On October 22, 2025, the Van City County Council held a work session to discuss three major agenda items: the policy direction for a residential natural gas electrification fee, an annual review and proposed amendments to the tree preservation standards, and funding allocation for Transient Room Tax (TRT) projects including a flex plaza, riverfront path, and Drake Park bridge. Staff presented data analysis and preliminary fee structures for electrification, while seeking council direction on fee objectives, equipment efficiency requirements, and calculation tiers. The council also reviewed implementation data from the first year of tree code enforcement and evaluated three proposed tourism infrastructure projects.
Staff Presentation (Cassie Lacey & Danielle Walker): Presented data showing that for most residents, converting to inefficient electric equipment increases annual bills significantly (e.g., +$2,500/year for Pacific Power customers), while efficient equipment reduces costs or has a minimal increase. Carbon impacts vary by utility mix; current conversion to inefficient electric equipment increases emissions, while efficient equipment reduces them.
Policy Direction: Staff outlined three spectrum options for the fee:
Council Positions:
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.