LETTER: Portland must look for root causes behind slow, confusing permit process

Published 9:26 am Thursday, October 24, 2024

When we ring in 2025, our new council will have many complex issues to unravel: homelessness, climate, a fiscal hole, and years of ineffective government.

One legacy of the commission form of government is a stack of overly prescriptive development codes. As someone who has worked for the city for over 10 years and in permitting for two, I can tell you no amount of moving around the boxes on an organization chart is going to fix our permitting system without addressing the codes themselves. Over the years, each bureau and commissioner has added or changed “their” code without considering the whole picture.

These codes have not evolved together.

Title 11, the tree code, was last changed in March 2023; Title 21 for water, a year earlier in June in 2022; and Title 25, the plumbing code, just this year in February 2024.

In 2025, with a City Council focused on policy and not directly managing bureaus, we have the opportunity to look at the whole collection of development codes in a coordinated way. Only City Council can approve the needed changes to simplify permitting at its root. Many candidates are eager to reform permitting.

I am confident we’ll have at least seven votes to do this work quickly, without spending millions of dollars. This will improve our investment climate for housing and allow us to move on to solving the next policy problem.

Sarah Silkie

City Council District 4 candidate