City of Portland Plans Vote to Dissolve Unreinforced Masonry Policy Committee Amid Pandemic Emergency

The City of Portland plans to disband its URM committee at the council meeting on Wednesday, September 30th.

Joanna Papaefthimiou, the City of Portland Planning, Policy, and Community Programs Manager, emailed the following announcement on Friday: 

Dear URM Owners, Advocates, and Interested Parties:

Thank you for your patience awaiting an update on our work.  After much deliberation, the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM) and the Bureau of Development Services (BDS) have agreed to dissolve the URM work group.  A resolution to accomplish this will be on the City Council agenda next week, on Wednesday, September 30.  

The ongoing pandemic emergency, the historic racial justice movement, wildfires, and the ongoing protests have forced us to refocus our resources.  It is now clear that PBEM must concentrate on pandemic response and recovery at least through 2021. Our bureau also has a role to play in the transformation of the City’s public safety systems.  Our colleagues at BDS are experiencing transformation of another kind, as they develop new systems to meet the needs of property owners and builders in a virtual format.  Neither bureau has capacity to lead a policy-making effort about unreinforced masonry in the coming year.  In the current economic climate, funds for seismic retrofits will likely be scarce for some time. 

As the current emergency makes clear, historically underserved communities continue to be disproportionately impacted by disasters of all kinds.  Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color are highly impacted by the current pandemic.  Many community leaders must now concentrate on the immediate well-being of their community, and on work for social justice and police reform.  

For all these reasons, we cannot proceed with the URM work.  The work group will be dissolved, and there are no plans to reconvene. Since the group only met twice prior to the pandemic and no decisions were agreed upon, there will be no final report. 

Earthquakes continue to pose a significant threat to the safety of Portlanders.  In the longer-term, PBEM will continue to work in partnership with the BDS and with other bureaus and public-sector partners to advance seismic safety in the built environment, including in publicly-owned infrastructure and in support for voluntary retrofits.  When we are able to focus on community recovery, seismic resilience will be a part of that strategy.  

In response, Angie Even, spokesperson for the URM group Save Portland Buildings, had this to say: 

We appreciate the City's acknowledgement of the pressing pandemic and economic issues currently facing our city. We hope the City will now pivot and invest in a holistic educational campaign that prepares the entire city facing a number of resilience challenges which include Portland's fuel tanks, fuel lines and water systems. Portland is far behind on an early warning system. That system would be an important accomplishment for Portland.