The Bend City Council held a work session at 5:00 p.m. and a regular meeting at 7:00 p.m. on September 20, 2023. The agenda included a legislative update with state representatives, a check-in on the Tree Regulation Update Advisory Committee (TRUAC), an executive session on real property negotiations, and a full regular meeting with public hearings, consent agenda items, and multiple votes on development, housing, and city services.
Office variances, uh a hefty land supply conversation, which we'll get into uh some more. There was a pretty significant conversation, but a little amorphous on the infrastructure needs. We spent a lot of time, the city of Bend in particular, working with some of our community partners and our delegation around transportation priorities. Uh we spent a lot of time with the chamber, a lot of time with Central Oregon Land Watch working in Salem collaboratively around the need for infrastructure to make land ready. We're talking, you know, in addition to the potential of new land on the urban periphery, want to make absolutely sure that we are getting the resources we need to utilize the land we have that's already inside the UGB in our central areas and and otherwise. So there is an emerging theme that I think is catching fire to a degree, and that which I expect to be uh a heavy priority going forward. And of course, um, case in point on that is the collective work that our uh entire delegation, the city and our community partners put in and getting five million on the Hawthorn overcrossing. I think uh we've seen a lot of success. Um we've got support from the federal government, we've got support from the state legislature, and that project looks to be in pretty pretty good shape. So a huge thank you to uh our delegation for the help on that one. Uh another big topic that uh I again didn't pass, but continue to be a uh continue to expect it will be a core priority for the short session is uh a House Bill, House Bill 2980. Some of us are familiar with the number by this point, which basically proposes a revolving loan fund. It would be if it were to pass, it would be seeded with a significant amount of state general fund. That general fund would then be managed for a local opt-in program. If the city wants to participate, it can opt in. A developer would make a proposal to come forward and say, hey, I'm having trouble getting this middle income housing development pencil. If I had access to some of these revolving loan funders, uh revolving loan dollars, I could provide uh on site infrastructure, potentially even contribute to public infrastructure, SDC offsets, uh construction gap financing, a whole variety of things that could help make a lot of really critical uh projects pencil that are sort of in this no man's land if it's not a full market rate project, but it's not uh a big A affordable housing project. And there's a lot of interest in this, but there's a lot of money that it would take for it to work. So we spent a lot of time uh supporting that project as well and are involved in the effort to try to advance that in the short session as well. So one other topic um, in light of the fact that the mayor already mentioned uh House Bill 2705, which was our middle income tax exemption, it passed in an omnibus tax expenditure bill. It didn't pass this 2705, but it passed with the language we wanted and the language we expected. Um we put out a really big push for uh shelter funding, uh, one that fell short. We did get some funding collectively from the legislature, really the the larger cities, the you know, Portland and then what we've come to call the mid-sized cities. There's technically seven of us, but there's a few more that have shelter facilities. We're in a pretty precarious situation where the funding of a lot of the facilities that are already on the ground, sometimes by local dollars. This is not a thing that cities have have typically done. It's typically been a county public health priority. Cities um to represent the needs of their own communities have stepped up, sometimes utilizing state dollars, sometimes utilizing local dollars. It's not sustainable. The funding is not there yet from the state, so this is going to be a huge push of ours, and I would think probably all of the mid-sized cities for the short session. So, what you're hearing from me is a lot of things that we spent a lot of time on, some of which passed, some of which are ongoing in it. So, you know, you could say what well, what is it accomplished? Uh, I think we're gonna find out in the short session what this big investment of ours in these topics is going to accomplish, and we're gonna stay the course. So I'm gonna leave my my introduction at that, and I think what we'd like to do here is um I'll introduce uh the two of you and then um Mayor Pro Tem. You can handle the letter afterwards. So, Senator Canut, let's start with you, and again, it's the floor is yours. Great. Uh thank you, Eric, and uh thank you mayor and counselors, and of course, city staff. We should not leave you out. Um it's a pleasure to be with you this evening, and it was great to have uh the involvement of your team in the legislature in 2023. And I would encourage even more in the future. So my goals really for the 2024 session are to uh focus on the things that Oregonians were sold annual sessions for, which are emergencies, budget, and technical fixes. The declared emergency that we have today is housing and homelessness. And so that fits right in with what actually needs to be done. So one of the unfinished pieces of business, Eric mentioned was uh 3414, Hospital 3414, and also infrastructure. Because as you all know, uh you can make all the plans in the world, but if you don't have the money for infrastructure, it will move slower. And so uh we would love to uh help cities out and get uh some sort of a revolving fund to help with infrastructure needs because uh we uh definitely need to up production of housing, and the governor has set a very aggressive goal at 36,000 units, and uh I think we're you know 20,000, 22,000 uh on an annual basis uh in the past, and so uh that's a significant jump, and in order to meet that uh you have to do things that you haven't done before. And so um uh much was accomplished on homelessness. Uh we kind of called it housing 1.0, and then we tried to do housing 2.0 and didn't quite get there on everything. Uh we also did um some semiconductor uh work trying to uh bring some federal dollars into the state on that.