Okay, we are gonna get started with our work session.

And our main item tonight is talking about our transportation fee and also receiving some feedback from DAF.

So I'll kick out Russ, you're gonna start us off.

Okay.

Well, good evening, Mayor and Council and Respiration Chief Operations Officer with me is Elizabeth Oschel from our city attorney's office and Sarah Hudson, who is also from the city manager's office who's really been leading this up for quick thanks for her for keeping the ball moving as we go through this.

So this as our as council is aware we've been working on this for about a year now.

Um and if you think of the discussion of a funnel, we're getting to the point where we're getting towards the bottom of the funnel and we're we're ready to actually set the policy and get a code out there for review with the public.

So in my eyes, we are starting to enter into the kind of the more official public engagement process.

Um, and the purpose of this meeting is you're gonna see a lot of technical information, a lot of questions that we have for council.

The purpose of this work session is to provide staff with direction, especially Elizabeth, because she needs to draft the code over the next several weeks to get that out for formal review with the public, and we'll go through the process of everything.

So, again, a lot of technical questions, a lot of work's been done around this as we go through this.

Sarah's gonna um give you kind of what the topic is, what feedback we receive from the community, give you some context, and I would say this is a conversation.

So, as we go through this, please ask questions.

Um, we will try to address them as we can, but we're gonna try to keep this moving, and this really is intended to be a very detailed conversation with council to give us kind of clear policy direction so that we can we can start drafting the code moments forward.

So, with that, I will turn it over to Sarah.

Thank you.

So, really, we want to review process to date, specifically have a chance to synthesize the feedback we heard from the round tables that were held this fall, and um the Bend Economic Development Advisory Board discussions around the non-residential side of this fee.

And as Russ was saying, we have a number of policy questions, we'll kind of go through them one at a time.

Um, and we divided it into kind of two different buckets.

So we'll be talking about fee structure and collection first, and then we'll talk about use and oversight of funds and have a number of questions under each of those categories, and then we'll talk about next steps and timeline a little bit more at the end, but just to kind of preview what the proposed next steps are.

So, this isn't our last conversation.

Um, we'll really take how the discussion goes today and and decisions that council makes, and then use the rest of the month to develop the code, initiate some of the implementation work, um, then the idea is that we'll come back next month at the first work session in February to kind of have that draft code, um, discuss any open questions, um, something that we'd like to get direction on from council, but um whether we want to have listening sessions in February on that draft code to kind of collect more input.

The idea being then we'd come back at the beginning of March work session to get um any direction to kind of incorporate any of that feedback we received, um, and looking at later in March for a first reading and targeting July for this to start appearing on bills.

So, just a quick review of process today.

As Russ said, we're gonna move through this part pretty quickly just because um there's a lot of technical um items to go through, but just to kind of remind ourselves of what what we've kind of gone through together in the past year.

Um, but we had four council work sessions last year, and I'm gonna detail on the next slide kind of the decisions, the discussions that took place at those work sessions.

Um, we had three round tables this fall.

We also had a couple neighborhood district forums, um, five different BDAB conversations, and then we did a number of advisory board presentations um as well, and all the while met kind of internally, did a lot of technical work in the background, um responding to community member questions as well, interviews, things like that.

So there's been a lot of work that's occurred in the past year.

In terms of council direction received to date, just to kind of remind ourselves of the discussions that we had last February is when we confirmed the need for establishing the fee, where we talked about the scope of the fee to really be a sustainable source of funding for operations and maintenance and to address some programmatic elements and other priorities out of the transportation system plan.

Um, in March, we um discussed kind of what our community engagement approach would be where there was support for having city kind of a city city advisory group and round table-led approach to gather input on various elements of the transportation fee in July, is when we kind of confirmed what we'd be talking about at those upcoming um round tables and um council indicated preference to identify revenue targets that the community would then be reacting to.

And at the August meeting, that was our last work session together, and that's where we discussed uh $15 million annual revenue target to serve as the basis for roundtable discussions moving forward, and that was also used for ongoing rate estimate analyses.

And then today, as discussed, we're gonna be um discussing the feedback received and getting some policy guidance.

So, as a reminder for the community roundtables, we had three meetings August, September, and October, and the purpose of the round tables was to have representative and focused guidance on elements of the transportation fee.

And this is really building off of work that was done a few years prior by the citywide transportation advisory committee that explored a number of funding options and identified the transportation fee as a preferred funding mechanism.

We covered a lot of topics over the course of those three meetings from fee estimates to transportation values, got some high-level feedback on the non-residential approach.

We reviewed revenue priorities, benchmarking data.

I guess it would just be for any community members who are watching this and haven't been following us closely.

Everything is online and recorded, and as Russ said, we're going through these items and kind of deep diving in.

But if people kind of want more of that primer, that would be a good places to kind of get that background.

And then on the slide is a list of the organizations represented as well.

And then in terms of the BDAB, the Bend Economic Development Advisory Board, non-residential discussions.

The purpose of that was getting feedback on elements of the non-residential fee from a group of business representatives because there's just some uh more technical consideration there.

So we cut cover fee estimates, different assessment options, um, policy considerations.

I think an important thing to point out was that we did a business community survey.

Uh we got over 300 responses representing a wide variety of business types and sizes and locations that help to inform the recommendations that um BDAB gave, and they will be um sharing some of those recommendations today.

So to overview the questions that are kind of in this fee structure and collection part of the presentation, we're gonna be talking about revenue targets and phase-in.

So should the fee be phased in and how also want to talk about revenue allocation.

So does council want to move forward with a um a proposed residential, non-residential allocation that we'll be chatting about in more detail in just a few moments.

And then we'll talk about um specifics for the residential side of the fee and then the non-residential side of the fee.

So we have a number of questions related to each of those items.

And I think before we begin, we're gonna be showing numbers as a result of a lot of the technical exercises to get to these kind of fee estimates.

Um we think we're really within a good ballpark, and they provide a gauge of the the uh level of impact to a resident or a business, but um with as the conversation evolves or as we do more um data cleanup, the numbers could change slightly.

So just want to make that note that the data is subject to change, but we think it wouldn't wouldn't change much from what you see today.

So, in terms of transportation fee revenue targets, um, as mentioned at that August work session is when we talked about kind of that $15 million revenue target.

Um, the question I think today is should that transportation fee be phased in and how what as staff has been talking about it, we've been talking about it kind of following budget assumptions.

So, according to our budget, um, it's five million dollars in year one, ten million dollars in year two, and then kind of thinking about kind of that full 15 million dollars in um year three and beyond.

Not sure if there's anything else you wanted to add.

Um, and that's we just want to make sure that in terms of everything we're presenting, that's the context of kind of all the assumptions and the information we're gonna give you.

Again, that's why we want to make sure and check in with council to say is that what you want to do?