Watch the City Council meeting above. (The remand discussion is 50:48 to 2:43:40. The extension of current large grants is 3:52:20 to 4:01:40.) 

Portland City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved the extension of current Portland Children’s Levy large grants from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, with up to a 25% reduction from the current year funding due to declining property tax revenue.  

More than 70 programs will continue to receive funding for services such as after school science and art programs, youth mentoring, school food pantries, home visiting programs for parents and more. 

The decision came on the heels of a 7-5 vote to have the PCL Allocation Committee reconsider its decisions in the large grant funding round.  

City Council’s decisions mean that the 94 large grants approved by the Allocation Committee on April 23 will not go into effect July 1, 2025 as planned. The soonest a new round of grants from the recent funding process could start would be July 1, 2026. 

The 7 city councilors who voted for the remand expressed concerns with the funding process.  

The remand powers of City Council do not include choosing specific grants to fund. The authority to remand by funding category means that City Council may send decisions for an entire program area back to PCL’s Allocation Committee if the decisions were not made based on the application scores and other community conditions to foster a balanced and integrated citywide system of services. City Council does not have the authority to substitute its own decisions for the decisions made by the Allocation Committee.  

In this case, City Council chose to remand funding decisions across all 6 PCL program areas. PCL staff is working to get a better understanding of next steps and will share additional information as soon as possible. 

More about the 2024-25 large grant funding round 

The 94 grants approved by the Allocation Committee in April 2025 were the result of more than two years of equity-centered community engagement and input on needs and priorities. More than 750 community members and service providers provided input in more than 25 languages. PCL’s Community Council helped design the community engagement process, shape the application and scoring criteria, and create funding recommendations.   

By the numbers 

  • $3 in requests for every $1 in available funding
  • 168 applications received in the 2024-25 funding round, a 45% increase compared to the last funding round in 2019-20 
  • More than 200% increase in the number of applicants that are not currently funded by PCL compared to the last funding round  
  • 91 trained community volunteers scored every application, with 4 reviewers per application
  • 21% drop in revenues from the current fiscal year to 2025-26 due in part to declining property tax revenue