Portland’s parks system is built on an unsustainable funding model that threatens the future of the city’s beloved outdoor spaces, according to a city audit released Wednesday.

The report, dropping weeks before Portland voters consider renewing a parks funding levy, highlights how political influence and scant financial planning have kept the city building new parks it can’t afford while neglecting older parks.

“While Portlanders may enjoy new splash pads or [park] shelters today, future residents may inherit unsafe or unusable assets the City cannot afford to maintain or remove,” reads the audit, authored by the city’s elected Auditor Simone Rede.

Few of these findings are new.

According to the Parks Bureau, nearly 90% of all of its facilities are in poor condition. The bureau estimates that it would cost between $500 to $800 million to restore all park facilities to a “reasonable level” of wear and tear.

But the city says that declining revenue and taxes have kept the bureau from requesting enough money to begin chipping away at that massive maintenance backlog. This has left a mark: In 2022, the city closed the beloved Columbia Pool due to structural hazards, and a year later, the Parks Bureau removed crumbling lamp posts in some parks without an immediate plan to replace them.

Meanwhile, politicians have directed the Parks Bureau to create new parks and expand others. That’s financially possible because of the bureau’s reliance on system development charges, or SDCs. These fees paid to the city by developers go straight to the Parks Bureau’s budget, but can only be used on new projects – not maintenance.

They’re the reason why the city was able to open East Portland’s new Parklane Park in May with $30 million in SDCs and expand Mill Park, another eastside property, with $13 million SDCs. in

The audit highlights four new park projects reliant on SDCs that have no long-term funding, including the two eastside parks, the new Old Town skatepark ($15 million in SDCs) and a long-simmering plan to build a park by a new development in Slabtown (the Parks Bureau was unable to locate the SDC costs for this projects by OPB’s deadline). The audit also pointed to a project led by former Mayor Ted Wheeler to turn a street along Laurelhurst Park that had attracted homeless campers into new pickleball courts and a skatepark. This project was funded with $500,000 directly from Wheeler’s budget, but came without a maintenance funding plan.

According to the audit, the parks bureau has not identified the estimated $5 million in annual maintenance needed for those five projects.

The audit states this funding pattern was enabled by Portland’s old commission form of government, where city commissioners oversaw bureaus. Under that model, which was replaced this year, commissioners could easily select pet projects to advance over others.

“This meant that new investment decisions were susceptible to political pressure rather than based on systemwide needs,” the audit reads.

The audit notes that any recent decision-making about parks could have benefited from a larger strategic plan, which identifies which spending on parks should be prioritized over others. The audit found that the Parks Bureau does not have any such plan.

“Ideally, agencies prepare such a plan before they encounter funding crises,” the audit reads.

The audit places some blame on parks leaders, which Councilor Steve Novick says is misplaced.

“It’s totally unfair, the auditor knows better,” Novick told OPB. “Parks officials are not to blame, prior city councilors are. Staff are the ones who warned us of these problems long ago. But previous city councils decided to let old parks deteriorate.”

Novick, who previously sat on city council, said it’s councilors’ responsibility to decide how to find new funding to keep aging Parks Bureau facilities open, or to decide which ones should close.

“It’s the responsible thing to do,” he said.

Novick has long been critical of the city’s over-reliance on SDCs to fund parks. He said he’s pleased by Mayor Keith Wilson and Gov. Tina Kotek’s decision to temporarily waive SDCs on housing developers – both as a way to incentivize new housing and to keep the Parks Bureau’s budget in check.

“Less SDC money means we aren’t going to build new parks for a while,” Novick said. “We need to stop building new parks until we figure out how we’re going to pay for them.”

City leaders have tried to address the Parks Bureau’s flagging finances in the past. In 2014, voters renewed a 20-year, $68 million parks bond to cover park maintenance. Those funds have since dried up.

In 2020, voters approved the city’s five-year Parks Levy, a property tax that goes toward park programs and services. But that fund was not intended to pay for maintenance, and instead has been largely used to pay for recreational classes, tree planting, trash clean up and to subsidize parks programs for low-income households.

Next month, Portlanders will vote on whether to renew the parks levy at a higher rate to meet the bureau’s funding needs. The current levy taxes property owners $0.80 per $1,000 assessed value annually. The ballot measure increases the taxing rate from $0.80 to $1.40.

That means the median homeowner would pay about $310 a year and the median commercial property owner would pay around $440 annually. If approved, the levy would raise an estimated $84 million in the first year.

The new measure would also make a dent in the maintenance backlog by ensuring that roughly 2% of levy revenue goes to maintenance costs. That would raise about $2 million annually.

The levy’s importance has grown. It now accounts for much of the Parks Bureau’s budget.

If the November measure fails, the bureau will face a $90 million budget shortfall and be forced to lay off about half of its staff.

Auditors say that the city hasn’t done enough to show voters that it’s exhausting all other cost-saving measures before increasing taxes.

“Without Parks providing this information, the public won’t know to what extent new revenues are necessary,” it reads.

In all, the audit recommends that the city create an overarching financial plan for its parks, evaluate which parks are in most need of funding and prioritize their funding, and go further to communicate what cost-saving actions the bureau is taking to the public.

Parks Bureau leadership and the City Administrator’s office, which oversees all bureaus under the new government model, agreed with all recommendations and pledged to follow them. City Administrator Michael Jordan said the new government is a reason for optimism.

“Looking forward, I see opportunities for a clear, unified, system-wide level of service implementation, and funding plans to support those levels of service for our City’s assets,” Jordan wrote.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/15/portland-parks-bureau-lacks-stable-funding-plan-audit-finds/