PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Portland’s biggest pro sports teams have penned a letter to City Council voicing their support for public safety funding in the city’s upcoming budget.

The mayor’s proposal adds $2 million to the Portland Police Bureau with the expectation that the bureau will add more officers to the street. The teams’ letter asks councilors to approve a budget without any cuts to a public safety system they say is already stretched thin.

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“Portland is at a crossroads, with the path we choose leading either to a prosperous recovery or a continuation of the negative economic pressures Portland families and businesses have felt since the pandemic,” it said.

Councilor Eric Zimmerman said the letter is exactly right.

“I think that there is this– this whisper campaign again, to bring back this idea of defunding public safety in Portland right now,” he said. “And I think we’ve got to be really stern that that era is over. That we are going to hold firm, that there should not be any cuts to public safety in this year’s mayor’s budget.”

He said when two big employers in a city speak up, you should listen.

“They are, in essence, kind of a canary, letting us know if there’s a problem,” Zimmerman said. “And they weathered that storm in previous years. And I believe them when they say they don’t want to go backwards.”

Councilor Angelita Morillo has supported amendments to move funding from the police bureau to the city’s parks department. She said moving one-time funding is not a cut, and the concerns in the teams’ letter come from misconceptions.

“Every single other bureau had to have at least an 8% cut,” she said. “And so what we’ve also seen is that the police bureau has 91 fully funded, vacant positions, and they’ve been funded for the past decade or so, and they have not been able to fill those positions. So this is not going to be cutting the number of officers on our streets.”

Morillo said moving that money would not change staffing. She said the bureau already has money for staffing and needs to recruit.

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After the Trail Blazers announced last week they are up for sale, Portland fans shared fears that a new owner could come in and move the team. Zimmerman said he has those same fears.

“Why would we want to contribute to that equation by not being a city that commits to the basic core services that you can get in almost any other city in America, who’s going to be competing,” he said. “So why give them a reason to say Portland’s not the place?”

While she supports moving funding from police to parks, Murillo said she is fighting tooth and nail to keep the Blazers in Portland.

“I also think that these teams are going to be able to stay and flourish in a city that has a lot of driving infrastructure, and that includes parks,” she said. “The Portland Insight survey showed that parks are actually the number one reason that people choose to live in Portland, and a lot of our amendments that we’re looking at are going to try to save our parks.”

Morillo said she is happy to meet with anyone from the teams to go over concerns raised in the letter.

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