Bend City Council Work Session – October 18, 2023: Quarterly Update, Equity Definition, Website and Bend Works
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Bend City Council Work Session – October 18, 2023
The work session began at 5:00 p.m. and covered the quarterly update on council goals, a discussion on defining equity for the organization, updates to the sponsorship program, and presentations on the city website redesign and the new Bend Works service request system. No public comment or consent agenda were part of this session. The session concluded with a report from the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) regarding parks system development charge (SDC) exemptions.
Quarterly Council-Board/Commission Update
- City Manager Eric King reported that 46 of 50 action items (92%) across five goal areas are on track. Key highlights included: over 400 attendees at the State of the City; the Public Works Campus broke ground in late August/early September; permitting times met or beat targets (residential new construction first review at 30 days target, commercial at 76 days vs. 90-day goal, tenant improvements at 22 days vs. 45-day goal, rights-of-way slightly over at 52 days vs. 45-day target); 250–300 non-law enforcement calls handled by behavioral health response; over 7,400 new emergency alert signups since September 2022 (1,700 in last two months); and the transportation fee work continuing with a planned vote in March 2024.
- Jesse Thomas, Office of Performance Management, presented a prototype of a new council goals dashboard merging with the open data platform, featuring improved mobile accessibility and translation. The public safety dashboard was ready; all goal areas expected to be live by mid- to late-December. Council provided positive feedback.
Defining Equity
- Andres Portillo, Equity and Inclusion Director, presented four definitions of equity for council consideration. The Human Rights and Equity Commission (HREC) preferred definition four (aspirational, aligning with the state of Oregon’s DEI action plan), while the Committee on Accessibility and Belonging (COBAC) preferred definition three. Staff surveys were inconclusive.
- After discussion, council reached consensus to adopt definition four as the aspirational definition for the city and definition one as the operational definition for day-to-day use. Councilor Megan Norris expressed a preference for definition two, and Councilor Ariel Méndez noted operational concerns with definition three’s use of “absence of discrimination.” The decision was not a formal vote but a consensus to move forward with two definitions.
Sponsorship Program Update
- Andres Portillo presented three changes to the council policy on discretionary funding and sponsorships: adding a line item to create and maintain a discrimination-free environment, expanding protected classes per federal/state/local ordinances and adding an ADA statement, and making for-profit organizations ineligible if funds are used for commercial enterprise. The formal vote will be at the November 15 council meeting.
Website and Bend Works
- Jacob Rigal, User Experience Designer, reported on the city website redesign. User research identified top tasks; improvements included a new search tool with manual result adjustment, a redesigned navigation with a 21% higher success rate and 19% faster directness, a consolidated services page, and a new “About” page. Future plans include rewriting content at an eighth-grade reading level and replatforming by end of 2024.
- John Condon, Project Management Office, introduced Bend Works, a new community service request system (web and mobile app). It allows reporting of non-emergency issues (potholes, street flooding, etc.) with a public map of open/in progress/resolved requests. The web version launched October 18; the mobile app will launch in late November. Privacy protections include private request options and guidance on public records.
Committee & Commission Updates
- Ian Schmidt, Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC), reported that SDC exemptions for affordable housing have enabled nearly 1,000 units in the pipeline and over 500 shelter beds. He urged council to encourage Bend Parks and Recreation to continue and expand its SDC waiver program, which is capped at 75 units per year and may expire after 2024. Council acknowledged the issue and plans to discuss with the parks board.
Key Outcomes
- Council agreed to adopt definition four (aspirational) and definition one (operational) for equity, with formal adoption to follow.
- Sponsorship policy changes will be voted on November 15.
- Website improvements and Bend Works soft launch commenced; council encouraged continued public feedback.
- The AHAC request regarding parks SDC exemptions will be communicated to the Bend Parks and Recreation board for further discussion.
Meeting Transcript
Good. Okay. All right. Um, we will go ahead and get started with our work session. I'm sure Council Campbell will be here shortly, but we've got a lot to get through, so let's go ahead and start with our quarterly update. Yeah, I will kick us off here, and just to remind everybody and those watching that our quarterly updates are an opportunity for us to uh track on our progress that we intended with our two-year council goals and work plan. So we are three and a half months in. Um so we have some progress to report and we'll walk through that. We also want to make sure that we are helping build towards some of those projects. There's some interdependencies, and so tonight we're gonna talk around equity. Um and that really is infused into many uh actions in our work plan. So we want to really get some clarity from council around defining equity. So that's that's a perfect topic for the quarterly goal update because it affects so many different projects. Um we also just want to uh share, you know, more deep there's more detail than we we have time to share, so there is a progress report that's on our website that folks can go see. There's 50 actions so you can kind of see where we're at, and I'll I'll go by the numbers here in a little bit. We're also gonna uh give you a preview of our dashboard. One of the uh objectives of these quarterly updates was to show important metrics that we're tracking for each of those goals. And so we'll do that today. And it's also an opportunity to make sure that we're synced up with our board's committees commission, so we have opportunity at the end to hear from our partners that help us do this work. So that kind of covered the agenda, so let's go through some of the numbers. Uh we have five little areas, thirteen strategies, fifty actions, pretty similar to our revised uh goals from our previous two year period. We had initially eighty and we slimmed it down. This is more on par from what uh we had la the last biennium. When we track our progress, we're 92% of the work. The fifth 46 of the 52 items are are tracking. And many of these projects are complex. They're not a one or two month project. It is pretty involved, and in fact, many of them have been carried over from the previous biennium. We have a few that haven't started yet, mainly because we're waiting for some clarity, uh, things around CFEC. Um one that needs attention is uh we had uh so an action item around local gun safety policies and we're still waiting for kind of clarity from the courts, as well as you know, we didn't have an opportunity in the last session for local control. There's still some things that I think there's I think council interest in maybe I don't know if the short session will be an opportunity, but future legislative opportunities to make make it known what our local concerns are. So just a few highlights. So I'm gonna cover what what has transpired over the last couple of months, um and then talk about what's on deck for um for the next quarter, really. So first off, state of the city. I thought that was a great uh partnership, uh with staff and council working to do things differently. And it connects to one of our strategies of meeting people where they're at, really take um taking new approaches, innovative approaches. I think that state of the city was a good example of that. Um so uh four over 400 folks attended, um, really good results there. Our supplier diversity, we've kicked that project off. Um that is something that is going to be implemented in the I believe it's the second quarter of 2024, so more information there, but that has been kicked off. Our Stevens Road UGB expansion, I'm sorry, public works campus. Uh, that you've approved the I think this is the second or third GMP uh guaranteed maximum price. So that project we broke round in late August, early September. So you know, if you go out there, you'll see dirt being moved, and we'll start going vertical in the next couple of months. Um, and then uh Stevens Road expansion. So we've gotten the we had the one action with council. We went to the county and got approval uh in early October. Uh we'll have planning amendments coming before you in December as part of that process. Uh permitting times. So we are are meeting most of our goals with permitting times.
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