All right.

So we are going to get started with our Ben City Council work session today.

And first we will start with roll call.

Start on your end, Councillor Francisza.

Gina Franzosa, she her.

Mike Riley, he's a Melanie Keebler, she her.

Megan Perkins, she, her.

Steve Platty.

And then we are hoping Council Norris will be able to join us online.

Okay.

So she's there.

Great.

Okay, so first topic is private development engineering review.

Okay.

Informational.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, city counselors.

I'm Colin Stevens.

I'm the director of the community development department.

And joining me in the presentation.

I'm not sure if Ben has been promoted yet.

Is Ben Barry.

He's been with the city for about a year.

And he uh has is is was promoted or applied for and received the job to be the new city engineer within CEDD.

And he started two weeks ago today.

So he's fresh, fresh.

So we're going to go over I I also um have about twenty minutes because I don't want to run over with into Ryan's slides, so I'll just gonna go through this quickly.

Um, as you'll see in the conclusion of this, we are instituting some new processes uh based on some legislation within the engineering division, so we can come back in the spring when that's more formalized and give a presentation on that so we if there's more engagement, we can come back when there's more time for it.

So the agenda for today is some background um some uh review process and timelines.

This is the Senate Bill 974.

I was just talking about.

I'll go over that and uh how we're going to implement that and then next steps, and we'll save a little bit of time at the end for questions.

So how infrastructure is built in Bend, there are two ways that it is built, and that one of them is with the engineering department through Ryan and his team.

You're gonna have a presentation on a capital uh several capital projects that he's working on.

That's one way that infrastructure is built for the city of end public infrastructure.

The other way is through private development um projects where there's infrastructure that needs to be built to serve the projects.

The biggest driver of that is usually subdivisions, although site plan review for commercial buildings builds that as well when they have frontage improvements or utilities that need to serve the site.

Um with those the city side the the ones that the city builds through the engineering department.

Um they're managed by our staff, um they're funded by public funds from the very beginning, such as SDCs or the general obligation fund.

Uh and there's full city oversight through that entire process through the timing, the design, the construction, the inspections, and and and finally the acceptance.

A little bit different for the private projects.

Um city oversight really begins after the initial design has been done.

So we're looking at it for the first time after it's actually been um designed, and then there's an iterative iterative process where we we look at it, we make sure that it meets standards and specifications.

If it doesn't, we send back a correction letter.

The it has it has to be redesigned, and there's some back and forth on that.

Once it is approved, the city does do the inspections.

Um I would also like to say that there is some um infrastructure that is on the city's uh uh approved project list that they do get some SDC reimbursement for.

So there's a little bit of a hybrid in there where they get public money, but they do they build it as part of their project.

And this is a demonstration of of how the the sort of division of permitting uh within the the three permitting department or divisions within the department, the development proposal comes in, goes to planning, they administer the building or the development code uh building safety.

If there's a building associated with it, they administer the building code, and then what we're talking about is the one on the right, the engineering division.

And their um what their document, the one that they administer is called the standards and specifications.

Within the division, we have 18 staff.

Um, one of them is Ben, the the city engineer, the private development division manager.

There's 12 review engineers, and then we have five inspectors who are out in the field.

And this is uh the one division that sticks with the project through the entire continuum of construction.

They they are there at the pre-application meeting when it comes in as a concept at the planning stage, and they are with it throughout the entire thing, including the through the inspections and even through what's called a warranty period, which lasts the year after the the project has been finalized.

We go back and make sure that everything survived at least one season before we finally sign off on it.

Here's where I'm gonna turn it over to Ben for a couple of slides.

If he's on, yes, I am.

Can you hear me?

Oh, yep, you're there.

Trish, can you turn it up a little bit?

I'm sorry that for whatever reason I'm locked out of sharing my video.

So you'll just have to listen to my disembodied voice go through all of this.

Um we we do several things.

Uh we do plan and application reviews, and um, kind of like Colin was saying, we don't have this on this slide, but we do offer pre-application meetings as a free service.

So we're there from the very beginning, and then we get into the um things that you're seeing in that left column.

So water and sewer analyses, traffic impact studies.

Pardon me.

Oh, you're good, Ben.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Um, so both of those things are important to kind of helping a developer figure out what they're required to do as part of a project, and often often are part of figuring out whether or not it pencils, and then we move into um more active construction.

So things like grading plans, stormwater design, um, and then we're involved in uh building and planning applications as well.

Then when things move into construction, we're um heavily involved in uh figuring out when traffic control is implemented, uh managing revisions.

So when something comes up in the field, the engineer of record will figure out a solution, provide us with a revision to make sure that they can deal with that construction issue in the field, and also um meet city standards by making sure that they comply.

So we do all of those things, and then we also manage um a great deal of agreements related to those.

So that could be things like stormwater maintenance, also dealing with moving around property lines and you can see me now and easements, dedications, those types of things.

Thank you.

So it's really this the main two things that I think that we do are to make sure that infrastructure that's installed in the city is safe, that we don't end up with leaking, you know, leaking sewer pipe, contaminating a water pipe.

So things like drinking water and all of the utilities work properly, that intersections function safely, and that all of the things that we're having the development community install for the city of Bend are maintainable long term for the least amount of money possible, so that we're being really responsible with the funds that we get from our taxpayers.

Um the other things that we're doing is making sure that developments align with the long-term planning that uh our friends in long-range planning do, and um also catching errors during plan review that make things smoother during construction.

Um, you know, our really good plan reviewers can catch constructability issues, they can also make sure that the things that are being designed by our consultant partners in the private sector are uh functional and meet our standards.

So the earlier that we can do those things, the cheaper it is because it's a lot more expensive when you got equipment idling out on a site.

And I'll turn it back over to Colin.

Okay, these are just some photos of the broad scope of things that that engineering works on.

You can see on the left, there's some very big projects as a roundabout, very complicated.

The one below that is the pressure reducing valve, another big piece of city infrastructure for water system.

Um, and then moving to the right, there's there's more lower level things, but a lot of things that we have to look at through our engineering division.

There's accessibility, um, there's street preservation, that one in the middle on the bottom.

It's a that's a patch that needs to be a little bit better than that one.

So we we have them make sure that our roads are put back together when there is a a cut street cut, and then um the sidewalk, making sure there are sidewalks are fully connected, and then on that lower right-hand side, that's a good one.

This is a gas line that's going through a city water line, or I'm sorry, a city sewer line.

And so that's the thing we want to avoid that.

So we work with our franchise utilities to make sure that they get permits and that they're um when they are maintaining and installing their facilities, they're protecting city facilities.

So I'm gonna go through some timelines.

I'm gonna touch on this very quickly.

This is the council has seen these before at the quarterly updates, um, but I'm gonna go through them again.

We're we break them out uh engineering permits by the complexities.

Tier ones are very simple, tier twos are a little bit in the middle, and then the the really major ones and the ones that most of our um partners on the development side are concerned about are our tier threes.

So most of your larger commercial buildings and subdivisions are tier three applications.

So these uh this is a uh snippet from our dashboard, our online dashboard.

Uh council's seen this format before, but this is updated with August numbers.

The dark blue is the time it's with the city, the light blue is the time it's back with the applicant in that iterative process.

This is the tier one, the simple ones.

Um we have a goal of 15 days to get those out, and we've been pretty consistent with that.

You can see in August we were at 17.

Um, any any little spike, you can really see it's it's more time that we were waiting for the applicant to get back to us on those.

Um similarly for tier twos.

We've been pretty we had a spike up in January, February, and March over our goal of 45 days to get those out.

But as you can see, really through the spring and and summer, um, we've been pretty good at meeting our goal of 45 days.

And then for tier threes, um, this is for the actual to get the permit issued.

I sometimes show it or more in-depth ones, a first review on that one.

That's what that's a big one for us as a first review, but this is to actually get the permit out.

And you can see within August, we had a pretty good month there at 190 days.

Um, a little bit up and down, but as you can as I've explained before, tier threes can be very um different in the complexity of them.

You can have a fairly simple tier three or a completely complicated tier three.

So it's uh there's some validity or um volatility, volatility in uh the the month, depending upon the complexity of the projects.

And Colin, that's a good question.

Yep.

Um these deadlines driven by you know, like one or two really big projects that come in at a certain time.

So they're sort of outliers in terms of complexity.

Um we use average, we don't do median.

Um I know it's it's a little bit of a crude tool, and we include everything.

We don't cut the outliers, you know, the five percent on the very ends, we keep it all in there, and so it is in it can be very much influenced by one, and there's not there's not a lot.

There can be a month where we issue one or three or four, it's not that we have 40 or 50 of these going out.

So one of them can really uh influence the that average.

So Ben has put together some review times for some recent examples, and I'll turn it back over to him.

Yeah, thank you, Colin.

Uh apologize for the kind of wall of text here, but I think there's a lot of good information in here, and it'll kind of color some of what Colin was talking about with the average timeline.

So um we measure we measure our timeline from uh the date that an application is deemed complete to issuance, and then those um numbers that you were seeing in the last slide that Colin was showing are an average of the time that time again between completeness and issuance for all of the permits that were issued in a given month.

Um so digging back into um number.

Well, first we have 68% of our 44 tier three permits that were issued when these slides were created, um, have met that 120-day review timeline.

And I want to emphasize that you know we weren't really focused, obviously, we were focused on being efficient and getting our permits out, but when we were ran into complications, the developer knew what was going on, and we weren't held to that 120-day standard.

So I feel like the fact that we're at 68% speaks to some of the efficiency improvements that have been made in um PDED in the last few years.

Um, and I think you know, as we're being really close uh careful with reviews going forwards, um, we should be able to hit that 120 day mark.

So there's a little chatter sometimes when I speak.

So um I'm gonna try and pause a little bit just to make sure that I'm not missing any questions that you're bringing up while we go through these.

Okay, we we may just skip through the examples and the details, um, just in the interest of time, if that's I I mean, I think it'd be okay to talk about the expedited example, maybe how that was different from the other one.

Maybe Ben, you could talk about that.

Yes, um, yeah.

So, example number two on this slide uh has an affordable housing component.

So it's expedited, and the way that process works is basically um whatever else is in a review engineer's queue falls behind this when that permit comes in.

Um, this project was also a little bit special because we had regular uh meetings with the development team starting, so that this permit was issued in June.

We started uh meeting with that developer for their you know myriad uh infrastructure and planning applications in the fall of last year, and and had a lot of time to kind of coordinate the way that we wanted all of these things to work.

So this particular project intersects with uh septic and sewer project that Ryan's team is working on, so there's coordination around that.

Um then also the fact that it was expedited meant that whenever this project came in from the development team, it went to the front of the review engineers uh queue to work on.

All right, so in July, do we want to get into either of these examples in particular?

If you just want to sum up any takeaways from these, Ben, and I think it's good to have the information, but any of your takeaways on what was going on in these months and why we were seeing those numbers.

Sure.

Um, so both of these were relatively simple infrastructure permits.

The top one is was literally just a fire sprinkler line and a driveway.

Um I believe in in this one, the uh design engineer had a few issues.

Um and then in that second plan set, we had a good team working on that.

Um and honestly, just having having a good first application makes it really easy to go through the process of iterating to make sure we're catching all of the issues.

I think honestly, um, the most interesting one is on the previous slide.

So um I'm missing this one.

Yes, so in this top example, um, this this project had interaction with the capital improvement team.

It also required uh a legal agreement, a non-statutory development agreement to deal with the fact that there were some easements in the right-of-way, and there are a bunch of complications with that process that slowed down the entire project.

So it's it's not necessarily the big like the really big things like roundabouts that go the slowest through our division.

So Ben I have a question.

So one of the things that holds up projects the most is sort of disputes between the city and project teams about what infrastructure actually should be required of the project.

And so I guess my question for you is how are you and it's that dispute resolution time that can typically really add to your um the review timeline.

So what are you are you planning?

What are you thinking about?

I mean, I I think you're going to talk about time timeline for these process improvements in a moment here, but um just preliminarily, like what are you thinking as far as mechanisms that you can institute to help to resolve those disputes more rapidly and keep projects moving?

Yeah, that's a good question.

Um so the what we want to do, and and the way it should work is during the planning review of a development proposal, all of the big big rocks, the big issue should be identified and made conditions of approval.

If in if the if an applicant isn't proposing to do a particular infrastructure construction and it and it's required through our codes, that should be in the planning decision, and that's an appealable decision if if they feel as though they shouldn't do it or it's out of the scope of what what our code actually requires, that's where the due process of development happens.

We don't want large infrastructure items to come up after the planning approval and have to deal with that during the infrastructure review.

That's not where we should be putting conditions of approval on the development.

That should be in the in the planning process.

We can't foresee everything, things pop up either through the development or through the design during the infrastructure, or actually even in the field where they find something can't be constructible.

So there's always I mean, construction is kind of messy.

Um we'll never get away from that.

But anything that is a requirement that is a piece of infrastructure that the developer hadn't anticipated uh as being part of their project should be in the in the in the planning decision, which is uh uh an appealable decision, and we have a process for resolving those.

I have two questions.

Sure, and I don't know if they're just think about maybe something Colin's gonna talk about next, but well, uh what uh to counselor Francosa's question, how does that um dispute resolution, if you will factor into some of these time frames?

Like where how is that measured?

Is that measured by the sector or you know it it it kind of depends?

I mean, if it's if it's we put corrections back and the developer doesn't agree with the corrections, it's probably it's on the developers.

You're waiting to get it.

It's on the light, it's that light blue, and we can we work it out.

We don't we don't not answer the phone or have meetings during that during while it's there.

So um it but it kind of depends.

I mean, if it could be during the review, um it's each each one is sort of case specific.

Okay.

What is a um applicant?

Which applications qualify for expedited treatment or status?

Affordable housing.

Just affordable housing.

Yeah, as defined by our 80% number in the um it it's a little more complicated than that, but but it's our our housing division and real estate, they they're the ones who authorize that, and so we have a uh it's in concert with city council resolutions that have all of those criteria within them.

Got it.

Okay, let's keep going.

Okay.

So this is um the state legislation that uh referenced earlier, and Ben even talked about the 120 days.

That's a new um requirement, or it's going to be a new requirement.

So Senate Bill 974, this was uh out of the last legislative session that concluded in June of this year, um, instituted a new requirement for engineering permits, and it it uh mirrors what we've been doing for years for planning reviews, and that's the 120-day review period.

I think all of you have heard of that one, and they they basically borrowed those deadlines, put them into the statute for engineering.

So it has a 30-day completeness check, same as planning, and there's 120 days to for the city to issue a decision on an engineering permit once the application is accepted as complete.

And there's an asterisk right there.

The one key difference between um the well, there's really, I guess one key difference with planning is that uh when we put it back to the applicant with that revision or corrections, that is not on the city's 120 days.

So if just the on the visuals, that light blue wouldn't be considered the 120, the dark blue would be within that 120.

It'll apply to all applications to tier one, twos, and threes.

We're mostly concerned about the tier threes, they're the ones that would really take that long anyway.

It does start on July 1 of 2026, so we have some time to make sure that our processes are updated in order to accommodate this, and I'll talk about that in a minute.

And this is uh it has some penalties if we fail to to meet um the 120 days.

An applicant on day 121 can go over to circuit court with a writ of mandamus to ask the circuit court judge to force the city to issue the permit.

Um not only do we lose control of the permit and may get some infrastructure that doesn't meet our standards, um, but we also would be subject to some potential financial penalties for legal fees, um, etc.

So we do not want to miss a deadline, and we um we're not we're not gonna anticipate failure there.

Callin question on that.

Can the applicant say, hey, we're working back and forth, we're pretty close to finished.

Can they say we we're gonna waive the 120?

We're just gonna keep working with you, we're not gonna enforce that.

Is that something the applicant can do?

Yes.

So the city can't cannot compel an applicant to extend the 120, but the applicant uh at their own discretion can uh extend the 120 day review period.

Okay.

So this is a visual that does what I just just described or shows what what I just described.

There's uh on the left is a hundred, it's the 30-day completeness check.

And then our first review, we have a goal of 45 days, and then we send back um re review comments, and then uh that area up above where it says pause, that's the applicant's response, and then so on.

We have tiers of review.

We actually have uh about a 14-day internal what we'd like to on on rounds of review, we like to get back to the applicant within 14 days.

We plugged in 30 here just because it all adds up to be 120 there.

Um, but we are going to be taking a closer look at that because we're digging into all of our uh engineering timelines to and doing um process uh flows to make sure that we're we're running as efficiently as we can and we'll be ready.

And to do that, um we are actually underway on that top during the fall of 2025.

So the community development department is meeting weekly with the Office of Performance Management to do process mapping for everything that we do.

In fact, I was just in a meeting with them earlier this afternoon.

We were talking about the completeness check.

We were doing what's our current state for completeness check and what's what is we need to have for our future step for completeness check.

We're gonna continue these weekly meetings through the rest of this calendar year.

Um we are also uh engaging with consultants.

There's a uh the through the pro housing grant, there's um money to hire a firm to take a look at our process and look at other jurisdictions and and provide us with some best practices that we may be able to utilize to help us out.

Um with the goal of next spring to actually have those best practices and the workflows tested.

So we we'll be running some test cases through uh in the beginning of the year, not only for that, but then also anticipating uh the larger council policy discussions on we've we've talked a little bit about that with council, we've been bringing it back.

On what are we expecting developers to build in association with their project?

This is primarily associated with infill development.

You know, do they have to build the at the alley beside the streets?

So is the corner lot?

Do you have to do but so we're gonna hopefully be able to bring those two together with the anticipation that on July 1 of summer of 2026 when it takes effect that we will be ready for any application that's submitted on that day or after that we will be ready for the 120 days.

And then just a reminder council also has a call as a goal of a 20% reduction in timeline.

So all this sort of syncs up.

Yep.

Um that's that's a target for the end of the biennial.

And should we need some additional staffing to implement the recommendations that come out of this review process?

Where do we stand in terms of staffing with the budget?

My understanding there might be one vacant position.

Yes, there's one.

We have one open position within the uh private development engineering division.

Um we actually have the the backfill for Ben because he was a principal engineer within our department.

Um, so we need to fill that.

So we we do have and we're gonna take a close look at that before we fill either one of those to see you know how how would they best fit in with where we're trying to move the division.

We're also going to be af after we sort of redo our our processes, we're gonna take a look at the engineering fees similar to what we did with planning at the end of the with the adoption of the budget, just to make sure that our fees are allocated correctly for the work that's being that's being done.

Um, and so we just we'll make sure that the the services that we provide are adequately funded with with the fees that we collect.

And those two positions are already essentially in the budget.

And those two positions are already essentially there are those two are already in the budget caps on that.

Great other questions.

Council Colin, what happened in uh January and April for the tier ones with all the time with the with the at homes or at that with the customers let's see um I'm not sure I'd have to dig into that do you know why it was with the application I don't know off of the top of my head I would we sometimes get um a big glut of permits kind of around that time of year getting ready for um construction to begin another thing that happens as well is tier ones and tier twos don't have to be submitted by professional engineers they can be submitted by homeowners so it could be in that circumstance we were it was kind of random chance that we got a bunch of applications from homeowners who are sort of figuring out how to how to meet our process um and and in those situations we do have staff step in to help people out you know if someone's really having an issue drawing a set of plans that we think is constructable and is a good record we'll have our review engineers step in but I agree with Colin I don't know off the top of my head and we'd have to read into it.

So we can get back to you on that it's light blue though so we don't have to wait too much.

But my I guess my point is if that's an annual cycle can we can we think about you know allocating resources ahead of that to try to work some of that out customer service thanks Colin I yeah I appreciate if you get back to me just thank you.

And so one more follow up questions yeah yeah and sorry counselor Norris just raised your hand too um on on the matter of um disputes sometimes that does happen in pre-applications and you know one of the reasons why I think there's a little bit of a magnifying glass on the engineering department is that those infrastructure requirements can stop projects before they even start so um what is the plan to kind of go back and take a look at pre-application meetings um of projects that didn't move forward that maybe had some onerous infrastructure requirements to assess what role infrastructure played in those projects I mean we don't have a divisional plan to to do an analysis of that I mean we could do it on a on a case by if there's one that someone is familiar with we could we could look look at that um but yeah at the pre-application meetings that I mean our staff respond with all of the information that we have but oftentimes we're not getting the full story on the the entire spectrum of what's what is being proposed we're we're giving the information based on you know what we're seeing in front of us um so I'm not sure I mean if if there is a project that looked promising and ran into a roadblock at a pre-application conference I would encourage the applicant or the owner whoever's the the the main person on that that pure application to contact me and we can try a development navigator position to and I think I think there's some some work to do to kind of look at um and if you know of some let us know because we can kind of do a deeper dive on that area if that's what's killing we're actually doing uh the next home committee is a specific focus on infrastructure requirements for infill and is there something that the home committee wants to recommend in terms of funding to help remove that barrier so I assume it's something that the consultant from the pro housing grant we're looking at the full process wouldn't be barred from looking at that as well so I I would hope for that yeah and and I I just want to be clear though we we want to put everything out on the table when there's a pre-application conference we don't want to sugarcoat something and then have something pop up later on that they weren't anticipating when they spend the money to put together a formal application so correct counselor norce a little bit of a balance okay I'm just curious Colin are there any other states that have implemented this and just kind of interested to know any lessons learned or ways that we could you know move it forward more effectively hiring staff things like that.

Are you referring to the the 974 the legislation 120 um I I think this is we are we are um sort of at the at the leap bleeding edge of of the of implementation of this I don't think every jurisdiction is going to have to to do it um but so but we're all doing it on the same time frame.

I don't think any other state um or any other jurisdiction has a a deadline of 120 days.

No there's some interesting things in California with the builder's remedy and things like that but I don't I haven't seen this particular shot clock.

Anything else Councilor Norris that's it okay thank you.

All right well thanks Colin for the information it's good to see that for tier ones and tier twos we're basically under 120 no problem for tier three we have work to do but we have a plan to do it so I feel pretty good about that.

And I've I'm glad that we have all this information in this way for the public when Megan and I came on to council this did not exist.

None of those existed right we've got dashboards we've got information for people to help make sure they understand what's going on with us and for us to track for our own accountability so I think that's great.

So I think that's great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ben.

Thank you.

All right.

Next, we are doing our discussion at Midtown Crossings.

Okay, sure.

All right.

Good evening, Council, or mid-afternoon.

Ryan Oester, director of the engineering department.

Bob Johnson, Senior Project Engineer.

And we've got a slew of supporting characters with us today.

Not going to go through all of them, but we've got our friends from ODOT.

We've got KPFF, which is the primary designer of the bridge for Hawthorne.

Fire departments here to answer questions that you might have on Greenwood.

Kittle sin, our consultant, who helped put together the data on Greenwood.

So if at any time we need to dive a little deeper, we can absolutely call on one of them to come up to the mic here.

That being said, the agenda for today, it's gonna be a lot of information.

It's gonna be very layered, it's all interwoven connected.

And so we're gonna try to piecemeal this.

I'll give a quick background of where we are today.

Then we're gonna take a little bit of a dive into Greenwood and then pause there to make sure we're gonna continue moving forward at council direction.

Then we'll move on to Franklin, have a similar discussion at the end of that, and then we'll wrap it up with Hawthorne.

The couple key takeaways that I'm really hoping we can get from council coming out of today, the two most important ones, or maybe three.

Uh number one is whether you know whether or not um or which which direction on the bridge structure.

Are we gonna maintain what we're doing, or are we gonna switch switch to a different structure?

So we really need that decision tonight so our our design consultants can make some progress on that.

Uh, number two is what questions do you want us to capture here to take back to the joint CAB TBOC meeting, which is next Monday, and then we'll come back to council with that discussion at a later date, probably October 8th.

And then the third one is just at least uh general direction on Franklin of whether or not we're gonna proceed with the full design or maybe just a partial construction contract.

And our contractors here as well, KE excavating.

So that's yeah, Ryan, just to pause you before you start too.

And then I just want council to recall that we are are sending this topic to our joint committee of T Bach and CAB.

Yes.

So that we may have we may be talking about kind of our thoughts today, but I also want to leave some room to allow them to also give us their thoughts on some of the things that we're gonna be deciding.

Some of them we need to do ourselves today, like the design, but other things we can get some help from our community members.

So we have a summary slide at the end that we can edit here on the fly, however you want to do it, and those are what you want us to go back to that joint uh T bot cab subcommittee with.

So that being said, um, I'll kick it off with the background and then the Greenwood discussion, then I'll hand it over to Todd for Franklin and then Garrett will close us out with Hawthorne.

So uh a lot of bullet points here.

I'm not gonna go through each one of them particularly, but this has been a topic of discussion since we started planning for our transportation system plan with our citizen advisory committee.

We identified midtown as kind of a key connective tissue here between downtown and the future core area.

Uh we the TSP told us to look at Franklin Greenwood and Hawthorne, and if we could build one of them, that'd be great.

If we could build two, that would be amazing.

So here we are, of course, trying to do all three at the same time.

Uh the good news is is that we got some federal funding, and we'll dive into that a little bit more when we talk about Hawthorne.

So the general obligation bond is the primary funding source for this work.

So the public voted and passed that uh geobond, 190 million dollar bond back in 2020.

So that's how we're funding the Greenwood and Franklin portions of this with a few other sources, keeping in mind that Hawthorne is almost exclusively funded through federal and state grants, so no impact to um our citizens in terms of the geobond expenditures.

So uh we did we've done a bunch of studies through the corridor dating back to 2022.

Uh we held some council work sessions.

We had one in October of 2022 where we talked about the funding priorities at that time.

We didn't know we were gonna win the Hawthorne grant.

Uh so we got some direction from council there, and then uh in April of 23, we had another check-in with council about alternatives uh for contracting method, and we're doing a progressive design build contract, and so uh that gives us a lot of flexibility on how we want to deliver this work.

Um, and then we've did some done some visioning work as well on Hawthorne.

Uh Mayor, you mentioned going to CAB and T Bach in a joint meeting.

We have gone to them in the past in 2022.

We went to them independently and said, you tell us what you want to say to council with respect to Midtown.

So this is a summary from each of their perspectives.

The Core Area Advisory Board definitely wanted to focus on development.

They wanted to see Franklin going as quick as possible to encourage growth in the area.

They did see the benefits of completing Franklin and Greenwood.

There was a little uncertainty on Hawthorne at the time.

So they recommended continuing to pursue funding for that.

On the bond oversight committee side, they were like full steam ahead.

Let's tackle all three of these.

So we got some guidance and direction from them.

We brought that back to council, and that's that helped guide council recommendations to what staff's been working on in the meantime.

And this was, of course, before we received state and federal money.

Correct, yeah.

This was prior to the Hawthorne because both of them said, Yeah, if we could go after some more money for Hawthorne, let's do it.

And it worked.

So what have we done to date?

We've done the quick build on Greenwood, and again, we'll dive into that in a little bit more.

That provided a safe detour route.

One of the main focuses on doing that is we knew there was a closure coming on only, which is still in place today.

We assumed a future closure on Franklin, and so one of the requirements is we have to provide a detour route, not just for vehicles but for bikes and peds.

So we really focused on Greenwood as being that detour route while other undercrossings and other corridors were under construction.

Um and we wanted to build this safe route kind of through this core area into downtown.

We also built 2nd Street that was funded through urban renewal funds.

So we were able to work that into our contract.

KE delivered that not very long ago.

Um so that that wasn't even originally a part of the midtown project.

We just added it in, and that was one of the early focuses.

On Franklin, uh council gave us direction for concept one is what we called it.

We identified the need to tackle the stormwater issues, which we've probably all seen pictures of rather recently.

Uh that's still an issue today as our crews got to take our vector trucks out and suck all that water out because of the failed stormwater system.

Um, and then we're we're knee-deep into design on Franklin and including building the fourth to eighth stretch today.

And then at the time, there was also recommendation to say reserve a little bit of funding for Hawthorne, let that be the seed money for how we can either initiate design or go after some future grant funding.

So that was kind of the direction we got from council back in 2022, and that's what we've been operating off of to date.

Last background slide I want to share before we dive into Greenwood, is just a reminder.

We do have 12 key routes that were identified in our transportation system plan.

The Geo Bond partially funds that work, but two of those key routes number number two is on Franklin, and number six is the future Hawthorne Overcrossing.

And these are obviously rather important east-west connectivities that get us to the Bend Bikeway system, which you're all familiar with, but that gets us to other otherwise built greenway projects and future Bend Bikeways work that you're going to start seeing going into construction later this year.

So all of this is thrown together into the midtown conversation, and uh we'll dive now into Greenwood and we'll talk a little bit about what's going on today at on Greenwood.

So quick reminder of what we built.

Uh we went from fundamentally what was a four-lane cross section, two lanes east, two lanes west, um, with no center turn lane, all the way through the undercrossing, and we converted that to a three-lane section.

So one travel lane in each direction with a joint use uh center turn lane.

Just as an anecdote, if if if we were building a road from scratch today, we would never build a four-lane section like that.

It's completely unsafe.

We would never build two lanes in each direction without a center turn lane.

Um, that's just not a non-standard that I just wouldn't allow in our system today.

So we converted this from four to three.

We also added safer pedestrian crossings.

Uh, we restriped things, we put some temporary paint down, some ballards, narrowing down the crosswalks.

Um, and uh, one of the key things is you probably all remember is in order to do this, we eliminated parking on the north side, but we maintained parking on the south side, and we built some bike buffers to make those a little bit safer for those using that route.

So, where are we today?

Uh, first slide here is going to talk about the vehicular impacts.

So, um, as a part of the council uh data, you you probably all seen the results.

Uh Kittelson's here if you'd like for them to take a little bit of a deeper dive into the data at a high level though.

Uh I just want to put a few disclaimers on this.

This data was collected over four different periods during during this pilot project time.

And during most of that time, almost all of it, we had other other projects under construction.

So there was never really a clean window here in which we could say this isn't being impacted by something else.

The Portland closure, the wall and only intersection closure, and even the only closure today still influences how Greenwood is operating.

So what what's the data?

What have we seen overall?

We've seen the average daily traffic go down.

So pre-construction, we saw about 18,000 cars a day through here.

We're measuring about 17,000 a day.

So fewer vehicles are using this east-west connection.

The free flow speeds have gone down.

So speeds slowed down, which again is in that was the intent is we wanted to slow things down a little bit and make it a little bit safer for the whole all the users of the system.

So we saw a reduction of an average speed from 32 down to 29 as a result of those slower speeds and the other construction impacts.

We have seen a peak travel time increase.

So as you probably know, the peak travel time is really that early morning rush hour in the evening or afternoon rush hour, and that's that's when we measure the most impactful side.

So previously, in a peak hour window, would take you about a minute and a half to get through here.

Today it's taking you about two minutes.

Outside of peak hour times, there's not much of an impact from a travel time reliability.

You could you could go down there at seven or eight at night relatively smoothly and not have any backup at all.

So, but it I want to recognize it has impacted the peak travel time period of roughly 30 seconds through that intersection.

Crash data.

That was one thing on the report we wanted to be very transparent about.

So the the roughly year that we've had to collect data, and again, from a standard standpoint, one year's worth of crash data on a pilot project is nowhere near enough data to draw broad conclusions on whether or not this thing is effective or not.

But it is the data we have today, so we wanted to share that.

Pre-construction, we were showing that there were 17 reported crashes, with roughly a third of those happening at the intersection.

So that would uh primarily at third and 90 and uh Greenwood is where the most of those blue dots you see up there.

So that's where we saw a decent number of crashes pre-construction.

Post construction, the number of crashes has gone up.

Uh, not denying that at all.

We've seen a lot more crashes at uh Greenwood and 97, primarily because people were having to avoid the wall and only closure, you couldn't access the revere interchange, so more people were taking greenwood, and that Q distance as you were trying to take a left to go north on Third Street, backed way up, and it started impacting people either trying to go straight to go east or even take a right turn.

So that queue backed up.

Uh people get frustrated, people make hasty decisions, and as a result, we see an increase in crashes through there.

Throughout the actual corridor from the four-lane to three-lane section, though, it's been roughly the same, maybe a slight increase.

And so uh most of these crashes we've recorded are at the intersections, but I'll talk briefly about it.

Uh, we recommend that we you allow us to continue to monitor this, especially trying to find a window in which we don't have other closure impacts uh to get some some better data on what this looks like.

Uh, typically when you're reporting crash data, you want a minimum of three years of data, if not five, and we simply just don't have that at this point because this was a one-year uh quick build period.

Can have some ways so we're saying crashes on this slide, but um in the report, we're talking about um incident report data, and that includes traffic citations.

So, could that could some of these be just a traffic citation for not stopping for a pedestrian or something like that, or are these specifically incidents where a vehicle has hit something?

These are these are crashes here.

Okay, so we've sorted those out.

Okay, got it.

And another thing, just talking to our consultant is the some of what we're seeing here is you know what was the cause of the crash.

Pre-construction, it was clearly noted that some of the crashes were due to design restrictions, like I couldn't see this car, or I didn't have visibility of this person turning, whatever the case may be.

Most of the crashes we're seeing now are not because of a design issue, it's more related, I would say, frustrations and anger, and you know, the appearance that you're you're having to sit through another signal cycle that you might not have had to sit through at the past.

So it's not really a design issue, especially through the undercrossing.

And the other thing to keep in mind is this is a nodal system, so there's controlling nodes at either end of this.

You could make this six lanes under the undercrossing, but you're still going to come back to the same pinch point on either end, and you can only get so much volume through those points unless we completely redo the intersection at say third in Greenwood.

So that being said, fully want to recognize the data in the report.

Yeah, please, one more question.

So the the six percent decrease in traffic volume, is that just people saying, forget it, I'm going over to Franklin or Yeah, that's probably part of it.

It's also people just avoiding the wall and only closure and going even further south to Franklin or going even further south than that.

So, yeah, I I heard a lot of feedback from people during the wall only closure that they were going up and around Mount Washington.

So we got a lot of feedback that there was impacts up there as well.

So yeah, uh just lower volumes overall.

Well, and some of these people are also probably biking instead.

I mean the bike about a thousand people a day.

Yeah, well, and we'll yeah, the next slide.

Uh thank you for that transition.

In terms of bike ped data, uh that this is a good news story in my opinion.

Again, these were daily counts.

We did it four times over the period of the construction.

Uh even these though are with an asterisk because a lot of these happened during the wall and only in Portland closures.

But overall, you can see people uh there's an increased usage of this corridor because of this the system that we've built.

So from a bike and ped side, we have seen the usage gone up.

You see, there's a little dip in each one of these that kind of goes down over winter months.

That's fully expected.

Fewer people out walking and biking during that period, but then you see it really shoot back up in June of 25 as the weather improves.

So you really want to compare the May of 24 to June of 25 numbers.

So, like the jump from 209 to 379, the jump from 108 to 429, these are pretty dramatic.

That's how many people were using it in that one-day period.

So, times that out over over a year.

Um, and that's kind of a that this means it's doing what we intended it to do.

We're getting more people to use this from a different modal system.

Okay, uh, last slide from a data standpoint uh before we kind of get into a quick discussion on Greenwood.

Uh, again, full transparency here.

We asked the public for feedback.

Tell us what you think about this this lane reduction from four to three.

Uh we we got we definitely got a lot of feedback on that, and that's good.

Uh, we do want to hear from the public.

That's part of the transparency here.

So we got roughly 4,000 responses.

I'll note this is not a statistically valid survey.

This is just people jumping on our website answering some questions, tell us what you think about it.

Um I we're not tracking how many times one person may have gotten into this, or if this was truly an independent 3,995 people.

We don't know.

Um, that's that's not what we were tracking here.

We weren't tracking IP addresses or or who may have said what.

But this is the result.

These are this is the data we got back.

So again, uh there's there's an asterisk here because there was construction projects going on throughout this period.

But you can see the pie chart in front of you there.

Uh, when looking at these numbers, we ref got about 22% saying, yep, they're good, they're fine with it, or it's okay.

Um, but a good majority of folks said that they did they were not fans of this flane reduction from four to three.

And what percent of people that answered said they were primarily driving on Greenwood for this survey.

Did we have that breakdown?

This is a good question.

We did ask, like, what's your primary mode of transportation?

I don't think we have that right now, but I think the vast majority were people that said they drive.

That would be my assumption, yeah.

And one person that'd be my assumption.

For a report in the bulletin, one person said they went by hot air balloon, which maybe was not a serious response to this survey.

Okay, yeah.

So that'd be interesting.

Yeah.

If we saw some of that, it would have been some chatter in the community about that.

Yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, Todd Todd, I'll see maybe we can find that data real quick.

But yeah, again, you know, part of part of being a public agency is we want to be fully transparent.

So the data we collected, um, you can see it.

It speaks for itself there in terms of uh how the public feels about that.

Some we said like 90% or plus or something like that, apparently.

Interestingly, I mean I just pulled it up and it says 65% are saying car 15 or walking.

You know, there are stated choice biases, like what do we what does the public think that we want to hear?

Yeah, so um so yeah, it's a 65% car.

Okay, uh, to wrap up Greenwood, and obviously, whatever discussion you'd like to have on this one specifically before we switch to Franklin, from a staff perspective, where we sit today is uh we we spent all the money we had allocated for Greenwood on the quick build, so there isn't anything sitting in the Greenwood budget today.

Um, and we'll show a budgetary slide here at the end.

However, we do have an all-roads transportation safety or arts grant as we call it, and we would like to continue uh moving forward with that grant to design a safer crossing at second in Greenwood, as well as start engaging with ODOT on how we could look at extending these safety features to the east as as the bikers and walkers start approaching the third street intersection because we did hear a lot of feedback that this is great, I can get through the undercrossing, and then it just dumps me kind of back into the old system.

So uh it's really important that we continue to look to progress that.

Uh, we are also asking to be able to continue to monitor this thing, and we want to want to keep collecting data on this thing.

And hopefully there's going to be a window sometime later this year, early next year, where we can open up the only east-west movement, and before we do a Franklin closure, depending on how council wits, and maybe we can, like I said, find a narrow window in there where we can get some better data.

But we just don't have enough data to make a conclusive decision in terms of the crash side of things.

Other things to consider.

We could go all in.

We could make this more permanent.

So that's a picture of what what we built and kind of how you can see the paint starting to wear off, the delineators starting to get worn down a little bit.

So if we're gonna if we're gonna keep Greenwood the way it is long term, we'd recommend putting curbs and putting bulb outs and other things in here that are more permanent than just paint on the ground.

Um and then we want to pursue the ability to go after some additional funding for the crossing at second in Greenwood.

So that's where we are today.

Uh the three basic questions on this one or options are uh you kind of keep it how it is, let us move forward the way we've got shown here.

You could direct us to put it back the way it was, um, which I personally would not recommend for a new numerous reasons.

Um or you could say, you know, make it more permanent.

So that's kind of what which one of those three or some variation of those uh we would like to consider for council today.

Okay.

Have an informational question.

Sure, yeah.

So for the second street crossing, that's a funds to have support design, not actual that yeah, the grant is for design.

We don't have any construction allocated yet.

Okay.

I'd like to hear from the public.

I'd love to hear from the fire.

You said there was something like that.

Yeah, I definitely think I under Chief about Greenwood, and I'm just curious about yeah, sorry.

Well, if you can just look to the book for 42, thank you.

I am like hand draw sheet.

Yeah, I'm just curious.

I mean, since this has been um since we did this, can you tell us are you experiencing any difficulties um from public safety standpoint?

Are you taking other routes um to get places faster?

Yeah, so there's there's a lot to that question, and it depends on call type.

So we go on all hazard and we go code one and code three.

Code one calls, we experience the same delays that the public experiences.

There's kind of no way around it for emergency calls.

We can oppose traffic, so we haven't seen a significant delay in those calls.

Sometimes they're actually faster because of the germ pockets.

So, and we have a lot of room to go opposing, not the safest thing to do, but it does give us a really fast option to get through the core.

And then with the other closures, like those impact us as well.

There's only so many ways to get east or yeah, east to west, and Greenwood is a major route for us.

Where our fire stations are located is the most convenient one.

So during peak travel times, it it does impact us just like it does the public, which increases our unit utilization, and over time, those things will have a cumulative effect.

We haven't had any service failures due to the construction, and we haven't had the emergency response failures due to the construction.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

That's good.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So right, oh sorry, go ahead with your question.

Thank you.

Uh Ryan, just to go back to the crash data.

I think that's the part that is the most concerning for me.

Absolutely.

Um just to understand the sources, uh, Ben Police Department calls for service, which is different than the source that you might see in the state Oregon Transportation Safety Data Explorer.

Is that correct?

Sorry, could you refer?

Yeah, I guess I didn't know.

If you look at this the the previous year data that is available from the from ODOT, that data is different than what was presented in the memo tonight.

I can answer that.

The the crashes that we have are from the police department, and those go directly into Oregon's crash database system stars or what we have is what's going to be recorded when ODOT releases their data.

Okay.

Yeah, the ODOT system usually there's a year or two lapse between when we get reliable data from the crash system they have.

So I would say I think I'm prepared to support staff recommendation to uh at least not revert the design.

But I I am concerned about the crashes.

I would say, having looked at the memo, I encourage everyone to read through the notes on them.

The um some of these crashes are pretty unfortunate.

I think um the severity does appear to have dropped.

So in the previous period, we had one four-car crash.

We didn't have any crashes that involved more than two vehicles in in the uh sorry, in the pre-period, we had a four-car crash, and we haven't had any four-car crashes in the post-period.

Um the rate of injury crashes dropped from about 18% to 12%.

So that's good.

But uh the number of crashes is is concerning.

I do think that we probably do need more data.

Um there's a lot going on here, as you just as you described.

You know, five of these were on third street itself, it's kind of outside the bounds of the actual project area.

I would like to better understand before we look at permanent options whether we think there are design factors that are contributing to them.

I mean, looking at some of these notes, it's a lot of distracted driving.

I mean, one one crash, a spider fell on someone.

Um didn't break in time.

The number of rear end crashes.

Is speed still a factor here?

Things like that.

So I feel like I would before making a decision to say let's make this permanent.

I want to better understand what's going on, and I feel like that warrants more time to to collect data and understand it.

Yeah, I I had sent a question, and I think I've got this right, but tell me if I'm wrong.

You know, we had more people biking and walking, but we didn't see a commensurate rise in the amount of incidents with people biking and walking.

So we're getting people through there more safely, sort of per capita with the crashes, if that makes sense, right?

Um, but still concerning enough, I think that we want to keep monitoring it for sure.

Um, but I think that speaks to providing that space for people to bike and walk, you know, can can lead to less of those injuries and less of those incidents.

So I think do you want to go through all of them and then come to the questions, or are we gonna kind of take them piece by piece?

However, you want to do I mean if you want to keep the questions and we'll do the question slide at the end, that's fine.

Well, this one, this one is again, we're gonna be asking T Bach and Cab to weigh in.

So I think we can kind of state our positions, but also what would be helpful from them on these questions.

Yeah, Council Friends.

I just want to offer on Greenwood.

I'm very comfortable leaving um the quick build improvements in place.

And honestly, I'd rather just leave the quick build and not talk about permanent improvements for quite a while so that we can you because we have a lot of other intersections and a lot of other stretches of road that we need to improve, and it's working.

It's working great.

So with the very affordable price of a quick build.

So um, yeah, so that's just my two cents.

I just say I I I agree that we should keep it a non-permanent, non-permanent as it is right now, not um, but I would I would say that there are a lot of people in our community that that don't feel it's working.

And I think I I I think it's part of a larger picture of um, yes, this is not a statistically valid survey.

Um, you know, we have a lot of anecdotal, you know, I have a lot of anecdotal conversations at at the dinner table too about from a from a commuter husband that there are you know tens of thousands of people that that take these roads, and um, you know, what is a statistically valid survey is you know our our 2024 community survey that said that congestion is the number one issue by far, by far in this in this community from transportation side.

And you know, the whole idea of the go bond, which the voters voted on, which I would consider that somewhat statistically valid.

Um, you know, it was the whole idea was to improve traffic flow.

So I just don't want us to, I just don't want us to forget that when we're having this conversation because um, yes, I'm I'm I'm very happy by you know the fact that there are more people um walking and and biking safely on that road, and I think that's great.

But I think as we're talking about these three things as a whole, um, we do need to keep to keep this this idea of congestion being the issue in our community that that there are people in our community that are that are that are very concerned about this, and this is impacting them every day.

Yeah, and I think I think that's a valid concern, and part of the Go Bond promise was the East West corridors and eastwest routes, right?

But I think we've had so many closures, we can't come to conclusions yet about how well this thing is functioning, nor from this these uh crash patterns.

I I tend to think, and I think from the discussions I've had with staff, you know, some sort of unfortunately change in some of the safety things that happen while people get used to the new system and how it works is what we would expect to occur.

So I I just don't think we're ready to make any changes until we've had a period of time without closures and we can really see how this thing functions because we may find performance improves on East West even you know more.

We've had the one thing we've seen is travel time for about 30 seconds.

So I think that it's important for us to just give this a chance and really see how it performs without the closures.

I'd also like want to make sure that we're maintaining the existing temporary infrastructure we put in place.

So I'm hoping that we're not gonna not paint the yellow stuff anymore for three years.

We're gonna keep doing that on a regular schedule.

Um and I'd like to see us move forward with the design on the second street crossing as well.

I think that's important for us to figure out what's possible.

Yeah, and get that worked on sooner rather than later.

I think it's part of the discussion of the crossing.

Yeah, yeah, I think one point on that, like we did look at the left turn cues, so eastbound and northbound.

You may need to speak up.

That's people can hear me.

So we looked at the left turns, eastbound and northbound, um, going on to third street, and the queuings far exceeding the capacity right there.

Some of that's likely due to the only closure.

Uh-huh.

So we just wanted that dust to settle there, reevaluate what those cues are, because generally the solutions we're coming up for and get improving the pedestrian cross, making a pedestrian crossing there would reduce the queuing capacity at that intersection.

Right.

So you understand that that's part of what has to get talked about.

It's so much better.

As someone who's on that at 8:30 every morning, um, it is so much better than it was.

Um and that's why I can see why there's there were crashes there because I mean you're just you know doing this, you know, for for many many minutes.

And yeah, I can see.

But Tom, my understanding you're right.

What you're saying is that queuing capacity might be more of a problem with a second street crossing.

That's gonna be the trade-off discussion, right?

Yes, right.

So we need the good design and some analysis of how all that fits together.

Okay, so just we'll come back to this later, but shaping in my mind for what we call this to cab, too about cab, I don't know what we call it.

The the joint committee to look at, I think maybe some um feedback for us around the second street crossing might be helpful.

Um, I think we've we've maybe taken off the table, go backwards on this, and and I'm okay with what has been stated as far as keeping it temporary.

If they have really strong feelings about making it permanent, I'm sure they can tell us.

But I think we're more in the realm of what are what are kind of some next steps here that are the next baby steps on the corridor.

And I also I'm gonna throw this out there for all these projects.

Like, if they can help us think about the timing, right?

So if we're like closing down Greenwood to do second street crossing, is that the same time as this?

Like I think I think having them help us think about that would be really good.

And we have a schedule slide we can share here, but with them as well.

Okay, so I think are we okay with that sort of direction at this point?

Anyone else have a different thought?

Okay.

Okay, on to Franklin.

I'll hand it over to Todd.

Yeah, it's uh a great time to talk talk about timing too.

Um, and that's one of the reasons why we're here.

Um we are currently constructing GMP3, 4th to 8th Street, 3.6 million dollars.

We're building the south side of the bike path and sidewalk, should be done late October, have all that completed, flip to the north side.

Um yeah, we're here to talk about GMP 4.

Uh, what that entails right now we're we're still looking at it as one construction package from Harriman to 4th, um, and then the implications from that full closure of the undercrossing for at least the storm and water improvements, but then what are the goals of council in terms of potentially if there's a desire to reopen to traffic, maintain access through one of the tunnels at all times, like those are the kinds of things that will really inform what goes into GMP4 and the potentially the cost and then potentially the duration of the construction.

Um yeah, so the status again under construction.

We with GMP four, we we were directed to hold right-away acquisition, and it's another decision we're looking to be made is to whether we can continue on that process going from the existing 80-foot right-a-way to the 90-foot right-away.

We can um, yeah, and then leveraging progressive design build to meet community council goals.

What is the undercrossing closure look like?

We can talk through the value engineering considerations, and I on the next slide, I do show kind of what the implications were if we said don't proceed forward on the right-of-way.

Sure, there's cost savings, but is this the cross section that we ultimately are trying to deliver on this key route too?

So, yeah, just value engineering.

Last time we met, we kind of talked about the uphill bike lanes at the undercrossing.

There was a million dollar savings there.

The current estimate that we're showing, the 13.8 does include that.

And then all of these bullets below are showing what potential savings might be there.

Um like talking about the right-of-way, that bottom image.

Um directions we got was to keep parking on Franklin.

And so we're showing that with kind of the sidewalk, bike path, the buffer.

Um this is at a 90 foot cross section.

If we were to eliminate crop right-away with the parking in there, things get very tight.

We only have a five and a half foot buffer and it's a five-foot acquisition on the right-of-way.

Sure, we could talk about like the there's a two-foot buffer between the travel lane and parking, potentially like reducing the width of the sidewalk.

Um, but yeah, it might mean going to a shared use path, which when we went out for the open house, certainly there was a community desire to maintain these separate facilities, the sidewalk and bike lane.

So that's what we're currently designing.

That's what we're currently showing.

But were we to be given different direction?

Um, yeah, there's probably sacrifices that are made, whether it's trees, etc.

Okay.

And then yeah, the scene on our screens is actually different from there.

So you go back, it's just the trust report.

Yeah, sorry.

That's right here.

Yeah, well, I I kept editing this up to the last minute.

So it might be slightly different.

Yeah, I wanted to show the cross section with the parking in it.

And I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, no, I mean that makes sense to me.

I'm appreciate you getting that.

I just follow along closely here.

Yeah, so then this is this is where we we sit currently.

It's it's sort of do we are we completing Franklin with one construction package, looking at that hefty price tag, recognizing that um the infrastructure improvements that like you can see on the right the this the flooding from stormwater, um the sidewalks being undercut, there's full depth cracks in it, the railings crumbling.

Is that work that's potentially prioritized now, or do we say uh there's too much uncertainty with kind of how the rest of this project's going, we don't know what's going to happen on Greenwood, Hawthorne, etc.

Do this early package, fourth to second at this cost, and then we'd come back with maybe potential a little bit more information in the summer.

Um I think certainly like the one construction package, there's benefits of it.

Um we would we would Franklin's design, it's it's there to essentially alleviate the um when sorry, when we construct on Franklin, the greenwood work is there to alleviate um the impacts there.

And if we split this into two construction packages, we potentially delay getting into the undercrossing, and that might potentially delay making changes on greenwood if desired.

Got it.

Okay.

So we're really talking about some timing here, council, and whether we go forward with the community design or try to do look at something different.

Um noting that we had talked about the uphill bike lanes being a pretty large cost out of that undercrossing, and I think we had talked before about do we delay that work and save some some money here.

Um, but thoughts on this, and again, I think this is also really ripe for this joint committee to think for us as well and give us some feedback on this.

But any comments anyone wants to make at this point, Steve.

Um Todd, if you cut out the um undercrossing and just isolated by itself, how long would you have to stop traffic?

Yeah, I think that's it's a good question in terms of a total closure.

Total closure.

We certainly have the stormwater work, and it's something that we'd be leaning with.

That's one of the benefits of the progressive design build.

We can talk with a contractor.

Um I'm not gonna give an exact time frame right now, but I think certainly there's maybe the opportunity to get in there and do the stormwater work, which are huge holes in the ground.

Reopening to traffic while we're rebuilding the walls at least in one direction, so we could certainly like reduce the impacts in the traveling public in that regard.

But it would certainly be less if you cut out second to fourth, right?

That would be a smaller time frame where that was all cut out where the traffic was stopped, right?

Obviously.

Yeah, yeah.

That was yeah, that's kind of the decision tree here.

Is if you don't want to approve the whole package, we can of course we bring that back for council approval later.

Um, we could break this down in a second to fourth, and second to fourth, we could build under traffic.

It's a lot like Franklin right now, right?

Um, from fourth to eighth.

Like we we can there's there's two travel lanes going to the to the west.

We can close one of those downs, do work there.

So second to fourth is a it's it's an impact, but a lot less of an impact, of course, than the undercrossing work.

Okay, I'm gonna push you a little bit, Ryan, because you had said six months to close full closure before when we were talking about this Franklin last time.

If we just doing the undercrossing, can you give me is it gonna be less than six months if we're just doing that?

I'm just trying to understand just the just the actual undercrossing itself.

Well, I would go back to what Todd said.

I mean, uh again, the advantage of a progressive design bill contract is if you give us the direction to look at doing the whole thing, the next meeting we have with KE is all right, how do we based on council direction?

If your goal is to minimize closure, we will put a plan together that absolutely focuses on minimizing minimizing closure.

So, but to Todd's point, there's that you know, if you're putting dry wells and putting a stormwater system in there, there's there's no way to do that without probably a full closure, as well as we got to rebuild the eastbound wall and the water line.

So at a minimum, that's a few months of a full closure.

Okay.

And then and then we would explore how we get creative with traffic impacts.

Do we keep one direction open or flip-flop it or all these different potentials?

Thank you.

Can we keep in one package but reduce costs by changing some of these design choices?

Is that possible?

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, if you want to say do fourth to Harriman, we can absolutely come back.

There's this box, the down box here, which is kind of the yes box.

We can come back and say, okay, here's we've applied the value engineering concepts.

We think we can reduce cost to this much, um, but we can still meet the intent of fixing stormwater, fixing the water line.

Progressive and yeah, keep them.

And they I would say one of the real benefits of the one construction package, we could talk about when to have that undercrossing closure.

If we went to, we're sort of we're kicking the can down the road, but then we're getting forced into we have a contractor on board.

And that might fall during the summer or during the winter, potentially a time that we don't want to build.

And so if we got a goal of like it's a lot better to construct.

I just looked at the sort of school maps and like nothing crosses a like bend high district is at the parkway.

So you wouldn't be as impacting traffic.

But if there were yeah, summer events or winter things, like we could certainly construct during a season the undercrossing.

Okay, so questions down here.

Sort of two follow-up questions to Steve.

Um is it the is it the stormwater stuff that really um impacts how long we have to be closed for that?

That's yeah, I would say that's the number one factor.

Yeah.

It's basically so um, and what portion of the cost of the project as a whole is the stormwater investments.

So water improvements.

You got one.

We have yeah, I'm just thinking putting our budget through my mind.

We've we've got three to four million dollars on the stormwater side alone, and then it's gonna probably be another million to two on the water side.

So out of that total cost, I would say five million of it is stormwater and water related.

And what's the what's the water piece of it?

And then to the storm water.

Disconnected, but uh, you know, as you can see in this picture here, there's a water line under that sidewalk and it's eroding away.

It's a 50-year-old old cast iron line that I'm pretty sure is leaking and and cracked right now.

So it'd just be while we're there.

This is we don't want to have to come back again when this thing breaks.

So while we're there, let's we don't want an emergency break.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'll get it.

I guess I'm just wondering about the stormwater and how it connects in terms of the sequencing of this, and is there a way to look at, you know, as a community, do we want to think about well, maybe we delay the stormwater for a period of time and even do it as a separate project versus now.

I mean, I I don't know, that may not make sense practically when you get into all how all this works together, and I I get that, but I'm just posing it as a question.

Yeah.

Um I think if I remember right from conversations, I thought the stormwater improvements were around 1.2 to 1.5 million.

Um, and then the other thing I was gonna add to this, like the whole conversation as we circle around towards the end of this, is we I think we felt like there was some input from city council of whether or not there was any need to reserve funds for some of these other efforts.

And so some of these minimal value engineering efforts that were identifying with like the westbound bike lane, um, getting rid of that on the west side of the undercrossing, the the right-of-way consideration, which I I'm not sure is something that we want to pursue just for consistency of infrastructure through the corridor, but um and the others, but primarily that uphill bike lane opens up or provides that bond fund availability to start moving forward at least with looking at the Hawthorne extension from where our current terminus is and getting those concepts and estimates ready and bringing us to summer of next year where we're gonna have a larger funding conversation where we know more about the read market grant and some of these other um projects that are farther down the list and the bond and and ODOC contribution.

So I think they're I think that's the window we're trying to open up through this, and then having the P the advantage of the P2B contract to say what are the goals of performing the remainder of this corridor and how do we come back to council with having a GMP package and sequencing that could reflect that if you're what will or wanting to approve that whole package.

Right.

And to your point, Councilor Riley, if we get the nod to continue with the full design and full construction, we can have that conversation of is it does it make sense to do this in November, December, January or March, April, May, or whatever months we say, okay.

This and we can like we can start letting the public know in the middle of 26 or in the fall of 26, you can expect a closure on Franklin.

So there's a lot of lead time and other intersections will be open by then, and we've we've got the ability.

Yeah, I mean we'll be only will be on the so we've we've got the ability to come back to council with some of those, you know, is this meeting the intent of what you want?

So at this point we have identified 1.4 million in value engineering that between the cross the the uphill bike lane and um changing the design and the yeah, I guess yeah, the right-of-away piece.

I'm in agreement with Garrett though.

Like, I mean, if if you're really looking to pinch pennies and accelerate this, we can avoid having to go through the right-of-way process.

But it it's gonna give you an inconsistent feel on the north side, you're gonna have a shared use path on the south side, you can have an independent bike lane and sidewalk.

So it just depends.

Are do we want to go with what the public said they were looking for, or do we want to narrow this down to avoid dabbing to pay some right away and going through the potentially a condemnation process and et cetera.

Counselor.

At the risk of beating a dead horse here, so the stormwater piece could end fixing the um retaining walls on the sidewalks leading to the bridge and improving the tunnel and improving the sidewalks to the tunnel, that could be a discrete project separate from improvements on Franklin or Hill.

So it's almost like an option three.

Your stopping point might be interesting.

Like we have the the old West Swab site there, right?

Which if you get just to pass the undercrossing, you get to their driveway, which we've been trying to coordinate completing to the edge of their property a little farther to the east.

Um, and then how you transition your existing infrastructure uh into that new infrastructure as far as like the the bike lane would go or protected bike lane.

Um most of those driveways will be closed minus the two at Sherwin Williams, if that's part of the concern, especially if we also helped reconstruct the access to less Schwab in partnership with that development.

I was actually just asking because I think the stormwater issue is I mean, that is an annual issue, and it it's really it's unsafe, and um so that seems to me to be like an infrastructure necessity, whereas I mean, and I'm a cyclist and I'm pro-bike and everything, but like making this stretch of Franklin, you know, the ultimate bike route is is not an you know, that's a little bit more of an ice to have at this point.

Um there is there is a bike lane there.

Um and my my thinking about the this cross section is just that it to my mind it doesn't meet what the community already talked about at length when they worked on the core area plan, you know, the core area plan calls for Franklin to be more of a you know s storefronts, you know, that cars are not whizzing by, that there should be on-street parking, um, that there should be you know ample sidewalks um and you know access to these storefront businesses and things like that.

And so, like right now, yes, we have driveways along Franklin, but you know, in this perfect future the beautiful imperfect feature that we we won't really need a center turn lane because there aren't any driveways for people to be turning into, right?

So a center turn lane just functions to give more space for drivers to feel like they can go faster on a street that's at some point in the future with the driveway accesses going away, we could convert that into a landscaped median if we'd like.

That would be lovely, yeah, for sure.

I guess I'm just wondering, like, and maybe this is just for a T Bach and CAB to kind of deliberate a little bit as you know, do we build, do we spend all the money to build a street that we know we're just gonna come back in 10 to 15 years and tear up and build a landscape median?

Or do we do maybe I don't know, I mean, should we look at a light like a more of a quick build option?

Um, but have a section design so that developers can move forward.

Um I think I know that's that's a key point, I think, in conversation.

We've got like the infrastructure that we that we sounds like we really need to do, and then also like we need to make this pretty and we need to make it pretty so that we can get investment in in on that street, right?

And so I I mean I think we need to have be thinking of that when we're talking about this as a whole.

Okay.

Go ahead.

One other question is just um depending on what design we move forward with, I I guess and um if we substantially reduce what we're investing in, how is that impacting the burden that we're placing on future development in terms of what they have to pay for?

We hear infrastructure is constantly an obstacle the development and redevelopment in all parts of town, and we're trying to catalyze what's happening in this in the central district.

And are we setting ourselves up to perpetuate that problem?

I think that's by not building part of this.

That's feedback you will definitely hear from the cab side of this joint subcommittee meeting.

Yeah.

Yeah, you will definitely hear from that.

And this is this is a go-bond project, it is a key route, which needs all sorts of things to consider.

So I think we can again refine this in a minute, but I think you know, some of these questions would be great to have the input of the joint committee on as far as if we wanted to value engineer where do they think that's best to do that?

Is it the right of way?

Is it the you know up and down lanes?

Um, and then some thoughts around moving forward with the progressive build, you know, progressive design builds and timing of the stormwater improvements.

I think it would be great to get their input on that as well.

Yeah, and as kind of a historical note, part of that previous coordination with with CAB was they were involved with developing the the concepts for the frontage improvements along that segment, Franklin, and they provided um some funding in their CIP to contribute to those.

That's actually not part of the the bond contribution.

So the design we see now, they contributed to the yeah, minus the undercrossing.

The bond funding was really focused on intercrossing undercrossing and then and then several crossings along the corridor.

Yeah, so I think I think it is important to have them talk about like what do we want this street to look like too.

Absolutely.

Yeah, if there are is an opportunity to ask uh T Bonk and CAB about the elements and I it would probably be CAB in particular about the elements of the infrastructure that they hear would be helpful as a catalyst because I would rather see the city um invest in this kind of streetscape infrastructure and sewer and water infrastructure than a uh direct subsidy for a particular project.

That's that's just my my predisposition.

But I like the comments that councillor Franzosa made about asking whether this design that we have is really kind of the most future oriented and whether there are elements that we could take another look at that might bring the cost down that we could would still be able to build relatively soon.

Right.

Okay, pretty simple one more slide or no.

I think we gotta yeah, we ought to move to the bridge, but I think we had a good discussion there, and we'll come back to it at the end too.

But go ahead, Mike.

So um I think one other question for T Bach and CAB might be related to just um if part of this, if we're starting to talk about sort of downgrading the investments in walking and biking, maybe in particular, it's biking, especially with the the ramps, the up the uphill ramps, because we're talking about uh keeping the one ramp that's the least problem as a cyclist, right?

It's the it's the westbound uphill that's more of a problem, it's harder to get out of the way of the cars in there.

So that I I thought I saw more benefit of that option, but understand it from a cost perspective.

But just how are they prioritizing Franklin and Hawthorne really from a um that's been in particular in biking, but biking and walking in general, and might there be a way to think more about focusing on the Hawthorne corridor for the walking and biking and kind of shift our emphasis there and getting that work done, which means thinking about the full connectivity on Hawthorne and what do they see as that price those priority differences?

Yeah, are they the same?

Do they put one over the other?

If we if we are facing that we can't do everything in both places, then where do we put our dollars?

And um, I think if it's Hawthorne, that has a different set of implications for how we use the dollars we have.

Um so I'd like to hear it here with them wrestling.

Tully agree with you.

We're building a bike and pedestrian bridge, we should have people use it.

And then that 13 to 14 million dollar budget up there.

I mean, you're presenting, I think it's 13 to 18 million is the cost, and but the current estimate is about 14.

We have all those dollars secured.

For Franklin, we do, yes.

Okay, combination of borough bond, right?

Yeah, that's the storm water, that's the water money altogether.

Yeah, but there is, for instance, if we can't find some savings in bond dollars, those could be applied on the Hawthorne ends.

And some of that could potentially come from Borough in the core area.

Good, right?

Like we have opportunities for that.

Okay.

Okay.

Can I point out one?

Sorry, go ahead.

I just wanted to point out the the image in the top right.

Um we are showing removal of the pork chop island at Hill, and that's what allows us to put in a median and a protected uh uh pedestrian refuge island bike crossing at Harriman.

Without us doing that, we can't do anything at Harriman, which is an important north-south connector, it's an important east-west connector on the key route.

So I think that that's just an important element too to mention that like remote.

On the other side of the bridge, if that's working, that's what it needs to be.

Even the landing of Hawthorne, if somebody were they're gonna be coming down this way, right?

That's good connection to me.

Okay, let's talk about the bridge.

Part of these future slides.

Yes.

Um quick overview, just reminder.

I guess some people probably weren't involved with the last visioning study or feasibility study.

So high level last, I guess last September we finished the visioning study for the Hawthorne overcrossing.

The focus there was really identifying a structure type and estimates and feasibility and constructibility of those.

Um council has been uh a good decision making body for us because we had to expedite that process with some limited uh public engagement to try to maintain schedule and ensure that our our grant fund obligations were continuing to meet so that way we don't jeopardize losing any of those on uh on this project because we're largely as Ryan mentioned, we're largely funded through federal state grants.

That's you know, roughly 31 million dollars of our 32 million dollars that we have for this project.

Um, so very limited matching funds coming from the geobond, allowing us to use more of those money or dollars on on Franklin now.

Um our current schedule, so ODOT is administering this phase of it for us because we have FHWA funding.

Uh they've solicited a design consultant.

We have representatives from both here tonight, and um we started design a couple months ago.

We're in the early stages, the plans to get through design towards the end of 27 and hopefully initiate construction late 27, early 28.

So that's kind of our high level schedule right now.

We have some tight obligation requirement and restrictions within that, in particular with some of the um congressionally directed spending dollars that we received, um, around five million dollars, and so that's probably the most critical for us maintaining our schedule as is.

Uh, leading to the conversation of why we're here today with our you know, budget dollars plus concerns of schedule, being that you know, some of these early discussions that we've had, which will we'll go into more details on the future slides, have led to added costs around traffic control escalated dollars because we were per previously planning for construction in 26.

And so, with that in mind, with some of our previous discussions with city council about ensuring that we're we're managing our budgeted dollars very tightly.

We thought that it would be prudent for us to come back and make council aware of that and have a conversation around it, even though we're we're still within that previous range of likely that we had that range is is going up.

We still think we're towards the low end of it, but it it's high end of the old range is outside of our budgeted dollars.

So another item that we wanted to cover here was just what we were talking about about the extension of Hawthorne.

So, right now the scope limits for the federal funds are to go to the west side to Harriman, the east side to the to 3rd Street, but not across Third Street.

Um, those are strict limitations for us with that funding.

And so part of this conversation now would be whether or not we want to initiate something to continue um farther east and north and south to connect up to the Ben Bikeway and Juniper Park and some other key route uh important key route connections.

And then lastly, here kind of similar to what we did when we were doing the visioning study.

We had a few check-ins with city council at important points.

We're still intending to do something similar that to that.

We don't exactly have dates and an outline for anything beyond our upcoming or your upcoming November 12th meeting where we're doing a read market over crossing update.

Um, ideally, if if you're agreeable to a structure type for us to move forward today to help maintain schedule, um, we would be refining or our team would be refining that that concept uh to bring back to to council just to have something that um looks a more a little bit more conceptual or kind of 30% design for you to for you to understand a bit more.

Right now we're we're at a little bit of a sketch slash concept phase, I would say, to to try to meet schedule.

And then we'll have some others, you know, to talk about lighting, um aesthetics, you know, what we do at street level, just other considerations that will have cost implications and and kind of making sure that we're um thinking the right way about some of these add-ons and what our final finished product looks like as far as council's input that we've received around trying to achieve this signature structure but limiting cost and maybe planning for other future improvements of ways that we can build them out.

So, just to be clear, you'd like us right today to make a decision about the design, but then there's some other considerations we can keep talking about further.

The design just needs to we need to figure that out because we're under these time constraints.

Exactly.

Yep, yeah, that would be very ideal.

Um so this is this is the recap of the previous structure type that was selected of the four that we presented to the community and city council.

This is a single tower cable stay bridge.

Um you can see in the the box, the color-coded box down at the bottom right.

That's where some of the consideration factors that we had around maintenance, project cost, aesthetics, constructability.

Um, there was a lot of consideration around future land use compatibility, knowing that you could have 60 to 80 foot buildings in the core area.

So we were trying to show how this structure would look with that consideration, basically meaning your view plane for the structure itself is primarily looking down the parkway because it's probably long-term obstructed by buildings to the east and west of that.

Um, and then we had a lot of discussion around you know whether this is a signature bridge and or unique bridge and how it exemplifies the you know the characteristics of the city of Band in Central Oregon.

So knowing that one uh of where it was at that decision that was made, we've started to move forward into design for this next phase.

Um, as I mentioned, there's some construction increased cost considerations, primarily around traffic management, and then just the escalation of dollars for from 20 from 26 to 28.

The traffic management concerns are really around what would be considered an allowable closure on the parkway or when those would be allowed, which would really only be during the night, nothing during the day, just due to the high volume of traffic there and the potential for long, long, long queuing a vehicle.

So with that in mind and with that potential cost increase on this range of of about five million dollars.

The team started looking at other options that would remove that or construction of that median, which is where the space would be needed that would cause closures or or extra cost to divert vehicles around it.

Um looked at reducing overall cost of the project, trying to make sure that we're staying within our budgeted amount, maintaining unique character, and then once again the the future development.

Garrett, can I ask a question about that?

So the maintaining unique character is that why the bridge has these large or approaches as opposed to simply making the crossing and then having a more compact sort of stair plus elevator or even a ramp configuration in a compact fashion at the ends of the bridge.

That one goes back to a study that ended in 2022 where we were looking at the feasibility of all three crossings, Franklin Greenwood, and Hawthorne, and what could be done, and and a lot of discussion consideration was given around what the approaches would be for the bridge, you know, whether we would do uh something circular or have it meandering on the city property on the west side, or um doing stairs, elevators, and and that was how we came to this final.

There's a lot of details surrounding that that I'd I could I'd be happy to share with you and send over to you.

Yeah, I guess I'm interested in what the cost impact of like was this the least cost, this type of approach, or this was selected for the unique character.

The single tower cable stay, and Garrett has another slide next to it, was sort of the middle ground on a public input survey that didn't have a ton of people answer it.

But I think this is around the approaches of how you're gonna do that.

Yeah, well, but you asked if it was an aesthetic decision.

That was not that was part of the feasibility study on how the bridge should work for people who are walking, biking, maybe rolling up the bridge.

The then later came the design looks, but all the designs we chose for were based on that longer approach because that's what we decided to move forward with after looking at that feasibility study.

Yeah, yeah.

And ODOT did a lot on this prior as well.

They had developed some concepts.

We we did meetings with um COVAC and other ADA representing communities, um, along with CAB and T Box.

There was a quite a bit of outreach and then committee involvement around this.

And so when we got to that for that um that the mayor was just talking about, we had determined that we would have those straight long approaches at that point.

So that was a great on these approaches.

They uh go up above for around seven percent, which means that since they exceed five percent, that they need landings every 15 feet or so, which I believe we showed a uh yeah, we looked at that concept at one point and shared that with council to make sure we were still going in the right direction.

Okay.

Um, this is just a reminder back towards last year's public involvement when we were looking at the four different um four different structure types, and I just wanted to provide this as kind of an overview of some of the the community input, not necessarily the the highest scoring bridge.

And I just wanted to provide this as kind of an overview of some of the community input, not necessarily the highest scoring bridge.

We had about 400 people who provided input to it, so it was a relatively small pool.

But some of the takeaways we had just around the left side here of the most important things were looking at having something that had greater aesthetics, better land use compatibility, as I mentioned, the future development, and then maintenance costs.

Trusts, as is highlighted here, was the highest scoring of the 400 people.

And down at the bottom left, there talks a little bit about some of the reasons why, as far as people feeling it met the historic character, it was the lowest cost and lowest annual annual man maintenance and overall lifecycle maintenance.

And then the last bullet there is just some of some people who were were commenting on it, felt as though it was an outdated and not unique enough structure.

So I think our current team read into that a little bit and tried to show a little bit more unique, but we can also show some other images we have of this kind of more standard boxy looking trust too.

If we want to talk about 28 minutes, I'm gonna go fast from here.

Well, I think we yeah, we want to look at the different options.

So as mentioned, as mentioned at the beginning, we're you know, the the team has developed all these over about three months or sorry, three weeks here.

And so they're developing some pretty high-level concepts.

Sketch level would bring back something refined in November, November 12th, if you're able to provide some direction there.

Um this incline cable stay basically you know, has no sort of structure in the median.

It would incline across the parkway and then have some uh suspension off of it, holding the overall bridge deck.

There's a couple variations down on the bottom two that I just wanted to show as well.

So they're just providing some ideas right now of different structure types we could use, and they're just wanted to show that there's variations to these.

If there's one that council may gravitate towards and want us to further design, um to the next slide.

And then this is the way that we presented it uh before, so it's really kind of similar to the considerations that we saw is important with helping with decision making.

Uh, overall project costs, maintenance, aesthetics, constructability, parkway visual impact or that land use compatibility, and then they added in this unique identifier for City of Ven.

And I feel as I this one's probably a lower scoring one because I think they feel like this one's um been used a lot of locations, this kind of design, and so it's it's not as unique to them or to what's been built in other places.

The just want to make sure I didn't skip anything here.

Okay.

Yep, the um broken top truss.

Uh, once again, we went through the truss prior.

Um, we can just go through the variations really quick here and kind of scroll through them if that works well.

Um, one piece that they've talked a bit about this one in particular when we get to the constructibility on the next slide, is just the ability the you know, constructability is easy on this one.

Um, that's something that they're feeling like we could build towards the side or towards the side of the parkway, and then launch it over over the course of a weekend.

So a little bit less impactful with some of those concerns of of the parkway, um, but still coordination there with with access and detours if we need some sorts of uh temporary closures and impact to our local system.

Um project cost on this one being that 30 to 37 million, that one falls really close to our next one, and it's actually you know, within everything's here is within a couple million dollars minus our previous single tower, just due to those added um traffic controls considerations.

And then lastly, is the the mountain concept here.

Um, once again, all of these don't have any construction in the median.

Okay.

Are we confident that one will clear the railroad tracks?

Yes.

Yep.

And then you can go to the summary slide at the end.

I think that one is helpful to go through.

Um, so I mentioned that increase of five million dollars to the original single tower cable stay on the left side.

That's that's reflected in the 34 to 41 million coming back to our budget of 32.2 million.

Um, that low end estimate.

We are feeling would be pretty tough to achieve here, especially with the the traffic control needs, and um they're still you know unknowns as we continue to progress through this design.

The other estimates in you know, when we developed these last year and brought them to council, we'd always felt like we were we were a little conservative with some of these estimates and ranges and feeling like we would come in towards the lower end of them, obviously knowing we have to manage the add-ons as we go of you know what some of the treatments are gonna be around the bridge and on the bridge.

Um I think we could continue to to manage it that way with that lens, and we'd be targeting still trying to stay with all below our budget on a lot of these some of the feedback from our current design team because you know we have a new set of of eyes on it, it's not the same who we did the last effort with.

Um their input is similar to kind of what we had before of some of these looking as though they're a bit conservative.

We still have a 40 percentage 40 percent contingency programmed, and then there's some areas where the prices look a little bit high and a little bit low.

Um, and so that's kind of typical as we're we're at this level of of concept development and design.

So I'd like to pause here, council, because we're being asked to make a decision on this tonight, and then we can get into sort of the funding and the the connections discussion next.

But um, I'd like to have folks give their opinions on sticking with what we decided before, changing to one of these other options.

What do people think?

Who wants to start?

I just asked a question about the funding.

The because the design estimates vary if we come in under.

Does that to what extent does that allow us to have funding available for the rest of the corridor?

Yeah, I I think we talked a little bit about that one last time, and I would I would honestly need to see or talk a little bit more with ODOT too about which fund we're expending at what time because there's ongoing dollars too.

Yeah, there's ongoing conversations right now about how we try to use some CDS funds earlier.

Um CDS Garrett is kind of congressional directed spending, federal dollars.

Yes, yeah.

Um, and so what we just need I would need to talk through that.

At the end of the day, the majority of the funds that we have on this are have scoped limits of um Third Street to Hill Street.

But we have an Oregon community paths grant, which there could potentially be some flexibility, and then if we don't need our entire city of Ben matching funds, there could be some opportunity.

But we're we're talking smaller dollars under half a million dollars.

State dollars that are five million dollars.

The five million, there might be some opportunity there.

That and that, but that's I think right now that's planned to be our first match dollars, and ideally expending those and we have 20 million from the feds from the grant, five million congressionally directed spending, and five million from the state plus community paths, and that's how much million-ish, I believe.

So that's what gets us to the 32 million.

There's where we sit down.

There we go.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

That 33.4 includes previous money spent on Hawthorne for like feasibility study and and whatnot.

So that's both those are just okay.

Okay.

Well, back to the other slide, please.

I just want to say, as someone who was thought that the trust design was um not very inspiring.

I really love this what what you've done with it.

The broken top truss, I think is really cool.

Um, I think it's um I do.

I think it's cool.

It's very it's been it showed like it.

What I don't like about the trust is I thought it is like that's not okay.

So, how is that different this from anywhere else in you know in the country?

But this is actually something to me that looks like um looks like Ben, and and um I love that it's it's cheaper, and I love that it's easier to maintain.

Um, and um I love that you can pop it up in a weekend, which is really amazing.

Um, and definitely want to be there for that.

But yeah, I mean I that's that's my vote.

I think that's feel free to comment on variations because there's a lot of debate there too.

Yeah, but sorry.

I I agree.

I think it it you know, I I wasn't really excited about it, and I think it offered that unique kind of standout character and just reflects our community.

So that's my vote as well.

All right, other thoughts.

That's my vote.

I mean, this was my vote in the very beginning.

So um, and um, but I do I do appreciate this new design.

Um, I think it does have a lot more character to it, and was kind of what I'd hoped if we ever got this one going.

I I would continue to express concern about budget basically, and so I think we need to choose the lowest cost option.

Um, there's no question about that.

And I I'm also expecting that we're gonna see escalation in the cost.

And I think the concern I have is just making sure we have some reserves essentially to deal with the cost escalation in a year to a year and a half from now.

So as we get into the funding discussion, which maybe we're not going to make all those decisions tonight, but you know, or what what is a seven to ten percent reserve fund look like, and then if we're gonna do that, what would we spend those dollars on if we don't have to spend them on the bridge?

And I would advocate for spending them on the connectivity of the bridge to the east and west.

Yeah.

Um really making sure that if we're gonna especially we shift focus to uh bike and pet stuff primarily on the Hawthorne corridor and sort of de-emphasizing that a bit on Franklin that we kind of go fully in on making this one work, and we have to get through some solutions for that.

So um, I think that's a it's not a decision for tonight, but I want to flag it for council as something I'm gonna continue to bring up is make sure that we have a plan when we get there, and all of a sudden it costs two more million more or three million more, we're not stuck in some other big conversation.

Right.

Um, that we we can't deal with it.

Okay.

Others on this end uh thoughts about the truss.

Is steel trust still an option?

That's what this is.

But I mean the uh the the 27 to 33 million dollar plain steel truss, save three to four million.

That that was in one of the slides.

The previous previous concepts that we were showing.

That one here.

That one's even cheaper.

It's up to you guys to decide about it.

I would say looking at the looking at the the view of the sky from that one, you have an unobstructed view.

I do feel like there's some aesthetic merits to it, but the savings of three to four million is is I think very attractive.

That savings wouldn't still be reflected with consideration at least of the escalation going to 2028.

Um in talking a bit with some of our design team here about that was that was kind of a lengthy conversation for us because we were surprised to see the trusts um also have some other design consideration costs, but part of that that unique character trying to add a signature style to it is gonna be added cost as far as additional steel and um not going with more of just kind of a standard efficient truss style, which is what that other one I think my ideal would be to get it done as cheaply as quickly as possible and reserve as much funding for the corridor, and if that means a plain steel trust design without a lot of extra frills, I'm okay with that.

Otherwise, I support everything that everybody has said about the broken top design.

I think it's it's aesthetically attractive and unique, and uh I did get some feedback from uh an 11-year-old resident who said that was her favorite as well.

Can't we kids they know what's cool?

So um, so that that's where I stand.

Yeah, yeah, I kind of feel like the the big design, like the single cable, the single tower, the incline cable, say the mountain, they all almost feel like they would tower over literally everything else in town, like it might detract from pilot butte, and like that would be so sad, you know.

So I kind of I I was a fan of the truss design um earlier on, so I'm in I'm in favor of this too, and I I can I agree with Councilor Mendez too.

Uh you know uh simpler.

Um I think there's a lot of ways that we can use lighting and public art um to beautify um this infrastructure.

So um I ask a question about that.

I mean, is this cost the cost for this broken talk trust significantly different with today's um schedule and cost escalation factors doctor then compared to the original street trust that Councilor Mendez is bringing up?

I I would like to hear the difference between those two because I tend to agree on the cheaper alternative, frankly.

I thought that that's kind of what this was was just maybe a predified version of the other one, and it wasn't that much different.

But if there's a big difference still today between this broken trust and that other one, I'd at least like to know what that difference is.

We have the team here.

Do you do we want to rely on one of you guys want to jump up to the phone?

I I also want to say, like we can make a decision to go with the trust today, and we don't have to come back to say it's gonna be this pointy one that's a good thing.

No, I I agree, but that's my point is that for the finish the conversation down the road.

Yeah, we can just have the conversation.

I think if we're going for a standard um more efficient style versus trying to get that unique character, that would be helpful to know as far as continuing forward with design.

What is the cost difference?

I guess between those two things.

So we've talked about a structural engineer.

Just to clarify the trust cost estimate you saw before of the image of the area of trust, it also had a peer in the media.

So that the cost for traffic control, traffic management is not included.

That we don't have today was not included in that in that original.

So that's that's what Garrett, you were making the point that that's actually more expensive than we thought it was also the my point was more of that that range that we had that uh councillor Mendez were was referring to.

We would still have to apply escalation to that original range to get us up and you know the reflective amount, but the traffic control thing we've we've left aside as far as adjusting from one to the next.

So I don't know if that was 27 on the low end before it was.

Yeah, so three million more our escalation there is probably two million dollars of that.

Okay, so really it's helpful to know.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Steve.

So medians and Ryan.

I did it.

So Garrett and Ryan, this is uh not a good news brief, right?

I mean, this is uh I mean it's not really a happy presentation we're having tonight.

We we've we've come up with some pretty large cost escalations um based on our previous design.

So that's concerning to me.

Um you know, I I used to say my we used to have uh an expression our old my old job that uh when you were in a crisis situation, first thing to do is assign blame.

Uh and I'm not asking to assign blame right now, but I'm telling you what I want to hear from this team because my cost estimate decisions is predicated on the fact that I want to hear what kind of process changes are we making when we are working with ODOT going forward to avoid surprises like this a five million dollar surprise.

That's a big surprise.

Yeah.

So please tell me what process changes that we're gonna make going forward to minimize bad news, please.

Um, too, by the way.

Because I was I was kind of leading the effort.

I'm not I'm not asking to assign blame.

I want to know what we're gonna change going forward, and then I'll tell you my choice.

The the five million dollar, just to be you know, kind of rough high level numbers on that.

As far as the additional traffic control implications, that was roughly 2.3 million dollars.

When we were um applying the date for when we thought construction would happen, 2026, we had different understanding of what our process was going to be to get to design and when we're gonna get to construction.

That's you know, we're early on in design right now, and that's proven to you know not be accurate.

That's the other kind of delta there within that five million dollars.

So the big one for us is the traffic control.

Um we had some assumptions built in there of how this would be constructed.

We had a team that was really focused on getting a structure type so that we could maintain our schedule with our grant funds.

Um we didn't probably cover this one element to the level that we could, but we we do have you know some documented correspondence and uh assumptions from our design team.

We we thought that we were in a good place, so it was it was um I I would say one of those scenarios when when you're going from a high-level concept and you're going into design, you're flushing out those unknowns, and that's why we have contingencies in place to try to cover.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, and this this technically would still fall in our contingency.

We still think we're at the bottom range of that, it would fall within our our previous um range, being that we're we're likely on the lower end of it.

Um those excuses aside, I suppose there's still other risk as we proceed forward with with our schedule and ensuring that we're continuing to secure these funds.

Um we do uh have a historic structure on the west side.

So these are a couple big items just highlighting on top of that.

Part of ODOT's practices that they have established early on in design is just going through uh risk register process and applying different considerations around risks and costs, and if some of these unknowns would fall outside of our our budgeted contingency, so that's something that's being done early on.

Um, and then beyond that, it's like we've got a big uh a big group of people outside of just this meeting room here that we have to continue to communicate and align expectations to keep things moving forward.

Um, you know, as a previous boss of my said project boss of mine said project management's like herding cats, and yeah, and we just have to we have to keep doing that and we have to keep all moving.

So are we meeting more regularly?

We're meeting in a different format.

Are we doing any changes going forward between now and and when you come back in November or anything like that?

Yeah, I was saying, I mean, when we developed that earlier concept, yeah, you know, ODOT wasn't in charge of this.

We didn't have KPN, KPFF, the guys who design bridges all day every day for a living.

So yeah, today, I mean, we're meeting with this team weekly.

We're meeting with all the different levels within ODOT that it has to go through for approval.

We've got some BNSF uncertainties, but we're in regular communication with them.

So, yeah, one of the main things we do, as Garrett said in these weekly meetings as we go through the risk register, which one of these is high on the chart, which ones have we mitigated, and that's just a standard project management practice.

So ODOT processes change that we have to react to to be more tight on our pro cost estimates at all.

Change now are they have they have they updated?

Do we have we updated our process to work with ODOT more clearly to get these cost estimates a little bit tighter?

Yeah, I mean we've only really been working on this for a couple months.

And so as Garrett pointed out, this is what you would expect at the early points in this process.

And so, yeah, there's there's no plan to change how we're working with them as of right now, other than we're gonna meet regularly as we are, and we're gonna continue to identify these issues.

Thanks.

I'm a trust guy.

Thanks.

Okay, so it's three minutes to six o'clock.

Let's move into the next.

I think we're on trust.

I think that's where we are unanimously, because I support that as well.

Um if we can move quickly through just kind of we've already kind of discussed a little bit, like what do we do with this funding for the ends of Hawthorn and how these are all interconnected.

Um so I think I just want to make sure that we get to that final slide of sort of what are we asking TBOC and CAB to think about in their discussion.

We want to move forward on the extensions too, you're saying.

Well, I think we I think we need to talk about having T Bach and Cab help advise us on the designing the extensions of the bridge, where that funding would come from, what kind of timing that would be.

And we can we can continue to consider some level of unique trust structure, or are we in the box realm?

I think we heard that that other one requires the meet the middle median, and that's a non-starter.

So we have to go with what's been presented here tonight, I think.

And I think there is good reason to try to make it look like something that's not just um the simplest version of it.

That old concept doesn't seem viable because it has the same median problems associated that ODOT's talking about.

Yeah, right.

So that that's still gonna cost if there was a cheap alternative that didn't have the center median as a requirement, I think there might be interest in that.

Well, yeah, I mean, uh I know we're running quick on time, but that's that's where some of these other variations would come in is you can do something that is not quite as peaked.

You can do something that's flatter.

If that's gonna save you a million or two dollars, probably not.

Yeah, no, um, that's relatively minor, but yeah, all of these don't require a center median, we're putting them on the edges.

So in the big scheme of things, whether it's peaked or flat, it's really not that different.

Okay, so uh can we agree we want the trusts, we want it to have some peaks.

And that's very okay.

And make it as cheap as possible.

Solid direction, maybe we did it.

Trust with peaks, got it.

Trust with peaks.

Because we are a mountain town, it is true.

Yeah, um, we've we've been talking as we went through for T Bach and CAB, some questions for them.

This is just sort of a summary of some of that.

Yeah, this was our first draft.

Is there, and I and I hope that you've been taking notes and can watch this back.

Is there any other questions for TBAC and CAB that counselors want to make sure that we're posing to them with regards to these projects?

I would just say, like that I think you've that as direction, like we've heard we've talked tonight multiple times about wanting to invest in in that Hawthorne you know, crossing area and making sure that um that that's successful um and efficient way um to um commute and to you know to recreate.

Um, and so just that that that is something that I think we want to put um invest resources and into as a help I think in looking at these projects, where are the opportunities to help us move that vision forward?

And then are there opportunities outside of these projects that also we should be thinking about, such as for further borrow investment or something else, right?

Um so that it doesn't all have to be hey, we're you know, coming from Franklin.

But I think some serious consideration of how do we look at Franklin as a way to maybe save some costs there.

And I think the only other thing I would emphasize is I know you skip past the schedule slide, but just having them help us consider the schedule for the community and what that looks like and for the area as far as the impacts of these different closures that might be happening.

Absolutely.

So anything else?

Are there specific investments that they think specifically are needed in that that um east-west connection from Hawthorne all the way to Drake Park and Hawthorne to the west?

Like and would they prior might they have some suggestions on prioritization?

Like if you can only do two of the three, do these two or whatever it you know, what do they think the key investments needed are one of them's pretty obvious?

Yeah, some of them might come in if we say okay, move forward with looking at some designs here, then more of that input would probably go into that part of the process.

But yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I think the the other thing I'd love is for that them to find a way for us to get across third street, not make everybody angry um when we're going across at the bottom of the the Hawthorne Bridge, you know, how do we do that in such a way that that drivers can still do their thing and the bikes can get safely across term heads?

Yeah.

That's one of those options.

Okay.

That was one of these alternatives.

Right.

Yeah, I think that's part of the discussion is are we breaking it up?

Are we keeping it in one?

Are we delaying the stormwater?

Are we value engineering?

I think all those questions are really helpful to have some input on.

Well, I uh what I took note of of elements of the infrastructure that would help serve as a catalyst and balance with you know what are the like sort of operational things that we really can do and that can we compartmentalize that and value engineer that even further.

Yeah.

Okay, it's like clear as mud for all the committee members who are watching this.

But the staff is gonna put it together for you.

Happy to run it by you.

This meeting is on Monday, so we'll try to summarize this.

Yeah, we'll be meeting with the county, they'll be meeting in here, I think.

Um and so we'll be sure to watch that back and and take the input in whatever format they want to give that to us going forward.

You've got your bridge design decision now, so that's good.

Anything else for today?

I got one question.

So everything everything midtown, you know, we're talking about prioritization with it within existing funding, but there's all these other projects that are kind of hovering out there.

Is there a desire to what we did in 2022 was go through all the prioritizations of these projects we're discussing around Hawthorne Extension, Franklin, um Greenwood, future greenwood, second street greenwood, or is that you want to stick more to the current funding picture and not be getting something to help with the future funding picture.

Stick with that for now, and I think that is a the next step of the conversation probably.

So real quick, just to highlight future check-in points.

We've got the joint subcommittee meeting.

I'm coming back on October eighth to talk about prioritization in general, so that's where we can get into that.

Yeah, if you want five more million on Franklin, we could take it from the Murphy ramps.

Like there's there's ways we can do that.

We'll talk about things like the bond read prioritization.

So a lot another in-depth conversation on October eighth.

Garrett mentioned we want to come back on the twelfth.

We want to give you an update on the read market bridge, uh, more Hawthorne information, as well as having a general transportation standard discussion.

And then the Franklin GMP, whether it's second to fourth or the full thing, we want to bring that back here late 25, early 26.

And then as usual, I will come back with an updated five-year CIP across all of our capital plans.

And a lot of what we're talking about now would be reflected in that biennium update.

So a lot of this is just good discussion for a future adoption by council.

Great.

All right, thanks everyone.

Meety discussion.

We'll skip the sort of what our next meetings are and come back to that.

Still on your calendar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

We are adjourned.