So I think we're gonna go ahead and get started with our work session for the Benn City Council today.

So we are starting with a work session on the Reed Market Bond Roundabout Construction discussion, and I will turn it over to you.

Ryan.

Perfect.

Thank you very much.

So Ryan Oester, director of our engineering department, and I'll let Scott introduce himself here.

I'm Scott Baird with Kittles and Associates, and we've uh been helping the city with analyzing this intersection for a few years.

Okay.

I'll wait for this to catch.

Okay, so we've got about a half an hour set aside uh for this this evening.

And so probably gonna get through a good other bit of the background in the you know, maybe five, ten minutes tops, and then really kind of dive into uh you know what direction council, and I I don't need a decision tonight, just want to clarify that up front.

We don't need a like yes, do that.

But we are gonna be coming back uh on September 24th talking about midtown, kind of as its own independent thing, and then on October 8th, we'll be back for a much larger, more comprehensive work session that's gonna probably be the full two hours all about transportation prioritization and how we might want to move stuff on our capital program.

So, again, this evening is just to address some of the comments we've been hearing from the public and give some background and throw out a concept or two on how we could potentially meet the intent of adjusting the schedule.

So uh bond and read market.

I think everybody's familiar with where it is, it's right up above the old mill there.

It's it's one of the more beautifully landscaped roundabouts in the city.

The old mill has always kind of taken ownership of that, it always looks great.

Uh, this is one of the primary east-west corridors across the city.

I think we all understand that.

Uh, east-west travel time reliability was one of the key goals out of the transportation uh master plan, and this is one of the only eight river crossings in the whole city at the Bill Healy Bridge there.

Uh and as a reminder, this is the southernmost river crossing in the city.

There's no bridge south of this.

Uh, we do have uh a study planned in the TSP for another southern river crossing.

We haven't initiated that.

That'll be part of the discussion we can have in October of when we want to initiate that.

But this is what we have today.

This is looking east, kind of where where you'd be in front of the park right there, looking up towards the roundabout.

This is a good example of why there's a lot of cut through traffic in in Wood River Village right there.

Is a lot of people don't want to wait through this line, so they they take the ride and they kind of speed through the neighborhoods up there.

Uh so we fully recognize there's a backup here and it's uh reaching its life expectancy in terms of when this was built.

So, what have we done to date here?

Back in 2020, uh, we did an initial study.

We even spent a couple days out there uh counting cars, counting the cues or the backup with a metering program, which was uh uh an unorthodox idea for us here in the city.

Um they do have have these in other places around the country, but we uh investigated the idea of metering the roundabout, which basically means at peak hours you would give priority to one of the legs that has a longer cue compared to another leg that has a short queue and let that cue kind of empty out, um, and then you can trigger the lights again.

So uh results of that were a bit mixed.

We didn't get a ton of like, yes, this is gonna work really well, uh, but that is still something that is on the table that we could explore a little further.

And then, of course, uh a lot of concern lately, especially with what happened in California about wildfire evacuations given the the limited crossings we have in the river here in the city.

So uh what else have we done to date?

A little more background information.

We did a pretty intensive study of the corridor as a whole with ODOT.

They have a lot of improvements they would like to make at the 97 Reed Market interchange.

If anybody's uh taken that that northbound off ramp and tried to make a left, you know it's very scary.

Uh there's multiple on-ramps to go north off of Reed Market.

It's just a a bit a bit of a jumble and kind of confusing.

So we studied the bond and reed intersection, we studied both ramps, we study the division intersection, the third street intersection, and the Brosterhouse intersection.

And what came out of this study is the project landing where it is today on our CIP, which was much more optimistic in terms of ODOT wanting to do something at the Reed Market interchange.

I think we all understand that's pretty unrealistic.

ODOT doesn't isn't gonna be able to bring anything to the table.

Um so it is a good question for us to ask is do we separate our work from whatever work ODOT might want to do at the interchange in the future?

This is the concept that we developed.

This is this was again a preliminary idea.

This isn't even a 30% design, but it's it's the main concept we landed at.

So today it functions as a standard single-lane roundabout, one entry lane and one exit lane on each road.

What we landed on for a concept is a lot like what 15th in Reed is today, which is a dual entry single exit.

And then we prioritize the longer cues where more the more vehicles are and helped differentiate which one of these is the through lane compared to the left and right.

So you'll see if you're on the south leg, the left lane is the left turn and the right lane is the through and right.

If you're on the east leg, it's it's flipped, it's opposite of that.

So this was developed to address the idea of there's more people making a specific turning movement, uh, and that's intended.

So and you can see the central island in this one.

Um we're trying to think of a catchy nickname for this one, um, but it's not a standard center circle, it's more of a hurricane shaped, which is yeah, I don't want to scare anybody because Hurricane Aaron's coming up the east coast now, but it's it's a different type of center island, but it does allow for for two lanes on some of the legs.

Uh a couple of sections still maintain one lane through the through the roundabout.

I think it's a single googly eye.

Oh yeah.

Oh, there we go.

Sorry, like googly eye roundabout.

You're just asking for a lot of things.

Okay, um, so here's where our capital plan is today.

And I just highlight these two because this is one option on the table.

So you can see the bond and read roundabout is not programmed to start design until summer or fall of 2028.

And we would design it through most of 28 into early 29 and probably build it in the summer fall of 2029.

The idea of moving it up in the CIP, uh, I've had this discussion with a few counselors on you know which one could we think about moving.

The the clearest one to me is the one right below it, which is the Brosterhouse Chase intersection.

And I'll show you on a map real quick where that lands and how it fits into our system.

But this is a relatively easy change.

Number one, because the dollar amounts are the same, so it's very easy to do without having to adjust those bottom line numbers there.

And so, what this would mean for the bond read roundabout is instead of as I said, designing through 28, constructing in 29, this would bump it up to be a design in 26 in early 27, and then likely building it in 2027.

So that's kind of the high level of what we could do again.

Uh, if council kind of gives us the head nod to maybe head in that direction, we would come back in October and we would show this as a as an alternative in the future capital plan.

So uh where the Brosterhouse Chase intersection, so just to familiarize everybody where that is, on the left side of the screen, you'll see the US 97 powers interchange.

That's the at grade intersection that still has a signal on US 97.

That's is that the only one left?

I think that might be the only one left on 97 here in Bend that that ODOT would love to get off the system.

Uh again, future plans.

Uh third in powers is right there, and then Rosterhouse and Chase is way over on the edge here.

You can see there was a developer that built a bunch of homes right there, and we had them build Chase Road right up to the edge of Broster House, which is the one that kind of does the 90-degree turn in the corner of the screen there.

And the idea is that if we connect Broster House directly to Chase, then people could come down Chase Road.

We have a geobond project with money dedicated to investigate the peril powers chase intersection and how to maybe better align those.

But the whole idea is that if we can get more cars off of the read market interchange using the powers interchange with this kind of chase road cut through, uh, then it'll alleviate some of the congestion on read market.

So this is the project that we could potentially delay for a couple years.

Uh, and then we would have to look at the timing of the geobond work as well in when we would do parallel powers and chase.

So that being said, um, that's generally the project background and in what we could do as staff.

Uh shifting the discussion here a little bit.

I know there's been a lot of discussions.

Yeah, Councilor Mendes.

Could you just say a little bit more about the in terms of the background?

The the two items that that you mentioned on there that I wanted to ask more about were the congestion and the wildlife evacuation concerns.

To what extent do you think that those are separate concerns that a project like this would be you know meeting one or the other, or or are they just totally lumped together?

Between difference between the two projects?

Yeah, I mean, my sense is that congestion is a different kind of problem than wild wildlife or wildfire evacuation.

And I would say neither of those are really a concern with Brosterhouse chase.

I don't think evacuation connectivity.

Yeah, it's a connectivity.

It's to maybe alleviate congestion on read and put it on the powers, but that's yeah, neither of those would be the high priority of why I would say we need to do broster house chase and for the bond and read market.

Yeah, so that's a great segue.

So I a list of questions.

And I just asked a question about um Rosterhouse Chase first.

I mean, wasn't the idea the reason part of the reason that was earlier on the CIP and the sort of project schedule was because prepping foreclosure of read market?

That was that was one of the initial thoughts.

This allows some more this would be an east-west alternative route when we do close read market to build the bridge over the rail.

Do we know do we know what our estimated time of closure is going to be for the bridge?

For the overcrossing I about probably 18 to 24 months.

It's well, I mean, when is it gonna start?

Do we think oh building the bridge?

The construction of the bridge, yeah.

So we're white we're finishing up the first million dollar grant we got from Federal Rail Administration now.

That should be done at the end of this year, and if everything goes well, we would get awarded the second part of that grant, and we would be designing through most of 26, probably into part of 27, and hopefully under construction in 27, 28 at the worst.

Okay.

So it's just something to consider if this might be.

We did ask Kittle sin to do some modeling, and and I'll admit I was surprised.

I thought having this connection would do a lot to help alleviate the congestion, and the model came back.

It'll help, but it's not gonna be this hugely impactful like yeah, you got Wilson, you got Murphy, and that's where most people are gonna go.

Some might use this, but I mean, if if you haven't been out there, there's a stretch of Chase Road here that's still gravel.

Yeah, um, and so that that's one of the things we would have been been attacking with this project, or still will.

Um other questions on Ross Strauss Chase before we move on.

Okay.

So a lot of questions have come up not only around this intersection, we're also gonna be holding an open house tomorrow evening about the potential expansion uh 15th and read to a full double lane.

So a lot of questions have come up in terms of you know, are we evaluating this all?

You know, we we don't want to be just react uh too too quickly.

So, what are some of the things that we need to consider as staff and and you as council before we consider widening a roundabout or adding capacity at some of these key intersections?

So I'll just kind of try to go through these as quickly as I can.

Uh one one of the main questions, and uh I've had this discussion with some of you, you know, is is expanding an intersection consistent with our current policy in the transportation system plan.

So specifically, this is policy 17, uh, where it says uh you can all read that, but the summary is uh we will not be adding travel lanes for motor vehicles unless we've evaluated all of this other criteria.

Um so those are all wonderful valid criteria, all factors that we need to think about.

Uh safety is one we'll dive into the difference between a single lane or multi-lane roundabout.

Uh, but I do want to highlight 17B.

Um, and my interpretation of this is the potential to add capacity, really focusing on the nodes of where the congestion is.

I don't, as your city engineer interpret this being uh counter to what our TSP policy is.

I think widening an intersection does not constitute adding a lane uh to read market, but I know that can be interpreted otherwise.

Um happy to have that discussion, but that was one of the main things that came up at first is is widening aroundabout consistent with our policy and the climate-friendly and equitable community rules coming down from the state that we have now.

So um, and then there's other policies under under 17.

There's a total of 18 policies in our in our TSP.

Um, and some of those, depending on how you read it, could feel like they're contradicting each other.

They're all good things, but it's you know, it talks about safety as a huge priority.

It also talks about travel time reliability.

It also talks about emergency response time.

So balance all those with something uh that that'll meet the intent of what the TSP says.

So that that was an interesting one uh to address right off the bat.

So stop me if you want to have a discussion on any of these or if something pops up.

Yeah, Councillor Mendes.

You said um intersection improvements, and then you also said intersection widening is I mean, I I feel like improvements can be interpreted in a couple of different ways, not just as widening.

And if we're talking about widening as potential to add capacity, I mean, we can be talking about other ways of adding capacity that aren't also widening.

So isn't there other ways of interpreting paragraphs?

There certainly is, yeah.

That and that's yeah, I I can give you my reading of it, but ultimately it's your decision.

Just to kind of bring back with the question.

So we've had a lot of requests around dealing with this intersection one way or the other.

And I think we have sort of a concept plan about how we could we think we could improve the queuing and maybe help people get through there quicker.

But I think we can use all of these items to talk about how we can improve that intersection.

Um, and maybe it is a double lane entry, or maybe it's something else.

But I think also what Kelsey to keep in mind as we're talking about this that we also have to make a decision about are we even gonna move that project up?

Whatever it might end up being.

We don't have by moving it up, we don't have to decide we're only doing one certain thing.

Yeah, well we can move it up and say the conversation's gonna get moved up, and we're gonna decide based on these factors what we want it to look like.

Well, yeah.

So, but I think it's it's good to remember this is one of several factors, but it is important to think about when we're having that future discussion.

And just for history, the previous TSP uh identified corridors that would not be widened, would not have travel lanes added along the entire corridor.

Um it was somewhat arbitrary, uh, it wasn't really based in any type of qualitative analysis or quantitative analysis.

So this policy was was inserted into the new TSP to try to provide more analysis around where we can actually add capacity and one of the ways we can add capacity at the intersections.

You know, obviously intersection is a point of conflicting flow.

So we may not need a capacity along the corridor, but by adding it at the intersection, we can actually relieve a lot of congestion.

So we can still keep our you know skinny roads, wider node philosophy without adding um you know, additional travel lane that has to be maintained and uh cross for pedestrians along the entire corridor.

Costs a lot of money to add any lanes, right?

Just to be clear when you say add capacity, you mean capacity for motor vehicles or capacity to move people?

Um I would I mean I would say either.

I mean, if we add um additional travel lanes, and depending on how cyclists use the intersection, I think that you know it's it's available capacity to anybody, so transit.

So one informational question the the 4.25 million was that projected roughly at the time to get us the concept you showed earlier.

Yeah, right.

So a two-lane, a two-entry, a dual entry, dual exit would be more expensive.

That's yes, it would.

Yeah, yeah, and and one of the driving factors in that that estimate that again I caution there's there's still room for some refinement in there, is even with this concept you can see in the corner up here, we're really cutting into those steep walls.

So there's gonna need to be retaining walls through portions of this.

And you know, this there's uh the old mill monument sign is sitting here.

So we're trying to minimize impacts where there's not physical structures.

You know, we've got a lot of the townhomes through here, we've got a PPL substation here, more steep slopes on this side.

So this was intended to have a concept that we could get whatever right-of-way we might need, work within the existing right-of-way as much as possible, um, and build something that goes more inward than outward.

Uh can you give me an example of a dual entry single exit in town and and maybe if what kind of changes we saw after?

Yeah, 15th and read market is a dual entry, single exit today.

And so we went from a signalized intersection straight to that.

And just to differentiate the one at Empire and 27th on the north end, is a full dual entry, dual exit, full multi-lane roundabout.

This we call a partial multi-lane roundabout, because you still only have one exit lane.

So from a safety standpoint, having you know one less lane on the exit means less crossing distance, right?

So those are all factors when you, you know, pedestrian safeties, pedestrian crossings.

One of the questions was you know, how much more unsafe are uh partial or multi-lane roundabouts compared to single-lane roundabouts and full transparency, it's less safe than a single, undoubtedly.

There's just more crossing, there's vehicles side by side where you didn't have that before.

It's still fundamentally way safer than a signalized intersection or a four-way stop-controlled intersection.

From a pedestrian and bicycle standpoint, then uh you know, we we would investigate if this moves up in the timeline and we get active on this project, we would investigate what kind of push button or signalize things or other things we could do for the bikes and peds that are having to cross multiple lanes now instead of just one in each direction.

So that's that's one of the factors we would definitely investigate is how could we build this um from a pedestrian safety standpoint.

Uh a few other questions is you know, does this does this meet the evacuation needs?

Uh and as Scott described, you know, the the wider you can make them nodes, the more you can get flows through that.

There's still single lane roads on either side, right?

Reed market across the Bill Healy Bridge and all the way up to the 20, the 97 interchange, you're still one lane in each direction.

So this isn't going to fundamentally open the four-door up for quicker, faster evacuation, but you can get more cars through that specific node, and then you know, potentially send them not only towards the parkway, but maybe south as well, depending on on where the fire is coming from.

So we have a lot of refinement to do on our wildfire evacuation plans.

Right now, our plan is basically piggybacking the county plan, uh, which identifies all arterials and collectors in the cities as evacuation routes, and this is this is one of them.

So other questions without hitting on every one of these, you know, how long till we see similar congestion.

Um I'll let Scott probably jump into that one if you don't mind.

Yeah, um, we don't have analysis that's already been done to say um this is an interim year um, you know, that we would hit uh capacity.

Uh but we do know that under the existing configuration, if we look out to 2040, which was the the year it was analyzed for both um previous work the city did and the work that ODOT did in 2040.

The um you know, if you look at the AM, for instance, a lot of folks are coming from the east side um down read market.

Uh that queue today can sometimes back up to the interchange, which has the potential to create some problems with exiting traffic from the interchange, and obviously we don't want to back traffic onto the parkway, that'd be in unsafe condition.

Uh but that's sort of the the scenario today.

Uh the analysis that's been done in the past has shown that that that queue in 2040, if we don't do anything, could extend all the way to third street and beyond, um, even maybe close to American Lane in theory.

Um, at that point, people are going to start finding other routes realistically, but um it is projected to be um pretty significant.

So uh by doing the improvement that Ryan shown in that 2040 analysis, we show that queue coming back down to about the kind of that parkway ramp.

So it'd be similar today to what's you know we're seeing today.

So we might buy ourselves basically you know, 15-20 years of of improved condition over what we see today.

All dependent upon growth, which you know we can plug a standard growth percentage in there, but you just never know uh what it's ultimately gonna be as we continue to grow and densify and expand as a city.

Well, but uh but it isn't the the modeling that you the scenarios you just described based on um sort of a relatively full build-out scenario for the UGB plan.

I mean, we did the UGB, then we did the TSP, and wasn't isn't it built on that assumption?

It's based on the comprehensive plan, what's in the comprehensive plan?

Yeah, the growth is already built into those scenarios that you're describing.

Sure, what's currently in the plan, um obviously where development actually happens, the pace that happens where it happens, but we know southeast if there's another river crossing would obviously be a game changer for that corridor.

Um that's a lot.

Just in the interest of time, and I'll get to you, Steve.

I just want to make sure because we have about like seven minutes-ish before we need to move to the next topic.

Um just want to see one of the goals tonight is just to see if there's council support to bring this suggested scenario to our next discussion about CIP about moving this project up.

And then I think to gather any um input that could be useful then or could be useful in the future about this intersection.

So just want to kind of focus us in on that.

Yeah, Steve.

For your projections for 24, does it 2040 does it assume a constant modality of travel?

Or is there any change of modalities?

Um in terms of a relative percentage.

I'm not you're talking to the engineer today instead of the planner, so I apologize for that.

I don't know what the mode split is assumed in the model.

Um, yeah, we can yeah, and that's the idea, right?

Is as congestion gets worse, people will naturally gravitate to trying a different mode.

Um but yeah, congestion is never gonna not be there.

Right, and there are policy choices we can make to facilitate that transition as well.

So I mean, I don't remember there being a large mode shift predicted based on the policies that were adopted in the TSP because that was part of the process.

So there was some mode shift, but it was really.

Yeah, even if it goes from five to seven percent, you're still gonna see the amount of vehicular increase by more than that.

That was assumed into the modeling outcome against the scenarios you're describing.

Yeah.

So also on the modeling.

I mean, if I recall, the the model does not include things like assumptions about the quality or connectivity of walking and biking facilities, what kind of transit improvements we might expect, or the implementation of transportation demand management programs to try to incentivize.

Yeah, those are all kinds of things that we can factor.

So is that is that correct the model does not include those, or it does?

It would not, no.

Those are all like policies that we one of them that we talked about.

Those are all good things that we would like to see implemented, but we don't assume a s X number of employees from this type of employment is going to do a mode shift because they offer an incentive to ride instead of drive.

So yeah, there's too many variables in there to factor in for the 20 year planning horizon.

Right.

But those are all things that if, as you said, mayor, if if this moves up in priority, those are all things that we would need to start tackling.

It's not on our radar to do it right now because this is three plus years out.

Yeah.

But if we move it up, it'll change it.

Yeah, I don't I don't want us to get so stuck on 20 years from now.

Um I think what we're seeing right now is a really really rough situation, and I'm on team, let's do something about it now.

Um so I I don't want us to get stuck thinking too much about in the future.

I mean, I think these things are gonna come.

These these these mo shifts are gonna come.

Who knows what type of car we will be driving or if at all in 15, 20 years, we have no idea.

Um, but the fact of the matter is there are people that are sitting at that roundabout for a very long period of time who are trying to get somewhere, whether it's work or or school or whatever.

And um I see this as a as a way to uh decrease that bottleneck a little bit.

One suggestion I might make, council, if if folks are on board with looking at, and again, we're not deciding tonight, but looking at a scenario, SAP brings just to move this up as described.

I would like to maybe in conjunction see that southern crossing study moved up.

Um, because I think ultimately the problem here is this is the southernmost crossing of the river, and there's a whole lot of bends out there.

A lot of demand of the south.

So I think that that is the if we had a magic wand right now to fix this, I would place another bridge at powers, right?

Um we don't, but I would like to see in conjunction with this moving up that study, if it's possible, maybe a scenario, how do we move that up?

Um, yeah, that yeah, that's it.

So we get into that conversation a little sooner um with the community and start planning for that as we get into our TSB work with it.

That that would be my suggestion.

I'd want to also at least have some, you know, it's fifth class or whatever the the the more general one.

The class five estimate is on what it would take to to do the dual entry, dual exit, not because I'm advocating for that per se.

I'm just just to see it's important for us to see the range of options, like leave it alone and what are some other things that might be done.

This concept, if that's even possible, the first thing I said, this concept, and then at least have a sense of you know, uh cost because you could say, well, if we're gonna do this, why don't we just do it, especially if it's not that much more, but if it's if it's a lot better, on order of magnitude, you know, like double or triple, then we can put an estimate together for that.

And maybe hard for us to do that.

Does that make sense?

Just to be clear, you're asking you're saying move up this where this means that, or this means potentially lots of other things to do.

Yeah, the project of improving this intersection.

Yeah, it doesn't even think it has to be this.

Not necessarily this particular design.

This is just what we developed when we were doing the metering program and some options that we could explore.

So I think I think I can support that.

I mean, my worry is that you know, use the example of uh 15th and read market as as uh you know dual entry uh partial uh multi-lane roundabout, and that one already is expecting can it is uh uh experiencing congestion as well.

So it's I just worry that you know, if our policy is let's just keep widening and then you know we're gonna get to a point where we can't widen anymore and we're still gonna have the congestion, and then we look at the alternatives that are actually more effective in the long run.

So I just don't want to make sure I want to make sure that we don't lose track of those no, I don't want to preclude those all those policy bullets, right?

I think those should be all part of the conversation.

Sounds good.

Yeah, and I think the looking at pedestrian, I mean I want to hear about cycling safety as well.

Yeah, but I think pedestrian, you know, I mean it's the cross scenes when you're changing direction that may be the hardest thing, whether you're walking or biking, um, and how we're gonna address that in at least for sure in this scenario, but even in the other one, which maybe we're learning about when we talk about remarket.

Yeah, yeah.

It's probably gonna be similar sets of solutions.

Yeah, it's all it's all the same.

But there's actually not a ton of data that you can point specifically to that says the difference from safety for a pedestrian between a single and a partial is X.

Yeah.

Um it actually, yeah, there's really not a lot of data out there.

So the the train of thought is we know it's a little worse, so just build in some safety mechanisms.

That's what I'm after.

Like what are the ideas to that we've got an RRFB or a hawk signal or or elevated elevated something, right?

Those are all things we would explore if this project gets moved up.

We just don't have the resources today to dive into something that it wasn't programmed for another three years.

And I think as I said when I asked for this to come from review, um you know, my feeling is that is we like the council and the folks who ran the bomb measure, broadly speaking, promised to the community that we were gonna really make sure East West corridors worked and that um that we would fix bottlenecks, and that that was fundamental to the promises that we made, knowing that we have a limited system with these north south barriers to East West travel, and also that we weren't gonna make large investments in five-ling roads because frankly they're just too expensive primarily, they're like way bigger orders of magnitude, and two, they're not safe for people.

And so if we're gonna go with that kind of, if you will, a little bit more constrained system, then um, we really need to make sure that we're paying attention to where these bottlenecks are, and in particular these east west corridors.

And I think consistent with what your proton Perkins said, that's why we need to be paying attention to this now.

Okay.

So it sounds like there's majority on um moving forward bringing that to us.

We're also looking at when can we move that study up and then we will come back to this topic on uh in October?

Is that what you said, right?

Yeah, well, you know, on October 8th, we'll have a more comprehensive updated CIO for the whole list.

This will be part of the all geobond and all transportation projects to make sure.

And you'll bring us a number for the double double to make sure we understand that.

We can do that.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

All right, next up um electrification policy process update with Catsy.

Okay, um, good evening, counselors.

I'm Cassie Lacey, senior management analyst in the city manager's office.

I'm here to share an update regarding our electrification policy options work.

Um the goal of the presentation today is primarily informational.

I'm gonna share with you the findings of some research that we've been doing to inform the development of our electrification policy, um, and then I'll share with you what our planned next steps are for that.

So I'm essentially looking to see if you agree with the general approach that we're taking for all this, um, specifically with respect to the overall work plan, the scope of our policy, and the public engagement approach.

Um, so uh just to remind us about the background of this project and how we got to where we are tonight.

Last year we launched a process to explore different policy options to reduce the use of natural gas and bend.

The environment and climate committee was asked to develop a recommendation to the council about which policy options we should consider pursuing.

The ECC delivered a recommendation to the council in December.

Their recommendation um was multifaceted.

But the biggest priorities from them were that they want suggested that the council pursue directly restricting natural gas use in new development through either right-of-way restrictions or by regulating nitrogen oxide emissions, or if these um if these types of regulations were not feasible to pursue a fee on natural gas appliances and new construction.

The bigger priority was um new construction since it's easiest and most cost effective to electrify when it's done up front, and then the ECC recommendation also included um a recommendation that we develop incentives to help um electrify existing buildings as well.

So, in response to that recommendation, the council directed staff to go get some additional feedback from the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and the Bend Economic Development Advisory Board.

Um, so we did that um in February, and at that time, staff introduced a recommendation to the joint committee that uh we suggested that we focus our next fall policy phase really on the incentives, um, including investigating a fee but also looking into other non-fee-based incentive programs.

Then we came and presented to you all in April.

We shared the same staff proposal and an associated work plan with you all.

I'll remind us of that work plan on my next slide.

Um, the direction we got from you all in April was that you supported the focus on incentives and that you wanted staff to specifically pursue the natural gas fee as sort of a foundational element of that incentive disincentive package, and that um we could then look at creating an incentive program using the revenue from that fee.

So, since that work session, we have spent the summer researching um other similar fee policies across the country and trying to figure out how we would go about creating that kind of fee here in Vend.

So that brings us to today, and my presentation for you today is primarily sharing back with you some of the key findings uh that we have uh found, and then based on that, how we're recommending that we proceed.

So, also as a reminder, back in April, we presented this work plan for you for encouraging electrification.

So before we dive into this incentives process, we have already been focusing on doing outreach and education to just try to expand awareness in the community and voluntarily drive uptake in increased electrification.

We've been doing that work since the spring.

There's been kind of a social media web newsletter events component of that.

The other initiative of the outreach and education program was to launch an energy navigator program.

We had initially planned on launching that this summer, but after we had the discussion earlier this year about the council prioritization of the overall work plan, that was one of the actions that was slightly slightly deprioritized.

So we're still planning on pursuing that this biennium, but we shifted it to next summer instead of this summer so that we could really so that we could focus more on the incentive and fee process.

So the next big focus of our electrification work is to develop this incentive disincentive package that will help transition our buildings to more increasingly all electric buildings.

We'll focus first on the development of a fee as a disincentive and then pursue an incentive program built off of that.

And then the last part of the work plan is that we will continue monitoring the regulatory pathways that the ECC had first expressed interest in, things like the right-of-way restriction and the Knox regulation.

There are other jurisdictions that are still pursuing those types of things.

So we're still monitoring that and we can report on that.

We but we're not actively pursuing any of those at this time.

So now I'll switch gears to sharing the findings of the research we've conducted on similar policy initiatives around the country.

I'll start with the city of Ashland.

The city of Ashland passed a fee ordinance in January of this year that goes into effect in January of next year.

Ashland was the model that you all had expressed the most interested, the most interest in trying to model off of.

It's also in Oregon, which is helpful.

So I have the most in-depth information about Ashland's fee.

So the purpose of their fee is really framed as aiming to offset the impact that that additional carbon has in the in the decision to use fossil fuel gas.

Their fee applies to all new residential construction.

It applies to every single dwelling unit.

The fee is assessed per fossil fuel based appliance or system.

So the appliances that have fees associated with them are gas-powered space, space heating and cooling equipment, gas stoves and cooktops, clothes dryers, gas fireplaces, and gas water heaters.

The way that their fee works is that it's calculated by multiplying the social cost of carbon by an average emissions factor for each appliance by the service life of that appliance.

So the social cost of carbon is a concept that assigns a monetary value to climate change damages resulting from emitting greenhouse gas emissions.

There are many different ways that the social cost of carbon can be calculated or is defined.

The US EPA has published a national social cost of carbon for many years.

So Ashland used the most recently published EPA social cost of carbon, which was from November 2023.

That sets that value at 208 dollars per metric ton.

The EPA is no longer publishing or endorsing the social cost of carbon.

So if we wanted to replicate this model using a concept like the social cost of carbon, we would want to just look at our options about how we define that.

And there are a lot of other options that we can use.

So the fee is the same regardless of the size of the dwelling unit or the size of the appliance, which makes it easier to administer.

And then the service life values are more straightforward.

They were pulled from a variety of sources, including the American Gas Association and the National Association of Home Builders.

And then some of the other findings about the Ashland model is that Ashland estimates that between 2019 and 2023, so pre-fee, roughly 86% of new heating installations were electric heat pumps as kind of their baseline.

So we'll look in a couple of slides what the data shows about our community.

It is a really different story.

And then Ashland estimates that they'll raise about $90,000 per year in revenue from this fee.

That assumes the same proportion of homes continue to use gas and pay the fee.

So if if it disincentivizes people, they would make less than that.

And that just represents a lower development level of development activity in Ashland.

I also found examples from two additional cities that I'll talk about more briefly.

The first one is Burlington, Vermont.

Burlington has a carbon pollution impact fee that's been in effect since January 1st, 2024.

Theirs works a little differently in Burlington.

The policy is centered around first a requirement that buildings must electrify or use renewable energy for any of the thermal energy systems in their building.

If the applicant can prove that both electrification and renewable energy for the building are economically infeasible, they may use a fossil fuel-based system, but then they must pay the carbon pollution impact fee for that building.

Their law applies to all new construction, residential and commercial, and it also applies to space and water heating replacements on existing buildings if the buildings are over 50,000 square feet.

The fee for Burlington is calculated similarly to Ashland's, but it has some distinct differences.

So where Ashland uses 208 dollars per metric ton as the social cost of carbon, the city of Burlington charges 150 dollars per metric ton.

That value was obtained by a combination of uh they first did an analysis to determine what dollar amount would effectively influence market cost to incentivize the investment in renewable energy.

And then they compare that to Vermont has a Vermont specific social cost of carbon, which sets the value at a little bit lower than that, but close to 150 dollars per metric ton.

So their number is it's actually primarily driven by a behavior change approach, but it's still informed by the social cost of carbon that kind of worked out for them.

Um another difference for Burlington's fee calculation is that rather than using an average emissions uh estimation to rep for the climate impact of the building, so that the emissions impact that you multiply that 150 dollars by, they intend to require an analysis of the actual carbon impacts of that building to determine the fee.

So Burlington's fee is calculated specific to each building, um, where Ashland's is um just uses one average that applies to all buildings, if that makes sense.

Um Burlington has not yet needed to assess a fee.

All buildings have complied with this regulation.

Um they don't have a lot of information about how tricky that's been to administer yet.

If they do collect fee payments, their ordinance spells out how the funds will be used.

A portion of their fees are allocated back to the um existing building applicants that they are allowed to use on greenhouse gas reduction projects for other buildings that they own in Burlington.

And then the rest of the fees are allocated to provide financial assistance for low-income programs that are all geared towards various greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.

And then some additional findings about the Burlington program is that they do allow the use of renewable natural gas to meet the renewable energy requirement.

So if a building builds with gas but they are procuring renewable natural gas for that, they don't they don't have to pay the fee.

Um there is very little single-family residential development in Burling uh in Burlington, so their program was structured more oriented to large commercial and large multifamily development, also just a lower less development activity in general.

Can I just I went to their data housing hub on it uh from 2012 to 2021 average of 120 new housing units created each year?

Is that because they're largely built out?

Yeah, and they're a lot, they're smaller.

And they're about half our population.

So yeah.

And Ashlands was similar.

I have I don't have the data in here, but I looked over the period of 2018 to 2023, like we had 15 times the amount uh number of dwelling units.

Just something to keep in mind.

Yeah.

Um, and then the last um finding about Burlington is that unlike Ashland, the um the majority of buildings before this fee were defaulting to using gas.

Um so the fee really is um effectively driving that behavior change for them.

And how does someone prove renewable energy is not feasible?

Good question.

They said, so I don't think anyone has attempted yet.

Yeah, okay.

Um, and they made it sound like some of those things are like gonna they will work out as they come up, but they said they will require an actual consultant report.

Like it would have to be um some real analysis done to justify that.

So um pretty intensive standard, it felt like one more disincentive groups.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and then the last example I have is very brief.

It's from Breckenridge, Colorado.

They have a program that's more similar to the Burlington program.

It's different because it's not about natural gas use specifically, it's about luxury outdoor energy uses such as snow melt systems, outdoor kitchens, and heated pools.

Um and there, the luxury energy the luxury energy uses are only permitted if supplemental energy is added to the home to offset the outdoor energy load.

And if the applicant does not provide the renewable energy, they may pay a fee in lieu of this requirement.

So it's a different kind of program, but I looked into it to figure out how they calculate the fee and loo amount to see if that could inform how we might approach a fee.

Um Breckenridge's fee like Burlington's is based on um a dollar value based on the market cost to incentivize renewable energy.

I didn't see anything in their materials or the conversation with the staff that uh the social cost of carbon was a factor for them.

So it really was more behavior change driven.

Um also like Burlington, the fee and loo amount is based on a project specific analysis about the carbon impact of the particular project.

Um so it is it's project specific and not an average like Ashland's.

Um and that is basically it.

So that summarizes the key findings from the research that I found about fees similar to the one we would be pursuing.

As you can see, they're different.

There's not a lot of uh fees like this out there.

Um so what we'll be doing will uh be unique to some extent.

Um so now I have um I want to share with you some uh findings from our own permit data.

We've been trying to figure out our baseline with respect to how many new buildings in Bend are building with gas versus all electric.

The first slide shows that um shows all new construction applications between 2020 and 2025.

The blue bars indicate applications that have gas on site, and the green bars indicate applications that do not have any gas on their site.

You can see here that a large majority of all new construction uses gas and bend, most prominently single family dwellings predominant predominantly use gas.

Other small residential, like townhomes, duplexes, and ADUs use gas the majority of the time, though the gap is smaller.

Large multifamily is the only residential building type that is predominantly all electric.

And then on the commercial side, this data shows that more commercial buildings do not have gas hookups, um, implying that they would be electric.

However, the commercial data is not entirely accurate for this inquiry because the permit data captures buildings at an earlier stage of development for commercial, or the gas rather is brought in at a later stage of development.

Um so if we wanted to get a better understanding of how much gas is in commercial buildings, we would need to find a different data source.

So we just didn't um have the we didn't have the time to look into that yet.

We believe that the majority of commercial does actually use gas.

Um so that's an area for further exploration.

And then I have a couple more slides that just zoom in on the particular uh residential building types to look at the trends from 2020 to 2024.

The um the picture on the the graph on the left is single family gas use.

You can see that in that time period um 95% of single family homes use gas, so it's a pretty large number.

There's a little uptick in 2024, but it's um short enough and subtle enough to really say if that's the start of a trend.

Um the multifamily data shows that only 12% of multifamily applications in the last five years have used gas.

Um these two graphs show townhomes and duplexes between those years.

It's uh similar story.

88% of townhomes use gas and 76% of duplexes use gas.

Um so those are all the key insights uh I have for you today from our permit data, but the additional takeaways just knowing that we do have this data, we can use it to track our progress if we um enact any sort of policy initiative and we can continue digging into it and generating more insights.

Yeah, and just for the the graphs here are showing number of applications, so those are not showing number of units, right?

Or else the multiple like the multifamily bars would be like off the chart, right?

So that's true.

Yeah, just to make that point.

I think we're getting the the gist of kind of what the trends are, but um just wanted to make that point just for the yeah, no, thank you for that.

Number of units.

It's just number of applications.

So one application could have hundreds of units, right?

But yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a good point.

And we did, we kind of just did like just pulling together the dashboard for it was um a little bit tricky to get it all clean.

I think so.

I think this is good at showing the trends, right?

So I think that that makes sense.

But we can definitely dig into it deeper.

Is there a way to pull the number of homes for multifamily?

Because it seems like that would be pretty meaningful to look at.

Yeah, you could just easily units.

Yeah, because each application has a number with it, right?

So yeah, that would make sense.

Um one of the other things that this data does not tell us is what the gas is being used in the buildings for.

So we don't know if this is all used for space heating or if some of the units are only using it for a fireplace or a hooktop or something.

We can continue digging into that.

I don't, it didn't seem like we have that data readily available in our system.

We did uh we did add some fields in the permit software, so moving forward, we should be able to start collecting data on the type of heating system that people are using.

So hopefully over this biennium we can start seeing that.

And we might not be able to get to cooktops, for example, but if we know how many of them are using it for heating, we can you know make some conclusions.

And heating is the biggest heating is the biggest one by the way.

Baseland water, right?

Eating water, yeah.

Yeah, I think cooling and heating water are the biggest.

Yeah, I'm assuming that's the same.

Yes, they're definitely the biggest.

I'm trying to remember if we were able to like add in the permit software, whether they would give us information about the water heaters, but I'll look into that.

I know we did the space heating.

Space heating is still is larger than water heating by a fair amount still, but water heating is also big.

Okay, so that is all the information I have to share with you from our research.

Here are some of the key takeaways that I've taken away from the research efforts over the last few months and really this whole process.

The first um, and we've kind of alluded to some of these things already, but the first is that Ben's development context is unique.

I it's something that may impact how we want to approach the development of this fee.

We have significantly more active development, especially residential than pure cities with similar fees.

Um, compared to Ashland at least, we have a lot more gas use as the default in new construction.

So that means that in trying to incentivize people, um, it's going uh and just trying to get people to switch, it's gonna affect a larger number of people, and we may have market conditions that drive people towards gas more than they are in Ashland today.

Another key takeaway is that both the costs of electricity and the upfront cost to electrify are uncertain and may be different between cities.

We've had a lot of discussion, particularly with the joint committee back in February, trying to get to the bottom of whether electrification will save people money or cost people money, both upfront and over the long term.

And we really do not have a confident answer to that question today.

We do know that it really depends on the context, it can be different building by building.

Um you can find written reports and anecdotal stories that support both realities, and so in order for us to set both the fee and the incentive program effectively, we're gonna need to collect some good local data to try to get reasonable numbers to clarify what the story is about the cost of electrification in Bend on average.

So that will be part of the analysis to get to that fee is trying to get good data so that we can you know route decisions based in that.

Um, also related to costs, both Ashton and Burlington have their own municipal electric utilities, which means they have a greater degree of control over their electricity costs in the long term.

Um my third takeaway is that we need to determine what factors we want to incorporate in our fee calculation.

You heard from the examples that there are different ways you can approach defining the fee.

Um you can use the social cost of carbon, you can uh use market cost to drive behavior change, you can use the average um emissions estimates, or you can do project-specific calculations.

Um there may be you know options in between those.

Um determining what factors we want to incorporate into our fee, and then determining the values for those factors is the heart of what our fee development process is going to be focused on.

And then the fourth takeaway is that we think a policy focus on new residential development would be the best approach for this work initially, like Ashland's is addressing commercial or existing buildings brings a lot of additional complexity to a couple different aspects of this project.

So that's what we would recommend.

We could consider expanding the fee into other building types in a future phase.

So that brings me to our next steps.

These are the policy decisions that need to be worked through in order for us to get to a fee and incentive program.

In the most general sense, we need to clearly define what the ultimate goal of the fee is for us in order to orient the rest of our policy work around that appropriate goal.

So, for example, two possibilities that lie somewhat on a spectrum are that is to what extent are we trying to drive behavior change or to what extent are we trying to raise revenue for an incentive?

There could be other ultimate goals for Ashland, it's more about offsetting the impact of the additional carbon from that building.

So that's something that we want to define for us to make the rest of it uh all come together.

And then as I said in my last slide, we need to determine what the factors should be included in our fee and figure out how to define those values, which will be informed by I think that ultimate goal.

And then last we'll need to determine what the incentive program should be and how it should be structured.

So we do not need you to answer any of those questions today.

Our next step is that we're on the process of procuring a consultant with expertise in this kind of fee development, and we will come back to you with additional analysis and additional framing on October 22nd on different approaches to the fee, and that's when we'll be looking for more direction from you to help us really hone in on the scope of our fee and to set up the public engagement process for success.

Then we anticipate launching a public engagement process using the joint committee of affordable housing and economic development advisory board and environment and climate committee to help us define the fee and the incentive program.

Um so we expect that to start in November following that October work session.

Um I'm estimating we can have a fee policy by the early spring.

That's kind of my target date, and then um we would probably do that first and then develop an incentive policy uh within a couple months after that.

And then this is my last slide, just to uh focus in on the expected public engagement process again.

As I said, we anticipate using the joint committee as the recommending body.

So this is who we will work with to create the recommendation about the fee for you all.

Um we would like to offer ex officio seats to each of the three energy utilities so that they can be continually engaged in the process and provide good information to the joint committee to inform their decision making.

We anticipate additional developer and industry round tables on specific topics as needed.

And then as far as the scope and the focus of the engagement, I expect the committee to mostly be helping us define the factors that make up the fee.

I would like the council, I the way I think it will come together is um if the council can help us define the general purpose of the fee up front, and then the joint committee can advise on how to make a fee calculation that achieves that purpose.

Um so that's what I'm hoping we'll get to at the October meeting.

Um we'll also use the committee to determine the best use of funds as an incentive and an effective um how to structure that program to be effective.

So that's all I have for you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Um and the feedback we're looking for is uh is essentially do you support these approach and these next steps?

And I've kind of outlined the work plan, um, that idea that uh we'd like to focus on new residential development to start and then um the public engagement approach as well.

Great.

Thanks, Kat.

So you talked fast and got through a lot of things.

Sorry.

Um yeah, we knew that was coming, but that's a lot of research and a lot of information to gather up for us to take the next step in this policy development, Steve.

Cassie, how long has uh Burlington's program been up and running?

Um January 1st, 2024, so about 18 months.

Okay.

I'm really intrigued by their program.

Um the idea of renewable energy rather than just electrification, I think might present us with a little bit more opportunity in our community.

So that's the thing that direction that I would like to see us go in.

Um also on a little like if if I had my way, I would have us do the incentive program before we were doing the fee.

Um I would like to switch that around.

I think that makes a lot more sense, Carrot than a stick, but um just my thoughts.

Other thoughts?

I well, I I like taking the dual approach of creating the fee so that we then have revenue to use as an incentive, um, but not that the primary purpose is about generating money for that.

Yeah, um, I think you know, fundamentally we have to deal with the emissions issue and how do we get a shift to non-fossil fuel-based in um I do have a question.

I mean, I guess I would just like to see if you go back one slide.

I think the additional developer industry round tables, I think it's gonna be important.

We also have a round table that just engages the environmental community to see what their perspective are and how this is all developing, and that should be explicitly in the plan, and I don't see it here yet.

Yeah, um, because I think they're an important stakeholder in this process.

Um yeah, does anyone everyone okay with this sort of engagement with using the different committee members?

I think that's a really smart way to do it.

Will there be an opportunity similar to the tree code?

I would like to see an opportunity similar to the tree code where the public can attend these meetings and and give public comment.

Um I think it's important to engage outside.

This is a this will be a significant change for for people in our community, and um I don't want it to be a surprise to anyone.

I want people to be able to, yeah.

I mean, I was anticipating it like our regular committee meetings that there would be that opportunity.

Yeah, it would be they'd be held like committee meetings, so they'd be open to the public.

We can um well, we can plan on accepting public comment for them.

So it should be similar to the tree code, except the main difference is that rather than form a brand new committee, we're trying to leverage those existing committees since we engage them earlier.

But I do actually think it would be helpful potentially in October or shortly after it to write up like a specific charge letter or something, like we do the resolution for those ad hoc committees, but at least like really focus this committee, and there we can kind of outline some of the some more details about what that process will look like.

Even yeah, just to just to clarify.

So even a committee of committees will need to be formed by resolution.

Oh, okay.

So I think that's the perfect opportunity to do that.

Yeah.

Scope and all of the things that we talk about in October to really help, and then probably November ish, get that resolution that will really formalize the charge.

Yeah, of the anticipate having a draft of that um direction for the October meeting or at a meeting to follow.

I think the October meeting is gonna give us the direction or the scope.

It'll probably have to be like one meeting after that, and that's where both those comments like about the the round tables and who that should focus on, and then um how the meeting should run, all of that can be included in there.

Great.

Okay.

The only other fee question for fee design factors is I hear a lot of people have anxiety about what happens when there's a power outage, and I think there are steps that we can take to address that, but if there are implications for what kinds of policies we should have for mitigating or reducing the frequency or duration of power outages, whether that's like you know, um, maybe we need to be building more passive house style buildings or burying power lines so they're more resistant to these kinds of outages.

Um I would be interested in hearing that too because I I think it's a valid concern.

And if there are things that we can be doing to mitigate that, then I don't want to overlook them.

But yeah, it's a it's a big question.

Yeah, I'm not sure it's in the scope of this particular fee.

I'm not sure I quite see the connection, but I think I think you're I I take your point, and we've already heard some about that this year.

So would we be able to see also in October the um the the larger scope of work that the you know your group is doing kind of like the results of the grant program and and and how some of this education is going, and I think I think that might be helpful too.

Um to not see this just isolated frame like it within the work that we're doing.

Yeah, that would be helpful.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I'm hearing support for moving this forward so that we can develop a resolution at the October meeting for this committee.

Um can I ask folks?

Steve, do you have a question I wanted to ask about the residential housing?

Is everyone okay?

Cassie's recommendation was starting with new residential housing.

Is there any is everyone okay with that?

Okay, so consensus on that.

Any other questions about the I thought that was a direction we'd already given.

We I think just wanted to make sure.

Yeah, okay.

Given the example, I said working under that assumption, but then I was just couldn't recall if it was clear, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

I just want to say, Cassie, this was a lot of work to get this here.

And and you really put a strong emphasis where it needs to be.

95% of the residential houses that are going in, we're talking about changing the behavior of 95%.

It's a big lift.

And you brought that forward, and you and you've you've made that very plain.

So thank you for doing that.

It's a big ask that we're asking our community to do, and that's why this public engagement's gonna be so important to move through this process.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

I was just really pleased we were able to work.

Um, shout out to the OPM team to put pull that dashboard together because it was not it wasn't really easy to get that from our permit data, but we found out a way to get to that.

And um, yeah, the the results were I think they surprised me a little bit at how pronounced that was.

Yeah, that's really interesting to see for sure.

Yeah, the only thing that I'll add is I would like to see you.

You touched on a little bit, but the cost of some of these, you know, like the the heating and the um both water heating and um and climate systems, and what is the cost of the end user on that?

I think that's gonna be really important to understand that as we go through a lot of this public engagement process.

To install to install and operate that's yeah, okay, counselor Norris, are you asking like if what conceptually the fee might look like for those different systems, but also then if you chose an alternative and did to not pay the fee, you chose an alternative electrification approach.

What is that cost?

What does that look like?

Right.

Sure.

Yeah, and I think that's Cassie was sort of saying there's not a lot of great data on that.

So I think that we need to look at that, what that would be realistically for us.

Yeah, we definitely need to collect that data, and it can be hard because cost data is tricky in general, and so there's um it can you can spend a lot of effort, time and money on getting really precise data, but then it doesn't, it's doesn't exactly fit what you need it for, and so uh I tried to get like the because those questions have come up since the beginning.

So I initially I was like by August, I'd like to like have a summary of like what is the cost for all this stuff, but as I dug into it, it just takes a little bit more nuanced of a look, and I think part of it is gonna be defining our what the goal is of our fee, so that we can kind of define those costs like oriented around that those goals, if that makes sense.

But we we will get to the bottom of it, at least have numbers that are usable for us.

But it's tricky because there really are um like there are stories on both sides, and that's been the the trickiest thing about the public engagement we've been doing here, and and really well done professional reports too.

So yeah.

Okay.

All right, okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

You guys stuck in the in the chain on this.

Okay, we're gonna take a break and we will be back at 7 p.m.

Started.

Okay, we are gonna begin and call to order our 7 p.m.

Bend City Council business meeting.

We will start with roll call um on your in Council Franzosa.

Uh Gina Franzosa, she her.

Ariel Mendez here.

Mike Riley, he's in.

Melanie Keebler, he she her.

Uh Megan Perkins, she her.

Megan Norris, she her.

She put.

Great.

We are all here tonight.

Um, so let's start with council action and reports um stewardship subcommittee.

Eric, did they meet between our last meeting or meeting upcoming?

Um the meeting is upcoming.

We have the meeting right before our last meeting.

Okay, so the next meeting, I believe, is September.

25th, it says here.

Yeah.

Cool.

Okay.

And then we had the community building subcommittee meeting where we talked about the collection system master plan, the transportation uh kind of overarching schedule and kind of context over the next couple of um months of decisions that will be need to be made as well as the engineering permit turnaround times and processing preference.

Okay, great.

Um, okay, and then it looks like a transit presentation at the next meeting of that subcommittee.

For steward for first community building.

For community building.

Yeah, great.

Okay, um, letters.

We did not have any at the moment.

Um was just remembering that we had said last time that Council Platt, Councilor Riley could help work to submit a public comment in the process about the EPA rescinding the rule that we were just talking about.

Um, so we'll keep working on that.

I think that's due next week.

Um, under appointments, I sent an email um earlier about um no, I said I can't remember if I did send an email on this, but um wanted to bring up the home committee.

We did appointments on the home committee last time.

Um the the resolution also states that the the mayor and uh manager should pick a chair and vice chair and also council liaisons.

So wanted to propose to council um have talked to the members um Sarah Odendahl as the chair, um Carly Colgan as the vice chair, and they've they've agreed to do those roles, and then myself as the liaison with Steve, who's the AHAC lease and sort of as the backup co liaison with me to that committee.

So if that's okay with everyone, we're gonna move forward with those um appointment or decisions.

Awesome.

Sounds good.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so let's go to council reports.

Um, counselor Franzosa, are you ready?

Sure.

Okay.

Um I I have a busy couple of weeks.

Um I I want to thank Melissa Steele with Ben Fire, Robin Church with Summit West Neighborhood District and the city communication staff.

Um, they came to my house and conducted a wildfire safety assessment.

It was quite enlightening, and it was filmed so you guys can all see all the risks that might be entire community.

Very um Melissa is um basically overbooked with requests for wildfire assessments.

Um, and so uh there aren't too many people here tonight.

Um, but I'm telling the rest of the council if uh anyone in the neighborhood districts that you work with are interested, they can become trained as an assessor, and um I'm sure they will be very busy.

Um I attended the executive board meeting of the Central Oregon Area Commission on Transportation, which is our three county committee that um issues joint comments to ODOT.

So next month we'll meet um and receive an update on ODOT staffing following uh what we hope will be a very short and successful um session uh next week to approve ODOT's funding.

Um I attended the welcoming week storytelling social, um, which was a really wonderful gathering of the incredible people who are planning and hosting welcoming week events.

So I'm really grateful to the champions for equity in our community.

And I hope everyone, I've got a couple welcoming week events on my calendar.

I hope everyone will check out at least one of those welcoming week events.

As City Manager King mentioned that we had the community building subcommittee meeting, I attended that.

He mentioned the updates that we heard on.

So I'll just say one talk about the um, we got a brief, very brief preview on an upcoming council discussion on transportation funding and projects, and one of the things that we emphasized was that we'd like to uh kind of make sure that we keep in mind the transportation system plan and the status on executing all those projects within the transportation system plan.

It's the foundational analysis to all of our road projects.

We should be building from that and accomplishing that in the prioritization that that plan put forward.

Um so continuing on the theme of transportation, I met with the transportation and mobility department and learned about a really cool GIS tool that they are developing to prioritize road maintenance projects.

Um and they'll it'll allow them to factor in bike and ped needs such as safe routes to school, for example.

Um so it was really really impressive, actually.

And um, so I'm excited.

I I was there for two hours, so like I don't know if anyone if everyone wants to take two hours to be there with them if they have two hours to spare for each of us.

But anyway, I'm excited for that to be rolled out and uh because I think that'll provide a lot of transparency.

Um I think and I would I emphasize to them, they you know, they they kind of we always hear about the road pavement index, road pavement condition index, but we don't always we don't have a ranking for bike and ped facilities, um, and if we if we did have that, it might not quite feel like it's um it's equal.

So um anyway, they I encourage them to use their dollars uh most of and try to make streets safer for all users.

So um, but it was a really great discussion, I thought.

I also met with the interim director of Deschutes County Health Department.

I've had so many meetings in the past two weeks.

Um it was so enlightening, um, and I just want to thank Holly Harris for her time and the county staff's great work to meet the very broad range of health issues that are um that our community faces.

Um I also want to follow up on something I brought up in the last meeting regarding the city's actions around funding for Juneteenth.

I had asked that council and city staff fulfill the human rights and equity commission's request to meet, and I understand that meeting will be scheduled for next week.

I forget the date right now, but I'm sure someone talk about that.

It's on web perfect.

Great, great, great.

So yeah.

And one, you know, one step that I took in the past two weeks was um I because I had never done this, I'd never read in 2020.

City council prioritized the matter of equity in our city government and commissioned an extensive survey, and there was a really great report that came out of that.

So I encourage you to read it if you haven't already.

Um that is uh it was a result of that report that HREC was commissioned.

So yeah, I thought that was super informative.

And finally, I want to speak to the bulletin's reporting of the Jackstraw project.

Um I thought that was um really insightful, and I applaud the bulletin for covering that issue and noticing that rents that are advertised are higher than the rents that were in the application for the tax abatement that was approved by the city.

Um so it results in, according to my math, income that would be equivalent to about half of the value of the tax abatement.

Tax abatements about 1.2 million and the income equivalent uh with higher rents is about 700,000 dollars per year.

So that's dollars per year.

So, you know, the policy under which the tax abatement was approved, um, was it was clear that the abatement uh should only be granted if the project cannot move forward without the abatement.

And so that is that was determined at the time of the application.

Um the policy does also allow it it allows the the administration of the policy.

There's a there's a lot of devils in the details, I would say.

And I think frankly, I think the administration, the policy was lax.

I think we um provided insufficient financial analysis of the need of the project at the get-go.

Um, and I think that um the emails that we've received from the community, um, and I mean I'm one of them too, is we're correct question.

You know, if the rent values are higher than originally stated, you know, are there other values in the application that were different?

Um, and was that tax abatement really necessary?

Um I just don't think that we obtained the information from the developer to even answer those questions.

So, you know, I think the council does have the authority to terminate the abatement award due to lack of need, um, but I'm not proposing that tonight because um I believe that would be equivalent to moving the goalposts, and that's not the message that we want to send to the development community.

Um what I would like, and I'm also concerned that with the site-specific TIFF program, the same matter of developers receiving outsized subsidy for high rent buildings will appear in the news and disappoint our constituents.

Um, you know, I've advocated for various forms of developer assistance from permitting timelines to low interest bridge loans, sorts of things that can be very meaningful support and come at zero cost to our general fund or to the city's operations.

So if we're going to provide significant subsidy in the form of tax abatements or otherwise, then what I would like to ask of my fellow council members and staff is to bring greater oversight to the these awards going forward.

We should not make awards simply because a developer says they need it.

Oversight, for example, could look like creating a template pro format to ensure that project costs are clearly stated and able to be evaluated.

Could include requiring applicants to amend their applications when changes to the projects occur.

Could include requiring reconciliation at the end of a project to ensure that subsidies are not resulting in windfalls to private developers.

And finally, you know, I did also go back and listen to the council discussion when the award was granted.

And actually, Mayor, one of the things that you said I thought was really appropriate is that the city needs to do a better job in clarifying the rules for developers and for the public alike so that it's very clear what the public benefit is, what the value of that benefit is, and what the value of the subsidy is so that we don't get questions like this.

So anyway, I believe that oversight of subsidy is just basic good government practice, um, and I hope I hope we can see changes to this end in future programs.

So thank you for listening to my long update tonight.

Yeah.

So Council Brazil, I'm gonna make a comment on um using the update time to make a statement like the one that you just made.

I think it's fairly disrespectful to the rest of the body to use this time to propose these proposed policy things or make accusations about how policies are being administered or what's happening with oversight.

What would be appropriate is if you want to discuss topics like this, one to let me know that you're gonna even make a statement like this tonight would have been nice to know so that we could have staff prepared or myself or anyone else prepared to respond to it.

Um, because there's a lot of things you've said that I disagree with, and I think are maybe misrepresenting some of the information I know that you received um by email from our staff prior to this meeting.

But um the appropriate way if you want to open up discussions on these types of policies is to use the work session requests, which is the first meeting of the month, um, and to see if there's council support to reopen these things.

Um you certainly have every right to comment on past decisions of council or to make proposals for future policy, but I would request that you not use this time um for those types of things and that you communicate better with the chair and um with staff before you want to bring things like this up and start talking about um changing policies or um increasing oversight or any of the things that you mentioned.

So I think that's how I would respond to that comment at this time.

I did.

I mean, just I did email staff, and it seemed like they didn't really have any notice from you that you're gonna make this kind of statement tonight.

It is a very lengthy, specific statement with a lot of policy asks, and what I'm asking you to do is at least let me know, um, and then we can talk about when the appropriate time is to bring that up, whether it's appropriate for the agenda, um, or to bring it in the work session requests.

So that's my request to you.

All right, Councilor Mendes.

Uh thank you.

I mean, I I feel like I wasn't prepared to respond to a statement like that, although I do have a lot of thoughts and happy to talk about what I think the primary benefit of a program like that was.

A program which, by the way, doesn't exist anymore.

Uh, so I would prefer to be forward-looking and take whatever lessons you feel like we can draw from it and improve our work going forward rather than be, you know, kind of retrospective.

Um, in any case, um community building subcommittee met on uh Monday, August 11th, and one of the interesting topics there was the collection systems master plan, where basically we try to plan to accommodate all those sewage that everybody dumps into the system, and really bad things happen if that gets messed up.

We saw some pretty uh interesting uh uh photos of what happens if things go wrong.

Um that we're not taken in Benn, though.

We don't want them to be taken in Benn.

Um, but that was a uh a really important uh discussion, and then on um Friday, August 15th, the Benn Metropolitan Planning Organization policy board met.

And one of the things that I wanted to just briefly spend a little bit of time talking about is the um uh federal highway administration FLAP program.

So FLAP stands for Federal Lands Access Program.

Oregon has historically been a really big recipient of FLAP money because we have a lot of public lands, and there will be a call at the state level for how to use those kinds of funding in the future.

Uh we've received tens of millions of dollars to do things like uh resurface the Cascade Lakes Highway.

So if you've ever visited any of the mountains or the lakes, you have benefited from this program.

Uh it has paid for things like paving the hall road trail, it has paid for uh transit to trails programming.

So a really important program, and uh the reason I think it's important to talk about it is because right now Congress is going to be talking about how much to allocate to that program, and we can talk about prioritizing our needs all night long, but if there's no money for that program, it's not gonna do us any good.

And we can talk about prioritizing our needs all night long, but if there's no money for that program, it's not going to do us any good.

So I think it's a really important program.

Important to talk to our congressional delegation about the importance of how much benefit we have for it.

We have a lot of visitors who also benefit from it.

Access to federal lands is important, and this program supports it.

And that's all.

Thank you, Council Riley.

Thank you.

I think we will have an opportunity when we do some discussion about the site specific tick tip to potentially talk about some of the things that you raised, Council.

So that seems like the appropriate time to do that.

I want to thank Melissa from Fire Department and Robin Church as well.

We they came to my house and did an assessment, didn't video mine, but um I think you know it was very interesting and informative and really did help practically prioritize stuff.

So I encourage people.

I know they're very full, but just a big thank you to them for for doing that work, and we're getting started on it by one cleaning the gutters and getting up, you know.

I do it regularly, but you gotta do it during the summer multiple times.

Yeah.

Um I want to just report out on the COIC decision relative to the Cascades East Transit Fair discussion.

So the board at the last meeting that was um at the beginning of this month, so right after our last meeting, um, went move forward with the uh FARA um proposal that was on the table that we saw here a while back essentially in Ben, what it means is it's two bucks a ride, a maximum of six dollars per day.

That's the standard fare, and then there's a whole bunch of different groups of people that um get discounts on the fairs.

Um, and um there's also the ability to partner with a variety of organizations like OSU Cascades or COCC or Ben LePine Schools or um Central Oregon Council on Aging to also um get discounts for the members and the people that those organizations serve, in particular youth and seniors.

We did we made two modifications.

One, um the discounts were extended from just active duty vets to all veterans, um whether they're disabled or not.

Um, and then dial a ride in Bend because the dial ride system is a little bit different in Bend.

Um instead of immediately charging uh four dollars a ride and or two dollars after the discounts, we gave the first 10 rides per month for free because the concern that I raised and it and the board unanimously agreed with that we we need to not have the impact be so hard on people, in particular seniors or those with this disabilities who are on very limited incomes with this change.

So there still be will be some free trips every month, um, but that we still need to keep in place.

There are some people that are misusing the system and just using it in scheduling rides four times a week and then canceling them, and so trying to really provide an incentive for that to not happen.

So that is moving forward.

It probably will not be implemented until the first quarter of 2026.

There's some variety of issues coming up around implementation.

Um, but it affairs are going to move forward.

Um, myself and Councillor Francisa met with um the leadership of the core area advisory board and several staff just to discuss there's a cab meeting tomorrow, um, and there's a lot of desire to sort of develop an action agenda for getting the and central district in particular really moving and how the city could help facilitate that process, and some of that is connected to our discussion about midtown crossings.

Um, so I just wanted to, you know, I'm really looking forward to the conversation, and I wanted to thank in particular Corey Harland and Dale Van Balkenberg, who are the co-chairs of CAB for doing a lot of um spending a lot of time to really think through what what might the recommendations that they've gonna propose to the full cab tomorrow look like and doing a lot of research and talking to a lot of stakeholders to get input on that.

And then finally, um I toured the Gales property um at Hanby and Highway 20 with Councillor Platt and several other community members and also with um commissioner, County Commissioner Phil Chang, just to kind of get an update on what they're doing and you know, are they moving forward with the funds they got from the CHRO to kind of look at how that property might be uh rezoned and used in the future to kind of help meet some of the needs that we have for um our homeless community in Bend and Deschutes County?

Um so it was a really good to kind of see the property, see what's possible and think through like you know how how to move it forward.

Uh, not that it's necessarily the best or only solution, but I think it's one we should be looking actively at.

Um, and I just want to really express my gratitude to the Gales, um, Craig and his brother for just all the work that they do to find solutions for our homeless community and their continuing commitment to that.

So thank you.

Council Perkins.

Um I managed to go on vacation, which is great.

Um, but uh also managed to I've had a bunch of meetings in the last um couple weeks uh regarding homelessness, whether it's um Shepherd's House in the Nav Center or Juniper Ridge and some of the things that have that are still happening with um the closure of China Hat.

Um yesterday uh attended or Monday, sorry, I attended um BDEB, the Bend Economic Development Advisory Board.

Um, there is a lot of interest um from individual members of of BDAB in participating in conversations, particularly about midtown crossings, and so we were kind of talking about ways that they could um either provide data or provide public comment for that.

And um BDA there's investment uh update and uh BDAB approved um four priority industry clusters to be included in the economic development strategy, and those are advanced sciences and manufacturing, outdoor lifestyle and products, craft beverages, forestry and wood products, and we will be hearing more about that as a council um soon.

And the last thing I would like to talk about is that I was out of the country, and our last meeting was not able to talk about the concerns that HREC, the human rights and equity commission brought up about the sponsorship policy as it relates to funding for Juneteenth.

Um I have uh been with HREC since its founding.

Um I was I was on the their first council liaison.

I was did the first set of interviews to create um the human rights and equity commission.

And um, since my return, I uh met with leadership from the human rights and equity commission and staff, including our equity director, to talk more about the policy and what happened or didn't happen.

Uh, we had a really robust conversation, and it really it kind of came down to one thing at the end of it, which was um I didn't think it was something that um to keep HREC informed about because the money was released and the the event happened and the event was successful and impactful in our community.

So um that was on me.

Um I should have alerted HREC about the situation just so that they didn't find out through the media.

So that's kind of the the conclusion of that conversation was that they that they found out through the media.

Um so information is important and information shows that we value partnership, so um I will do better.

Uh and at the end of our conversation with HREC leadership this week.

The key thing that we got out of it is that we all want eTREX to succeed, and HREC wants to keep doing important work.

So, therefore, HREC is going to have a meeting next Wednesday, which will be all virtual.

It is not an emergency meeting, it is a regularly scheduled meeting that was supposed to be skipped for summer vacation.

This is um a working abbreviated meeting.

There will not be public comment, and there will not be an extended conversation about who, what, how happened.

Um, we will address it briefly at the end of the meeting and let commissioners share and ask questions as needed, especially those who are not at this leadership meeting this week.

Um, and I know that council is looking forward to HREC's involvement in welcoming week and their council update, which I believe is at our next meeting.

And uh I just want to thank HREC for their understanding and remind all of us, including myself, that partnership is not always easy.

And HREC exists to bring out issues and systems that may make us uncomfortable or make us defensive here on the dias.

I know that I I can claim that as well.

And it's our job to listen and absorb.

And uh, even if that feedback, even if we don't agree.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Councillor Norris.

I don't have anything near part because I too went on vacation.

All right, welcome back, Councillor Platt.

I enjoyed the tour at the Gales property with uh Councilor Riley and and uh Commissioner uh Chang as well.

In fact, I met across the housing spectrum this last two weeks.

Um during our last session, uh I was one of the votes that was uh voting towards uh housing that was going to be in the rental format as opposed to the the own uh format for those affordable housing.

And uh, and I believe that that's uh a good solution that we came up with.

However, I'm I'm also meeting with providers of the home ownership model uh as well during this process, so that I understand all the perspectives of those folks uh that are uh on various portions of our housing spectrum everywhere from the folks that potentially would be in the Gales property or in the central Oregon villages, which I also saw uh this week, and I'm just very impressed with uh all the folks that are involved in this process to get somebody in the housing continuum and move them uh in positive direction throughout as the as the flyer on the uh on the city council.

I also had the opportunity with Tracy Williams to go out to the airport uh and see the third busiest airport uh in Oregon.

170,000 flights a year.

So after Hillsboro and after after uh Portland, we are the third busiest.

Uh I got a chance to tour the Epic uh factory, which was just really incredible.

And uh they are taken.

Uh they are taking folks of all levels of education and giving them uh a living wage in our community, and it's really impressive with what they're doing there.

I look forward to touring some of the other facilities at the airport as well.

And then lastly, uh thanks to Lori and Rod Mingus for taking me down through the watershed hike yesterday.

It was really amazing to see the unique water system that we have that that feeds our our um our community and how fragile it is and the engineering that's involved and the caretaking $50 million that's gonna come in front of us before long uh for the intake facility that we're gonna have to take a look at and and think about how we're gonna do that.

This is uh gonna build in resiliency uh and it's gonna build in a long-term capacity for our our um community.

So thank you for that very informative tour, Eric, for your team.

Uh well done.

That's it.

Yeah, that's a great hike if anyone hasn't done it.

It's awesome.

Um, so um for me, um uh we had a meeting earlier this week with the Ben Parkson rec.

Um, they have a new chair and co-chair, so it's Donna and Carrie's the uh vice chair um and just checked in with them on a variety of topics.

Um then um yeah yesterday had the rural fireboard meeting that Eric and I attend regularly in some good our staff gave a really good presentation about our planning and our growth plan um and how we can start to think about what the needs for emergency response is gonna be in the future um and how we need to think about incorporating that when we're talking about transportation and just planning in general for where and how we're gonna grow and what kind of resources we're gonna need going forward.

Um so we've gonna continue to collaborate with the Rural Fire Board and our emergency departments and our planning department all together and hopefully at an even deeper level than we have in the past to really use data to inform what we're gonna need in the next um 20 years.

Um this morning had the downtown business uh board association or uh downtown business association meeting, um, which is great.

They're continuing to move forward with the structures for the Main Street America program, which is really helping them just set goals and then form committees and stay accountable to making sure they're getting um all of their objectives done, which is great.

Um I did bring up an item we're gonna hear about later, which is the um the Franklin um project downtown, um they were really excited about that.

So um I think when I said that we were potentially looking at maybe some race crossings, there was like literal applause.

So they they see the the safety issues down there as as as business owners and are excited about improvements there.

Um also today, a really great event with First Story, which is a nonprofit partnering with Hayden Homes to create um affordable homeownership.

Um and this was an event where they're handing the keys to the new family.

So I know Council Rye was wanting to be there and had something come up, um, so I stepped in to just give a few remarks and also um just be there in support um of this program and it was just really great to see this mom and her two kids officially move in basically and that was a dream that this mom had had, and and she'd overcome a lot to get there.

So really great grateful for our the nonprofit and private partners that helped make that happen.

Um also heard while I was there that um in Parkside Place, which is an affordable housing uh development that Hayden Holmes is working on, they've had the first home sale, and it was to a wildland firefighter.

So 19 years old, yes.

Wow.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, very cool.

So um just wanted to list that as well.

Um, and then to um I think someone on this end mentioned about the transportation package.

Um, myself, the mayor of Sisters and the Mayor of Redman put an off-end in the paper about the transportation package and why it isn't inform uh well, I guess we're not calling it a package now, the budget fix and the special session that's coming up, why it's important to do that, and why it's important also to continue to have a conversation about holistically funding our transportation system in Oregon and not by emergency, right?

Um, so we'll continue to give that feedback.

I think there's a hearing next week as they go into that special session.

Um, and then finally, I had sent an email um on just a little action for tonight regarding um the midtown crossings.

We didn't receive a presentation on that, we're getting that um at a at a future meeting.

Um, but was hoping that council would be okay with the idea of of having T Bach and CAB meet together to help us with feedback on the midtown crossings.

We're gonna get a presentation and we can take that opportunity to say here's the things we want T Bach and Cab to really look at and then give us feedback on.

Um because of scheduling and because CABs meeting tomorrow, we want to bring this up to them.

We wanted to just make sure that that was something the council was okay with.

Um and we when we get to September in our Midtown Crossings meeting, if we decide, wait, no, we did we need to talk about it more, we don't want them to look at it yet, we can do that, but we just wanted to kind of move that forward if it's a possibility.

And so we're thinking three people from like the chair and a couple other people from each of the committees meet together to talk and then bring us some feedback after we ask them a couple of questions.

Yeah, that's the plan.

There was some interest expressed from both committees, so why not just be efficient?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, sure.

Okay, so that's a thumbs up for that.

Okay.

That will move us to our visitors section.

So we have a couple of folks in person and then one person online.

I see Todd is online.

Um so let's start with our um in-person folks first.

So I don't think anyone has signed up for this, but just in case we do have a couple of public hearings, um, item five and six.

If you're here for those, um we will call for public comment at that time.

Otherwise, is the time to address council.

Please address us as a body.

Please do not use any language or do any actions that would disrupt the meeting.

Um, I don't think we're having any problems with that tonight.

So we will start with Alan Spector.

And you have two minutes.

There's a timer right here.

Um, and when you see the yellow light, you have about 30 seconds left and you can wrap up.

Perfect.

All right, Alan.

All right.

Um, Mayor Keebler, Mayor Pro Tem Perkins, uh, members of the city council.

I really appreciate the opportunity to uh speak briefly today about the electrification policy that you were discussing earlier during the work session.

Uh first, we are the primary um util gas utility serving uh the city of Bend.

It's a responsibility that we don't take for granted.

So we've been working for the uh last several years, originally as part of the climate action steering committee, uh, to do a little bit of navel gazing about what does it mean to be a gas utility in a time where decarbonization is necessary, and so as a result of that, we've made a series of investments in what we call our uh securing the sustainable energy future initiative, and one of them has been in renewable natural gas.

So I was very heartened to hear uh discussions about renewable natural gas being on the table as uh something that could possibly uh be waived from a fee.

And uh actually uh we did a poll recently.

80% of Bend voters that were polled through uh DHM research agree that uh the city council should uh encourage us to invest in R and Geep UNEST and invest in R and G and we'd like to do so.

Uh so we do have three projects that are live today in the uh in Washington State.

We've got one coming online, and so uh we just would love the opportunity also to pursue our hybrid heat pump pilot.

Uh we're gonna be looking at putting um electric heat pumps, state-of-the-art electric heat pumps in 24 natural gas homes.

Uh that pilot is going to be running from October of this year through about October of next year.

And uh so we would love to explore the role of hybrid heating systems, the potential waiver there, um, if that uh pilot is successful, and also just would respectfully encourage you to uh allow us to share the results of that pilot uh before anything moves forward.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Alan.

Thank you.

All right, Brad Archuleta Hi there.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Council members.

I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous.

My name is Brad Artuleta, um, member of local 290 business agent.

Um I represent 5400 members of plumbing pipe fitting and gas distribution workers.

Um thank you for letting me speak today.

We need affordability, reliability, and sustainability in our energy system.

Electrifying the grid brings lots of problems.

Um sustainability, viability, and we know that it's really not affordable because my my electric bill is not going down with as many windmills and solar systems going up, my energy bill's going up.

Um we're gonna put more strain on the grid.

You know, Pacific Power just settled with the few homeowners on some fires that just happened.

So putting more strain on the good causing fires.

We need a dub diverse energy sources, you know.

Uh voters want energy choice, they want to be able to choose what energy source they want.

Um local tonight is excited about the RNG projects, the hybrid systems.

We're also working with modern hydrogen on some pilot systems with uh Northwest Natural that's really showing some some true interest in a lot of big companies.

Um I feel it's hypocritical to have natural gas in your own homes, but require all new homes to pay a fee.

So uh there's a large regulator and uh meter just on the other side of that wall.

It's huge.

I don't know if you guys have seen it.

Maybe we should start there on that one.

Let's uh let's make some smart choices here to make sure that we're helping homeowners get reliable and affordable electricity and natural gas in our homes.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brad.

All right, and then online we have Todd Torghan.

Hi, it's Todd Torrent.

I talked about time up for you.

Really appreciate you discussing the timing of the bond read market construction.

Tonight's presentation of what was considered in the 2023 ODOT study only addressed old conditions.

But it did recognize that study, the urgency and suggested roundabout design begin in 2024.

As a resident engineer who lives near the roundabout, I have detailed knowledge of how it fails now.

We are already seeing conditions that ODOT study says won't happen until 2040.

Read market does back up to the third street intersection now.

Folks are avoiding the intersection, and it's still bad.

Additionally, this roundabout is causing failures at the intersections leading up to it because of the current congestions, including Bond and Columbia, which is next to the second South Bridge for emergencies.

So what would council do if we are already seeing multiple intersection failures and both South Bridges affected when we only have eight crossings in the city?

ODOT study does not address the rapid increase in development near the roundabout.

Please see the email I sent this morning listing the projects.

Tonight's presentation used old data and old ideas instead of addressing today's reality.

This problem is in urgent need of a better design than what's already being rejected for 15th Street.

Please ask for an immediate start of a design that addresses the vital nature of this century to US 97 corridor.

People's lives depend on it.

And for those worried about pedestrians and cyclists, please worry about the ones in my Wood River Village neighborhood too.

We like to use our streets.

Thanks, Todd.

Okay, that will conclude the visitor section.

So that moves us to the consent agenda.

I think someone wanted to pull.

Yeah.

I'd like to pull item C.

Okay.

Motion on the other two consent agenda items.

I move to approve consent agenda items A and B.

All right, move by Councillor Riley, second by Councillor Platt.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any posts?

Okay.

That brings us to item number C.

Could you read that?

Ashley?

Council is asked to authorize acceptance of a grant award with Ben, the Metropolitan Planning Organization of 1, um $16,460 for traffic signal design and bikeway design and construction in connection with the bicycle greenways project and the Franklin and Wall Signals Project.

Great.

Thank you.

Claire.

Yeah, hi Council Sinclair for Senior Project Engineer in the Transportation Mobility Department.

As I understand, we're looking for a little more discussion on what this project is and what the what the grant is for.

So the city of Bend was selected to receive just over a million dollars in funding for two projects in and around uh downtown.

Um, the first of the projects, uh, we're looking about 540,000 for full redesign of the signals at Franklin and Wall and Franklin and Bond, as well as looking at the corridor of Franklin between Tinpan Alley and Broadway.

Um, we're looking at it because one, those signals are very far beyond their design life.

They're extremely old.

If they ever get hit, we're we're out of those signals for many, many months, if not years, because we can't get those anymore.

Um, additionally, uh, those signals don't have the kind of the decoured technology that we have in our current signals, so uh connectivity with ODOT's kind of mainframe.

Uh they do all the timing for our signals.

Um, additionally, we can do kind of different timing mechanisms throughout the day.

Um, we're also looking at um additional lighting for those signals.

Um, and then uh for the corridor work, we're looking at an island for the South Mirror Pond parking lot to prevent those left out movements.

Um, we're seeing a lot of people not obeying the sign there.

Um, and then lastly, we're looking at um some bike and ped connectivity um along that's probably oh, and then um we also are looking at a feasibility design at two other signals at Oregon and Wall and um Oregon and Bond.

So we're looking at um one, do we still need those signals after Hawthorne may be closed down at the parkway?

So we're we're trying to answer that question, and then two, if we do need them, uh we're looking at a feasibility for a raised intersection design.

And if those signals aren't there, maybe maybe we just go with race crossings uh north side, south side, both.

So we're taking a look at that as well with that.

So actual just removal potentially of those signals.

Uh possibly, but I mean that we're this is still a 30% design.

This is very preliminary.

Um, and then the second project, about 475,000.

Uh, we're looking at uh a bikeway connection, and this is kind of to the north and to the east of downtown.

Uh so we're looking at an island within Wall Street to cross at the Lafayette intersection, a shared use path on Lafayette between Wall Street and Harriman, and then kind of a shared street along Herriman, and that's mostly looking at Sherrows between Lafayette and Hogwarts.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Any questions?

I think these are much needed.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You pulled it, so you've got to do the motion.

Oh, yes.

Uh, I moved to um I moved to oh, I'll raise acceptance of a grant of Warwick Bend Metropolitan Planarization of $1,16,460 for traffic signal design and bikeway design and construction connection with the bicycle greenways project and the Franklin and Wall Signals Project.

Second.

All right, moved by Council Perkins, second by council Riley.

All those in favor.

All right.

Thank you, Sinclair.

All right, that will move us to item five, which is a public hearing.

So I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing and then councillor Norris.

I need to recuse myself on this item as I have an actual conflict because of my employer Hayden Holmes.

Um could be financially impacted by uh by this item.

So I will remember myself and guys and come back on here.

Thank you.

All right, Ryan.

All right, uh, good evening again, council, Ryan Oster, director of our engineering department, and I'll be assisted this evening by Elizabeth Oshel, one of our senior assistant city attorneys.

And we will be I'll be doing a quick recap of the Southeast Area Plan, all information you're probably familiar with.

Then I'll hand the baton over to Elizabeth to discuss the actual supplemental fee and the methodology before we get to the resolution.

So Southeast Area Plan, uh, again, as you probably already all know, uh, was adopted in 2021 by council, uh, accommodated about 122 acres of residential, about 100 a mixed use, and another 67 for commercial development at the time from an infrastructure perspective.

Uh, we mapped out you know the cost estimates of what we thought it would be, and we estimated about 60 million at the time for sewer infrastructure to serve the area, as well as the transportation needs in the area.

Keeping in mind this is not a count for water, this is primarily served by the avion water company.

So, from a city perspective, our focus is on the sewer and transportation system project costs.

So we've been to council on this many times before discussing the different scenarios of where the station should go, what our cost estimates are, how much we should be investing, and we got guidance from council in May and October of 2024.

Uh, we started building this project in late 2024, going through 2025, it should be complete uh in the next couple months, and so it'll be up and operational.

Uh, and then uh the the main question was with the city financing the station itself, you know, did we want to recover any any of that cost from developers in the future?

Uh, because no developer alone could have afforded a 26 million dollar investment as the backbone of this system.

Uh so through conversations with council, uh, we we took out a four million dollar cost that is basically a difference in locations of the station, and I'll explain that when I show the map here in a minute.

That brought us down to 22 million, and then council gave direction to seek about half of that in recovery.

So we're here tonight for that 50-50 split.

So keep that 11 million dollar number in mind because Elizabeth will use that more moving forward.

Uh so again, just as a reminder, this is the basin.

This is what this uh regional sewer lift station will be serving.

We moved it south, and which was that four million dollar difference to serve the parks and rec property.

Um, not sure what they're planning on doing with that long term, uh, but in order for them to not have to build another private pump station that pumps to this station, uh, we thought it'd be best to accommodate the entire area growth for whatever they might be using that for in the future.

So again, that's how we got from 26 down to 22, and then recovering half of that got us to 22 to 11 million.

So, with that, Ms.

Oshul, over to you.

A real shift down in where he said, this is you know, we're seeking that 50-50 cost recovery and the mechanism that we've identified as a supplemental sewer system development charge.

It's a reimbursement SEC, which by statute um allows reimbursement to the city recovery of costs for capital improvements the city has made that have capacity for future users.

So what we're talking about is that future capacity for development in the Southeast area.

And I do want to give credit to Alex Doz, an engineer in the room.

She really did the lion's share of the math, certainly, that I'm going to be talking about tonight, as well as the drafting of the methodology.

So she's here tonight if there's any real technical questions.

So in the methodology, you know, to have an SDC, you have to have a project list and a methodology that assigns cost to future users.

This methodology matches in many respects the 2024 citywide methodologies that we just went through and updated.

So there will be a lot of synchronicity between these two documents so that for folks applying for SDCs and for our staff.

You just do the same calculations and you add this fee at the end as well for those properties within the Southeast area.

So the methodology matches those land use categories, tiered housing rates, it bills on the gallons per day analysis of the water usage of types of development that potential to happen in the area.

The fee includes a compliance charge and exemptions for affordable housing and child care developments, again, consistent with that citywide methodology.

And again, also consistent with citywide methodologies.

This fee schedule will be an additional addendum to the citywide SDC fee schedule.

Those come before council for consideration of an annual inflationary increase.

So same treating them the same as our citywide sewer SDCs.

So to get to how much does each development pay as this SDC, first you start with what's the capacity of this project that was designed for the area.

It was designed using a number of 3,000, an assumption of 3,394 equivalent dwelling units.

That's what our standards and specs say for how you design a sewer system.

But SDCs are only for future users.

So you back out the existing user of High Desert Middle School, which is 90 EDUs.

And then the next slide will show you how we do the math to get to what's the cost for each development type within the area.

So we have that just over 3300 EDUs served by the project.

The current sewer SDC methodology analysis resulted in an average of 200 gallons per day of water use per EDU.

And that's what goes down into the sewer system.

So we multiplied those EDUs by gallons per day to get the total gallons per day.

We divided the cost of the project by the gallons per day to get the cost per gallon per day.

That we can then do the math back up to apply on the use of gallons per day for particular uses.

We're also adding a compliance fee of about 35 cents per gallon per day, and that was based on an analysis done by our community and economic development staff and finance staff about the amount of staff time on average it takes to administer an FS SDC program and comply with the state laws about financial reconciliation.

So it's a total of about $17 per gallon per day for the type of use that's being proposed on the site.

And that's all laid out in the fee schedule, which I'll show on the next slide.

This kind of if you do the math back up, it averages to about $3,400 per EDU based on that 200 gallons per day average that the methodology came up with.

And that is the number that we thought we'd be at when we started this process.

We were kind of spitballing in the wind, and that's the number we thought, and that's where we ended up.

Um I was pretty surprised when the math ended up that way.

We had to double check that.

Math is math.

Math math.

It was amazing.

Um this is just a sample of the fee schedule, the full fee exhibit, the fee resolution exhibit is in your packet, but this shows for the residential side.

We followed the tiers of square footage from the citywide SDC methodology, and as well as the multi-unit housing categories.

So in the supplemental sewer SEC is shown in the widest column.

So that's the additional SDC that will be charged to each of these dwelling types.

The current citywide SDC is that second column of numbers.

So the total sewer SDC that will be charged for each housing unit in the Southeast area will is shown in that farthest right column.

And that's to split out again the cost of this 24 million dollar project among these, or 26 million dollar project among the homes.

There's also a non-residential portion that's in your packet that will be adopted tonight.

Just lastly, I want to go over the outreach.

As Ryan said, the Southeast area plan was the first step towards figuring out what the infrastructure needs were and who was going to take the lead on developing and building each of these significant infrastructure needs to allow that future development.

That had a lot of outreach and input from property owners and outreach has been ongoing throughout the development of this SDC methodology and throughout the project construction as well.

Additionally, the statutory requirements for adoption of an SDC were complied with providing written notice to anyone who'd expressed interest in the process, not just about these SDCs.

We sent the notice to everyone who was interested in citywide SDCs as well.

And we posted the methodology 60 days prior to tonight.

Any questions, council?

I mean, I've I've just a comment that um we talk about a 50-50 developer city split.

When we use the term city, we mean the ratepayers for the sewer system, right?

All of us all of us are paying, and we're making this decision rather than putting all the costs on the developer because it makes the um housing there a lot less affordable and commercial development as well.

That the community as a whole is going to share that to help in particular to raise the total number of housing units we have in the community, and ideally, you know, that's one of the ways that we're getting at the affordable the housing issues in our community and hopefully affordability as well with more supply happening.

So it's a that we're sharing it amongst all of us and those who are developing that part of the community.

And I think it's in the community interest also to have these sewer improvements, right?

So for a better system, you know, for a for a clean and healthy system is great as well as you all saw at your subcommittee meeting.

That's important.

Um I just had a question.

This isn't exactly on the sewer SECs, but my comment is around this is this is something where we had asked for in the past um some state legislature help to help us to build some of these infrastructure projects that would unlock housing.

We haven't gotten it.

Um so I just want to kind of make the point this is then what we have to do to recover some of those costs.

Um it would be nice to take that off that burden off of both rate payers and and the developers, but we haven't been successful in getting that um yet.

And I just want to comment also, there's also transportation needs in this corner of town, roundabouts and some bigger you know, through roads um that also fall on the back of folks who are developing their properties that I anticipate we may be talking about that in the future as well as how to recover those costs if we can't get some um some outside funds to help us to build those things.

So just wanted to make that comment.

There were other funding tools that we discussed as part of the process that were also addressed in the legislative session this last time.

So we landed on SDCs as the appropriate mechanism for this.

We also talked about a local improvement district, which is an alternate way a city can advance build infrastructure and then uh recover costs uh prior to this legislative session.

We didn't see a path that that was available prior to annexation, so it wouldn't have worked in this instance where we have um properties and infrastructure outside of city limits.

There's legislation now that would allow us to partner with the county um and do an LID outside of city limits.

So that may be a tool on a table for other kind of conversations.

And thank you to Senator Broadman for running that bill for us and getting it passed.

I think maybe the other point to make is that the um supplemental SDCs were part of the discussion in particular with the the funding um strategy related to the TSP that this is a tool that was adopted as one of the potential tools that we were gonna actively look at using uh depending on how things worked out in the legislature and what the funding needs were to make sure that we're kind of balancing that growth is helping to pay its way, and in this case, we're kind of sharing sharing it here.

But it's something we have envisioned using for quite some time.

This is the first time I'm aware of that.

This is our first supplemental SDC.

Yeah, okay.

And just to clarify the process for bringing back the park district property into the calculation.

So if hypothetically that was sold and there were homes built on it or other commercial or some other amenity, there would be I assume a uh supplemental SDC added, and we would see that would be added to the whole basin, so everybody else's rates would drop a little bit, or how would that work?

I think the idea on that four million is to have direct conversations with BPRD.

I think those are occurring at the city manager's office, not to put that four million into the basin, but to have that BPRD property absorb that full four million dollars in some mechanism, and that's uh conversations to come and will be a council decision in the future.

And I think when our discussion prior was to not include that now because we don't there's uncertainty on what's gonna happen with that property, and it may not develop and then so we didn't want to put something in place predicated on something we're not sure is gonna happen yet.

So but if cost recovery were added on that property, would we expect everyone else's the supplemental fee to be reduced by a proportional amount or no?

You'd be increasing numerator or denominator at somebody else's job.

You'd be increasing the total number.

You have the same number of gallons per day.

So the cost they would go up.

Okay.

Good questions.

All right, any other questions for staff?

Okay.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

We did not have anyone sign up for public comment for this public hearing.

Is anyone here to comment?

I don't see anyone.

So I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing and deliberate a motion.

I move to adopt a resolution adopting a supplemental sewer SDC methodology and amending the SDCP schedule to create a supplemental sewer SDC in a portion of the southeast area then to reimburse the city for a portion of the Southeast Area Plan pump station project.

Second.

Alright, move by Council Riley, second by Council Berns Lozel.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Thank you.

We'll have um Councillor Norris come on back out for item number six, which is a continued public hearing.

Um and Ashley, do you want to go ahead and read that?

This is the first reading of an ordinance to amend Bend Development Code to amend the Oregon State University Cascade Overlay Zone to modify the boundaries of the four campus subdistricts, amend the innovation district standards to allow increased building height and manufacturing uses without a retail component, modify landscape standards to allow a more natural landscape, realign innovation way and clarify specific street sections.

Great, thank you, Councillor Mendes.

Uh, as a part-time employee of Oregon State University Cascades, I would like to declare an actual conflict and recuse myself.

All right, thank you.

And we have Karen here for just a couple of slides to reorient us on where we are with this.

Correct.

Uh so because this is an extension of a prior uh public hearing back in April.

I'm just doing a refresher from four months ago, um, just very, very, very high level.

This is the area of the OSU cascades founded by these uh general um collectors and materials, except for that notch triangle-shaped uh property that is owned by BPRD off of Cincinnati Avenue.

Uh the um master plan was adopted in 2018.

It was the first institutional master plan, and the master plan is comprised of four uh districts and innovation way, which is that new um name for that central road five steps of the campus.

So the proposal, as you uh learned in the description um for the public hearing, it involves six different items to realign the innovation way as you just saw on that figure is very curvature, it's too um extended farther north for various reasons cut bill and uh for site distance reasons, uh which therefore uh has subsequent uh impacts on those subject district boundaries between residential core campus and the recreational district on the west, but also to increase the size of the innovation district on the east, even though the uh anticipated uses for those um districts, impacted districts will remain the same.

That was um anticipated in the original master plan.

Uh the key one I think tonight is the innovation district.

It is to uh provide um an opportunity for manufacturing uses that would not require a retail component, which is um what is typically required in the MU zone, and also uh to increase the um maximum size of that uh manufacturing use from 5,000 maximum to 25,000 square feet maximum, and then also in the innovation district is to increase the maximum height from 65 feet to 85 feet.

And if you may recall from April, uh that um we could get to 75 feet if it was a mixed-use building.

Um 85 feet is the height that community climate-friendly areas um could be um increased to if this area was chosen as a climate friendly area within the next year, and it at this time it is a candidate.

Uh, then there were several architectural standards.

It was basically to remove the architectural standards that would apply on to the pilot streets within the district, um, so it would just apply to the public streets on how the architectural um uh elevations uh face the public streets.

Um, also uh landscaping rather than having to look at campus-wide on each project that we would just look at 25 feet around each building or parking lot, um specifically requiring native landscaping within 25 feet of the exterior roads, and finally um this was a the last item was a key item for the planning commission that uh the street uh cross sections clarified which um cross sections applied um from the code onto specific um delinear alignments and providing a multi-use path on every um primary and secondary road.

And so here is the overall um approval criteria um and primarily we're looking at the last um bullet item is these code deviations that I just mentioned that would be specific to OSU and a change from the existing master plan and the criteria is does it equally or better meet the purpose of the under um original regulation proposed to be modified?

And is it necessary due to the topographical constraints or other union characteristics of this site and this use?

All right.

And then was Russ for you want to give us just an update on the issue.

We uh to remind folks at the last time this was before us, we held the record open for a little bit longer.

OSU Cascades and BPRD were working together, and I understand there is now an agreement and no objection to us moving forward tonight.

So good evening, Reservation Chief Operations Officer, just to kind of um add some additional context with what the mayor already stated.

Uh just want to say thank you both to OSU Cascades and B PRD for um working through the issues and coming to conclusions.

There are letters that have been submitted by OSU, OSH's attorney as well as BPRD.

And the kind of a summary of that is everybody is comfortable with the arrangements they have within their current agreement or the current easement that's already been granted, and the pathway for um settling some additional issues regarding the property that's going back and forth with BPRD and OSU.

The PPRD said we're because of all because of the cooperation to this point, we're comfortable buttons master plan moving forward because we think their concerns have been directly by this.

So thank you to everyone working on it.

All right.

Thanks for all the folks from both entities in attendance here tonight.

Um, unless there's further deliberation, I think we're ready for a motion.

I move for the first meeting of the ordinance to amend Ben Development Code.

Chapter 2.7 special plan districts to modify the Oregon State University Cascades Overlay Zone as proposed.

Second.

All right, move by Councillor Francosa, second by counselor Platt.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, unanimously passed.

Thank you, everybody.

Thanks for being here and for working together.

We appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Close this talk.

And move on to item number seven.

Council is asked to approve the amendments to the 2024 annual action plan for community development block grants funds.

Good evening.

Sorry, we need to help amend those back.

Oh, yeah.

See, not watching the TV and they speak.

It was getting a delivery point.

Sorry.

It's okay.

All right, thanks, Melissa.

Yes.

Okay, good evening, Mayor and City Council.

Melissa Camania, your affordable housing coordinator, and I am here tonight to talk about the amended 2024 annual action plan.

I'd like to start with some background on why we amend the action plan.

So during the program year in 2024, the city received multiple loan payoffs sooner than anticipated.

These were from projects that were previously funded with community development block grant funds.

When that happens, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD requires that those funds are applied to current activities.

We call that those loan repayments program income.

The program income was applied to program year 24 activities.

When we applied all that funding, there was 275,000 remaining from our actual grant to reallocate.

HUD requires us to do an amendment to the action plan whenever we have changes to our funding structure, funding amount, or potential recipients of CDBG funding.

So the last meeting, our intern Lucy Reid brought to you the Pro Housing and Affordable Housing Fund recommendations.

This was not brought to you at that time because this funding requires a 30-day public comment period, which ends tonight, and a public hearing, which happened last week during our AHAC meeting.

So I think you've seen this graphic a lot.

This is just an orientation of our funding priority priorities for our consolidated plan.

The consolidated plan is a HUD-directed plan that is a pretty heavy document and a heavy lift.

We look at federal data and local data.

There's a lot of community involvement, a lot of public outreach.

All of that works together to help us identify what the needs are in the community.

And the five needs here, the five priorities are in order of priority based on our data analysis and community input.

Recommendations from AHAC won't come to you outside of these five funding priorities, and tonight is not different.

Tonight's application is for priority number two.

Affordable rental housing.

You've seen this graphic as well.

This is the timeline that our applicants went through.

All that to say applications were due on the 25th.

AHAC had their meeting and made recommendations on the 9th, and we're here tonight for the final piece of this puzzle, which is the community development block grant funds.

AHAC recommended just one application for CDBG funds.

It's the United Housing Partners Latino Community Association project.

They requested 2.6 million total.

And in the last council meeting, you awarded them 2.25 million in pro housing funds.

Tonight's recommendation is uh for 275,000 in CDBG funds for 102 units of rental property.

Just to refresh, you saw this project last time.

Uh it's um a 2.9 acre lot that they are looking to purchase to build 102 affordable rental apartments.

They're planning on-site social services to serve clients at 60% AMI or below.

And just to note they're requesting a zero percent interest loan with a balloon payment at the end of year 20.

Are there any questions?

All right, any questions?

This is the follow-on from our last meeting.

Um so Megan and Megan, this was explained as part of the funding that we kind of looked at last time, but it needed to come from CDBG.

If not, we can do a motion.

I move to approve the amendments to the 2024 community development block grant annual action plan and authorized staff to take all actions necessary to fund the recommended Latino Community Association and United Housing Partners Affordable Housing Development Project, including signing load agreements and related documents without further approval from council, and is approved by the city's attorney's office.

Second okay, GBJ, I think.

Uh moved by councillor Platt, second by councilor Norris.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

Thank you.

Melissa on to item number eight.

Council has asked to authorize a guaranteed maximum price amendment number three to the progressive design build agreement with KE Excavating Inc.

for the Midtown Multimodal Connections and Street Street Skating Project.

Good evening, Council members, Mayor.

Okay.

I'm here with Ryan.

Um yeah, thank you for your attention.

It's I'll just move ahead into the map.

Um, what we're looking at right now is constructing on Franklin Avenue between fourth and eighth streets.

That's the proximity to Juniper Park, and then Bend High as well.

Um proving the pedestrian conditions, improving the bicycle conditions, and reducing conflict points.

We can talk about um the details of what so this is on the key route, SISTOS key route two.

It is identified in the transportation system plan, including the fourth street intersection where we're putting uh a pedestrian refuge island to make that a better crossing.

And then, yeah, just generally reflecting all the community feedback, um, the two open houses we had on the bikeway side, and then the two open houses that we've had also on the progressive design build side, just kind of kind of framing what this cross section looks like.

And then it's it's also reflecting what recent projects are doing as well, butler market only, just the the modern state of practice for what we're designing and building with these bike lanes.

So, what are we doing?

We're moving the existing bike lane behind the curb.

We're widening and removing the attached sidewalks, pushing them further away from the roadway to make a more comfortable um environment for pedestrians.

Make ensuring that all the all the curb ramps are radiated compliant, and then one of the key design features of this project was just staying within a skinny design, so keeping the right-of-way very narrow, limiting impacts to adjacent property owners, trees, fences, mailboxes, free libraries, anything.

And then generally we're transitioning from that skinny residential area between fourth and fifth, where the land use type changes from residential to more commercial, and this is preparing for potential future future improvements along Franklin, but those are all contingent we have further discussions with council in terms of what the plan is for Franklin, and we'll talk about that in September.

The cost right now, what we're looking at there's the cost that's for the progressive design bill, fourth to fifth, then we have a portion that's um from the CIP funding, then bikeways, and that totals the GMP amount.

Construction impacts two.

We're looking at from September 2nd through April 30th, likely a shorter window.

We just want that whole time period just in case we need to go back and pave.

Conditions aren't favorable in the winter.

We are looking at a full closure to eastbound traffic.

Contractor will construct on the south side of the roadway, westbound traffic will be open for two months, and then we'll flip that whole scenario, close eastbound traffic, open it to what to probably confuse myself.

Um then distributed flyers, postcards, there's project contact information, email, and then gener, yeah, we keep the website updated, and then we've been coordinating with all those property owners too.

Right-away actions, etc.

I assume there'll be lots of social media posts too to let people know.

We're already starting to talk to Central Oregon Daily today.

Renee's and we're working on them right now.

Yeah, just making the graphics.

And then, yeah, just as I'd alluded to earlier, you know, this is fourth to eighth, GMP three.

What we're we're coming back to council in September in a work session to talk about kind of the greater overall midtown project and and what we're trying to do there.

We're potentially seeing like GMP four between second and fourth, and then potentially getting into the undercrossing, but those are all future discussions we're we're gonna have with council.

Okay, yeah, any questions?

Questions?

I was just curious that um looking in the contract.

I can see the original contract and the GMP one and two and amendment three.

Was that does that include like second second street, or like what were the projects that were finished with those?

Yeah, so that was Greenwood Avenue, the quick build, second street construction, designing all of Franklin, which we pulled back certainly some of the scope right now in a slight holding pattern, and then there's anything else on this storm improvements on second as well, and this and storm studies for the midtown area, and then um yeah, I think that and then uh the analysis on Greenwood too, which we'll have in September.

Traffic, crash, etc.

Yeah, I think in our communications, just being really clear, this is east of third street because already hearing proposal Franklin's gonna be closed.

No, no, no.

Not what you're thinking, right?

Um, we're gonna be keeping uh having our discussions about that.

And I actually that came up at the downtown meeting this morning because I'm just making sure to clarify to then here's where it's gonna be.

So just get I think people will get it, but just initially there might be some confusion about what part of Franklin we're talking about.

So the part by Juniper.

Yeah, and I think we say it.

We've been coordinating with Ben Parks and Rec and then we've been messaging also like the the roundabout of AT will still be able to you know traverse east, north, south, fourth street will remain open to turn on to or go through.

Okay, good job.

Okay, yeah, just wanted to say this is a great project, it's gonna make this corridor a lot safer and more comfortable for everybody who uses it, and I really appreciate the attention to try to keep it open as much as possible and minimize the impact of construction.

I think everybody appreciates that, but didn't want to miss the opportunity to say so.

Yeah, and a lot of time and effort going into engaging neighbors and listening to neighbors, and well, I don't think everybody got everything they wanted.

Um, you know, from a bunch of perspectives, we we got some really good input and feedback, and yeah, and I know you all made a real effort to do that.

So thank you.

Great.

Okay.

I move to authorize a guaranteed maximum price amendment to the progressive design build contract with KE Excavating Incorporated for the midtown multimodal connections and streetscaping project, the quote project unquote.

And substantially the form presented to council in an amendment amount not to exceed 3,605,693 and 10 cents for a total contract amount not to exceed 14 million eighty-eight thousand two hundred and eighty-one dollars and fourteen cents.

Second.

Okay, move by Councillor Mendez, second by counselor Platt.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, onward on Franklin.

Okay, and then we have number nine.

This is the second reading of an ordinance to vacate a 0.53 acre area of unimproved right-of-way along northeast and site street to realign the intersection with northeast Talus Place.

All right, this is a roll call vote on a second reading, so we just need a motion and then we'll do the vote.

Move for the second reading adoption by roll call vote of an ordinance to vacate a 0.53 acre portion of northeast and site street to realign the intersection with northeast Talus Place.

Second.

Alright, move by Council Perkins, second by council Riley.

Uh roll call vote.

Counselor Franzosa.

Yes.

Counselor Mendez.

Aye.

Councillor Riley.

Yes.

Mayor Kepler.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Perkins.

Yes.

Councillor Norris.

Aye.

Counselor Platt.

All right.

Yes.

I don't know.

Okay, fast.

Um, all right, city manager's report.

Yes.

I wanted to talk about the temporary safe state area.

We actually have this as an agenda topic for the stewardship subcommittee, but I think I think the entire council, just to have some summary information.

Just punchline, we're gonna have a full council discussion on this in more detail on September 17th, and we are planning a joint meeting with the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners.

We're in partnership with for the TSSA.

That's happening at the end of September, September 20.

Yes, so that should be on your calendar.

Just some high-level summary information.

So currently we've been in about six months in operation since it started in February.

We have about 135 camps, which represents 215 people that are within the boundaries of the TSSA, which was up from 75 camps and 95 people at the end of April.

As we've talked about, a big part of that is the closures in and around the area, particularly China hat.

We have some seen some increases attributed to those property closures that are east of the railroad.

That took place on May 31st.

Housing case management, just to summary there, our service providers are out there on a on a daily basis, and they have engaged with over 90% of the individuals at the TSSA, which is actually way higher than we had anticipated.

We were anticipating 50%.

And so far we've spent about 15% of the 1.13 million that we've dedicated for uh housing focused case management, which is fairly on track with with our our spend rate and what we've uh projected through the end of 2026, which is the entire life of the TSSA.

Uh so far, 22 individuals have exited uh the site into permanent temporary or shelter housing.

Uh in terms of the land management side of things, we have compass security that are that is on site for at least four hours a day.

Uh CUMPASS provides frequent reports to city and county staff related to the number of camps or individuals, the condition of the property, hygiene facilities, water services.

Um city and health and safety compliance coordinators do monitor the property for compliance with rules and regulations, and they issue notice of remedy to camps or individuals that are in violation of those rules.

So we do have staff also enforcing kind of in conjunction with our right of way enforcement uh for camping.

Uh the east side cleanup continues.

Uh we expect it to continue for the next couple of months, so that's the part that's already been closed.

Uh in terms of budget uh the budget and spending for the cleanup side of things, we had an estimated just over the two-year period from January 25 to through December of 26.

Um between 800,000 and 1.2 million is what the estimate was.

Um so far to date, we've spent 450,000 from January to July.

Um, of that 300,000 was for the east side cleanup, 50,000 for hygiene stations, 50,000 for additional trash services, and then 50,000 towards staffing.

Uh anticipate another 100, 150 uh to complete the cleanup of the east side, and then another 150 to 200 to support the overall management for the remaining six months of 25.

So we're anticipating a total spend for calendar year 25 to be around 750 750 to 800.

So we depending on the the cleanup efforts needed as we get closer to 2026.

We are gonna need most likely a budget adjustment to account for that.

Um so as I said, we'll go into more detail in a couple of weeks here in council.

I just wanted to make sure you were receiving the full council receiving an update there.

Any questions?

That's good information to have.

And I think just so council is aware, at our September meeting where we're talking about this.

I think we also want to talk about getting some consensus going into that joint county meeting on if we are gonna be asking for anything different to change to continue.

Um, we'll have that discussion as a council before we do that joint meeting.

I think that'd be a really good idea.

Okay, take a couple of other items uh in terms of project updates.

I know there's been a lot of uh questions, concerns around the Skyliner Skylander Skyland Ranch roundabout that's being uh constructed.

Uh so we have really worked hard with this is a private development project, just to be clear, it's not a city project.

We're working to make sure it's coordinated closely, though, and um to do anything that we can on our part to make sure that this opens uh preferably before school.

So the current uh schedule has the three legs of the intersection that will open the very early morning of Wednesday, September 3rd, which that's kind of close.

Yes, the north leg of the roundabout will remain closed as a safety uh rail needs to be installed before it's safe for pedestrians to use the sidewalks.

Um city staff is uh authorized work outside of our normal work hours, and we're gonna continue to work closely with the developer and contractor to get this usable for grades one through six and grade nine, uh which have their first day of school on Wednesday.

So we have the space start date.

So it'll be open for that.

That goes that goes towards Phil's that goes out towards the between the schools.

Towards the field.

Okay.

Towards the field.

Oh.

So yeah, yeah, yeah.

That north.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you.

There's no road skyline, the connection to Skyline Ranch Road from the roundabout.

You won't be able to access the road going north.

Going north if you're going towards the coming, if you're looking west towards the mountains, you won't be able to take a right.

Right.

But there is plenty of circulation in there between the local roads to around the middle schools and high schools to move people around.

Right.

Great.

Okay.

Okay.

Um we held a pre-construction open house for Butler Market last night, had about 65 people in attendance.

Um overall, really good amount of excitement about the project, and we're scheduled to begin construction on September 15th.

Again, reminder the eastbound traffic will remain open at all times during the roughly 14 months of construction work.

On Thursday tomorrow, we're holding an open house for the expansion of the 15th and Reed Market roundabout.

I think it was covered tonight.

Meetings at Larksburg from 4 to 6 p.m.

Uh and then with the council approval of the contract on Franklin, we'll be holding a pop-up pre-construction open house next week on Monday, August 25th at the corner of Franklin and 7th near the tennis courts from 4 to 6.

So just add another kind of add-on to what uh Todd just mentioned.

And then next week, Wednesday, the 27th, we're holding an open house uh for the Outback project uh uh related to the town site act.

Uh that's here in council chambers from 4.30 to 6.30 p.m.

Lots of stuff coming up.

Lots of stuff.

Um and then the chip seal work is uh started um this week it's happening.

So that's our Wells Acres, Purcell Petigrew, Mount Washington, 9th, 18th, um, uh 27th and 3rd Street.

So you should see that it's pretty quick application, it should be wrapped up by next week.

So we were on ninth today, so they might even gotten done tonight.

It was pretty far along.

Yeah.

When you call it again, then Chipsy, yeah.

And then lastly, just wanted to heads up that the transportation fee that phase two is hitting people's bills uh this week.

Um so big thanks to the team for all the really complex projects to get them all integrated into our uh bill system.

Uh so we're managing the call volumes and glitches as they come.

All right.

Thank you.

All right, thanks everyone.

We're Jared for the night.

Thanks.