The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners meets weekly to provide information, transparency and accountability to the Board and to the public on the County’s work, spending and policy development.
There is no Thursday, Jan. 25 Board meeting. The meeting was not scheduled due to a long-planned Board presentation needing to be postponed, and moving replacement presentations into the slot proved impossible due to staff illness and scheduling conflicts. The Board did meet as scheduled Tuesday for a Board briefing.
Every Friday, the Multnomah County Board Clerk publicly posts whether there is a Board meeting or a briefing the following week. The Clerk also emails more than 200 stakeholders and media, and any constituent who might have signed up already to deliver testimoy. The Clerk also posts an agenda of meetings by date for the week with a (meeting/no meeting) notice.
While the Board's goal is to meet regularly, it has always been the case that there are fluctuations in our schedule. When looking back over the past three years, the County has found roughly the same number of scheduled opportunities for our board to meet: 36 briefings and 41 meetings in 2021 (when we were almost entirely virtual, making cancellations less likely), 29 briefings and 44 meetings in 2022 and 25 briefings and 41 meetings in 2023. There were years with 83 total meetings, other years as high as 112 and many falling in the middle, similar to this past year’s 92. Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said is a priority for office that we continue to maintain a similar number of meetings this year and in years to come.
“As Chair, I am very mindful of conducting Board business effectively and in public. My administration brought new, collaborative budget worksessions to this board as we discussed important budget decisions which added additional meetings to our schedule. Such worksessions weren’t previously held at the county. And I’m proud to have convened two joint City of Portland-Multnomah County meetings, which hadn’t taken place in years, and demonstrated my commitment to collaboration, transparency, and public engagement.”