while BDS scrambles to hire more people.

Continue revising zoning to allow more housing types in more places. (I was an early champion of allowing more duplexes and triplexes.)

Housing investment dollars are national and can go anywhere, so we need to restore the perception of Portland as a good place to invest in. That means addressing both the reality and the exaggerated perception of Portland as a place overrun with homeless camps and crime.

Consider scaling back Systems Development Charges. For example, new parks are important, but is what is effectively a big tax on new housing the best funding mechanism?

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 city should supply fire and police protection (the two biggest parts of the general fund), water, sewer service and a functional system of streets. Most of of us would say parks are also essential, as are investments in housing.

I don’t propose new taxes to replace paying for water and sewer with fees, and police, fire and parks with property and business taxes. But police, fire and parks are all underfunded. I describe a possible property tax reform in respose to the next question. We may have to ask philanthropists to step up to share the costs of maintaning high-profile parks, as with Central Park in New York.

Logically, we should adopt a vehicle miles traveled fee to replace declining gas tax revenue for streets, but it’s hard to see how to get the billions of dollars needed to fix streets that the city completely neglected for decades.

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 to not renew? Are there specific taxes or levies you would support creating? Why?

Although Preschool for All is a great idea, if the county does not start showing real progress in actually delivering preschool for all, that tax should be reconsidered. I have concerns about how both the homeless services and Portland Clean Energy Fund dollars have been used (or not used) but would not repeal either tax.

I have no proposal for a new tax but would support calling on the Legislature to ask the voters to reform Measure 50 – the property tax measure that ties the relative amount properties pay to their relative worth in 1996. The Oregonian called that a “tax break for gentrifiers.” Reform could address the severe inequities it causes, and raise a bit of money by having the people in drastically gentrified areas, like parts of inner Northeast Portland, some of whom pay hardly anything, pay something.

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Do you have any concerns with the changes coming to city elections and city governance? If so, what would you like to see change?

A major concern is whether we will get high-quality applicants for the position of city administrator. We will be asking someone to take a brand-new job in a brand-now government structure with an almost all-new council. I think the mayor and council members will need to be actively, personally engaged in recruiting top people to apply.

Another concern is that the current council, each of whom has four to seven staffers, has budgeted only one staffer apiece for the new council. I think Portlanders will expect councilors elected by district to provide lots of constituent service, which will be pretty hard to do with only one staffer apiece. I think candidate Elana Pirtle-Guiney has a good idea: Hire additional constituent service staff for each district, but they’d work for all three councilors collectively, so we’re not competing over who does the best constituent service.

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?

I see it as a last resort, after you have tried other things – like, “if you won’t go to shelter we will impound your stuff and you will need to pay a significant fee to recover it.” It’s unclear what resources the county would spend on jail and prosecutions.

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 can’t say yes, precisely because I can’t say how to pay for it. I would like to restore detectives to investigate property crimes, traffic officers to stem the carnage on the streets and add patrol officers (after seeing how many calls can be handled by increasing Portland Street Response).

Do you support putting the Clean Energy Fund measure back on the ballot? What, if any changes, would you support?

No – I would not support that. But PCEF needs to start rigorously evaluating which projects most effectively reduce emissions and help low-income people. Transportation is the biggest source of emissions and a big expense for low-income people, so projects like 82d Avenue Bus Rapid Transit should be a priority.

Which would you prioritize: Creation of more protected bike lanes and priority bus lanes or improved surfacing of existing degraded driving lanes?

Respectfully, the question falsely implies that we could repave all the streets – which will cost billions of dollars – by avoiding spending on bus and bike lanes, which are relatively very cheap. A high priority is, keep streets that are in decent shape in good repair, before repairs become prohibitively expensive.

Have the problems impacting downtown Portland received too much or too little attention from current city leaders? Why?

They deserve and have gotten plenty of attention, but Julia Brim-Edwards is right – leaders sometimes seem not to recognize that some “downtown” problems like fentanyl aren’t limited to downtown. A good sign: The Fire Bureau recently expanded its pilot program that links overdose victims to treatment to the east side.