The city of Portland is facing a major budget gap this year of more than $160 million. In order to address that, current mayor Keith Wilson has put forward a proposal that would cut more than 150 jobs.
The details of the plan were released by the city Monday night and there were some problems with the numbers.
Portland officials bungled the rollout of Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed budget late Monday afternoon by publicly releasing erroneous financial figures, a city spokesperson confirmed to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday morning.
“Late yesterday, we discovered a handful of unexpected glitches occurred,” said spokesperson Alison Perkins, explaining that the problem arose as staff transferred information from city budget software to a document released to the media.
This was made worse by the fact that this is the 2nd year in a row the budget coming out of the mayor's office has needed to be corrected. In any case, despite the proposed cuts, the budget is still $8.5 billion.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson's proposed $8.5 billion budget would cut 150 jobs and reduce funding for police, parks and homeless services.
It attempts to thread a narrow needle — protecting the programs Wilson prioritizes while closing a roughly $160 million budget deficit.
The proposal would cut some money from the police force but, perhaps having learned their lesson from the "defund the police" era, those cuts will not cut any actual police jobs.
Mayor Wilson said he will not cut police positions or close any fire stations, parks, or community centers. However, he is proposing cuts to areas like technology and a public safety support specialist program, among others.
As for Portland Fire and Rescue, no fire stations will be closed under his proposed budget, but there may be a reduction in engine replacements...
While no police officers are slated to be cut in the proposed budget, half of all Portland Police Bureau administrative roles are on the chopping block. There’s also a proposed 35% reduction in the victim services unit, which helps victims navigate the criminal justice system.
The fact that no police officers will be fired is good news but the plan still cuts 6% from the police budget.
For the Portland Police Bureau, Wilson proposed about $17 million in reductions, or about 6% of its budget...
The police bureau could see cuts to its budgets for overtime, "external materials and services," technology, vehicle fleet, the Public Safety Support Specialist Program, and administrative staffing.
"Cuts of this magnitude will have real and substantial impacts on our personnel, operations, and ability to deliver services at current levels," Chief Bob Day said in a statement after the proposed budget was released.
The Public Safety Support Specialist Program is made up of people who are not police officers who handle non-emergency calls, such as responding to car accidents. Cutting those jobs will result in police needing to spend more time on these low-priority issues.
So why is Portland facing these cuts? Part of it has to do with the Big Beautiful Bill.
“Portland is not alone in facing these forecasted funding challenges,” said City Economist Peter Hulseman. “Communities across the U.S. are seeing slower revenue growth and rising costs, and Portland’s forecast reflects similar trends.”
Hulseman points to the federal government as the leading cause of the grim financial outlook. Specifically, he writes that reductions to corporate taxes included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” have the “single biggest impact” on the city’s budget.
In all, the city expects a $20 million reduction in business taxes and about $8 million less in property taxes.
But the city has other serious problems which can't be blamed on the Trump administration. As in San Francisco, the demand for commercial office space has dropped and that means values have dropped and taxes based on those values have dropped. It's not clear that this new normal is ever likely to change.
A new economic outlook for Portland shows the city’s commercial real estate patterns have fundamentally shifted — and that returning to pre-pandemic, office-centered demand is no longer a realistic expectation. Instead, a “new normal” is taking shape, and Portland’s economic future depends on how well it can adapt...
The chamber’s 2026 State of Downtown and the Central City report shows office leasing in the city’s core dropped to one of its lowest levels on record last year. On average, about 252,000 square feet of office space was leased each quarter in 2025 — far below what was typical before 2020. At the same time, more than 10 million square feet of office space sat empty, the highest level ever recorded...
Among top 50 U.S. big metros, Portland Metro Chamber President and CEO Andrew Hoan said Portland ranks "either last in all the things you don't want to be last in, like employment or housing creation, or first in things that you don't want to be first in, like office vacancies and recovery in foot traffic, or in some cases, taxes."
"So, the big takeaway this year is that we are at the bottom amongst every single region in the nation," Hoan said.
It's true that most big cites are dealing with similar problems, but why is Portland at the bottom? Here I think you have to go back to the years of street battles led by Antifa groups against the federal government, against the former mayor, against capitalism, against anyone who is not a left-wing extremist.
Put it this way, if you are a big company looking for office space on the west coast, would you select Portland as a site to do business? I don't think so. Why make your company and your employees a target?
Of course Portland's problems were exacerbated by the fact that cut funds and demonized the police, leading to several years of spiking crime. That's one more reason to work from home.
All that to say, I think Portland is partly struggling because of it's own tolerance for left-wing extremism in the recent past. San Francisco and Seattle have tolerated a lot of that as well, but they have also made some efforts to come back from the brink. Former mayor Ted Wheeler did eventually learn his lesson but only after several years of coddling these lunatics. By that point the damage was already done.
