The Bend City Council met on August 6, 2025, for a work session at 5:00 PM followed by a regular business session at 6:00 PM. The work session focused on an update for the Bend Bikeway project. The regular session included a continued quasi-judicial hearing, multiple public hearings, approvals of contracts, collective bargaining agreements, and a discussion on the city's sponsorship policy. The Bend Urban Renewal Agency (BURA) also met to adopt a new affordable housing loan assistance program.
Work Session: Bend Bikeway Update (5:00 PM):
Continued Quasi-Judicial Hearing – OSU-Cascades Overlay Zone (Item 5):
Public Hearing – Right-of-Way Vacation, NE Andesite Street (Item 6):
Public Hearing – Legalization of Bear Creek Road (Item 7):
Affordable Housing Fund Recommendations (Item 8):
Butler Market Road Roundabout Contract (Item 9):
Airport Taxilane Rehabilitation (Items 10, 11, 12):
Collective Bargaining Agreements (Items 13, 14, 15):
City Manager's Report:
Votes:
Referrals and Next Steps:
BURA Action:
There we go. Ariel, can you hear us? All right, can you give a thumbs up? You can hear us. Councilor Mendez, can you hear us? Public meetings. Okay, there. Councilor Mendes, can you hear us now? Okay, great. Yes, thank you. All right. Are we on uh the webinar? We're streaming. Okay, great. All right, we will begin our Ben City Council of Work Session. We have one item tonight, which is just an update on the Ben Bikeway. Perfect. Uh thank you. Uh Council Ryan Ostrom, the director of our engineering department. Uh I want to recognize Kevin Howard first, who's the project manager on this. He's unable to be here tonight. Um so I'm hitting for him. And basically this evening is uh an update uh of the work we've done roughly over the last year to get us to where we are now. And uh what I think is some exciting advancements in our uh bike system. Uh I did have a a little bit of time right before this to take a quick walk in between meetings, and it was nice on a day that wasn't even that sunny, walking around Drake Park and down Galveston. We actually have a pretty good system. Like we actually have a really good system in the city of Bend already. Um, and this I think is going to be build upon that. This is gonna really offer some other alternatives and really focus on those parts of the system that might be lacking and are people a little more uncomfortable on. Uh but once we get those connections made, uh I think we're gonna have a great system here in Bend. So uh no decisions being asked of council tonight. This is just an update. There will be, and I'll show a schedule here in a moment, some council touch points for some contract approvals. Uh, but just stepping into the background a little bit. I'm gonna start at the thirty thousand foot level, uh, drill down into some specifics on what we're doing in some key intersections, and then we're gonna take a virtual walk, uh, east-west and north-south on the corridors that were identified um as outlined here on the big picture. So uh the goal here is to hit council's target of building one connected north-south and east-west key route. Um, and to mark that with wayfinding. Uh so again this evening I'll just be filling you in on some of the planning and design efforts and what we can expect uh in the construction side rolling into later this year and into 2026. So uh starting again at a high level before we get too deep, just wanted to throw the budget slide on here so everybody understands uh where we're coming from and how this uh bit of a Frankenstein of a project was pulled together. Uh, there's multiple funding buckets. The accessibility fund, uh, we've pulled one point three million out of that fund. And this is really to focus in on areas of the system that we're traversing over where we have non-compliant ADA ramps and some other things that are really going to help us fix some of those items. The general obligation bond is pitching in 2.3 million. And then the bulk of the money is coming out of our transportation construction fund. I'm happy to report, and you'll see it in the asterisk down below on the budget side. Roughly a million and a half dollars that really made this kind of tip over the scales and allow us to do this the way we've designed it. So that's an STBG grant, an arts grant, and a safe routes to school grant. The key with those though is each of those was applied to a specific area. So that funding has to be used. It can't just be wherever we want in the system.