Tate White, a strategic projects manager with the city of Portland, explained, “The council will be focused on being a legislative body, making high-level policy and laws, and then, they'll have a lot more time to connect with the community and they'll be representing districts across the city. So, we'll have east Portland, for example, better represented than they've ever been on council. So, they're going to be really busy.”

Besides helping people in their home districts, the councilors will pick a president who will run city council meetings and decide which topics or bills will be discussed and when they will be brought up.

During council meetings, they will hear from members of the public, as they do now, from five people at each meeting. The public will get three minutes each and will have to send a written request to the auditor, stating their name and what they want to talk about to get on the agenda, and each person can only speak at a council meeting once a month.

Those city council meetings will be held at the current Portland City Hall. There are extra workspaces being built for the eight additional councilors who will be at city hall. It’s unclear whether they will also get additional offices in their geographic districts; the city council itself will decide that once they are elected.

Shoshana Oppenheim, leading the city's transition to the new form of government, explained, “The role of the new council that's coming in and joining us in January is to represent their districts and the constituents in their districts, so we expect them to be elevating community priorities through the committee structure and policy development work that they'll be leading but also constituent services that they'll be managing on the day to day.”