Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman called month-long water shut-offs "child abuse" when they occur within homes with children, sparking a recent back and forth with Water Commissioner Nick Fish.

Saltzman, a former water commissioner, made the comments in a Jan. 3 city council meeting at which officials from the city auditor's office presented a report that the Portland Water Bureau's financial assistance program for water bills failed to serve the renters who need it most.

The bureau shuts off the water to those who fail to pay their bills until they make delinquent payments. The audit revealed that 8 percent of water shut-offs in 2015 remained in place for more than one month.

"Having no water is a form of child abuse and neglect," Saltzman said at the meeting.

He recalled a time when he was water bureau commissioner that his office called Oregon's Department of Human Services child abuse hotline to report the parents in a home where the water had been shut off for an extended period.

Fish pledged to bring more information about the Water Bureau's financial assistance program to a February work session and explained how hard it to provide a water bill discount program for low-income families in apartment complexes, where there is typically only one water meter for the entire building.

He said water bureau officials will explain in February how they plan to use an existing program to provide financial help to renters and to get more people enrolled in their program for low-earners.

Fish also made several subtle jabs about how "prior commissioners-in-charge" failed to find a solution and noted that many of the homes where water remained shut-off for a month or more were "zombie homes" with no occupants.

When Saltzman pressed Fish on whether that was merely anecdotal and asked water officials to provide data on the homes with long-term shut-offs, Fish told him to make those requests in an email.

Saltzman obliged. In a Jan. 5 email to Fish obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, Saltzman asked that Water Bureau officials coordinate with the Oregon Department of Human Services' child services division to create a process whereby case managers visit homes where water has been shut off for 30 days or more to determine whether a child is living there. He requested that the city's Water Bureau and Revenue Bureau develop an agreement where data about the age and economic capacity of residents is shared and considered in cases when a shut off is imminent.

"We must work to make sure the most vulnerable in our community are not being placed in dangerous situations, and I know you'd agree that a child living in a home without water for over a month is a dangerous situation," Saltzman wrote.

Fish on Thursday responded to Saltzman's email, saying he is "happy to discuss these ideas in the work session next month." He said his staff would follow up with Saltzman's to learn what they did when they had the bureau.

"We appreciate Commissioner Saltzman's questions and look forward to discussing them further in the council work session next month," Fish's chief-of-staff, Sonia Schmanski told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a statement Thursday. "We're very excited to continue the conversation about bringing better help to more people."

--Jessica Floum

jfloum@oregonian.com

503-221-8306

@cityhallwatch

@jfloum