Investment / resident
3-year average · includes capital, nonprofits & volunteer value
Portland$322Seattle$440
TAXES & PUBLIC SERVICES / SERVICES
What do we get
for our taxes?
Portland and eight other cities. Follow the money into public services, then compare what residents can access and the results agencies report.
Compare the servicesWHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYSPortland’s record is mixed.
Portland’s record is mixed.
The service matters.
Portland has broad park access and bus operating costs close to Seattle’s, alongside gaps in park access, library use and reported housing exits. The data supports specific comparisons. It does not support a single verdict that every Portland tax dollar is either wasted or well spent.
LOCAL GENERAL SERVICES · 20234 of 9
Portland’s spending per resident, highest to lowest in this group
PARK ACCESS · 2026 EDITION90.0%of Portland residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park
BUS OPERATIONS · 2025$10.64TriMet operating cost per bus boarding; Seattle $10.47
HOUSING EXITS · FY 202433.8%of exits in measured Multnomah programs led to permanent housing; coverage limits apply
Different questions require different datasets and years. Each comparison below uses one source and definition across all nine places. Data reviewed November 1, 2026. Sources & methods
01 / WHAT RESIDENTS GET
Choose a service.
See the tradeoff.
2026 ParkScore edition
Can residents walk to a park?
Compare investment with the share of residents who live within a 10-minute walk of a park. Access is measured separately from spending; we do not use a composite score that rewards spending itself.
Walkable park access
% of residents within a 10-minute walk
Portland90.0%Seattle99.0%
Who is being compared: Park systems within city limits; Nashville and Louisville use the named consolidated geographies.
All nine cities · choose a city name to compare it with Portland. On small screens, scroll the table sideways.
| City / service provider | Investment / resident3-year average · includes capital, nonprofits & volunteer value | Walkable park access% of residents within a 10-minute walk | Low-income access% of people in low-income households within a 10-minute walk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portland Starting pointPortland, OR | $322 | 90.0% | 91.0% |
| Seattle, WA | $440 | 99.0% | 99.0% |
| Denver, CO | $241 | 96.0% | 96.0% |
| Minneapolis, MN | $346 | 99.0% | 99.0% |
| Austin, TX | $236 | 76.0% | 75.0% |
| San Francisco, CA | $476 | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Nashville-Davidson County, TN | $155 | 44.0% | 46.0% |
| Oklahoma City, OK | $118 | 41.0% | 47.0% |
| Louisville-Jefferson County, KY | $91 | 38.0% | 47.0% |
Read this comparison carefully. Investment is a three-year average of public operating and capital spending, nonprofit spending and the estimated value of volunteer time. It is not a tax-only bill. Walkable access does not measure maintenance, safety, opening hours or how often people use a park.
Access is a benefit. It is not the whole experience.
Portland’s 90.0% walkable access exceeds Austin’s 76.0%, but trails Seattle’s 99.0%. Park condition, restrooms, safety and neighborhood equity still matter. ParkScore’s overall rank is deliberately excluded because investment is itself part of that score.
Definitions, source fields and raw values
The downloadable extract retains the original agency identifiers, fiscal periods, numerators, denominators and missing-data flags. Percentages and per-unit measures are computed from those records. Download the reviewed data (JSON).
Trust for Public Land · ParkScore data · 2026 edition02 / WHAT THE SERVICES COST
One city budget
isn’t the whole picture.
Schools, counties and special districts deliver services too. These estimates combine local governments serving each city, using Lincoln Institute’s allocation of overlapping governments. All figures are nominal 2023 dollars per city resident.
$8,862Portland per resident · all general services
2.1% less than Seattle ($9,050)
2.1% less than Seattle ($9,050)
Included in this category: Includes schools, safety, health, roads, parks, libraries, sewer services, administration and general debt interest. Excludes water, transit, electric and gas utility enterprises, and liquor stores. Includes operating and capital spending.
Lincoln Institute · Fiscally Standardized Cities · 2023Your tax bill ≠ spending per resident.
Businesses, visitors, fees and state or federal aid also pay for services. Local spending is not a bill assigned to each resident. A renter’s modeled taxes cannot be divided into this total to calculate a personal “return.”
See how services are fundedOregon’s income tax funds more than City Hall.
This local-government comparison includes state aid received locally, but excludes services the state delivers directly. It cannot judge the value of Oregon’s whole income tax, Medicaid, universities or state highways. Schools receive state support as well as local taxes.
Explore the different tax leversWhy spending differs—and what the adjustments do not solve
FiSC standardizes government boundaries, not service needs or prices. Consolidated city-counties, regional hospitals, airports and public utilities have different responsibilities. Wages, land costs, pension contributions, debt interest, infrastructure age and capital projects can change spending without changing current service quality.
The general-spending total reconciles to its eight source categories. Capital is included: Portland’s 2023 general capital outlay was $1,363 per resident. The source’s separate all-expenditure total does not consistently reconcile to general, utility and liquor spending; it is retained in the download for audit but is not used as a headline or stacked total here.
Nine illustrative cities are not a statistically matched national peer group. These are nominal dollars, not adjusted for regional costs. The latest harmonized FiSC baseline used here is 2023; service-performance datasets have later reference years. No ratio combines those mismatched spending and outcome records.
03 / PORTLAND’S ACCOUNTABILITY RECORD
Progress and shortcomings
can both be real.
Independent audits test specific promises. They provide evidence about execution that a city-to-city spending chart cannot. These findings have their own dates and scopes.
77 → 18 seconds
Average call-answer wait fell from July 2022 to January 2026. The auditor found improved staffing and training; call volume also fell. As of April 2026, the bureau still missed the standard of answering 90% of calls within 15 seconds.
This is call answering, not an officer’s or ambulance’s arrival. An average and a 90%-within-threshold target are different statistics.
Portland City Auditor, Audit Services · 2026-06-249 of 18 implemented
Metro’s November 2025 follow-up found nine recommendations implemented, seven in process and two unimplemented. Planning improved; outcome and cost reporting still needed work.
Audit recommendations are not housing placements. The finding supports stronger reporting and oversight; it does not prove that housing services have no benefit.
Metro Auditor · 2025-11-19A benefit with delivery risks
The county’s 2025 audit found progress reaching families with limited preschool access. A September 2026 memo then identified funding and allocation risks: 1,250 open seats at an August snapshot while preferred sites had waitlists.
The fraud/waste allegation was not substantiated. Open seats change with enrollment; waitlist entries are not unique children. This is not a cross-city preschool evaluation.
Multnomah County Auditor · 2025-04 Multnomah County Auditor · 2026-09-23For evidence about taxes, migration and affordability, read the household comparison’s research.
WHAT WOULD MAKE THE CASE STRONGER?
Ask for a result
attached to a cost.
Measure the service people experience.
For emergency services: the share of urgent calls reached on time, with the same start and end points. For streets: road condition and serious injuries per comparable exposure. For schools: learning progress and graduation, with student needs and enrollment. These are not yet harmonized across these nine cities here; spending alone cannot supply the missing answer.
Keep the conclusion specific.
Higher taxes can fund valuable access, higher delivery costs, larger needs, or poor execution. The evidence here shows examples of both benefits and shortcomings. A claim that Portland’s entire tax burden is—or is not—justified needs the full state/local service package, matched costs and outcomes, and a stated judgment about which benefits matter.
Work on this comparison04 / FOLLOW EVERY NUMBER
Sources, periods
and definitions.
Six original data providers. Calculations are reproducible from the identified records; source files are pinned by SHA-256 so a revised download cannot silently change a published comparison.
Lincoln Institute · Fiscally Standardized Cities
2023 · Reviewed 2026-11-01
Data sheet; year=2023; city_name; fiscal fields listed in each record
Trust for Public Land · ParkScore data
2026 edition · Reviewed 2026-11-01
Page 1; named city rows; raw access and investment columns, not scores
IMLS · Public Libraries Survey
FY 2024 · Reviewed 2026-11-01
CSV/PLS_FY24_AE_pud24i.csv; exact FSCSKEY; POPU_UND, TOTOPEXP, VISITS, TOTCIR, TOTATTEN and flags
Federal Transit Administration · National Transit Database
Report year 2025 · Reviewed 2026-11-01
TS2.1 DataHub; exact NTD IDs; MB, TB, RB; all operating service types; 2025 displayed, 2024 retained for audit
HUD · Continuum of Care System Performance Measures
Federal FY 2024 · Reviewed 2026-11-01
2024 sheet; exact HUD CoC Number; SPM 7b1, SPM 2 (All), bed coverage and emergency-shelter unknown destinations
Major Cities Chiefs Association · Agency violent-crime survey
2025 versus 2024 · Reviewed 2026-11-01
Pages 2–4; city police agency rows; preliminary counts, released February 4, 2026
Calculation notes and reproducibility
- FiSC: nominal per-resident amount = workbook fiscal field ÷ CPI. All selected 2023 CPI factors equal 1. The workbook’s older base-year label conflicts with those factors, so this page follows its explicit conversion formula.
- Libraries: operating expenses, visits and checkouts ÷ IMLS unduplicated service population. Missing negative codes become null. Fiscal periods and source flags are preserved.
- Transit: sum each agency’s MB/TB/RB expenses, boardings and revenue hours across operating service types, then divide totals. Ratios of individual modes are never averaged.
- Housing: permanent-housing exits ÷ all measured exits; recorded two-year returns ÷ the earlier permanent-housing exit cohort. These cohorts are different. Coverage and unknown destinations are displayed without inventing adjusted results.
- Safety: (2025 count ÷ 2024 count − 1) × 100. Preliminary full-year agency survey; not a crime rate or causal estimate.
- Parks: raw 2026 access and investment columns, not category points or the composite ParkScore.
The reviewed data extract includes source URLs, hashes, raw values and agency identifiers. Download it without an account and apply the formulas above to reproduce the displayed measures.