Meet Nat West, candidate for Portland City Council District 2

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Name: Nat West

Neighborhood: Woodlawn

Renter/homeowner: Homeowner

Education: Murray High School (Charlottesville VA), some college South Puget Sound Community College (Olympia WA)

Occupation: Currently unemployed, former owner Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider, TriMet bus driver, software engineer

How long have you lived in the city of Portland: 22 years, since 2002

Age: 47 years old until June 2025

Pronouns: he/him

For each of the following questions, please limit your answer to no more than 150 words. If you run over, we will at our discretion cut your response to meet that limit.

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.

1. Permitting and Development Bureau: I spent three years in “permit hell,” negotiating a disagreement between BES and Water and I’m not alone. Developers cite Portland as among the worst cities in the country to build, driving up costs. Working with this new Bureau, I’ll propose shortening permit approval timelines. To gain support, I’ll work with Councilors endorsed by Portland:Neighbors Welcome and HOME PAC and present data from other cities that have successfully reformed permitting processes.

2. Police Overtime and Moonlighting: Due to low staffing, officers often work excessive overtime in addition to moonlighting. This contributes to officer burnout and results in inefficient use of tax dollars. I will push to cap overtime hours for officers and end moonlighting in external security roles. I’ll engage with other public safety reform advocates including the police unions, and presenting evidence that community policing strategies improve public safety and reduce crime rates.

What previous accomplishments show that you are the best pick in your district?

Please be specific.

For 20 years, I have lived, run a business, and raised a child in District 2. Because of this time and investment, people know me here. I’ve taken public stances on issues and supported grassroots and BIPOC-led organizations with $280,000 in donations through my company, Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider. Because of my reputation, I’ve received endorsements from across the spectrum including progressive groups, labor unions, and business owners. I donated my time and company resources to help minority-owned businesses get off the ground.

After Reverend Nat’s, I became a TriMet bus driver where I renewed my passion for service. I drove 29 different routes all over the city. I saw first-hand the effects of our deferred street maintenance, the danger of our street designs, and the importance of helping our homeless neighbors. My favorite route was line 4 from St Johns through New Columbia, Mississippi, and the Rose Quarter.

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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?

We need housing of all types: affordable housing financed with government funds, public housing owned by governments, and market-rate housing built by developers who see Portland as a desirable place to live. Portland ranks near the bottom of similarly-sized metropolitan areas in new housing starts. I will work with city planners and housing developers to right-size our System Development Charges, add new TIF areas where we will get the biggest bang for our buck, streamline the permitting process through strong oversight and constant adjustments to the new combined Permitting Bureau, and aggressively update zoning laws to respect the intention of the Urban Growth Boundary and move Portlanders away from long commutes and car-centric lifestyles.

While I will always work on policies to create affordable multi-family rental homes, my work will also champion Community Land Trust arrangements to create opportunities for affordable homeownership, especially on “missing middle” type of housing projects.

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?

PBOT is the largest essential service provider in our budget. But only 2% of PBOT’s revenue comes directly from taxes paid into the city’s General Fund, so I will find other ways to raise transportation-specific revenue. I’ll work on weight-based VMT fees and heavily lobby Salem to ensure our share of the State Highway Fund reflects the needs of Portlanders.

Other essential services I’ll work to fund are our alternative responders. By focusing our budgets on CHAT and PSR, we can increase our service levels of our high-acuity responders PPB and PF&R without increasing their budgets. Calls serviced by PPB and PF&R are extremely expensive compared to other options.

My ultimate goal on this topic is to work on business growth, which is the “cause” side of our budget crunch. I’ll work on policies to encourage businesses to open and stay in Portland.

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?

I hear from Portlanders of all incomes that the problem isn’t just the high taxes, it’s the lack of results. So while I will focus my efforts on wise spending and measurable results, I will not oppose changes to the Supportive Housing Services tax. The persistent high number of people living on the streets, combined with the general incompetence of the Joint Office relative to our neighbors in Washington and Clackamas counties, makes a temporary adjustment to the SHS tax a reasonable idea.

Preschool for All needs more time to roll out. You cannot create neighborhood businesses to meet all the demand in the timeline allowed so far.

I would not appreciably change PCEF other than add an additional level of requirements to City Bureaus submitting projects. I will work to prevent future budgets from intentionally leaving gaps to be filled by PCEF.

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

While I have concerns, voters approved these changes, so it is our duty to implement them. I’m already in conversation with other candidates about my areas of concern: How will we set up and manage the committee structure? I’ll work to ensure that each district has representation in committees and that Councilors with expertise in a topic can work in the right committee.

How will we use the committee structure to create partnerships with the Bureaus? I’m excited to form deeper relationships between Council and Bureaus, that won’t require starting from scratch whenever the Commissioner in Charge changes. How will the first new Mayor establish norms? Will they be a weak Mayor focused on vision and culture, or will they be very hands-on in daily oversight of the City Administrator and DCAs? Voters clearly wanted a Mayor without veto power, so there is an inherent request for less power there.

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For the five remaining questions, please 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?

Momentarily disregarding the moral issue, jailing the homeless is the absolute worst way to spend our tax dollars, especially in our current financial crisis. Every other option, no matter how nice, is still cheaper. We are failing taxpayers if we resort to jailing people.

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 am in favor of spending our tax dollars on quick responses to true emergencies, not increased militarization. Everyday Portlanders want well-trained officers to arrive quickly. We are understaffed in patrol officers, but the PPB budget has grown for the last few years without a commensurate increase in sworn officers.

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

The Fund is still too new to overhaul it. $250 million in projects is going out the door next week.

That represents a big step forward in getting money into the community. The Auditor’s report was insightful and I will encourage the Auditor to revisit the program in the future.

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

Thankfully this binary choice isn’t a part of our process. I’ll work to increase TriMet’s financial participation in PBOT projects for more bus lanes, and propose adjustments to our budget process to work down our maintenance backlog city-wide. Last year’s DHM community polling indicates that Portlanders favor maintenance first.

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

Downtown is simultaneously one of four districts and our largest commercial neighborhood so Portland’s future must include a thriving downtown. I look forward to all Councilors working towards the success of downtown while also ensuring that the rest of the City can carry us forward.