All right.

So we're going to get started with our Van City County Council work session.

Let's do roll call real quick.

Start with your hand, Council Franzosa.

Gina Franzosa, she her.

Ari Mendez here.

Melanie Keeber, she here.

Megan Perkins, she her.

Steve Flatter.

And online.

Council Riley, we have you.

Yep, Mike Riley.

Great.

And Councilor Norris is probably going to be late, and so hopefully we'll be joining us soon, either in person or by call, whichever she can make work.

So we are going to jump right into our electrification policy process.

And I don't know, are you introducing this country?

Okay, good afternoon, counselors.

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

I'm joined today by Danielle Walker from the Brightline group, who is our consultant now supporting this project.

She'll introduce herself a little bit more in a moment.

Yes.

So I understand you want to sit just we can't block the um the lane there.

We got to make sure there's access for people to get in and out of this room.

I know it's a little tight.

So let's try to scooch in and just make sure we leave that lane open, folks.

There's more seats over on this side as well.

Okay, and so you have signs, and signs are great, but just make sure when you hold your signs up, you're not blocking anyone so they can see.

So if you want to hold them down where we can see them, but they're not blocking other people, that's great.

Okay, Cassie.

Okay.

Um, so we're here today to continue our pursuit of encouraging electrification of homes by exploring policy options and incentives.

So just um some really quick background and context to remind us of where we're at today with this initiative and why we're talking about this.

Buildings make up 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Bend.

Two key strategies from our recently adopted CCAP update are to transition our buildings to be powered by electricity in conjunction with decarbonizing the electricity supply.

Together, these two strategies have the potential to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in buildings and are a really key part of achieving our climate action goals.

In Oregon, our investor-owned utilities are required by law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our electricity supply by 80% by 2030.

By 80% by 2030, um, and by 100% by 2040.

So the decarbonization of the energy supply is a process that's underway, um, and that's been a key assumption as we've been working on electrification policy.

We started our electrification policy options analysis over a year ago when we first completed a broad scan of potential policy levers to encourage electrification of buildings.

Um, and then in April of this year, the council provided direction to staff that we pursue the development of both incentives and disincentives to encourage residential electrification with a specific direction to explore and pursue the development of a fee on natural gas appliances in homes.

So since then we've been focused on the exploration of this fee model.

We had a check-in in August to share some findings about our research into similar and related policies elsewhere, and we told you that we would come back to you once we had our consultant on board and we had some more data and analysis to share with you.

So that brings me to today's meeting.

Our meeting objectives today are to share with you and discuss some data and analysis results completed so far related to the costs and the climate impacts of electrification.

And then we are looking to receive guidance from the council about the policy intent and the specific outcomes that you are looking for for something like a fee or a disincentive policy.

And then we have a couple of additional policy questions for you that will help us um understand more specifically how to structure this fee based on what outcomes or considerations you're most interested in.

So I'll now pass it to Danielle, who's going to review um the data analysis that um she's completed.

Okay, thanks, Cassie.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Counselors.

Thank you for having me here today.

I'm really excited to be here.

Cassie and I have been working kind of fast and furious to be able to present this information to you today.

Uh, as Cassie mentioned, my name is Danielle Walker.

I'm a principal consultant with the Bright Line Group, a small consulting firm focused in energy efficiency planning and policy.

Uh, as Cassie mentioned, I was brought on to support city staff and scoping, data collection, and analysis of implementing an electrification policy.

Um, I just wanted to give a little bit of background about myself, so you're not like who is this woman and why is she qualified to do this?

Um prior to joining Brightline, I worked for the Department of Energy, where I was the co-author of the Inflation Reduction Act Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate Program, also known as the HERE program, um, uh, which allocated 4.5 billion dollars to states to implement electrification programs in low and moderate income homes.

In writing those program rules, we wrestled with many of the same topics that we're going to discuss today.

So it's great to be able to bring my national experience down to the local level.

Prior to Department of Energy, I was also with the Bonneville Power Administration for 13 years.

Oh thank you.

Okay, so I'm here today to share the results of our analysis on the potential cost of carbon impacts and the electrification fee.

Hopefully, those results will support you in the later portion of this presentation on the policy topics.

Before we get into the analysis, I want to start with an overview of the data sources before we jump into the numbers.

To conduct a robust, accurate, and transparent assessment of an electrification policy, it is paramount to use local data that reflects actual costs and impacts reflected within the community.

As part of this study, we prioritized local, state, and regional data using data sets that have been peer-reviewed publicly by industry experts and considered the industry standard within the energy field.

Okay, so up here is the summary of the data sources we used in this work.

We started with local data where we could, and then building out to state, regional, and then national data to compare our results and test our assumptions.

Most of the cost data that you'll see today is from the Regional Technical Forum.

A technical advisory committee used an energy efficiency program savings, cost effectiveness analysis and reporting across the Northwest and recognized as the industry standard for Northwest states.

Next, in that middle box, we use data provided by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, also known as MIA.

Every five years, NIA conducts a regional residential building stock assessment known as the RBSA, which captures home characteristics, including fuel type energy usage and installed equipment across homes in the Northwest, including in the city of Bend.

Next, a very big thank you to the residential program team at the Energy Trust of Oregon.

The Energy Trust offers rebates to customers of both Pacific Power and Cascade Natural Gas.

The Energy Trust provided us with over three years of program data for new construction homes within the city, allowing us to get a very local look into installed equipment and energy usage in new construction homes.

Finally, we relied on city data, including permit and housing data.

We also confirmed electricity and gas rates with local utility providers, and we are continuing to connect with the building community through interviews, which I'll just talk about a little bit later as well.

Okay.

Today's focus and the data you'll see today is on single-family homes only.

Multifamily data access across the region is more limited and is taking a bit longer to gather and assess.

However, just to know, our initial findings show that 90% of new construction and multifamily is already electric.

We also have more data to gather in equipment and installation costs.

Collecting cost data, as I think everyone is aware of in new construction is very challenging.

And we look forward to continuing to refine and collect more data where available to make sure that that data set is complete.

Okay.

So the information and results you are about to see may differ from other regional or national studies on electrification.

They may be different on the initial costs of installing equipment or the ongoing cost impacts, and even the carbon impacts.

There are three main drivers of why these results may vary.

First, on the left there, equipment costs.

The initial equipment costs of electrification depend on both the absolute and relative cost of gas and electric equipment.

It also depends on which costs are included.

For example, example, some studies include the cost of piping and hooking gas to a residence.

For this analysis, as we've done so far, we are not including this data.

Sorry, it's kind of chaotic.

Okay, let's just say right before the adding costs.

So, for example, some of the studies in our cost, in some studies in cost analysis, include piping or gas infrastructure.

This analysis as is today does not include that.

So just making a note of that.

Um in reviewing the regional and national data, um, we do think that our data is generally consistent with other studies, of course, you know, with specific equipment numbers varying uh somewhat.

Okay, next are the relative rates of uh electricity in gas, which drive the estimated ongoing impacts to energy bills.

It's true that in many cases across the US and within Oregon, the ratio of electric to gas rates are such that bills universally decrease with electrification.

As you'll see in this analysis, Bend is in a slightly different situation where for most Benn residents, the relative cost of electricity is higher than natural gas.

Finally, the net impact of carbon emissions depends on the source of energy being generated.

Consistent with some comments stated uh in public comment last week.

Other cities in Oregon may be supplied by utilities with a greater proportion of hydroelectric and renewable resources, for example, Eugene, while Pacific Power is still working towards their clean energy goals.

Okay, it's all the preamble.

So diving into equipment, costs, and carbon.

Okay, so I'm gonna walk through four things.

First, the equipment that we used in our analysis, next, the estimated cost of that equipment, and the relative cost from converting to gas to electric, then the estimated carbon impacts of converting from gas to electricity, and then finally an estimate of potential energy bill impacts for residential customers.

Okay, starting with the equipment.

Our analysis included three scenarios.

So the first on the far left is what we're calling our gas base case, assuming a gas four-star furnace, an electric air conditioner, a gas water heater, stove, and dryer.

I'll note that our findings from the RBSA showed that in new construction, the four-stair furnace being installed are quite efficient.

They're upwards of 96 to 90 per seven percent efficient above code.

Um, in the middle column, we then analyze the outcomes of converting to electricity, but only with electric equipment, not efficient electric equipment.

So I think you can think of this middle column as kind of a worst-case scenario if someone were to install all electric, the most inefficient equipment available.

This really isn't actually completely feasible because the way Oregon Code is set up, you need to do something more than that.

So use this as kind of the bookend on a worst case scenario.

Um, okay, and then finally on the far right, we looked at an efficient case scenario where the installed equipment is highly efficient using all of the latest available technologies.

Uh, this on the opposite side of the spectrum, you can think of as a best case scenario, um, but also probably not what we're going to see on average in the market, as it's unlikely that every single one of these pieces of equipment would be chosen across all homes.

For example, heat pump water heaters, while commercially available, are going into what we think is about 5% of homes.

Yeah.

Um, and so still some work to do there.

Same with induction stoves, and then same with heat pump dryers, which are actually just right on the cusp of being commercially available.

So, best case on the far other side.

Okay, so here are the numbers for costs.

Uh, you'll see here that each box represents the scenarios that I just spoke to, gas baseline, electric conversion not efficient, and then an efficient upgrade.

Uh, just as a reminder, the data was collected from our regional data sources, mainly the regional technical forum, and compared with national source sources.

Cost data can vary widely.

Um, and you may see these numbers and you know, know that there's gonna be a distribution around these numbers of low and higher costs.

Um I'm not gonna walk through each line item.

I will note that one number that jumped out is the central air conditioner.

That number is too low.

That number will get revised upward, probably to another 1,500 or $2,000 on top of that.

So just keeping that in mind when you're looking at that 11,420, that number will go up slightly.

It doesn't change the overall takeaways or theme of this slide, but it does make a slight difference.

So I just wanted to call that up.

Um the overall takeaway here is converting just from gas to baseline electric equipment uh is actually uh cost less, or perhaps around $6,000 less, but we'll need to update that.

While converting to efficient electric equipment increases the overall costs.

Okay, moving on to the potential carbon impacts of converting from natural gas to electricity.

As I stated earlier, the biggest driver here of the results is the source fuel mix of the energy that is being generated and supplied to the home.

This analysis includes the current fuel mix of Pacific Power and Central Electric Cooperative as a weighted average, with 85% of residents supplied by Pacific Power and 15% of residents supplied by Central Electric.

With today's current fuel mix, conversion to the baseline electric equipment increases total CO2 emissions by around 110 metric tons.

That is assuming the life of the equipment.

So somewhere between 12 to 15 years, if you were to sum all of the years up of that equipment, that would be the total increase in metric tons.

While converting to fully efficient electric equipment reduces total carbon emissions by about 17 metric tons or about 27%.

So we also looked at the future carbon impacts once Pacific Power has completed this transition.

In all cases here, converting to electric equipment reduces carbon emissions.

This is also consistent with the studies we've seen where electric providers are majority hydro and renewable resources.

Okay, finally, um moving on to the energy cost impacts, which we can think about as the bill impacts.

Okay.

This can vary depending on the home size, the number of ocuments, heating preferences, and behavior, or insulation levels, and even the size of the heating equipment can all impact the bills.

Given this, uh it's a little bit more ideal to look at these numbers in terms of relative size to each other rather than absolutes, because it's just we're taking a lot of averages in these numbers.

So this is very unlikely anyone's given electric bill.

Um I'll also note that what we calculated here was the change in energy cost only, not the full bill.

So this does not include things like monthly service fees, public purpose charges, or other taxes that would be applied.

This would just be the therm dollar per therm, dollar per kilowatt hour rate.

With all that said, you can see here that if you're converting, oh wait, I'm gonna back up and just walk this.

This table can be a little bit confusing.

So that top line is if um would be that base case, cascade natural gas, if you used all gas equipment plus the electric air conditioner, you could assume that your 2025 annual total annual bill would be somewhere around $800.

These next two sections split out between Pacific Power and Central Electric.

The rates between the utilities were different enough that it seemed important to split these out.

So within public Pacific Power, you see first that inefficient case where you just convert to all electric inefficient electric equipment, and then below that the conversion to efficient electric equipment.

So if you happen to be a Pacific Power customer and you were to convert to all electric non-efficient equipment, your bill would increase by about 2,500 per year.

If you put in all the most efficient electric equipment, that would increase the bill by about 150 dollars.

Then looking at central electric co-op inefficient equipment would increase by about 1,200.

And for central electric customers, if you were to convert from gas to efficient electric, you would actually see a bill decrease.

Okay, so finally we wanted to try to kind of put this all together because one thing that you see when you start to put compare these numbers is you can have you know low upfront costs.

Doesn't cost as much to put in inefficient electric equipment, but you end up paying more for years to come potentially with higher bills, versus you pay more uh upfront for the more efficient equipment and then less in bills over time.

So what we're seeing here is just for Pacific Power, uh the total potential cost over a 10-year period for if you were to install gas equipment versus a home that would convert to just electric but not efficient electric, and then a home that would convert to the efficient electric.

Are you assuming there are the assumptions about what are the assumptions about rate increases in that 10 year old?

Yes.

So I'm assuming in parity, 2% increases per year for all utilities.

I think that this is the conversation that the council would give direction on about what would those assumptions be, or if that needs to happen in the joint committee.

I think this was a starting place.

We didn't want to speculate.

I think that would be a conversation to have to adjust to if we wanted to adjust those numbers.

So just it would be awesome if they were like a percent of year, but they're not, you know.

So and just to be clear like this is proportional to each other.

Exactly.

If at some point they become disproportional and gas goes up more than electricity does, this isn't reflecting that, right?

This is just holding them the same.

Yeah, vice versa.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, but we just didn't we thought it was too early to make those kind of assumptions about it.

So this is just an apples to apples makes sense.

Steady increase.

Counselor Ray.

Yeah, I see his hand up.

Council, Councillor Riley.

Um, Danielle, did you um look at all sort of to get historical averages on those utility increases?

Is that two percent grounded in something like that?

Or where does the two percent come from?

Oh, my time is up.

Um the two percent came from just a conservative place to start, understanding that I think we would be looking for direction on do we want to look five years back, do we want to look 10 years back?

Do we want to look at rate cases?

Do we want to look at IRPs?

So I think you know, just to start in place.

And at this point, because the takeaway is less the absolute amount and really like the relative to each other.

So whether we estimate a 2% or 10%, like since they're the same, the difference would be the same.

And that doesn't take into account things like the Power Act because the Fair Act that they got passed, that are they're gonna have sort of an outsize effect depending on how those how those come to fruition.

Yeah.

Um those are pretty, those are pretty big breaking out breaking out data centers out of the electric power structure, I think is going to be a pretty notable change to this assumption base.

Let's we have one more slide, and we were gonna pause after the data so we could have questions about the data.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

This is the same slide except uh with central electric rates.

Um comparison, same across initial equipment costs plus tenure ongoing costs and the differences between those.

Okay, so that's all the data.

So then next we're gonna shift into asking you some policy questions.

So we'll kind of shift into discussion mode, but we did want to pause and and um see if there's more questions about the data since it really is, you know, fundamental to all the discussions.

Yeah, any other questions on any of the data slides.

Not hearing any.

So let's go forward.

I wasn't expecting that.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, so now we have some questions for you all about the outcomes and policy intent of this fee or disincentive policy.

We have a few different policy topics to discuss with you.

And one way to think about each of these topics is that they lie on a spectrum of potential outcomes.

So we have framed it as on one end of the spectrum, we would be creating a fee that is more selective.

So, meaning that it has one particular outcome that it is really trying to drive at, which is to strongly disincentivize against natural gas and new construction.

So a highly selective fee would be more likely to drive a specific outcome of really shifting behavior towards electrification strongly.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, the fee would be considered less selective.

It would still send a signal, it would still be a disincentive against natural gas, but it would be more flexible.

It it would uh potentially drive less of that specific outcome that the disincentive is striving for, but there might be reasonable reasons why that trade-off would be acceptable.

So where this disincentive policy falls on the spectrum will have different implications for what the policy actually accomplishes.

So depending on where we land on a few key policy decisions, there will be different potential impacts that we can assess, such as how might this policy affect overall housing costs, how many homes would this policy convert to electric and what are the greenhouse gas emission reductions that we would expect to see from that conversion?

What, if any potential revenue might this policy generate, and how can that revenue be reinvested back into further achieving policy objectives, and what are the administrative needs for this policy?

So our plan for our next step is that we would come back to you with a couple of scenarios or fee options where we've quantified some of these outcomes for you in the hope that those results will be helpful for you all in deciding what general of structure of a fee will achieve the policy objectives that you're seeking.

So we have a few different policy topics that go into that overall structure, including the fee purpose, or really that's meant to be the policy outcomes that you're intending, the importance of equipment efficiency in the design of the fee, and then the fee design with respect to how it's calculated for individual homes.

So those are the three topics that we want feedback from you all today.

There are additional topics that we'll need to work through through throughout the rest of the process of getting this policy together that will also influence the ultimate impacts of this policy, including things like determining exemptions or determining what kinds of considerations or things we might want to put in place regarding mitigating against cost impacts.

So we think those two pieces and the and the other types of questions that will arise are pieces that we can work on at a later date, potentially using the joint committee to work through some of those details.

So the priority for today is are these top three.

So I will walk through some framing for each of those three policy questions to start so that you know the scope of the discussion.

And then I think our plan is to go back and walk through each one individually so we can hear your thoughts on each one.

So the first one is the biggest one for you all today.

And the question is what ultimately are you hoping the outcomes are from this policy being in place?

And on the one end of the spectrum that we called more selective would be that that outcome is that the policy is really shifting that behavior, leading people towards making the decision to install electric equipment rather than gas equipment.

The outcome would be that there is very little new natural gas being installed.

In order to get to this end of the spectrum, it would be necessary that the fee would be higher.

And we would we would be less likely to collect the fee because we would expect more people to be converting to electric and therefore avoiding paying the fee.

On the other end of the spectrum, the outcome is that this fee is helping to recover costs related to the additional climate impact that adding that natural gas in buildings is creating.

Those proceeds then become a resource that can be used to support electrification or other decarbonization programs.

So that would be more likely to be a lower fee.

It would potentially be less likely to convert new home, new home construction to the same extent.

So a lower immediate impact from the disincentive policy itself.

However, it does also generate some resources that can be used to drive that impact in other ways.

But it will help us to narrow the potential range of scenarios that we're looking at if we can just get some insight from all of you about whether one outcome is preferable over another, or even if there's sort of a different outcome or a different way that you all are thinking about this.

So that's the that's the big question.

And then the next one is more straightforward.

It's a question about whether we want this policy to specifically be driving the adoption of efficient electric equipment or if any electric equipment is acceptable.

We saw from our analysis that the inefficient electric equipment leads to much higher energy costs.

In the short term, it does little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We also know that it is worse from a grid capacity concern.

So on the more selective side of the spectrum, the policy would be oriented towards really driving only efficient equipment across all of the different home systems.

So that fully efficient scenario that we were showing in the results would be sort of what the goal is, what the what the policy is trying to drive at.

And then on the less selective side of the spectrum, the policy would be agnostic towards electric equipment as long as it was electric.

So for this one, our staff recommendation, because of what we know about primarily those ongoing energy costs and just the larger energy use impact of inefficient electric heat and equipment.

The staff recommendation would be that we try to orient this fee to drive the adoption of efficient electric equipment, especially for space heating.

It might make sense to keep it more flexible for some of the uses that just have a lower impact, such as dryers and stoves and things like that.

So that is that's question number two is any electric or efficient electric.

And then the last policy question we have is how specific the fee design is to the home.

So on the more selective side of the spectrum, we would have a fee that is calculated based on specific home attributes, such as home size, expected energy usage, or information about the efficiency of the appliances being installed.

This would allow for a more individualized approach to each home and could take into account more individual circumstances, but it would be very administratively difficult to do something like that.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, we would create a fee that is structured more like Ashlands where we develop values based on averages.

It's based on local data, but it's sort of averaged across the whole community, and that all homes would use those same values to calculate what the fee is.

This would be much administratively simpler, but the fee may be less directly proportional to the impact of that home.

The staff recommendation would be to strive somewhere in the middle where we aren't requiring individual calculations for each home, but we have some way of setting different tiers to try to make it more proportional.

I think this could be modeled after something similar to our tiered SDC structure, which would be administratively simple enough to do.

So that's question number three.

So now I think Mayor Keebler, would you like to go back and uh we can walk through and get some thoughts on each of those?

Yeah, let's start with sort of the policy outcome.

Um and any thoughts folks have around this, and and just to say also that we do plan to come back for another work session on this to finalize sort of the input we give today, just make sure the staff has got it right before putting this out for more um engagement with our committees in the community.

So this isn't a final final today, but would like folks to weigh in on some of this direction that staff is asking for so that we can keep this moving down the pike.

Um so whoever wants to start on on this one.

Sure, yeah.

Um Cassie, did you come across the uh the order from the Oregon Public Utilities Commission about ending the subsidies of mine extensions and since I don't know if that will be relevant here, but because it only they ordered Northwest Natural, is that gonna be something that we expect to affect Central Oregon customers, or what how can we think about the effect of that?

Uh I don't know enough about what to expect specifically from that order.

Um it doesn't because we didn't factor in like the the cost of piping or anything, it doesn't it doesn't affect these numbers necessarily.

Um but it is true that um a lot of the other utilities in Oregon have phase out the line extension allowance and Cascade Natural Gas may be investigating that, but I don't know for certain what the future holds on that.

Thank you.

And did we did we consider what happens if 2030 doesn't happen and we don't get it, you know that the grid isn't clean by 2030.

Um how this changes everything in terms of of this potential fee.

Yeah, it's huge.

I mean, for me, it's like it's question number one, and the way that I have thought about it is that um that's such a that's a different problem to solve and different ways we can engage on um working with our utilities, working with the PUC to understand what compliance looks like for the investor-owned utilities and how they're doing that, and and there's a there's a lot of you know, any cities with climate goals are watching that really closely, so there's a lot of I think coalition around um paying attention to that.

Um, so that's sort of how I've seen as that's such a big complicated topic that um it's definitely like as we're driving towards electrification, it also needs to be a priority to do that.

All right, I'm gonna see and then I see Mike online, so go ahead.

Okay, uh my view on on how this this looks.

I'm thinking about the policy we're talking about now, and I'm thinking about the policy as it affects us over the lifetime of these homes that are going to be installed.

Um, and so for that regard, I am I would like to shift as much as the installation away from gas gas usage as possible as soon as as we as we possibly can.

And the reason I say that is because I expect, and we'll have to see if it bears out this way, that over time uh the cost of our electricity is going to stabilize and that the cost of the gas may be maybe problematic for us going forward, and that the cost to convert a home after the fact is just really expensive, uh, having done this myself in our in our home.

So I'm concerned about the future buyers and future uh owners of those homes, along with the much bigger uh carbon impact.

So I'm more on the side to shift.

That said, uh I'm also highly, highly sensitive to the costs of getting the housing built uh here locally, and what that means to me is we gotta get our housing production numbers happening such that we have 33,000 more homes in the next 20 years, and I want those homes to be affordable.

It's really important to me that we do that.

And so I'm looking at where those houses are largely going to be built.

A lot of them are gonna be built in the southeast corner of our city, which as I understand it, are primary the central electric cooperative numbers.

And so in terms of the operating costs, that's a good case for those homes that are gonna be built in that part of the uh that part of the the uh city.

So having all that said, I come back away from even though my heart says I want to shift and I would like no more gas installations, I want to be pragmatic and I want to understand and have dollars to help enable that shift because it is more expensive as we see right now.

And so I want revenue to help make it easier for the people who are gonna get into the homes and the people are gonna build homes to actually encourage this shift over the long time.

So that's where I'm sitting on this one.

All right, thank you.

Councillor Rayleigh.

Yeah, I yeah, generally support um what Steve what Councillor Platt just said.

I think um I had a question about um you mean is it is it reasonable for us to think about um being presented with options that sort of sit at both ends of the spectrum and sort of uh in between if Goldilops is the right term or not here, but um for some, you know, so that we get a range of options.

I think that's something that I think is gonna be important for us moving forward is to have some set of options, but I know that each potentially each of these different um questions you're asking for us tonight, you know, there might be a similar result of a range of options.

So uh how possible or complicated is it to come back to us with a set of options that kinds of you know lays out well the this this emphasis gets you here, this emphasis gets you here here's something in between.

Um I think um I think for this overarching policy goal that makes sense to me to try to look at different options versus I think the next slide where we're kind of thinking efficient inefficient is a little more black and white.

This one is more it is a special.

I guess I'm asking that question.

I think in particular for Danielle, as someone who's designed these kinds of things before, just in terms of the work and you know is that within the scope of what we've asked you to do.

Yeah, I would I would generally agree.

I think guidance on some the matrix becomes really big when you have all of the bookends for all of the factors, right?

So if there's a few that we can narrow down so that our scenarios become a little bit more focused, um I agree on the fee purpose on the first one that it can be a little bit broader.

I think these other ones, efficient equipment efficiency, um, I think these two down here on the bottom, particularly exemptions, if there's ones that um areas, income levels, certain types of housing that would be exempt, like those are those are the kinds of the guidance, and I know that we might be working with the joint committee on that as well that could kind of help us just hone in that in a little bit.

Okay, great.

I would actually be interested.

Maybe just to finish up then, I I mean I'm I'm with Steve.

I I tend to think for the reasons that he said um that we should be focusing on the on the shift, but I want to see what the other options are because there is obviously real tension between our goals for climate um you know, climate and environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our reliance on fossil fuel with there's tension with our housing goals, and so we need to see at least two options in this scenario, if not three ideally.

But if I was to choose, I would be on that, I have to say, on the right end of the spectrum here.

But you like one option on the far right, just sort of for like comparison.

Yeah, that's my preference, but I want to see how what the other options look like, yeah.

And and what that means in terms of the tension with this um with this other goal that we have around affordable affordability.

Okay, thanks, Councillor Perkins.

Yeah, um I think first of all, I would be interested in um having our committee, our super committee or whatever we're calling them, um, take a look at these options as well, these two or three options, and and because I think it's it's not really enough to say, okay, now you get this little one little piece of it to do exemptions.

I mean, if if if we're um asking them to do that, we should ask them to take a look at the at the fee in general.

Um I also think that you know I'm I'm on the the left end of this on on the signal part, um, primarily because I feel like there are so many unintended consequences that um of something that that is far to the right um that could really harm a lot of our other goals.

Um it's all tied together, like has been said before with with housing and transportation.

Um and I think that we're still there's still other things that we we can be looking into that that don't have that same impact, like incentives that that are not necessarily you know financial incentives um that require us to have you know pool of money, um, whether it's you know density bonuses or getting to the front of the line or there's something.

Um so I am I am on the left of this, but I I agree that I think it would be really helpful to have two or three options, but I would love for a committee to be able to take a look at that as well.

Great.

Yeah, yes, I would just like well, first of all, I need to declare a potential conflict.

Um I am an employee of Hayden Homes, but I am allowed to participate in this um in this conversation since we don't have a clear and decisive policy at this time.

Um I just want to add, I I echo, I mean, this is a struggle.

I am very committed to um, you know, protecting our environment and climate goals, but I also recognize that um our governor has declared a housing emergency in our state, and I'm very concerned about some of these numbers that I'm seeing, you know, 25,000 dollars and equipment costs that are gonna have to be borne by developers.

Um that's significant, and it's probably gonna be passed down to the eventual homeowner, and then $10,000.

And I understand that you know, you typically want to recoup these costs within 10 years, and I'm not seeing those numbers being re-cooked when you're looking at 25,000 and 10,000.

Um I would also like to see more of a of a uh focus on incentives.

Um I think that there's ways that we can do non-monetary incentives, and I'd really like to direct staff to try to look at some of those as well.

Um I think that density bonuses um are a win-win for our environment and um and no cost to us.

Um so I would really like to find solutions like that as well.

Um but yeah, I would probably lean more to the signal.

Okay.

Down this end of the dias and thoughts?

Yeah, I think so.

I would like to ask staff to please include the cost of provisioning a neighborhood with gas that we could then attribute on a per household basis.

And I recognize that there's a lot of factors there that make that a hard number to get.

Uh, but also I'd like to include a cost estimate for the wine extension provision as well, because I I feel like these numbers are assuming that all of that infrastructure is already in place, and and that's a cost that might not actually be there if developers decide to go all electric.

So I think that's an important cost to include.

I for me, I think where I fall on here is it's less about the the outcome or the motivation and more about finding ways to incorporate some kind of market principle.

So there's significant externalities to burning gas uh in terms of leaking methane and all of the byproducts in inside the home.

So I would like to see if we could an estimate based on trying to capture some kind of value of those externalities, both in terms of the health costs, the tens of thousands of pediatric asthma cases that result, and also the huge potential that reducing methane has on meeting our climate goals.

So if we can find do a little bit of hard work to find a way of accounting for that, I feel like that would be a really good justification in terms of market principles.

The easiest way to account for an externality is often to put a tax of similar amount, and then you just let people make the decisions that they can within that framework, and and uh it is what it is.

Do you have any comments on any of those additional data sources or or questions like clarification clarification questions about that if we were to try to incorporate some of that?

Um yeah, we can look into getting that data.

I think that that's gonna be conversations with the utilities.

Um to your point about externalities, where my brain goes is that's the conversation where the social cost of carbon amount comes into this conversation, which does have to like I think happens at some point once we start to get our heads around like what does this fee really look like and what are the components of it?

And so that might be where that gets incorporated into the value of the fee amount.

So Francesa.

Thanks.

Um yeah, I agree with Council Amendez um about basing the um the fee in in some sort of rational basis um such as the social cost of carbon um and actual impacts to our community.

Um so I think that ends up putting me a little bit more on the signal side, I think, um, based on our prior discussions, uh, which I which is I think appropriate for now.

I I do, you know, I do want to acknowledge like there is now finally.

I was telling some folks today have been in energy efficiency and renewable energy for over 20 years.

We're now seeing renewable natural gas actually as an option.

So um, yeah, so I think I think going the signal path um is a good first step for our community to take, um knowing that the industry overall um gas and electric alike are gonna be moving toward um zero carbon eventually.

Um as far as uh you know the about the cost data, um I are are you gonna so the that those numbers that you showed us are a little are are somewhat draft, right?

You mentioned the central air or air conditioning, the uh installation cost at $600.

That's way too low, right?

So that's gonna go up.

I think the I mean just take a look at all those numbers.

Um I'll be I'd love to see an update on that.

Like the gas furnace cost also seemed really really low.

Um, and then the the heat pump.

I just got a quote from my hand my own house, and it wasn't 17,000.

So um yeah, so hopefully those numbers can be kind of refined a little bit.

I think there might be a little bit of a gap there.

Yeah, and Daniel did look at the so the um the the AC was one that we were re she was reviewing some of the numbers after just some of the comments we've been getting in over the last days in the pre since the presentation was posted.

And the the the AC is one that based on the data set we're using um should be updated, but the rest of the numbers based on that RTF data or the RBSA database, you can refer to the data.

That that does seem to be the best sort of consistent data, and I think that's one of the hard parts is like where does this data exist?

Um, where some of the numbers might not match exactly what people's personal experiences are, but we still need to be rooted to some sort of um widely accepted and consistent set of data.

And that uh this is the best one that exists, and those other numbers are the correct numbers that came from there.

I don't know if you have anything to add on that.

Like the the gas furnace at four thousand dollars.

That seems like the cost of the equipment, not necessarily the cost of like duct work throughout a house.

I guess that's what I that's where my mind goes.

And I look at the 17,000 for the heat pump.

Um, and that seems like that would be the full installation cost of you know, heads in different rooms, what you know, as well as the outdoor units.

So that's what yeah.

Yeah, happy to go back through those workbooks again and make sure that you know we're pulling the the right numbers.

I think to Cassie's point, we we really wanted to try to anchor in something that was publicly available, publicly vetted, and consistent.

And you know, that's what this cost data provides us.

I think we're gonna we're gonna reach out to you know, local builders to try to get to to kind of level set ourselves with these numbers a little bit, but um yeah, I think at there's this trade off between do we start to veer off and kind of tweak the numbers and get off of our anchor versus do we know that maybe these numbers aren't perfect, but in whole compared with other national studies that we've looked at, in whole they are they are fairly consistent.

Okay, and and ask those like if and if other people have data sets, if other builders have data sets we can use, we can update it.

But this is the data set that like the all of our utilities, for example, use to inform all of their energy efficiency programming.

So it really is uh like she called it like the industry standard, it is the industry standard that the energy trust is using that Central Electric Co-op is using to determine what's cost effective, it's those numbers.

Okay.

But I agree to your point about making sure we're consistent with not just equipment, equipment and insulation and not so definitely worth a a look again.

Yes.

Okay.

So I'm hearing um some folks more on the signal side, some folks more on the shift side, but I think uh can we all agree we have some different options to look at along this spectrum would be helpful.

Um and so I think that's sort of where we're landing on this.

And then is everyone in agreement.

Um Ariel mentioned, you know, including the cost of provisioning that line extension as part of it so that we understand what that would be.

And I think also again that the main assumption that 2030 is gonna, you know, this this key date if that doesn't happen.

I think it's important to also include that in these conversations.

Well, I think the obvious thing is that those numbers would just be different.

Well, maybe the same, like we have the 2025 numbers.

So just it would it would be those, yeah.

Yeah, those would be the closer ones.

Just to add for that, yeah.

Um I thought yes, and in terms of density bonuses and those kinds of things, please include those in the policies too, those sort of no cost to the city options.

Please include those to the policy choices as well.

Yes, and big picture process wise, we were planning on sort of focusing on this fee first and then doing the incentive discussion.

So that's why we haven't brought that specifically forward.

So we wanted to see that in a different way.

And we don't have to decide one before we're done with the whole discussion.

No, yeah, I think it'll all be packaged together, but we just have not that's just not the practice yet.

And then we will be bringing those to the committee, right?

The yes, for sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, let's see if we can move through these next couple of questions.

Um trying to target this policy towards either shifting or signaling towards more efficient or just any electric at all.

Any thoughts on this, Steve?

If we're doing that, if we're doing this, let's do it to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so efficient only.

Anyone have a different opinion than that that would want to open it up to all electric or no?

I mean, I would I would just say like uh the code kind of pushes houses to be pretty efficient if they are electric.

So this isn't necessarily a decision we even have it's sort of requiring.

We're already going that way.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Well, couldn't it be what if you had it in what part of the incentive based system, like where there's flexibility and it could be an option we could get more of an incentive to do efficient.

Okay.

Danielle, go ahead.

Yeah, I'll just so one note of that.

You the the biggest factor is the heating system.

And you do not need to have to put in an air source heat pump to meet code.

You can meet code in other ways with other combinations, and you can put in uh standard electric furnace.

So I think that might be one where we just have to think about is that is that the extra push.

That's the most impactful is the heating system.

Yeah, we should target expensive part.

So it's the one that I think uh potentially there could be a risk of there being sort of this mixed up incentive to put in that, you know, to come to avoid the fee and then put in a lower cost heating unit.

And I think a lot of builders say are not putting those in because there's preferences for heat pumps for a lot of reasons.

But if we had a strong disincentive, it could just it could change the decision making such that um we might want to make sure that that's not a potential unintended consequence that could happen.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't understand what what we just said.

We don't want putting in inefficient heat inefficient electric heating equipment just to avoid a fee.

We want to calibrate so that we're really trying to get those efficient heating systems in with the fee.

Sending a lot of head nods on.

So okay.

Is it not also true, Danielle?

Um Danielle and Rocassy that um uh certain of the of the kinds of equipment, say, for example, that Ashland has in their their pollution fee.

Um the heating and cooling systems are where most energy is used, and therefore most greenhouse gas emissions would be generated, I'm assuming.

Yeah, um, so getting that, you know, having the fee focus more there.

Um or you know, provide a greater disincentive for not doing that seems important.

And more flexibility for those other equipment systems, right?

Yeah, right.

And so tiering that can and connecting it to both energy use as well as GHGs.

Yeah.

Okay, so I think there's some consensus around trying to be more towards that efficient end of that spectrum for a lot of reasons.

And then can you remind me what you said in terms of like availability?

I mean, the fact that if we're building thousands of houses, you know, a year.

Um, these efficient you said some of them are are just coming online now, and some of them is the dryer.

Dryers in particular, so that might be um, you know, going from a gas dryer to an electric dryer is less overall efficient.

So that is, you know, and a heat pump dryer isn't really a market available technology, so that's a kind of iffy one.

But um induction stoves are available, heat pump water heater is available, and it's supported by energy trust programs and the rest of them are.

I just had a heat pump dryer put in.

Yeah, how is it?

Awesome.

Good.

Yeah, and I didn't need an extra, I didn't need the extra power thing, you know, didn't but the original power was was just fine.

Good.

So yeah.

Okay, final question here on how specific or or not we want to be.

Remember the staff recommendation was somewhere in the middle here with some tiers similar to how we look at like SDC tiers for home sizes.

Um other thoughts?

Strong feelings on this one.

Steve.

As somebody who's done a lot of a lot of running, you know big bureaucracies, and knowing that the folks who have to make it bring it bring the policy home at the end.

It's an asking a lot if we're gonna try to get.

I mean, my I would love to have all those exemptions in there or those based on the sides for your true carbon uh impact, however, y'all gotta make it happen.

We as a city to be successful on this have to be make it happen.

So that's SDC's tier thing really speaks to me in terms of a different sizing impact.

Councillor Rayleigh.

Yeah, I I agree with that.

I think I think it's also consistent with how we've approached some other um policy decisions in the community.

And my understanding, and I guess I'm asking for a confirmation on this, Danielle.

I've not looked at, I don't remember a study specifically related to energy use, you know, and a home connected to size, but that generally I've seen some studies in the past from DEQ on sort of overall environmental footprint.

Um, and that um it really size of the home was the biggest overall environmental impact.

And I'm I know that was connected to more than just energy use, but I'm assuming that that's generally gonna be true.

The bigger home, the more energy you're gonna use, and the bigger the impact's gonna be, and that there's some data sources that we can use objectively to support that.

Yeah, thoughts on that?

It's pretty straightforward.

But something that will help us do that.

Yeah, yeah, I think we'll need to do a little bit of research to to figure out what that is, but I I think that's a a a true enough statement that I feel pretty confident we could get there.

Okay.

Any other thoughts on this?

So we're all kind of on that page of looking in that middle ground.

Okay.

And then Cassie, anything else you need from the I just had a couple of just next steps.

Yeah, um, which is that um just really quick to um review our stakeholder engagement approach.

We have been uh we're still planning on using that joint committee of BDAP, AHACK and the ECC to further work through and get feedback on the development of this fee.

So the big next step for public engagement will be to launch that committee.

Uh we are scheduled to come back on December 10th um to share these fee options with you, but also really to focus on um finalizing the the charge for that committee and really ha defining what outcomes you're hoping that committee can deliver to you all to help make this policy.

So that's gonna be the big public engagement step.

Um we'll have the three ex officio seats on that joint committee from the three energy utilities.

In addition to the joint committee, we plan to hold additional round tables where we'll invite people from the developer and trades industries and the environmental sector to provide additional input that the joint committee can use as they develop those recommendations.

And then we are, as Daniel mentioned earlier, we're we're we are integrating some informal stakeholder interviews to get feedback on our data, um, get anecdotal insights about some of the challenges and opportunities associated with this policy initiative.

So some of those questions about the costs, like how does this compare to what you're seeing?

We're also doing that, and that's data.

That's information that um even if it doesn't change our data set, we'll still bring to you to just kind of understand like the data says this, this is what we're hearing to just put it in perspective.

So that's the general approach for stakeholder engagement.

Um, and then for next steps, um, just as I said, the next key date is December 10th, um, for that work session and the fee options, and then um we would go into launching the committee shortly after that, once we get a resolution creating it and all that.

So hopefully we can launch that committee in January.

Questions about the process.

Yeah, when do we have a conversation about like resource availability?

Is that in like the joint committee?

Is that in the informal interviews?

Is that something we can talk about in December?

Like um from the energy utilities type of availability.

If we do this, yeah, I think those we do.

I think those are the details, like getting really into the weeds will be what we use that joint committee on, and I still have to think part of thinking through the structure of that joint committee is gonna depend on which fee option we pursue and that kind of thing.

But but yes, that's where I'm where I'm envisioning having those deeper dive discussions.

Great.

Council Riley, did you have another question?

Yeah, so um I guess um in part to what you were just speaking to in terms of the super committee.

My um my assumption is that um part of the direction we're gonna ask them to provide to council is um you know, here is the range of options that we're getting sort of in the next phase of the um this uh fee or disincentive.

Um, they're gonna get to provide input on those as well, on those options, correct?

And I guess that's a good idea.

If we think I think that's part partially what we want to talk through on the December 10th meeting, is when you're looking at those options, which pieces of it do you want that joint committee to be the one to wrestle with and how do you want those recommendations to come to you and what that looks like?

Perfect.

I think the reason I'm asking the questions is there seems to be some sense that from some in the community anyway, that uh we're not gonna you know ask them to to wrestle with some of this at all.

Um, and that's not the way I viewed it.

Um, you know, the council's a final decision maker, but we're gonna be asking them for their their input as a group.

Um so I know that's that's I guess discussions to come.

How are you gonna go about ground truthing the data?

I mean, with some local input.

I mean, I heard you say that, and it makes sense to me that we have a reliability reliable data source um, that regional forum.

Um, but I've I've also got some input from the community that um in addition to line extension allowance and the air conditioning that some of the costs either seem too high or too low uh based on their experience.

Um so I I mean maybe you've already answered it, that we have to rely on, you know, we we can't do a bunch of anecdotes, and I get that that's probably true.

And yet at the same time, if low multiple people of a local experience in our community are experiencing something different than you, how does that influence this data set that we use?

Yeah, I mean, I think for now we will collect the anecdotes, and depending on what we find, we may have to just figure out how that adjusts our approach.

And it's a little hard to say until we know how different, you know, how different it is, how central that discrepancy is to the things we need to figure out for the fee.

So it's a little hard to say generally how you know how to address each of those.

Do you have anything to add on that?

Yeah, I would just say we if we're going to collect data, we just want to try to make sure it's robust, technically, you know, defensible data.

And so the more the more data we can get versus stories or anecdotes, it's really gonna help help us there.

The other comment I have is that I think it's important that we are getting to the discussion about non-monetary incentives relatively soon.

And so by the December meeting, Cassie, I'd like to see with the council.

I'd like to see kind of a bit more of a schedule of what it might look like for the super committee and when we're gonna be actually asking them to engage on those questions as well.

Because I think that they're making, you know, people uh you know, from the building and business community are making valid points about what about these other um factors and other ways we could be influencing behavior.

Um so I'd like to know when we're gonna be having them talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

We can we can present that and we can have a discussion about like do we need to switch the order of some of these discussions, you know.

So please great.

Okay.

All right.

Well, um I think you have the direction you need for now, um, December 10th for the next work session on this for everyone in the room.

I do want to say um we received a lot of input before today, and I want to thank everybody who sent us input, who emailed us, who called, who is here today, who was rallying on the corner.

We appreciate you showing um your care for this issue and your care for your community, and continue to send us that input.

We will continue to work through this process.

As you've heard today, it is not black and white, there are nuances, it is a hard topic to wrestle with, but we're committed to wrestling with it and to finding the best solution we can right now.

So um just thank you again to the community for engaging on this, and we'll see you soon.

We'll take a little break while everyone, anyone who wants to leave, can file out if you want to.

Or you can say for our tree code presentation.

Oh, thank you.

And thank you to staff for your work.

Yeah, please.

Renee and everybody, here they come through the crowd.

All right, we're gonna get into our tree code.

Hey Stephanie, Stephanie, or somebody can you tell them to shut the door?

Yes, yeah, or tell people to go outside.

Are we allowed to do that?

We're open.

Yeah, just one of the doors and maybe ask people to client.

All right, we are on to um item number three, the tree preservation standards update.

Um, Councillor Norris is gonna put something on the record.

Go ahead.

Um, I need to declare an actual conflict on this item.

I've uh declared one in the past.

I am an employee of Hayden Hums, and this would have a financial impact on my employer employer, therefore I will be leaving the diasp and joining you virtually for the last item on the agenda.

Thank you.

All right, thanks.

Okay, uh, thank you, Mayor and Counselors.

Um, Renee Brooke, planning manager, and with me here is Pauline Hardy and Ian Gray, who will also be doing part of the presentation.

I'll kick it off with just some background um leading up to council's adoption of the updated tree preservation standards last year, and then Pauline will dig into the data that we've collected over the last year, and then Ian will have um some focused uh discussion on some uh recommendations to the to the tree code.

Um so just background city council goals.

There's been a number of goals in the past few years that have been related to updating tree preservation standards with the interest of environmental and climate goals.

And so with that direction, you asked us to focus on specifically trying to protect larger trees while also balancing the need for more housing.

And you wanted us to provide consistency between the bin code, the development code, and standards and specs.

We needed to make clear and objective tree preservation standards at that time as we were going through and updating a lot of the development code to make them clear and objective standards specifically for housing developments, consider preserving larger trees, also consider alternatives to preserving trees, so offering some options for tree replacement or mitigation if trees couldn't be preserved on a site, and then also look at some additional programs to preserve the urban tree canopy.

So with that direction, staff spent about a year and a half working with the subcommittee that council appointed called the tree regulation update advisory committee, included a broad spectrum of stakeholders.

We had many public meetings with the committee as well as a couple check-ins with city council along the way to make sure we were more or less going on the right path with the discussions we were having with the committee, and then the standard public hearing process through planning commission and council with adoption of the standards in August of last year, and then here we are just a bit over a year of those standards being effective to give you the annual update that you asked us for.

And back in June of last year is when you asked us to provide an update after a year of implementing the code with specific discussion and research on best practices on the use of incentives to preserve trees, a review of the impact on the code and the production of housing, and an assessment of how the four options, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and any adopted incentives are being used by developers.

That's largely what we have to report back to you today, is that third bullet.

It's very data objective, objective data driven.

And you also asked that we suggest a schedule for ongoing review, and we'd recommend a year based on our experience so far.

So just quick overview of the standards that were adopted last year.

We'll be using these terms quite a bit.

So regulated tree is any tree with a trunk diameter of six inches, as measured four and a half feet above ground and standard nomenclature that's diameter breast height or DBH, and then a priority tree is any tree that's 20 inches or larger at DBH.

Any tree less than six inches is not regulated at all, not subject to the preservation standards.

So the code that we're talking about in the development code applies for sites larger than one acre.

It applies to land divisions and site plan reviews.

So it could be commercial land division, residential land division for site plan review.

Those are typically applications of multi-unit housing, commercial, industrial projects.

And then any other building permit that proposes a new dwelling unit if the site is more than one acre.

And that one acre threshold was a major discussion point throughout the drafting of the code and at City Council's hearing and determining what size of a site should these tree preservations apply because if the site is so small, there's just limited flexibility in how a developer could possibly orient the buildings on the site.

So that one-acre threshold was really important, and that's a lot of the data we have to present to you is based on that.

Then on sites less than an acre, if it's a land division or site plan review, so basically any project not proposing housing on a site one acre or smaller, they have some options, more flexible options for preserving trees, or could remove all the trees and just go straight to mitigation.

And then the code allows complete exemption for any application that proposes one or more dwelling units on sites one acre or smaller, and that was very much intended to let those sites go through development without any tree preservation required.

The options that the developer has for those applications that are subject to the code are to either preserve 20% of the larger trees, 25% of the total diameter breast height of all regulated trees that are six inches or larger on the site, or if they can't do that, they could choose to preserve at least 5% of the DBH of all regulated trees and then mitigate for the rest of the trees up to 25% that they wouldn't be preserving.

There's also discretionary track.

So those three options are clear and objective.

It's a case of filling out a spreadsheet and doing some math to determine whether or not a development meets the code.

But if a developer has a site that makes it infeasible to meet one of those clear and objective options, there is a discretionary track path if a developer needs to remove more trees for any of those reasons listed in the bullets.

If a developer does choose to save only 5% of the total DBH of regulated trees, they can mitigate for anything less than that, and they can do that by either planting trees on site to replace those that were removed based on a certain ratio for the size of trees removed, or pay an inlou fee of $600 for each tree that's required but not planted on site, or they can do a combination of those two things.

An example here just for seeing how that map works.

This was an actual project.

The developer chose to save 5.5% of those, so 152 inches.

So they needed to their mitigation worked out to be either planting 104 trees or paying 62,400 in LU fee, or they could ultimately decide to do a combination somewhere therein with that mitigation.

Also within the code are some incentives.

If a developer wants to preserve more than the minimum number of trees, they could ask for reduction of setback, increased lot coverage, reduction of landscaping, and reduction to lot or parcel dimensions.

And we have not had any developer asked to use any of these incentives so far.

And then I'll hand it over to Paula.

So this data was collected from the date the code went into effect through September 30th of this year.

Over the year during that time frame, we had a total number of applications of 766 applications.

That included, as Renee talked about land divisions, site plan review applications, and then also the we call minimum development standards review for like housing applications or building permits.

Of the 766 applications, 711 applications were completely exempt from complying with the code.

That is because they were one acre or less and they included housing of some sort.

So to dive into those 55 applications of the clear and objective standards, three applicants preserved 20% of the priority trees or the larger trees.

Six applications preserved 25% of the diameter of breast height of the regulated trees.

17 preserved either 20% or 25%.

So they definitely met the clear and objective standards.

And then nine preserved 5% or more of the diameter of breast height of the regulated trees.

Plus, they had to mitigate because they're only preserving of the minimum of five.

And then two of those applications were discretionary track.

And the two discretionary track options that they used was one had topography issues and one was an industrial site.

And then four of the applications just proposed mitigation only.

So all they had to do is preserve one tree out of the 42.

26 of the 41 projects are preserving trees and not requiring any mitigation.

So using clear and objective standards, a one or two option.

15 of the 41 projects are mitigating for the loss of trees.

So there's a total of 1,160 new trees that will be planted over 13 different project sites.

That we've not collected but has been conditioned.

And when you spread it over the number of units, it ranges between 60 to 600 per unit in those housing projects.

The developer feedback, we did have two meetings with a group of developers.

Uh, one was really focused on how their um interaction with the code has been over the year, and one was a little bit more uh based on how the code works with fire mitigation.

Uh the concerns we heard from this particular group of developers is that paying in lieu fees so early in the project timeline.

So submitting the payment prior to issuance of building permit or final plat approval in the city holding on to that payment.

Uh the additional cost to save and work around in particular the larger trees versus regular trees.

Uh things add up tree mitigation, system development charges, etc.

All add up to the um overall cost of dwelling units, and then potential conf conflict with defensible space requirements.

Um deputy fire marshal and lista steel is here if you have any questions about the how the bend development code interacts with the requirements for um defensible space requirements.

Um we did receive a positive email or two, but a couple things.

Um was just recognizing how easy the code is to understand compared to codes over in the valley or in Portland.

Um ours is just very clear and objective and easy to understand.

We also did a training in the beginning of July, I believe it was very good attendance to help them understand how to submit the information and insert the data and have very positive feedback on that as well.

The suggested amendments that came from this group of developers was to add additional discretionary paths.

So if they can't preserve the 5%, um add a discretionary path for the continuation of existing and new local street alignments, add um new exemptions where they don't have to preserve trees at all for all industrial zones, um, which are currently a discretionary path, but just exempt them 100% from tree preservation, exempt juniper trees or limit preservation to junipers over 20 20 inches diameter at breast height, and then exempt all trees that are in proposed right-of-way.

Allow the required climate friendly and equitable communities parking lot trees to count towards tree replacement mitigation.

That was passed kind of in the similar time frame that the tree co went into effect, and the climate friendly and equitable communities uh requires any parking lot that's over a half acre to have 40% canopy over a number of years, and that's a lot of trees in addition to requiring additional trees to be planted on site.

So it does add up to being a lot of trees.

Um, and then allow required street trees to count towards tree replacement mitigation and adjust requirements for very large sites and expansion areas, such as Faraway or Stevens Road track.

So our summary before um uh EA goes is to it's a good start to collecting data, but it has only been a year.

We've only had as you saw a small number of projects compared to the overall number of projects that have been submitted to applications.

Many of those projects are just started grading or construction, so it's too early to tell if when the root protection zones are effective, um, if the mitigation trees, the actual number of them being planted.

Applicants are getting more familiar with the code, especially with the trainings that we've been doing and the information we have available and the submittal requirements.

We do have some recommended possible amendments.

Um they're minor in scope.

Um, we won't recommend making significant changes to the requirements, but if there was interest, we would recommend um adding now that we have a reforester on staff flexibility in that route protection zone.

This has come up a lot of times on smaller lots where they would like to count the trees that they're saving, but there might be a parking stall that's near or a sidewalk or the building, and they would just like credit for because they're preserving the trees anyways, and they'd like credit for it, and that makes sense.

And we have some good examples of other cities that do a discretionary path.

Um, make it clear that if you have no trees, you're just 100% exempt.

And then are we a middle housing land divisions on sites one acre or less just um for consistency since we don't require tree preservation for one acre less with housing, that we would just exempt middle housing land divisions as well.

Okay, let's pause here for a second, councilman is you had a question or what we want to hear from questions.

The CPEC requirements for parking lots and trees.

Yeah, does that apply outside of climate-friendly areas or is that for all parking lots?

It's all parking.

And the requirement is to have a certain number of trees on the parking lots of what size again?

Half acre or larger that's uh interesting.

That's the mirror pond parking lot.

Yeah, that's it covers a lot of parking lots.

Okay, thank you.

All right, can I ask a question about incentives?

So if I'm reading this, is that so that means 17 of these qualified for incentives?

Am I not reading that right?

Out of the 55.

Oh, the 17 in the blue up here.

Yeah, is that right or no?

These are so incentives in the development code world is like reduction, setbacks, reduction of yeah, but I'm saying 17 could have used incentives.

And possibly those other nine too, just depending on if they were exactly at 20% of priority trees, maybe not, but I think that code says, but it's possible the three, six, and seventeen there could have possible.

And I'm just curious why you think no one's using any of the development standards are pretty flexible to begin with.

Lot sizes, setbacks, um, lot coverage.

Do you feel competent people know that they these incentives exist or we are going to do a better job letting people?

Okay.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, we did do the training and that went over it, but we will make sure that we're working with people to remind them that there are these incentives.

We have incentives throughout the code, and they just rarely get used, I think again.

Okay.

Just pretty flexible.

All right.

Ian, you want to introduce yourself?

Absolutely.

Hi everybody, Ian, great.

First time in the full council meeting.

So pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Happy to be here.

Um just want to say up front that it I've been super impressed with the amount of thoughtful work that's gone into creating the tree codes in the first place.

Obviously, a very collaborative process, and the development planning team has been doing an amazing job.

So they understand a lot more about the you know permit process than I do, so I'm still getting myself up to speed.

But um happy to be here.

Um I think it's worth understanding what my role is.

Obviously, the immediate focus is on assisting however I can with the implementation of the tree codes, subject matter expertise, whatever you want to call it.

Um I've worked in four different municipalities at this point, so I have a good idea of what works and what doesn't, and I've seen lots of different versions of tree codes, good and bad, and everything else in between.

So I've got a certain amount of reference for it.

Beyond the tree codes, my overall role is to find just going off my job specifications with a more holistic mission of trying to help the city create uh you know an urban forest management plan which encompasses things like tree inventories, uh management plans, maintenance plans, and canopy cover surveys, which is allows you to monitor the change from year to year in the amount of shade that's covering your impervious services.

Um the interim, I've also been doing lots of collaboration across departments, whether it's tweaking uh recommended street tree lists, working with engineering looking at infrastructure conflicts.

We now have uh urban forestry web page, and the general public has actually been reaching out to me directly, which is great because it puts a face to it and they can get somebody on the phone and speak to right away, and I can go up and do site visits.

It's something that I've always enjoyed doing and specialize in.

So uh yeah, that community interface is really important.

Um my first large-scale programmatic piece will be taking place spring uh 2026.

We'll be bringing that to city council with more uh explanation in detail as it builds out, but we're gonna be doing a citywide GIS tree inventory database, evaluating and logging all the trees that are in the city right-of-way or otherwise on city property, using volunteers.

Um, so we're gonna need a lot of them, but if we can pull it off, it'll be a great step forward in terms of community ownership, stewardship, and involvement in the uh urban forestry process.

So great.

So you might have questions about what we may be doing with those fee and loo funds.

I think the main focal point is we're trying to put money back into replacing trees and canopy cover that's lost across the city as part of the development process.

So we'll be looking at uh replacement street tree planting.

Um there's also some much needed maintenance uh dead trees in the right-of-way that are maybe too expensive for the adjacent to force onto the adjacent property owner, maybe create a hardship fund where we can help uh defray those costs uh and you know keep our rights away beautiful, um, and a modicum of uh routine pruning, so doing a better job of maintaining stuff that's already in the right way.

We can also use that to defray some of those larger programmatic costs.

Um typically when we just onboard the consultant to do some of these bigger pieces, and I think that will be part of an eventual 10-year urban forest management planning process, and that's a a good way to use some of those funds, particularly when you're in, shall we say a somewhat impoverished federal grant landscape.

We're gonna back up just a quick second.

It's a little bit dry, but root protection zones.

So this is a critical part of what we're looking at when we're asking the developers to fill out their tree inventories and go through the tree calculation process.

They have a surveyor that goes out there, logs all the trees on the development parcel.

They superimpose or scribe a tree protection zone based on the width of the tree, the diameter of the tree, and then they decide whether or not they can keep that tree in the context of their ideal uh building or construction plan.

Um but what we're identifying, what we did identify was uh, and it's supported by industry best management practice.

We don't have to be so rigid with that defining that tree protection zone, depending on the species, the age, and its tolerance to construction impacts, you should be able to allow construction that's much closer into the root zone, and it should afford the developer flexibility and it should allow us to retain more trees.

Um, and this is uh there's some good examples of it.

For example, Portland has this as part of their code.

Um so you can be a bit more flexible defining what that looks like in the field.

This is a little bit busy, but the very simple graphic on the left is the classic, you know, one foot of diameter, you know, one foot of separation for every inch of diameter.

The graphic on the right says, well, tree crowns are rarely symmetrical, and the buttress roots don't come out in a perfectly symmetrical way.

So if you're looking at the architecture of the tree and the root plate zone, you can actually build a lot closer into some trees, some species, and that should give us the flexibility.

Um so we'll be looking at ways of incorporating that flexibility into any tweaks to the root protection zone in the code.

So the next steps um staff will continue to refine data collected from applications to report to council and the public.

Um we will eventually have um the data a web page where um the public can go into and see what applications are doing, what tree options are being um uh picked by the applicants, and so that should be available soon.

Staff again recommends some minimal amendments to the tree preservation staff um standards, including updating the root protection zone requirements and uh exempting a regulated trees and middle housing land divisions on sites one acre or less.

Um, if there's any other amendments that council be interested in or direction from council, um we are here.

We can answer any questions too that you may have about the data that we presented because I know it was a lot.

Yeah.

Great, thank you.

And I'm so glad that you're on board Ian.

That was a good thing to come out of this process was getting someone in-house to help us.

No, I think a natural thing that came out of this process.

Um, and so yeah, I'm excited about this, and I appreciate the staff's recommendation.

Um I also want to say I appreciate the point that we're a year in, and there's some development that has had their tree you know, plan approved, but they maybe they're not even building or they're just building.

So I think there are some effects that we maybe don't know as much about yet, um, even after one year.

Council Riley, I see your hand up.

Yeah, I um I just wanted to say welcome, Ian.

I appreciate your um diplomatic tone there about the current grant environment that we're in.

It's very well put.

Um I might have said it a little bit differently myself.

But um, so I um I'm curious if I'm sure you saw some of the input we got from the community about junipers.

And I'm curious if you had any um response to any of what we heard.

I mean, some of what we heard is exempt all of them, they're trash trees and they suck too much water.

Um, the other we heard is um you know, potentially exempt trees over uh or only protect junipers of a certain size, and they proposed a size, but I'm just curious what you have to say about that.

Um I think the the short answer is this is worthy of a longer conversation and the more considered presentation.

Um I will say that junipers are uniquely habituated native trees to this ecotone, high desert ecotone.

Um yeah, they can consume a lot of water, but they can also go without for years and years and years.

They're remarkably well suited to uh a climate that unfortunately is gonna become a lot drier and a lot harder, hotter in coming years.

Climate models are now showing anywhere from four to ten degrees Fahrenheit of increased temperature by 2070.

Yeah, we're working on that.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, and I mean that is an important part of the effort, and it's gonna require a lot of different bits of attention to you know help make our continue to keep our communities comfortable places to live and work.

So um, and I think junipers have to be part of that, uh part of that calculus.

But yes, let's have more conversation about it.

Um obviously the COBA uh crew is have their concerns, and that's those are the sections of town that they're pushing into now, um, which are primarily you know juniper force, so um worthy of more consideration and more discussion.

Great, thanks.

Is the tree inventory going to include all trees or just on lots, one acre and larger and then the the main question?

Yeah, sorry, I guess that probably wasn't clear enough.

So we'll only be inventorying trees that are in the city right-of-way or otherwise on city property.

Now there are some cities that have global uh tree inventories, but it's really hard to collect all that data off of individual private parcels.

Um and also to mention parks does an inventory, I see port board members there for their property, so we'll yeah, we've been in discussions with them.

Um and we're talking about possibly uh walking some of their existing GIS data over to our system so and have separate icons for parks, separate icons for cities city trees.

But it'd be it's really uh really useful database for uh people to see what's out there, whether it's in front of their house and their local parks.

You click on the icon, it tells you what the species is, how big it is.

Oh, cool, all that sort of good stuff.

So the the forward-facing piece for the general public can be really useful.

Awesome.

Uh yeah, I'd be interested in having more conversations about junipers, and then I'm also interested in in having in the future a conversation about these large expansion area sites too and what we can do.

Maybe those could go together, those two discussions, I think.

Sure, given what you just said, Steve.

I just have a I mean I think the other thing we ought to be bringing into that discussion about junipers is the um uh fire issues because uh I mean I had a fire assessment in my house, and I can um share that one of the things that we did was we actually removed a fairly large juniper um because if we had removed the lens, it it would have made it kind of a lollipop and then a really high risk for toppling over, but we primarily were paying attention to that tree because it was close to the house and did pose a fire hazard.

And I think those trees in particular can be a problem, as can other conifers if they're too close to home.

So I do think that question about how this interacts with um fire protection and defensible space requirements probably should be part of a future discussion as well.

Yeah, agreed.

Steve Ian, we're already trying to lead in the city with our construction with our buildings to try to make the net zero, try to have power production here.

Can your tree inventory go into a carbon sequestration model to bolster that effort once you have it on board, at least on city plans?

No, absolutely.

It's uh it's tried and tested, it's been done for decades.

There's a system that was initially started through the federal government eye tree, um, eye tree canopy, high tree eco.

Once you have an inventory database species diameter, that can go straight in.

You can calculate biomass, uh carbon sequestration.

So you could tell us thumbs up, thumbs down, when are you losing on that kind of stuff?

And click on an individual tree, and that will tell you how much water that's absorbing from the storm events, how much carbon is being sequestered, how much air is being purified, how much particulates are being taken out of the air.

So this is the great functionality of these databases.

I'd be really interested in that being folded into the CPAC for absolutely thanks.

Okay, so uh am I hearing general support for what the staffs recommended, and then maybe a second conversation around those other three issues around junipers and large uh expansions.

Make a few comments.

Um I served on the TruAC committee.

Um the roots and root protection zone flexibility of the root protection zone is is really really important.

It's um it was not a detail that was discussed in the committee, and it was a major change to um tree protection in our development code.

Uh it went from protecting around the drip line to protecting one foot for every inch diameter.

Um, and that's that's major.

And so if we grant more flexibility with that, I think that'll result in that in protection of a lot more trees and less kind of mitigation.

Um yeah, I'm I'm good with all the other stuff, and then I think with the juniper too, you know, one thing that we talked about and it received a lot of debate on the committee is that six inch diameter, you know, that that has to be like the the cat the inventory trees on the site.

Um the reason for that was because uh uh a ponderosa that is six inches in diameter has taken many years probably to get to that six inches in diameter.

A juniper tree that's six inches in diameter probably hasn't taken is not quite that old, probably grows a lot more quickly.

So I would really encourage uh changing how we um look at uh junipers as well.

David.

Thank you.

Can I ask clarifying questions?

Sure, go ahead.

Um understand future conversation around those other topics that were mentioned.

Is that something you want to have happen before we would bring back to you development code changes?

These minimal changes are pretty important and also fairly simple.

So I would say let's have this come on back and then we'll set up, we'll key up that longer discussion, maybe in a different work session or something.

Yeah, we're just doing some scheduling right now, so our intention is to come back this winter with the bigger discussion around juniper trees and some of the other things that you talked about, like get going on these code amendments that are very strictly.

Okay, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, and now on to um transit room tax project direction.

Yeah, yes, yeah.

Alrighty.

Good evening, council.

My name's Cyrus Mooney, I'm the business development manager in the city manager's office.

Uh John Condon, project management office, and Brian Tower, project engineer in uh the transportation and mobility department.

And this has been a long going conversation.

We have some newer counselors in Councillor Platt and Counselor Francosa that have not had this topic come to them, but an ever-evolving dialogue uh with a lot of different partners and collaborative agencies and efforts to get us to this point, and I think we're all really excited to have this conversation.

Want to start with a little bit of background as to how we got to this point, and I will pass it over to John to walk through that.

Thanks, Cyrus.

Um, yeah, so Cyrus mentioned um most of you have heard parts of this conversation before, but wanted to share some history for everyone else, um, just to make sure there were no questions about how we got here.

Um so starting in this time when I started in 2017, um, there was a set aside of the transient room tax under um under legal challenge.

So there's a little challenge, and we set that aside until that was resolved in court.

Um that was resolved in 2022.

Um there was 2.36 million dollars um in the account at that time set aside.

Um in 2023, council directed the city um that those funds should stay with the city and asked staff to evaluate options for tourism facilities in downtown Bend.

In 2024, um, just about exactly a year ago, we came to council um and um we're directed to focus on the existing Mirror Pond Plaza improvements, um, and then a half million dollars set aside to evaluate the pedestrian bridge in Drake Park across the Sheets River.

Um, and then just a couple months ago um we met with Oregon Restaurant Lodging Association and Visit Bend to review some potential tourism facilities and discuss how broadly we could apply those TRT funds to some projects that we had in mind, including Mirror Pond Um Bridge and the plaza.

One note I will just caveat is that the um set-aside funding for the Drake Park Bridge has changed since last time council has talked about this topic, and we'll get into the details of that at a later point, but just wanted to make sure that that was well known.

So this go ahead.

Yeah, sure.

Um, so just wanted to put this all on a map.

Um if anyone was unfamiliar, um, but to show you know how all these projects are connected really with the Deschits River Trail was the connecting element to those.

Um, a new project that we're gonna be talking about tonight um is the riverfront multi-use path.

Um, but you can also see Mirpond Bridge and the um the flux plaza off of Brooke Street, and there's another project on here we'll be talking that I think doesn't have a location yet, so it's it's not sure.

So starting with uh the North Mirror Pond lot plaza, um, this slide is really to help articulate that this concept did not come from city staff.

It really was derived from the stakeholders working with the downtown Bend Biz Association, working with property owners, working with uh businesses to hear about what is working well in the area, what is not working well, what's the functionality, what are some potential opportunities, and a lot of these ideas really coalesced um in a consensus way across the board.

We heard a lot about the impacts of events and taking away parking, um, taking away functionality for drop-offs and deliveries in Brooks Alley.

We heard uh a grand desire for public restrooms, which I think is no surprise to anyone.

They've uh the public and downtown and more particular have been asking uh for public restrooms for quite some time now.

Um, and looking at the potential for a unique type of facility that doesn't already currently exist in town.

And so we also met with event organizers to hear about what are other facilities like, what could we add that would be unique uh to this concept?

And that is how we've gotten to the point that we're at today.

Um another note is that we heard similar types of venues in town that are in the parks district, for example, can't necessarily be utilized year-round due to the nature of the grass and some other seasonality components, and so um coming up with a concept like this would be able to be utilized year-round, depending on the type of event, it could accommodate anywhere up to 2,000 people if it was uh primarily standing event like what you see in the rendering over here.

Um, if Ben Film, for example, was gonna set up a screening and there was going to be seated uh audience, it would be less.

Um permanent restrooms is incorporated into this design, a built-in stage, utility upgrades to make sure that the um power supply and other components could actually accommodate the types of events that we envision happening in this uh space.

Covered trash enclosure and compactor.

I think we all see that on the weekends that trash pad in the North Mirror Pond lot could get pretty overflowed and uh not be the most aesthetic.

And we've heard a lot from the businesses about that.

So this would hopefully resolve that issue, and then grading and drainage upgrades, it's not an accessible space right now.

Uh when there's ice in the winter, we see and hear about people falling and slipping, walking back to their cars, and so that would also be addressed.

Um, just to note the types of events specifically that are going on right now.

The farmers market that occurs in Brooks Alley has been massively impactful to the businesses in that area, and we hear that constantly.

We made sure working with our consultants at Walker Macy that if this was to move forward that it would be able to accommodate the farmers market, some of the smaller events uh like the handmaids market that we have in town and not have to do street closures or alley closures.

The estimated construction cost at this point uh for the space is roughly 4.25 million.

There are some questions that still need to be answered, such as the maintenance of the bathrooms.

If you had a chance to review the support letter that we received from the downtown Bend Biz Association, we've been in very close communication with them about that component of this, and they are very open to a conversation, ongoing conversation and dialogue with the city about potentially taking on that maintenance if we are to find maybe an additional revenue stream uh to accommodate for that.

Programming of the facility, um, our licensing team does do uh special event permits, and so that would be a discussion of if we would want to retain that or if we would want to outsource uh that component to a third party, and then allocating cost for the trash compactor would likely be split amongst all the account holders that utilize that facility.

And I see counselor Riley has his hand up here.

Yeah, counselor, I have a question about this project.

Yeah, I'm just curious.

What are what is the what's envisioned for the bathrooms here?

Is it like um how many stalls, you know, and men, women, um all genders, what are we thinking about here?

Has it been it's not necessarily fully detailed at this point in the design, but we're imagining two stalls.

Um, but how they are constructed in terms of uh having one stall for each gender or otherwise is yet to be determined.

Yeah, I mean, I think some of the more recently built parks have you know just individual bathrooms that anyone can use.

It seems like something like that would be pretty assumed.

There's some really cool options too for like graffiti free, they can clean themselves.

There's actually a lot of interesting options like in Portland, particularly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just concerned about events for 2,000 people and two stalls.

I I don't know, just I think we need to be conscious about not under sizing this, and therefore, how does that impact the cost projection?

That's that's a great question, Counselor Riley.

And already currently, depending on the size and scope of an event in their sanitation uh plan, they would need to add some porta potties or other facilities to accommodate for a size of that magnitude of a band.

Yeah, makes sense.

Counselor Norris.

Yeah, can you remind me the flex part of this?

Like how does the parking and the event work?

I mean, is it when there's not an event, is it parking?

Yeah, great question.

We should have definitely hit on that point.

But uh the intent is for it to be designed as an event space first, and in the times it's being utilized for event, obviously, it would be able to accommodate all of those needs, but any other time it would be used as it does today as a parking lot.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sorry, so there's a small number of slots lost though, right?

Under this design.

Correct.

And really, that's only due to the fact that we need to bring them up to code standards of the width.

Um there are some kind of wonky spaces that are diagonal.

And so we would like to make that more of a prominent connection point from this space down to the river.

So I think you mentioned about eight, right?

Slots.

Roughly.

Roughly eight.

Okay.

Do we have a cost estimate for just the bathrooms?

Right now, that would be probably in the book with 750, I believe, is what we have penciled in.

But I will just caveat that the bathrooms would not necessarily be able to be constructed with the TRT funds as a standalone.

As a standalone thing, because that would not necessarily be a tourism-related facility of just installing bathrooms.

But if they're installed in service of this event space, then we're more in the clear.

Yes.

And that's something we talked about thoroughly with Orla.

Tourists don't use the bathroom, I guess.

And then a question about budget.

So 2.4-ish is available TRT, but this project is like four and a quarter.

So where is the difference?

We're gonna get to the budget once we walk through the projects each, if that's okay.

Okay.

All right, up the next project here.

Uh just provide an update and some project details on Riverfront Street.

I think many of us are familiar with it, but uh just to get one on the same page.

So um this is Riverfront Street here, it's a residential street located in between Miller's Landing Park to the south and Drake Park to the north.

And uh this image here is looking north, so you've got an existing uh deteriorated sidewalk on the left side of the screen there.

And back uh around between like 2014-2017, Ben Parks and Rec originally looked at coming up with a design to fill one of the last remaining gaps in the Deschutes River Trail, which runs right along here on Riverfront Street.

And due to project complexity and increased costs due to the uh the complexities, um, they postponed that effort.

Um fast forward to 2023.

There was an opportunity for Ben Parks and Rec in the city to partner.

Um the City of Ben received a service transportation um STPG grant, excuse me.

Um Ben Parks and Rec was also willing to meet us halfway in order to get a design consultant on board to uh revisit this area to uh fill in the Deschutes River Trail Gap as well as look at rebuilding Riverfront Street and address the stormwater lack of pre-treatment that exists today.

And currently we are in the midst of design.

We just returned 30% design comments to our design consultant before getting there.

Uh, we had a bit of a lengthy process engaging with the public with multiple public meetings, uh, went through a design alternatives analysis phase where we looked at multiple different layouts for the street, and ultimately we came to probably the next slide here, um, a one-way design.

Um we thought this was the best approach to both achieve the project goals as well as address uh many of the community members' uh interests, concerns, and um idealized wish lists, if you will, for the project.

Um so the the current layout of the project right now is we're proposing if you can think back to that previous photo looking north where that three and a half to four foot sidewalk exists.

We're now uh widening that to a 10-foot shared use path with the 12-foot uh primarily speaking, 12-foot wide one-way drive aisle to the north, and and many locations will have an eight-foot parking bay on the east side of the road.

Um right now the current cost estimate is approximately three and a half million dollars.

Uh, the design effort uh we're looking to wrap up in uh early uh 2026, so early next year.

And I don't know, is there an additional slide with the cost break on this?

Yeah, we are we're getting to all the costs.

Yes, exactly.

Um I think that's uh what most of the main point.

All right, questions?

Does Gilcrest remain two-way?

Gilcrest.

Gilcrest is north of the yeah.

Yeah, sorry, all the all the side streets that feed it except are two-way.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

We do have Henry Stroud from Ben Parks and Rec District here as well, if there are parks related questions or concerns, um, and hopefully you had a chance to review their letter of support as well.

Go ahead.

All right, uh, the third of the fourth project we want to talk about tonight um is of course the Drake Park Pedestrian Bridge.

Um, I'm sure you're all very familiar with the bridge and some of its issues, um, but of course it's a vital pedestrian connection between downtown, the park, um Newport Avenue, etc.

Um, and really the main issue is the surface is just not accessible, it's far too narrow for the volume of traffic at seas.

Um as Cyrus noted, a change from when we met with council a year ago and we were asked to allocate half a million of the TRT funds to it.

Um, the current city budget recently adopted it now includes a million dollars separate from TRT funds for design of that bridge.

Um, and that design is estimated to be complete in 2028.

I don't think that has begun yet.

Okay, and separate of these three options that are being evaluated, but I think tangentially related is that visit Bend is underway with a public assembly venue study, and this is a study to evaluate the feasibility of a multi-purpose use type facility.

They're coordinating closely with city staff, and we've interviewed firms through uh request for proposal process, and there has been a firm selected uh to complete that work.

It's roughly a 12-week study that is beginning immediately and is anticipated to be complete early in 2026.

It'll have extensive community engagement, there will be a supporting assets analysis, and to put that into plain terms, it's really looking more comprehensively at not just the facility, but how does it fit into a neighborhood?

How does it fit into a district and the other built environment considerations that need to be put into the equation?

Uh and want to be clear this is a process that's led by visit bend but in close coordination with the city throughout the entirety.

Councillor Riley.

Yeah, right.

And so why are we talking about this tonight?

Because we're not talking about allocating any of the 2.36 million to this study.

Is that correct?

Or am I misunderstanding?

No, that is absolutely correct.

I think it was just an opportunity to put this on council's radar that this study is occurring, and to the point of the staff recommendation, we're really hoping to lean more towards using TRT funds to create more catalytic types of investments, and I think this has opportunity to have that potential in the future.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, and to that point, um, staff's recommendation is that we've heard a lot from the community that there's a priority for these funds to be deployed as soon as possible and on a project or projects that are as close to shovel ready as possible as well and create the most return for investment.

Again, that type of catalytic type investment that can move the needle that can be done in the short term and maximize those collections is our hope uh and aspiration.

The sentiment is also reflected, I think, in the three support letters that you received from the Downtown Bend Biz Association, Ben Parks and Rec, um, and also Visit Bend.

Um, and I think in talking with Visit Bend really closely throughout this entire process, I think this gives us an opportunity to show the state how TRT projects can move forward in a collaborative way, working with Orla, with Visit Bend, with the business associations and our other partnering agencies to really make get creative and how we can make these things pencil.

And the breakdown of that recommendation looks like this for the North Mirror Pond lot.

Uh, we're recommending that two million of the TRT funds be put towards this.

We have parking and loo reserve funds that could also be deployed for this space, an additional million in our parking funds, which would put us right at the construction costs uh to make this project work.

For riverfront, we are recommending that the remaining portion from that two million, roughly 360,000 would come from TRT funds, and that really envisions being seed money or money that we could utilize for future matching funds or for grant opportunities in the future.

And in the support letter from BPRD, you'll see that they are very willing and supportive to engage and partner with us in looking for those grants, applying for those grants, and potentially adding additional funding in the future if we're able to get more uh traction and momentum going towards that overall construction costs.

And to be clear, CyberSpeak Visit Bend believes that we would maybe qualify for some of their grants for for use of TRT.

It's not guaranteed, but we are we have confidence that we would be a good applicant for that program.

I think we'd also braid some other fund utility funds, so a lot of this those costs are water and sewer work that we can we have a little more flexibility with those funds.

Transportation is always the hardest to come by because there's not a you know, we're we're balancing lots as you all know, uh, lots of competing priorities.

Councillor Norris.

Yeah.

When oh, can you hear me?

Yeah, go ahead.

Okay.

Uh, when would you know about the timing or if we got those grants?

For the visit bend grant, their Ben Sustainability Fund application opens November 11th, and I believe closes sometime in February.

So we would know rather quickly about that one, but it's also probably likely that even if we did receive funds through that grant, we would need additional funding.

Um, so a little up in the air for timing.

Which mix up with, you know, we see what the status of that grant is.

We're also, as you know, doing some prioritization within both the transportation construction fund and the geobond.

So this could be something that you could consider through that effort too.

Councilor Riley.

Um why is it a million dollars for the design for this bridge?

It just seems like a quite a large sum of money.

Um and why is it taking going to take until 2028?

And I'm assuming that means the end of 2028 to get a design.

Yeah, we we put this in the the million doesn't necessarily necessarily all have to be to design.

It was just putting something that we could afford within the transportation construction fund model, and we're balancing that model and the projects with available revenue and other priorities.

So this is again part of that prioritization exercise.

If you wanted to make this more important than some of the other projects, we we have we don't have unlimited resources in terms of project management and deploy, so we would have to balance that with the other projects going on, which is why it was put a couple years out.

So that gets to the when and then the why.

Do we really have a grounded cost estimate in design?

It just seems like that was what the model could afford.

So in terms of what how much we could uh allocate from design.

I don't think a million is gonna be the entire design, hopefully not.

I mean, the we have some seed money for not just not just to help pay for the design, but also if we want to apply for grants.

What we always want to do in applying for grants is to show that we have some local dollars with it.

So the million covers both design as well as potentially uh a signal to uh potential funders.

What is the estimated construction cost of the Drake Park bridge?

When we know that was presented.

It was presented as part of the geobond of that, and though this is dated.

So in 2020, and Michael remember because you're on that negotiating team when we looked at projects that could be funded in the short term that we would ask voters for, it was 1.5 million uh was what was in there in 2020.

That was I thought it was just presented to council like the previous council, just the last time this matter came up the parking lot update.

No.

I don't think so.

I do not recall that being included.

Okay.

Um, in talking with Henry with BPRD right before this, I do think there's also interest from BPRD to look at what other partnership or collaboration could look like on that bridge in the future.

I think it's great that we have this million set aside to do the work I think is intended for the short term, and we can come back to the table with other funding mechanisms or options further along in the process.

Great.

Okay.

Um so just to reiterate what next steps would look like if council was to move forward with the recommendation, is that design and bidding for the North Mirror Pond lot could happen immediately.

We would look at evaluate evaluating the grant opportunities through visit bend and others for the construction costs of the riverside project, and we would return a council with further information and recommendations for funding for the Drake Park Bridge when the study is complete.

Okay.

Could I go ahead and pitch a different set of next steps?

Sure.

Uh if you could go back to the slide of the flex uh plaza.

Uh so I'm skeptical of the flexible plaza concept, and I want to see if there's an appetite to tweak things a little bit while still retaining, I think what some of the biggest benefits are.

Um I'm particularly worried about the design of having a stage with uh a large pavement surface, basically, is not gonna really be a great event space.

And if you've ever been to any of our local events where they're held on parking lots, they're pretty bad.

I mean, the May 2024 taco fest, that was over at the old mill.

Half of it was on grass, but the city's booth was on the parking lot.

And at only 82 degrees, which is how hot it was that day, it was unbearable, and nobody wanted to be there.

Everybody wanted to be on the grass.

So none of our local stages look out on a big parking lot like this.

They all look out on grass surfaces.

So I'm skeptical of the viability of the flex plaza concept, and I wanted to see if there's any appetite to say let's reallocate some of this funding to keep the bathrooms, keep the restrooms, fund the restrooms through one of the parking funds, and then reallocate all of the TRT dollars to get riverfront done and get the Drake Park Bridge done.

Yes.

Yeah, I'm I'm skeptical of the plaza as well.

I also just haven't really heard from anyone on the plaza, um, but I hear from a lot of people about Drake Park Bridge and Riverfront.

Um just based on my own personal experience using these facilities during times when other tourists are using them.

But yeah, I mean the the bathroom down there.

Um I think that I do agree that that's a Y City investment, but yeah, I'm interested in exploring that third option of Yeah, I'm I'm fully supportive of the Flex Plaza, and I think um the downtown business association is fully supportive of it as well.

And some, you know, having gone through some a lot of discussions around Brooks Alley and that that area and iterations we've had over the years.

I actually think this is a really smart concept um in a way to spend these dollars.

And I think um, I mean the rendering right here is showing you it doesn't need to be a dark surface, it doesn't need to be completely impermeable.

Um there are some interesting ways to work this so that it is actually a more of a unique space um that can be used in uh in the manner that's being kind of described and shown here in some of these issues maybe we can we can talk about through the design process as well.

But I think this is a huge win for downtown, and I think this allows us to really um leverage those TRT dollars to help us get the bathrooms that we want, as well as an extra bonus and an improvement on a parking lot that's really not in a great shape right now anyway.

Um and I think we've made that commitment to the to the Drake Park Bridge um and to Riverfront as well.

But um I I do want to stress Riverfront does need to continue to be a joint effort between us and parks and I want to continue that partnership and continue to explore how do we um build on that together and and get the funds that we need.

This is ready to go now, and I think would be a huge improvement for downtown and for the businesses down there and for the community as well.

So I'm supportive of it.

Yeah, I I totally agree.

Um as well.

This is something that the downtown businesses are saying that they want.

Um and um I think this is a really innovative way to, you know, I mean, anyhow has had to walk down there during and to try to get a delivery going when um the the farmers market is going on.

I mean it's it's virtually impossible.

And so I think this will allow for better flow to the businesses there.

So I'm I'm in complete support.

Yeah, my only comment I I understand how far we've come.

I I do agree, I did look at this and I was a little concerned about the surface.

So I think we just need to focus on that in the design phase and just make sure that we are doing something that's lighter and just um focuses on the heat um and addresses any sort of concerns there.

But I am supportive of it if we just concentrate on those design standards.

I'd like Council Riley.

Oh, oh, Councillor Riley wouldn't go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I think the concerns that Councillor Mendez is bringing up about the design are really valid.

Um there are ways to mitigate that.

Um I I do think the bathrooms need to be sized appropriately, and from what I've heard so far, I don't think that they are, especially from a looking forward perspective.

Um the uh you know, my my biggest concern on this whole thing is I I want to see the Drake Far Park footbridge built and done sooner rather than later, and I would like to make sure that we have enough seed money for the construction phase, not just the design phase.

And I agree with what the mayor said about the partnership with Ben Park and Rec on River front.

So there's a part of me that wants to pull I I'd like to see some of us pull some of them some money out of here still to make sure we allocate a little bit more for the Drake Park footbridge so that we have you know at least half a million to three quarters of a million if we assume it's gonna cost three quarter to do the design, that we've got a half a million to seed construction.

Um so that would be 1.25 million for the Drake Park footbridge, and then keep the the 360 or so for um for riverfront.

So that means reducing the budget here for Mirror Pond Flex Plaza a bit and trying to you know asking staff to be a bit more creative on how we get um the 4.25 million that we need here um and make sure that you know part of that it may drive the cost up a little bit, but that we're looking at some of the design concerns that have been brought up tonight.

So to that, so that that's my proposal how to I mean I don't understand why the plaza is considered shovel ready and not the Drake Park footbridge.

Yeah.

Well I mean, well, I'm curious about TRC funds for Drake Park.

When you're doing work in the river or around the river, there's the water overlay zone regulations.

There's you know, we we don't typically build uh um parks has done this, so I think we're relying on some of their expertise of building other bridges across the river and and there's extensive permits, not just the city permits, but also um there's quite a few age state agencies that are in that jurisdiction that we have to pay attention to.

So that's why it's it's not a shovel ready project.

I you might speak more about it.

Yeah, and I would I would just add that the conversation with Orla has been around the components that are included in this design, and if that was gonna change significantly, we would need to go back and make sure that would actually be a permissible use of how the TRT funds are deployed.

And I I mean I would love to invite others, but I think that if we talked about removing things like the stage, that would be massively impactful to the justification of having this be considered a tourism related facility.

Could we use parking funds for restrooms?

I'm not sure.

The in lieu of funds, no, but the um parking fund potentially.

So we have there's a million there's a differentiation of those pots of funds, yeah.

So we could put the million of the parking fund towards restrooms.

I have to look at the how that fund was set up potentially.

I don't want to say definitively until we do a little more research.

Steve I'd like to uh you know acknowledge when I'm when I am not an expert on on these matters and the folks that are that are around that area that are running businesses around that area, as I understand it, are saying this is what fits the bill for them.

I'm concerned about a heat island as well.

However, in this case, I'm gonna lean on the expertise of the folks that are around there and go with this recommendation as read.

Okay, so we've got four for the recommendation to proceed forward with um the plan that you presented here tonight.

Um and I don't know when what the next steps are passed tonight from this direction.

I think the as the staff outline uh outlined the first priority would be getting the near this the plaza here out to bid so that you would you would come see that you would see that contract before you as a next step.

Okay.

We're gonna continue to investigate the and we'll still so I think to counselor Riley's point too, and uh and from uh Councilor Francosa and Mendez as well of prioritizing the footbridge and putting that in the mix of potentially getting that uh funded as part of this reprioritization exercise that we'll have this spring.

Yeah, okay.

All right, we're about five minutes over, not too bad.

Thank you, everybody.

Yeah, go ahead.

This is saying to move forward with the application process for the Ben Sustainability Fund for the riverfront project.

Yes.

Did anyone have an objection to that?

Okay.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I just wanted to make sure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Actually, I don't know.

Is there is here still okay for us now?

The screens are all that we are now just sort of