Portland city councilors this week are meeting to discuss amendments to Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed budget. The city is working to address a $160 million budget gap, and the proposed amendments seek to hold onto union jobs and instead cut management jobs, and stop Wilson’s proposal to divert Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) dollars to other city programs. An amendment to move $10 million from a fledgling police oversight board to the Portland Police Bureau and Portland Fire and Rescue failed in a 6-6 tie on Tuesday, marking the end of one of the more contentious proposals. Tuesday covered public safety amendments, and Wednesday will focus on governance, shelter, parks, and executive offices.
Check back here periodically for highlights from Wednesday’s meeting. It’s kicking off with changes to the Prosper Portland budget, carrying over from Tuesday. The Mercury will pick up with live updates around 11.
Wednesday AM: PCEF/PEMO/Trees
Avalos 1: Reverse PCEF Realignments for Impact Reduction Program and Public Environment Management Office (PEMO)
Councilor Candace Avalos’ amendment seeks to reverse Mayor Wilson’s proposal to reallocate more than $5 million from the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) to the Public Environment Management Office (PEMO) and the Impact Reduction Program. Wilson wanted the funding to be used for programs including sidewalk cleaning, lighting, trash and biohazard cleanup, and camp removal, among other things. But Avalos says she thinks PCEF resources should be preserved for climate work.
“This amendment is not saying sidewalk cleaning, trash cleanup, lighting, or public environment management are unimportant, those services absolutely matter…but this are core city responsibilities,” Avalos said. “They are not what voters created PCEF to fund. PCEF was created through a hard-fought community campaign rooted in climate justice, environmental justice, workforce development, and long-term climate resilience investments, particularly for frontline communities already disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis.”
Avalos’ amendment is in tension with an amendment proposed by Councilor Steve Novick (Novick 1), which also seeks to preserve the PCEF funding. But Novick’s amendment suggests replacing the funding to PEMO through general fund dollars currently allocated to tree maintenance programs at Portland Parks & Recreation. The Council’s debate over these amendments reflects broader disagreement over PEMO, which was created by former Mayor Ted Wheeler to “improve cleanup of the city.”
Councilor Eric Zimmerman lambasted his fellow councilors for the suggestion that PEMO’s work isn’t in line with the city’s environmental needs. He said camp cleanup and trash removal is “environmental more than a homeless response,” because “free and open camping” results in trash making its way into the city’s bioswales and watersheds.
In response, Councilor Angelita Morillo said the kind of garbage cleanup PEMO is doing is not “garbage pickup along the Willamette River”—it’s tangential to campsite sweeps. While PEMO may not directly sweep camps, the office has coordinated with business owners and neighborhood associations to arrange campsite removal.
Avalos 1 failed in a 6-6 tie. Novick 1 also failed in a 6-6 tie.
Koyama Lane 2: Urban Forestry and Tree Permitting Restoration
District 3 Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane brought an amendment to add $3.2 million to restore Wilson’s proposed reduction to Urban Forestry programs, specifically cutting enforcement and permitting staff. Koyama Lane says her amendment would restore 14 Urban Forestry positions. The funding would come from Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) contingency funds held by PCEF.
Koyama Lane said cuts to tree permitting staff “can no longer be considered trimming around the edges.”
“This is really gutting this program and undermining our ability to protect and expand Portland’s tree canopy,” Koyama Lane said. “At the very same moment where our body has made major climate commitments to our community, we’re seeing that these cuts have already been having real impacts.”
District 4 Councilor Eric Zimmerman brought a similar amendment (Zimmerman 4) which he says would more broadly support tree planting rather than enforcement of the city’s tree code. Zimmerman’s proposal would add nearly $1.6 million from PCEF reserves and transfer it to Portland Permitting and Development (PP&D). It would pay for six full time positions within the tree permitting division, which Zimmerman said would encourage tree planting rather than enforcement.
“I value more deeply the planting of new trees, the care and feeding of new trees, and expansion of the canopy more than I care about the goon squad of the former Urban Forestry [program] going out and telling people you can or can’t cut your trees,” Zimmerman said. Zimmerman believes the Urban Forestry program, previously housed in Portland Parks & Rec but now largely in Portland Permitting & Development, has served as an unnecessarily harsh enforcement service.
Koyama Lane pointed out that “protecting our tree canopy is not just about planting new trees, it also is really about present preventing the loss of large mature trees that we already have.”
“New trees are very important, but they really take decades to provide the same environmental benefits as existing canopy. Mature trees delivers way more shade,” Koyama Lane said. “The large trees [collect stormwater], store carbon, cool, and give neighborhood character way more than a newly-planted smaller tree.”
District 4 Councilor Mitch Green echoed Koyama Lane’s sentiments, saying “the cost of losing mature trees…has a compounding cost over time, and it takes really large investment…and a long period of time…to make that up.”
Green also said he takes issue with some of his colleagues’ concerns about spending PCEF contingency funds on this program, considering the city is currently weighing spending $75 million in PCEF funds to renovate the Moda Center.
“I need to ground us that we’re simultaneously talking about spending $75 million on a project that’s not even in [PCEF’s Climate Investment Plan], that has unverified and tenuous carbon abatement benefits,” Green said.
Koyama Lane 2 was approved 8-4. Zimmerman 4 is no longer on the table.
Wednesday PM: Governance, Privacy, Shelter
Novick-Morillo 1: City Data Privacy Office Realignment
District 3 Councilors Steve Novick and Angelita Morillo teamed up on an amendment to realign positions to help create a data and privacy office within the city. The City Council unanimously passed an ordinance in February to create the office, which expands data privacy protections for Portlanders, particularly in the face of AI surveillance technology. This amendment would move a manager position from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to head the new office, and bring over two other staff members as well. The office has been slow to build up, but the ordinance went into effect in early March.
District 2 Councilors Dan Ryan and Elana Pirtle-Guiney asked Tracy Warren, the deputy city administrator for city operations, if the budget moves represented the next step in the process to creating the office.
“This does include the foundation level of support that’s needed to get that office started,” Warren said. “I think it will be up to city leaders to determine if there’s an opportunity to do that work even better after office is developed.”
Council Vice President Olivia Clark asked Warren what was at risk if councilors did not pass the amendment. Warren hesitated, but said the office would add onto the city’s existent data privacy protections. Clark asked Elyse Rosenberg, the city’s chief information officer, how the office interacts with the city’s implementations of AI.
“The better control we have as a city, the better we can have some assurance around what information is shared through AI,” Rosenberg said.
The amendment passed unanimously, 12-0.
Kanal 1: Restorative Housing for North and Northeast Portlanders
District 2 Councilor Sameer Kanal has proposed an amendment to move $2.5 million in business license taxes to fund affordable housing projects in North Portland’s Albina neighborhood, where Black Portlanders have been repeatedly displaced through gentrification projects. The money would go to the Portland Housing Bureau (PHB) to fund $1 million for the Williams and Russell project and $1.5 million for a Self Enhancement, Inc (SEI) homeownership development project. The Council has been trying—to no avail— to find ways to fund these projects for a while, including through the use of $21 million in unspent housing funds earlier this year.
Chief Financial Officer Jonas Biery said the move from the business tax fund could deplete the city’s contingency funding, which may lower the city’s credit rating.
“I fought really hard for these funds just a few weeks ago,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “These are projects that I very much support.”
Pirtle-Guiney added that she cares deeply about the projects, which are led by Portland’s Black community to address generational harms caused by the city. She said the risk of affecting the city’s credit rating gave her pause.
“It’s starting to feel like we are drunken sailors who found the reserve stash of rum,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “Except instead of rum, it’s a reserve stash of dollars.”
A tense discussion commenced after Biery said the top threat the city faces for its credit rating going down is the lowering of contingency funds. Green noted that Wilson’s proposed budget draws down roughly $44 million in contingency funds, and the city is making deals to draw down taxpayer PCEF funds to the tune of roughly $75 million for Moda Center upgrades.
“Tina Kotek came here in front of the Moda Center and said ‘Council better quit playing politics and just pass this deal’—presumably with that money, in the next couple of months,” Green said. “Ok, so, if we’ve got that money to legislate for that purpose in the next couple of months, why are we shy about $2.5 million for these two projects in the northeast part of town.”
Kanal said other amendments came in after he submitted his amendment, but that amendment would fund the projects through the use of a revolving loan fund for the city’s social housing projects. Either way, the projects meant to serve displaced Black Portlanders hang in the balance.
“Are we going to use these people as a political football?” Kanal said. “Are we going to do, once again, what has been done for generations with people in North Portland?”
Kanal temporarily withdrew his amendment after a brief recess, but councilors returned for discussion after addressing a proposed amendment from Morillo, Green, and Novick (below).
After they returned, Kanal amended the amendment to fund the same projects but use a housing bureau tax instead of the previous proposal to use business license taxes. That amendment, and the underlying amendment to fund the project immediately, failed with a 6-5 vote with one absence. The meeting reached a chaotic period after District 1 Councilor Loretta Smith—who has long been working to fund those specific projects—passionately spoke out of order, leading to a council recess to cool their heads. You may just need to watch this one.
Morillo-Green-Novick 1:
District 4 Councilor Mitch Green joined Morillo and Novick on an amendment to pause the city’s “core realignment,” an ongoing project to reduce the city’s financial footprint by 20% and change staffing models. This amendment would pause the realignment and backfill 46 non-manager positions in parks, transportation, sewers, and water that would be cut in Wilson’s proposal. The pause would cost $8 million, according to the amendment text, but would be offset by using contingency funds from multiple pots: the Business License Tax ($3.2 million), Bureau of Transportation ($1.8 million), Parks ($339,000), Bureau of Environmental Services ($1.07 million), and the Water Bureau ($1.5 million).
The intent of the amendment, outlined in a budget note, gives City Administrator Raymond Lee 45 days to disclose classification details for each of the 46 positions and report to council periodically. Some city employees are concerned that the majority of positions proposed to be cut are union jobs, under the City of Portland Professional Workers Union (CPPW).
Novick, a cosponsor of the amendment, said early in the discussion that he should not have signed onto it without talking to the city’s administrative branch. He said since Tuesday’s deliberations, the Council has dug into the business license tax reserves for other purposes, and after conversations with the city’s operations and budget offices, he was concerned about the impacts of a full pause. Instead, Novick said, he wanted to limit the pause and spend a day between now and when the final budget is adopted (June 30) to talk with unions about how the cuts impact staff and management.
“I realize that I’m horribly disappointing some of our union colleagues by talking about putting a pause on a pause, but that is where I’ve wound up at the moment,” Novick said.
Wilson said the core realignment efforts began before he was mayor and before councilors held their positions. He said inheriting a $130 million deficit last year and a $160 million deficit this year has created challenges, and the local government is in year one of a five-year plan to stabilize its budget.
“This process didn’t happen overnight,” Wilson said.
He said he was concerned with the amendment because it pinned coworker against coworker.
“Managers are as important as any staff member, whether represented or not,” Wilson said. “When we unfairly pit each other against—all of us are losers. No one wins in that regard.”
Kari Koch, CPPW president, testified to the Council saying that the city was union busting by moving represented employees into non-union positions. She said laying off staff on June 30 without health care feels like the city is not taking seriously the work those employees do.
“We can take the time to do this right, or deal with the risk of doing it wrong, negatively impacting both your staff and the communities that rely on the services that we provide,” Koch said.
Morillo was aghast at a common notion that the city would later rehire the same people for those jobs when it could.
“You think you’re just going to acquire 10 years of institutional knowledge again with people that you bring in when you rehire with their expertise?” Morillo said. “We are losing the fabric of our city in these people that are holding it all together.”
Koyama Lane said the city is known as a union city, and said she and Northwest Oregon Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Laurie Wimmer were excited to see an article in People’s World about how labor had transformed politics in Portland’s government.
“We should listen to our city workers, and we should slow down,” Koyama Lane said. “Because our city workers are watching, and workers all across Portland are watching. Because our struggle is intertwined, and union members know that, and they’re really watching to see who are friends of labor right now.”
Lee said he wants to be sure the city is thoughtful about how it approaches the realignment project.
“If we’re not going to be strategic about it, if we’re not going to be outcome driven about it, I really don’t know what we’re doing,” Lee said.
District 2 Ryan and Clark each added that the amendment lent councilors an opportunity to discuss the topic more deeply than they had previously been able to.
Before the vote, Green added that “labor remembers.”
“They’re going to remember the vote that we take,” Green said. “Not the intention, the good feelings that we put out, not the expression of solidarity verbally. They’re going to remember the vote that we take and whether we stood with them in this moment or not.”
The amendment failed in a 6-6 tie. Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, and Dunphy voted yes. Pirtle-Guiney, Ryan, Clark, Novick, Smith, and Zimmerman voted no.
A Portland Democratic Socialists of America spokesperson told the Mercury after the vote that the organization was disappointed the amendment failed.
“We see this as a betrayal of rank-and-file city workers by two city councilors who claim to be pro-worker,” Ben Gilbert said. “Everyone says they are ‘pro-labor’ but we got to see how councilors act when they have to pick between the Mayor’s DOGE-like realignment strategy and actual frontline workers.”
Green 2: Proven Pathways to Housing
Councilor Green proposed an amendment that would put $3 million into a pot governed by Council that would be restricted to standing up more infrastructure to expand democratically governed villages. It would also set aside another $26 million—the balance of the current funding proposal—into a separate pot that Council would approve for other projects, released at the end of the first quarter of the fiscal year. It would also keep $9.7 million as is, to continue the shelter program as is.
The discussion revolved around Wilson’s shelter plan, but also focused on reporting about Urban Alchemy, the city’s largest shelter provider. Recent reporting from KATU outlined over 80 complaints to the City Auditor’s office regarding sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other human rights violations. The reports have circulated since the company came to Portland, and prior to their arrival in 2023.
Green said he intended for the amendment to address issues raised in that reporting, which were risks the city knew about but took on anyway when it signed the contract.
Zimmerman spoke first, telling Green it was likely “no surprise” that he was not in favor of the amendment. But not just philosophically, Zimmerman said his involvement in the city and county Steering and Oversight Committee (SOC) influenced his decision.
“The mayor and I sit on the SOC, I think that for the first time it might be the county running away from the joint office agreement, not the city, if we were to do something like this,” Zimmerman said. “So, the idea that we would go and think that the micro village model is the savior to all, is just not going to work.”
Councilors went back and forth discussing how the city treats homeless Portlanders. Wilson said the city’s overnight shelters offer a place for people to stay and have a way to file complaints—something living on the street does not offer.
“When we think about our population on the street and in our shelters, they suffer from mental illness, severe persistent mental illness,” Wilson said. “Are we going to throw somebody who has schizophrenia, bipolar or something like that into a village? We have to be careful where we go.”
Morillo disagreed, saying the issues that have arisen at Urban Alchemy and other shelters would not be acceptable if it was anyone other than homeless people experiencing those issues.
“We have a duty, colleagues, to treat the homeless population the same way that we would treat anybody else and take this seriously,” Morillo said.
The amendment failed in a 6-6 vote.
Green 3: Sanitation, Hygiene and Workforce Development
Green also brought an amendment to move $1 million from the Impact Reduction Program (IRP)—a city initiative meant to “minimize the impacts of homelessness” through trash removal and camp sweeps—to fund hygiene and health programs for unhoused Portlanders. These programs can also provide low-barrier workforce opportunities. Green said the amendment’s intent is to “make an explicit declaration of priority for investing in basic health, safety, wellness, and dignity for those who currently lack them among the unhoused community.”
“I’m not proposing the defunding of the sweeps program,” Green said. “[But] I can’t, in good moral conscience, vote for another budget that maintains this level [of funding for sweeps] without trying to reduce the level of harm by some small measure, and invest it in things that provide dignity.”
Mayor Wilson said the amendment is concerning because it would seemingly encourage homeless people to remain in encampments at a time when the city is actively trying to discourage that. He also refuted Green’s claim that homelessness has increased in Portland since Wilson took office.
“It is not normal to camp in an urban environment. It’s incredibly unsafe, it’s unsanitary, and it’s dangerous for the entire city, especially those citizens that are in the encampments,” Wilson said. “We’ve turned the corner in Portland. I just want us to recognize that.”
Earlier in the conversation, Dunphy asked the councilors to limit their debate so they can get through several more amendments this evening. Morillo wasn’t pleased that Wilson was granted the time to make a speech in favor of maintaining his proposed level of IRP funding.
“I don’t see why we are being told as a council to limit our comments when this is our time to make amendments to the mayor’s budget, but he has ample time to give a propaganda spiel with inaccurate data about how the shelters are working or not working,” Morillo said. “We’re not resolving homelessness, we are keeping it out of sight.”
Green 3, along with a correlated budget note, was approved with seven “aye” votes (Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney joined the progressive caucus). Novick, Ryan, and Clark voted “no,” and Smith and Zimmerman were absent.
Council is mulling Avalos 4 now.
The amendment would take $1 million from Portland Solutions to “evaluate opportunities to improve coordination, reduce duplication, and clarify operational responsibilities between the City of Portland and Multnomah County regarding homelessness response, shelter operations, outreach, and public environment management.”
Translation: Avalos essentially wants metrics and audits of shelter administration to ensure best outcomes.
“We are in year two of staring down huge holes in our budget because of these systems that we are overspending and under delivering on, and so this is about forcing the conversation to move beyond the joint meeting where we just talk at each other about the charts and all that…” Avalos told fellow councilors.
City staff estimate the amendment could lead to about five layoffs within the Public Environment Management Office.
Avalos didn’t get much buy-in from Councilors Ryan or Zimmerman. Zimmerman called the amendment “dangerous,” and calls it a “million-dollar layoff to PEMO.”
Avalos 4 failed on a 6-6 vote.
Parks
Elana Pirtle-Guiney 2:
A tiny, $15,000 amendment from Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney to keep community centers open and make sure after-school programming run by the city’s parks department remains intact was passed easily. It was slated to be cut in the mayor’s budget.
Koyama Lane 7: Age-Friendly Portland Parks Programming
Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane’s amendment would restore Portland Parks & Rec funding for senior programming-particularly programs that offer personal physical training to those with physical ailments. The money (approximately $375K) would come from the city’s parks levy funding.
Council Vice President Clark said she’s mindful of concerns about needing to be prudent with city funds, but also notes the “silver tsunami” and says if this program serves a lot of people in the city’s aging population, it might be a worthy investment.
Koyama Lane 7 passes 9-3.
Dunphy 2: Save the Arts
Surprising no one, Dunphy is proposing arts-related budget amendments (the guy campaigned on music issues, after all).
Council President Dunphy wants to preserve arts and culture program funds, like small grants. Initially he wanted to scrap a $200,000 downtown marketing initiative that would’ve gone to the Portland Metro Chamber and instead use the funds for his amendment, but by Wednesday evening, Dunphy said he’d come up with an alternative funding source- new money appropriated in the budget for Council operations to fund onboarding new councilors who may be elected in November.
“I’m attempting to backfill as much of the cuts to the arts as I could find. This pot took a 7 percent cut overall,” Dunphy said. “These are the grant dollars that are given to the Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Interstate Firehouse Community Center, and Music Oregon for relatively small dollar grants for working artists in the community.”
The budget amendment passed 7-4.
Avalos 3 + 6: Restore two Portland Parks & Recreation positions (Community Group and Administrative Support and Community Engagement Coordinator II)
Avalos put forward two amendments that would restore two positions in Portland Parks & Recreation, as well as seasonal administrative support capacity, using a little more than $416,000. The first amendment drew from the Parks Levy, while the second was from the general fund contingency. She said both of these are particularly important for East Portland residents, helping them access parks services across the city, and maintain parks in the district.
Councilor Dan Ryan bristled when Avalos named one of the employees whose job she is trying to save.
“I think it’s odd that we’re getting into names of people. This is such a micro amendment, and I’m startled by it,” Ryan said. He asked PP&R Interim Director Sonia Schmanski what she thought about restoring this specific employees’ job, and she essentially said while she wanted to save all jobs in her bureau, she was comfortable without that particular position.
Councilor Steve Novick said he votes no on amendments that seek to “pay for things with magic money,” and said he had wanted to draw up an amendment to use a nonexistent $200 million to “buy every child under the age of 10 a pony.” Avalos took issue with Novick’s remark.
Both amendments failed 6-6.
Koyama Lane 6: Rebuilding the Demolished Montavilla Park Picnic Shelter
Koyama Lane’s amendment seeks to rebuild a picnic shelter at Montavilla Park that was demolished in 2021 and never rebuilt. It would use $755,000 from the general fund contingency. Zimmerman was supportive of the amendment, seemingly in large part because his old boss, Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards, vouched for it. Other councilors who voted “no” said they didn’t support it because of the same reasons they didn’t support other programs that draw from the general fund contingency. Koyama Lane withdrew the amendment and brought it back using funding from the Parks Levy. The amendment was approved.
Pirtle-Guiney 3: Fund the Restoration of the Columbia Pool
North Portland’s Columbia Pool was closed in 2022, and slated for demolition shortly after. But District 2 councilors advocated for it to stay open. Pirtle-Guiney’s amendment would allocate $5 million from the general fund contingency to renovate the pool as an outdoor facility. But Pirtle-Guiney didn’t actually know where the money to fund the pool should come from, or how much it would cost. (It could cost up to $20 million.) She just wanted her fellow councilors to indicate they would support funding the pool at some point, with some amount of money.
“I don’t have a fully fleshed out proposal for you today,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “I would still ask for support to show the community that we care about investing in our pool infrastructure.”
Pirtle-Guiney recognized there was some irony in bringing this amendment without a solid funding source, when she previously voted against drawing from the general fund contingency for other programs.
Morillo appeared very angry about Pirtle-Guiney’s decision to bring this amendment after voting against so many of her colleagues’ amendments, including one that would restore dozens of union jobs.
“We’re sitting here contemplating the use of $5 million to fund a pool, an inanimate object, the cost of which is $1.7 million more than what it would have cost to prevent the layoffs,” Morillo said. “More pools, and less union jobs.”
Smith pointed out construction on the North Portland Aquatic Center is expected to begin next year, which will result in a brand-new pool facility a little over a mile away from the Columbia Pool. Pirtle-Guiney’s amendment failed, receiving only one “aye” vote.
Executive Office Programs
Kanal 3: Driving Toward Democracy (it’s a golf pun)
Kanal’s amendment would transfer $450,000 from the city’s Golf Fund to the Small Donor Elections Program, which is low on funds this year and seeking an ongoing source of funding. Kanal’s amendment would only provide one-time funding to the program, which he said is not ideal, but is a stop-gap solution.
“The small donor elections program is a critical part of ensuring the health of our democracy, and ensuring that PACs and corporations and wealthy people broadly are not dictating the terms of the elections to regular Portlanders,” Kanal said.
Some of the councilors running for re-election this year (and participating in the Small Donor Elections Program currently) expressed concern about the ethics and legality of voting for this program. City Attorney Robert Taylor said it didn’t present a conflict of interest. Novick and Smith said they didn’t want to take more money from the Golf Fund, which was tapped into during last year’s budget cycle.
The amendment was approved with 7 “ayes.”
Koyama Lane 3: Equity and Human Rights
Koyama Lane’s amendment sought to restore staff at the Office of Equity, including the Human Rights Commission officer, using money Wilson proposed for new HR positions. The amendment failed 6-6.
Dunphy 4: Merit and COLA Pay Freeze
Dunphy’s amendment proposes restoring several police administrative roles by limiting cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for non-union employees, to the first $100,000 of their salaries. (In other words, any income above $100,000 would not be part of the equation when calculating percentage-based raises.) The savings would also restore an at-risk youth outreach coordinator position within PP&R.
Mayor Wilson, who approved a similar proposal in last year’s budget, expressed concern about managers making less money while unionized staff make more.
“Looking at the wage disparity between unionized and management…affordability is affecting us all,” Wilson said. “We’re creating a situation where our city isn’t an employer of choice…We need to treat the entire staff fairly across the board.”
The amendment was approved 7-5.
The Council meeting adjourned before 10 pm, after councilors approved two technical amendments that allow the budget process to continue. Next, the city will send the approved budget to the Tax Supervision and Conservation Commission for review.
Zimmerman (who had earlier indicated he was the only councilor still in a good mood after hours of deliberations), cheerily warned his colleagues that the budget process is still just getting started.
“I know this feels climactic, but here we go,” Zimmerman said. “It really starts now.”
