The Bend City Council held a work session at 5:00 p.m. followed by a regular meeting at 7:00 p.m. on October 4, 2023, at City Hall. The work session included discussions on a youth advisory council, a safe streets for all event debrief, and a follow-up on e-bike safety with Representative Emerson Levy and Commute Options. The regular meeting addressed proclamations, public comments, a consent agenda, the Middle-Income Housing Pilot Program, airport projects, the Caraway Master Planned Development, and annexation. The council also approved development assistance agreements for the Bend Urban Renewal Agency.
No, it's that it was going to have clothes on in public, but we can't be waving that thing around people. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started with our council work session. So we are starting with a couple of schedule requests and um start with you, Barb. Hi, everybody, I'm Barb Campbell, and I prefer she and her pronouns. And I am hoping that we can look into having a youth advisory council for the city of Bend. Um I handed out an illegible paper for you, and I did not hand out, I think it would have been seven or eight illegible papers, in order to make the point that two high school seniors approached me with this idea, and they have already been working. And this document came from them, and it is pages and pages long, and it just lays out every youth advisory county in this in the state. 23 other cities already have them and how they're organized, what kind of a format they run by. Um the other bit um uh I received an email from someone with Campfire USA, and they say that they could organize a teen event to talk about city government and encourage them to join a youth advisory council if it was um passed. So the reason I gave you the papers is because this is not in our goals, it's not on our work plan. But we have this bit of energy and momentum from specifically two high school seniors who are going to graduate at the end of the year. And now we've heard from Campfire USA that they would like to be involved. So I'm hoping we can have a work session on this maybe by the end of the year, and hopefully get this ball rolling next year, and that is my request. Okay. Um my question for Eric is to have a work session by the end of this year, would we need to remove something else or how would we have staff be able to present something to us? I mean, if you're looking for staff to present something for this work session, I don't know if we could do it by the end of this year. If you're looking to have a forum for for high school students that are doing research to share that, that's probably something that we can do. Um I just would need to look at the schedule to see what's available. It'd probably be that last meeting in December. I think we're pretty booked up until then with work sessions. And obviously, the general request is could we have a work session? And yes, if we can get it somewhere on our schedule in a way sooner rather than later. That would be appreciated by all of us. And certainly last week in December, it sounds well as long as we're not I guess I just want to be clear with council that we're not asking for staff support at for something like this at this time. If it's just if it's just high school students sort of presenting research, that is fine, but we are just really bugged. We have a compensation committee, we've got um uh our just many things on our work plate that are all converging right now. We've got some pretty big policy work with the TUF for the SDCs, and I just want to make sure staff stays focused on those projects. I think that if there's a way for us to I I agree with what Council Mendez said about it aligning with the um identifying new ways to reach out and engage the community. I mean, is there a way to sort of um cut to doing something a little bit faster and have sort of a round table kind of format as a first try and maybe you know, without having to do a full work session, but that is us having a listening session and talking about both issues as well as what they see as potential ways we might continue something like that and just try something in the first quarter of next year or the second quarter of next year without too much investment of staff time with preparing for whole. Is it Campfire Central Oregon? Right, our local campfire that reached out, yes, um, which is an organization I'm familiar with, and they have great team programs where they're already engaging with teens. So I think what I would support is maybe not a work session, but if we can get a partnership with them to set up a listening session, perfect and to talk about some of this information and what might be meaningful for these ways for them to engage because I'm not sure that a traditional committee as we do them is the best way. So there may be other ways that they think would be best for them to talk with us, and I'd also um love to talk with the school board, they have a youth um group that is communicating with their leadership, and I want to hear how that's going as well. So that'd be something that could make it faster. Was we have a um uh stewardship subcommittee, which you're a part of part of it, and it might be just that might be a great venue over the next couple of times. To have and your counselor Riley is as well, and they could just have a con you could just have a conversation there versus a full-on work session and all of that. So if we just do that, that might be a little bit easier to start the conversation. That's great. Yeah, and then we can have these students actually telling us what they think about the eight-page list of other yaks and how they operate and what might work in central Oregon. And yes, mayor, I think that in some level school board, um school district would be involved, but whether it's a single central committee or the schools have their own, you know, are sending reps of there are a number of what different ways to do it. But I think that's a great idea. How about stewardship committee? Everybody okay with that? I think that's a good idea. Okay, I think that's great. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Great. Okay.