novick and hales.JPG

Commissioner Steve Novick, right, with Mayor Charlie Hales speaking about Portland's need for street repairs.

(Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)

The Portland City Council on Wednesday quietly killed off a 26-year-old financial policy meant to provide millions of dollars a year for road repairs.

Tucked inside more than 70 pages of documents filled with policy changes, the City Council voted 4-0 to amend a passage about city financial policies by deleting reference to a transportation funding plan from 1988.

The now-deleted policy set a "target" that 28 percent of the city's utility license fee collections would be earmarked for transportation.

This fiscal year, the city's utility license fees are projected at $82 million. If the city met its funding target, the Portland Bureau of Transportation would receive $23 million from the general fund.

This year, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick have been making the case to establish a new street fee to pay for road repairs. The fee, under the latest public iteration, would raise $53 million annually by the third year via fees to homeowners and businesses.

After Wednesday's vote, Novick said he was "thoroughly embarrassed" he didn't notice the deletion or call attention to it -- because he would have used it to make a political point about funding.

In 26 years, the city has allocated 28 percent of utility license fees to transportation just once -- in 1988. The actual amount diverted for transportation dropped from more than $5 million to nothing in 1994 -- where it stayed until the 2010 fiscal year.

Today, the Bureau of Transportation receives about $9.9 million from the general fund, with $2 million of that from the fees.

Dana Haynes, a spokesman for Hales, said he didn't know why the transportation funding policy was removed from the city's financial management plans but would look into it.

Part of the reason the City Council approved the policy 26 years ago: to deal with road repairs.

According to the 1988 City Council resolution, Portland had a backlog of 476 miles of streets that would cost $37 million to repair and repave.

Here's part of what the now-defunct policy called for:

"The General Fund portion of the proposed Transportation budget will be reviewed each year along with other General Fund program needs. This policy provides a target amount of 28% of projected utility license fee receipts for the program to be submitted by Transportation. However, depending on the financial condition of the General Fund and the other service needs of the City, the Council might adjust the actual transfer in any given year."

City staff and members of the City Council didn't address the deletion of the policy on Wednesday.

Under a section about "other financial policies that guide City operations," the city deleted a sentence that said those other policies were recognized as part of Portland's comprehensive management policies.

Included in the list of policies that got axed: the 1988 Transportation Fund Policy.

-- Brad Schmidt