The Bend City Council held a work session beginning at 4:00 p.m. on October 8, 2025, in City Hall Council Chambers, focused on the Transportation Capital Improvement Program (CIP) funding and prioritization. The work session was followed by a Budget Committee meeting to review revenue updates, legislative impacts, and bond spending requirements. Key discussions included midtown projects (Franklin, Greenwood, Hawthorne), southwest and southeast area improvements, ODOT contributions, and the city's financial outlook. No public comments were taken; the meeting was a joint work session and budget committee check-in.
Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and get started with our work session today. We're in a little bit different seating arrangement because we're also going to be joined by the budget committee in a little bit. Um, everyone is present, Councilor Princesa. Hopefully, we'll be joining us as soon as possible. And so we are gonna start with um our big old CIP transportation prioritization discussion. All right, let me share my screen real quick. And while you're doing that, Ryan, Councilor Norris, do you want to go ahead and just name out your yes? Let's just put that on the record. Yes, I need to declare an actual conflict when we get to that portion of the Southeast area transportation because of my employer Hayden Holmes. Um this would have a financial impact on them. So, insofar as we're giving direction in that area today, you're not gonna be participating. I won't be participating, and I should probably take away. Okay, uh, just to set Ryan up here, too. So, really, the the council through the budget process approves a five-year capital improvement program for transportation water sewer infrastructure at the airport. We have a CIP. Um, when we passed the budget uh this last June, we said we know that there's a lot of moving parts with transportation. We have federal grants, we have community concerns, we have values around economic development, around housing, and so we want to really be thoughtful, thoughtful about any potential changes to that CIP. So, really what I see today is as being some some building blocks, just some big changes that could potentially take place this spring with the transportation CIP. And that CIP is split into both a transportation construction fund, which is primarily funded through SDCs, and then our geo bond, which is approved by the voters. So we're gonna talk both kind of high level about some values that you have as council to help inform some potential changes to that CIP that would be formalized this spring. There is some immediate uh contracts that are in play, media projects that we want some direction on. So you're gonna see kind of two different pieces tonight. Actual direction on things that will help us keep projects moving, as well as some large uh kind of or some influential uh values to determine how we make some changes to the CIP moving forward uh approve this spring. With that, perfect. Thank you, Eric. So for the record, Ryan Oester, I'm the engineering director here for the city of Ben. Ben assisting me, Russ Grayson, chief operating officer. You're all familiar with him. And then, of course, in the midst of this conversation, uh, we've got legal here that could support answer some questions. I've got some of our consultants behind me here, my business analyst. So happy to call any of them up if necessary. So, context and background. So you all got a handful of handouts from me. It was a part of posted as well. Uh, the biggest things to remember is, and I actually added one underneath your agenda. So our current five-year CIP for the Geobond and the Transportation Fund, as Eric described, as well as the official letter from the joint cab T Bach committee. And then the third attachment was kind of a progress report or update because we're almost to the date five years after the adoption of the 2020 transportation system plan. So that was a pretty in-depth document just describing to each of you where we are in terms of our near-term, midterm, long-term, programmatic capital, all of that bundled together. So a good reference document, should you need that as well. So this afternoon, we will start by giving you an update from that midtown discussion. You know, we were here before you on September 24th. You asked us to go back to the joint cab T Bot Committee. So we'll cover their recommendations, ask a few questions to council on that, then we'll go kind of more geographically around town. We'll talk about the southwest area, the southeast area, have a discussion about some ODOT uh ideas we have. Yeah, and then really to Eric's uh statement, then we'll dive into some specific questions. Everything before that is gonna be just kind of a general direction or guidance that you'll see with our mid-biennium budget adoption. But then we do have a handful of things we would like councils head nod on this evening to progress on active current projects. So we've included this slide up front. We have it shown again at the back of the presentation, and it's just continued to grow as we built it.