The Bend City Council held a work session starting at 5:00 p.m. and a regular meeting at 7:00 p.m. on February 7, 2024. The work session covered updates on the Tree Code, Economic Improvement District (EID) renewal, and Transportation Fee draft code. The regular meeting included a proclamation, extensive public comment and deliberation on a letter to federal representatives regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict, consent agenda approvals, public hearings, and several action items. The meeting was followed by a Bend Urban Renewal Agency (BURA) work session.
Oh, would that be Sterling? Of course. It's kind of a tragic to the suit table that they don't. Good. Okay. Yeah, thanks. All right. Let's go ahead and get started with our work session. We're starting with tree code update and public engagement process. Go ahead, introduce yourself. All right, good evening. Um, I am Colleen Hardy with the community development department, and then I have with me two members from the tree regulation update advisory committee. Um, Jeff Harris and he is with Solar Homes and Corey Harlan with Central Oregon Land Watch. And so the presentation tonight is going to go over three um topics. One is just gonna go through the recommendation from the tree regulation update advisory committee, also called TruAC. Uh the second part of the present presentation is just gonna go over two additional um code amendments that we would like to propose to be part of the package of the amendments, and then the last one staff is looking for guidance from council on discussing um the public outreach options, and um well, I'll get into more detail on that once we get there. So just to remind the council and for the um the audience, the true ac was working under a very specific scope from council when it um had to propose or recommend updates for our tree regulation standards. Uh one of the this part of the scope was to provide consistency uh between all our different codes and standards. So uh the BEN code, chapter 16, the BEN development code, we have a landscape chapter, and then also our standards and specs need updated. So what TruRAC recommended, we're gonna make sure is consistent in all the different documents. Uh TruAC worked really hard in uh providing clear and objective tree preservation standards in line with the scope. Uh they did consider larger trees, and we'll talk about uh what their recommendation is for that. And they considered and recommended different mitigation options too. Um if they have developer can't preserve trees, they can do some mitigation. So the summary of the tree regulation update advisory committee process. Uh I'm gonna pass on to Jeff so he can just give a real quick overview of um the committee and the meetings, and then I'll talk about the the meetings that we held. Thanks. Um as we a little, I guess sort of mentioned when we did our check-in with you uh midstream in the process. We're really focused on a collaborative consensus building approach. We have subject matter experts in the on the committee um that have different you know perspectives. We did a lot of learning, which is why we took nine meetings to do five meetings worth of initial work that we had planned for. Um I think everybody came curious and they came with an effort uh with an understanding that we needed a balanced clear and objective, tree preservation with our housing crisis. Um and keep practical thoughts in mind. Um so we we work through, we didn't have we we we would generally go through a discussion and we would go around the table, we would do a little head nod, a little straw poll, a little get the feel of the room, because that's how you have to build consensus when we have so many rocks to put in the jar as far as um the kind of specific things we had to get to. So um, if that's clear enough, I'll pretty much leave it there. But that was the idea was consensus building so that we could come to a sensible recommendation. So like Jeff said um they ended up holding nine public meetings uh during the meetings the very beginning. We just reviewed a whole bunch of different codes from different cities from different states. Uh we reviewed different preservation plans from different applications and bents. We looked at different site plan review applications, land division, uh, master plan applications, uh, just to see what they were preserving at the time compared to some of the preservation standards other cities were implementing. The committee did discuss making sure that we provide options that allow for flexibility. They talked about options for mitigation, which includes the tree replacement on site and payment in lieu of tree preservation, which I'll go into detail on. They talked about sometimes to balance the housing and tree preservation on smaller sites, that might be a little bit more difficult. So they added some language to exempt some smaller sites. And then they also were concerned that if we were too flexible, that a developer might just go straight to mitigation and not preserve any trees. So we call it a floor of what is the bare minimum that uh TruAC recommended them to preserve before they go to mitigation. So this is the true RAC recommendation. So it starts with a development site, it would apply to any sites that are more than one acre. The applications, and this was under council scope to make sure it applies to larger projects. So site plan review applications, which includes larger building expansions to existing developments, and then also any new developments, so like industrial, multifamily, or mixed use developments, and then any land divisions, so partitions or subdivisions that create new lots or parcels.