The City of Portland’s 12-month financial cycle begins July 1 and ends June 30 the following year, with five phases: budget preparation, current service level budget and forecast, proposed budget, approved budget and adopted budget. We’re currently in the proposed budget stage for FY 2026-27 and the community is invited to submit their input. The City’s website, portland.gov/budget/join, provides options to submit input as a number of ways to learn about the budget.
There is a four-part series of videos explaining what the City of Portland’s budget is, how it works, where the money comes from and how it can be spent, balancing the budget and the process to completion. Watch individual videos or watch the full series.
There is also a Balancing Tool which allows people to explore ways in which to balance the FY 2026-27 General Fund discretionary budget, explore budget priorities and tradeoffs, provide input on budget priorities and view submitted budget priorities.
There are two types of budget-related comments the community can provide. Year-round general budget comments can be submitted at any time during the fiscal year. The comments will be kept on record for two years. As part of the public record, they are filed with the City and available for public access upon request.
The community can also provide specific input on Council Agenda items related to the budget—such as the Approved Budget or Adopted Budget in May or June; make sure to select the appropriate agenda item when submitting comments. These agenda-specific submissions, known as testimony, will be filed with the corresponding agenda item and retained permanently as public records. Written testimony is not read out loud into the record during the meeting. The Council agenda, along with the option to testify on a specific agenda item within the Budget Comment and Testimony Form, is published by 9 am Friday before the meeting. Testimony is archived as part of the record after Council acts on the item.
All of the documents related to the FY 2026-27 budget, including documents from all phases of the development process, can be found at portland.gov/budget/2026-2027-budget.