Keith Wilson For The Oregonian/OregonLive Wilson is mayor of Portland. Parks versus police. After-school programming versus emergency shelters. Portland Street Response versus fire stations. What do the budget choices before us mean when it feels like we have no good options? As the city faces a projected $93 million general fund shortfall, my days are filled with intensive budget meetings and close collaboration with Portland city councilors. I’ve worked to integrate their deeply held values and priorities into the balance sheets that guide all city functions. I do not believe in blanket cuts. We scrutinized our budget line by line, strategizing investments, improvements and reductions. I’ve sought out areas where spending has spiked, where one-time American Rescue Plan Act dollars were treated as ongoing funds, and where the inefficiencies from our previous system of competing bureaus could be reversed. My proposed budget will include substantial cuts, but it will not include false choices. I will request increased funding for street cleaning, filling potholes and removing graffiti. I will raise or reinstate fees on Airbnb hosts, rideshare services, leaf cleanup and public golf courses. Our communications, information technology and human resources personnel must be centralized and shared, not duplicated between bureaus. All city managers must manage an appropriate number of people or be reassigned to reflect their duties. The beneficial tradeoff for these reductions and fee increases is keeping our community centers, SUN schools, youth programming and violence prevention teams. There are no easy answers for a city facing a nearly nine-figure funding gap. Many have seized on numbers that seem egregious, like the $10 million jump in police overtime in recent years. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll realize this growing expense arose from efforts to hold the line against slipping response times and unprecedented levels of criminal activity. Restoring a system where law enforcement responders arrive at an emergency rested and ready will take time and investment. I’ve watched with cautious hope as our homicide rate plummeted year-over-year. This accomplishment isn’t a sign that our violence interrupters or police aren’t needed. It shows they’re working as intended. Meanwhile, our response times, human trafficking and property crimes remain at unacceptable levels. That’s why I am maintaining our police and fire budgets and putting $2 million towards boosting recruitment and missions. I’m also improving first responder workplace safety by reducing excessive and expensive overtime. Supporting Portland Street Response and adding outreach workers and emergency shelters is part of our core public safety mission. Homelessness may ultimately be a housing issue, but we can only house the living. It’s far past time to end unsheltered homelessness and end the unprecedented flood of tragedy and death on our streets. Come Dec.1 of this year, I can’t look at a neighborhood association, local business or one of our outreach workers and tell them, “Well, at least we focused on existing shelters,” or “We can’t help our unsheltered until we look at housing outcomes over the next five to 10 years.” Pitting lifesaving shelter against existing city services is a false choice we don’t have to make. Portland city government is about to enter a period of layoffs. There is no easy way to talk about a process so deeply painful to families and workplace culture. The administrators I work with have lost sleep, as have I. At the height of the Great Recession, my wife and I remortgaged our home to prevent as many layoffs as possible at the trucking company I led. That is not an option for our city. After I present my budget on Monday, our City Council will go through an amendment period. Any amendment that increases spending will require specific and equivalent cuts, even if the amendment fails to list those cuts. Some have already suggested that the answer is raising taxes, but we must be cautious. As one of the highest-taxed jurisdictions in the nation, I believe we must prove we can work with the funds we have before we look at new taxes. As I propose this budget, I am grateful for the role and responsibility our City Council will now play. Together, we will leave a profound impact on the future of our city. I have faith that we will, as a city, meet the moment and put ourselves on the path to a skyline of cranes, streets without senseless deaths, and the green, prosperous future our community deserves.