After holding its inaugural meeting last week, the Portland City Council on Monday held a workshop to discuss and identify the city’s goals and policy priorities for the coming year.

The common goals decided upon by the Council serve as a framework for the Council Committee’s work plans over the course of the year, and generally determine what policy initiatives are prioritized.

The nine-member Council inaugurated three new members last week, following the departure of Councilors Victoria Pelletier, Anna Trevorrow and Roberto Rodriguez.

Those new members are Benjamin Grant (At-Large), Sarah Michniewicz (District 1) and Wesley Pelletier (District 2).

Pelletier joins District 5 Councilor Kate Sykes as the second democratic socialist elected to the city’s policymaking body.

During last year’s workshop, the City Council chose four goals: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), housing, climate change and improving community engagement.

Councilor Sykes expressed frustration at the opening of the meeting, when Mayor Mark Dion opened the discussion with an overview of the city’s discretionary funds, which total about $274,000.

“I don’t want to limit our goals or our aspirations immediately at the outset by saying we just don’t have the money for it,” Sykes said. “So we find the money, we find the time, and we have staff do the things that we prioritize.”

While rating the city’s progress toward achieving the previous year’s goals, City Councilor Regina Phillips gave the city a “D-” letter grade on making DEI its top priority.

“We 100 percent do not prioritize DEI — plain and simple, we don’t prioritize it,” Phillips said.

Phillips reiterated criticisms she has made at previous Council meetings regarding the city’s justice, diversity, equity and inclusion” (JDEI) office, which has just two staff members.

“We have not prioritized [DEI] at all in my book, I’m giving it a D minus,” Phillips said.

Later in the meeting, while discussing the city’s progress on community engagement, Phillips again brought up the issue of DEI, bashing the city for not engaging enough with the Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) community.

“The city does not do a good job of reaching out to the BIPOC community,” Phillips said.

“We have a couple of relationships with certain people, and certain organizations, and that’s great — but we do not communicate with communities of color,” she added, saying the city needs to hire a dedicated community engagement director.

While no set of goals was officially voted upon at the Monday meeting, the Council brainstormed a list of just over a dozen potential goals for the coming year, including the four goals from this past year.

Those goals included addressing affordability and cost of living in Portland, taking a more aggressive approach to the State Legislature, doing more for the city’s homeless population, overdose prevention, increasing road safety and civilian oversight of police.

There was broad agreement among the Councilors that the list of goals decided upon would not be binding to the exclusion of other policy initiatives, but would simply serve as a guide for what policies on which the city wishes to make progress over the coming year.