Joel Corcoran — Candidate for City Council, District 3
Endorsed 350PDX CJ platform? Yes
Will you support PCEF? Yes
Candidate statement:
Portland does not need another aspirational climate plan. For decades, we have been a leading model for what cities can do to combat global warming and prepare for climate change. We don’t lack aspirations, but City Council currently lacks the capacity to change those aspirations into good policy.
We need a City Council that can work with the Mayor and City Administrators to develop climate policies that can actually be implemented. And we need a City Council that can create and follow a robust strategic plan to identify the capacity the City has for implementing new climate policies–and commit to gathering and dedicating the resources necessary for that implementation.
Climate resilience is neither performance art nor a side project; it is core infrastructure planning, budgeting, emergency management, housing, transportation, and public health.
I commit to strongly supporting these initiatives if elected to Portland City Council
- Climate accountability in bureau budgets
- Sidewalks, crossings, and safe routes
- Heat mitigation and cooling access
- PCEF transparency and implementation discipline
- Building efficiency with tenant protection
- Tree canopy and shade equity
- Resilience hubs and backup power
- Reducing the risks of a CEI Hub disaster
Additionally, I am planning to lead four particular initiatives personally:
1. Create a climate implementation dashboard tied to bureau performance. Require quarterly public reporting on climate resilience, heat preparedness, tree canopy, building efficiency, emergency readiness, and PCEF implementation. Without generating any more reports. We don’t need another report for sake of reporting, we need a dashboard that collects and presents all of the available data and information. We need a management tool that shows where the City is falling behind and an informational tool geared toward public engagement and transparency.
2. Support a stronger Chief Sustainability Office (but define its authority carefully). The CSO should coordinate across bureaus, flag implementation failures, and help resolve conflicts among plans, budgets, and operations. But the CSO should focus on coordination, not creation.
3. Require climate-risk review in major capital decisions. Any major infrastructure, transportation, housing, or public facility investment should disclose whether it improves or worsens heat, flood, seismic, emissions, and emergency-resilience outcomes. Much of this information is already included in the standard environmental reviews, but it’s not integrated or presented in a publicly available manner.
4. Use the budget process to separate real implementation from symbolic policy. Ask each relevant bureau: What climate-resilience obligations do you already have? Are those obligations fully funded? Or only partially funded if at all? And what can City Council–and the administration–fully commit to accomplishing in the next 24 months together? That data and information will help City Council develop a set of budget priorities and guide some incredibly tough decisions that Council will be facing for the immediate future. The best policies only matter if supported by good budgets, great staffing, procurement, and bureau accountability.
